I dislike the flow of this one. Not sure what it is exactly.
As for technicalities:
“gingerly picking twigs out his hair and dropping” seems like it should have an “of” there, and it’s in present tense.
Dunno if you have to have that “had” in “Once he had picked his hair clean”
In the second paragraph I think you should move that comma from after “softer” to after “against the wall”

Fairly intense and effective in transmitting the fear of the bullied; the imagined clatter of rocks against the window conveys the heightened sensitivity engendered by fear quite well, I think.

So overall, I’d disagree with DB’s more critical appraisal (each to their own, of course). On the technicalities, I’d agree with the ‘out of his hair’ and would probably excise the ‘him’ at the end of that sentence. But the second para reads fine to me, commas and all.

It’s ironic that we choose this story to be ‘brutishly honest’. Nonetheless, I will follow suit… I think you could’ve been a bit clearer at the beginning of the story about what the boy was doing. I thought the boy was using the loo. As far as the punctuation and presentation… I have now idea. It looks good to me.

A very disheartening take on the whole ‘sticks and stones’ aphorism. Nicely told, and I caught on from the beginning the kid wasn’t dropping a deuce.

I got to take issue with just about all of DB’s points. Aside from the missing ‘of’ I think the rest of those points are just fine as-is. The only thing I might add is a comma after ‘against the wall.’ Other than that, the story flowed pretty well for me, and I followed the chain of events logically from start to finish. It actually reminded me a bit of some of my own (less pleasant) childhood experiences.

One sentence, that’s all this story is about for me, one sentence holds a mystery:

>Thankfully none of them (contusions) had even a smidgen of blood so far.

Why would this abused kid be thankful he wasn’t bleeding? I wonder…