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like—”
    “Lookout!”
    Too late. A flying snowball caught Nicky in the back of the head.
    “Quack, quack!” a voice called out. “Nice duck, Borelli!”
    It was Dirk Van Allen, with three of his rowdy pals.
    “These guys are asking for a beating,” Tommy said, and began to walk toward Dirk.
    “No,” Nicky said, “it's just a snowball fight. Come on! We'll cream them.”
    “Then look out!”
    Too late! Nicky got hit again, in the chest that time.
    Tommy scooped up a handful of snow and formed a snowball. He cocked his arm and threw—
bam!
His first snowball caught one of Dirk's friends square in the ear. The boy looked shocked, then angry. He scooped up a snowball.
    It was war. Nicky and Tommy hid behind their snowman, who soon lost his nose and his crown of leaves. Tommy took one hit to the chest, but he landed quite a few on the enemy. Then he prepared a giant snowball and said, “Watch this. Big Bertha. Bombs away.”
    He cocked his arm just as Dirk hurled a snowball that flew like a rocket. It cracked into Tommy's chin and knocked him to the ground. Nicky grabbed a handful of snow and prepared a counterattack. Tommy didn't get up. Nicky said, “Come on! They're charging us!” but Tommy didn't answer. Nicky dropped his snowball and fell to his knees. There was red all over the snow. At Tommy's side was a sharp stone that Dirk had buried inside his last snowball.
    Nicky reached inside his jacket for his cell phone and quickly dialed. “Clarence! We need you back here now!”
    It took an hour in the emergency room and four stitches to close the gash on Tommy's chin. By the time they got home, it was late afternoon. The light was going. Tommy was wrapped in gauze. The doctors had given him a shot, so he sounded fuzzy when he talked. Nicky's mother put him straight to bed.
    Then she marched Nicky to the kitchen and said, “I've got to call Tommy's mother and explain what happened. What in the world were you doing throwing rocks?”
    Nicky said, “We weren't. We were throwing snowballs. Then Dirk Van Allen buried a rock in a snowball and hit Tommy in the face.”
    “It must have been an accident,” his mother said. “I can't imagine Peter Van Allen's son doing something like that on purpose.”
    “Give me a break, Mom,” Nicky said. “He's the biggest bully at C.P. He always does stuff like this.”
    “We'll discuss this when your father gets home,” she said. “In the meantime, I'll need his mother's telephone number.”
    Nicky was happy to learn that Tommy's mother hadn't answered the phone. He'd been afraid she'd insist on Tommy coming home right away. But when Nicky's mother had called, there had been nothing.
    “Isn't that strange?” she asked. “There wasn't even an answering machine.”
    “I think they're kind of poor, Mom,” Nicky said.
    “Too poor for an answering machine?” she replied. “Ridiculous!”
    Nicky's father wasn't happy with the story when he got home that night. “That's a dirty trick,” he said over dinner. “I'll talk to his father.”
    “You should do more than that,” Uncle Frankie said. “Somebody ought to teach that kid a lesson.”
    “That little boy needs a smack in the head,” Grandma Tutti said, and waved her wooden spoon.
    “Well, I assume his father, after I speak with him, will discipline him for throwing rocks at other children,” Nicky's father said.
    Frankie looked at Nicky, who shrugged.
    “Yeah, right,” Frankie said. “His dad won't do nothing. This isn't the first time he's done something like this, right, Nicky?”
    “He's been like this since preschool.”
    “He's a bully,” Frankie said. “So he's a coward. All bullies are cowards. They're afraid of everybody, so they make themselves feel strong by finding someone who's afraid of
them.”
    “Listen to Sigmoid Freud,” Grandma Tutti said.
    “I'm just saying,” Frankie said. “Until that kid gets a wake-up call, he's not gonna stop beating on Nicky.”
    “Well, he's not going