Wonder

“Just leave them alone, dude,” Amos repeated calmly.
“Are you a freak, too?” said Eddie.
“They’re all a bunch of freaks!” said one of his friends.
Amos didn’t answer them but looked at us. “Come on, guys, let’s
go. Mr. Tushman’s waiting for us.”
I knew that was a lie, but I helped Jack get up, and we started
walking over to Amos. Then out of the blue, the Eddie guy grabbed
my hood as I passed by him, yanking it really hard so I was pulled
backward and fell flat on my back. It was a hard fall, and I hurt my
elbow pretty bad on a rock. I couldn’t really see what happened
afterward, except that Amos rammed into the Eddie guy like a
monster truck and they both fell down to the ground next to me.
Everything got really crazy after that. Someone pulled me up by my
sleeve and yelled, “Run!” and someone else screamed, “Get ’em!” at
the same time, and for a few seconds I actually had two people
pulling the sleeves of my sweatshirt in opposite directions. I heard
them both cursing, until my sweatshirt ripped and the first guy
yanked me by my arm and started pulling me behind him as we ran,
which I did as fast as I could. I could hear footsteps just behind us,
chasing us, and voices shouting and girls screaming, but it was so
dark I didn’t know whose voices they were, only that everything felt
like we were underwater. We were running like crazy, and it was
pitch black, and whenever I started to slow down, the guy pulling me
by my arm would yell, “Don’t stop!”