GETTING WHAT I DESERVE

Samuels’ middle-grade novel centers on a young teenager’s thorny relationship with a bully.

Thirteen-year-old Charlie has known his schoolmate Mark since they were both 9, and they’ve always been casual acquaintances. Then one day, for no clear reason, Mark starts bullying Charlie relentlessly and even convinces other students to harass and ridicule Charlie every Friday (or “Charlie Day,” as Mark calls it). Charlie initially sees summer vacation as a welcome relief from the abuse—but then Mark shows up at Charlie’s apartment and says that he wants to be friends. Charlie is initially wary but decides to give it a try. The problem is that Mark frequently berates Charlie, insisting that he’s immature—or “acting like a baby,” as he puts it. He also makes bizarre demands, such as suddenly insisting that Charlie immediately take a shower. Charlie, who has no friends, oscillates between frustration with the situation and thinking that he might have somehow brought Mark’s horrible treatment on himself. “Why was he doing this?” Charlie wonders at one point, but it takes some time for him to finally get an answer. Samuels’ story is often dire; Charlie, who narrates, hopes on a daily basis that Mark’s “bad attitude” won’t resurface, and some of what Mark does is quite disturbing and will likely make many readers uncomfortable, as will the fact that Charlie continually agrees to spend time with an unpredictable bully who humiliates him, privately and publicly, at random intervals. Overall, though, it’s an effectively understated novella that allows for multiple interpretations, and readers get a better understanding of each of the main characters by the end. The author’s prose also effectively reads like the thoughts of a bright 13-year-old: “He was being stubborn for no reason at all. I guessed he was trying to see if he could get me to panic, so I kept taking deep breaths and concentrated on waiting him out.”

A hard-hitting and ultimately insightful tale of adolescent woe.