Read Just Another Kid for Free Online

“We’re trying to work. Make that boy stop.”
    Putting Leslie off my lap, I rose and went to catch Dirkie. Taking him by the shoulder, I physically returned him to his chair and pushed him into it.
    “That girl has long yellow hair. You have long hair. You have long yellow hair too. Are you going to cut your long yellow hair?”
    “No, Dirkie.”
    “That girl, is she going to cut her hair? Is that girl going to cut her long yellow hair?”
    “She might,” Geraldine said waspishly.
    “No, Dirkie, she isn’t going to cut her hair either. Now come on. Here’s today’s math. Let’s see if you can get it finished before recess. I’ll help you get started.”
    But he couldn’t reorient. “Hey, girl,” he said, “girl with the long yellow hair, do you have a cat?”
    Geraldine came over to me toward the end of the afternoon. “Shemona doesn’t like that boy, Miss.”
    “Yes, he can be annoying, that’s for certain. But if Shemona doesn’t like him, all she needs to do is tell him to go away. And he will. He doesn’t mean any harm.”
    Geraldine frowned.
    “What about you? I asked. “What do you think of him?”
    “Shemona thinks he’s silly. So do I.”
    I was grateful to see that particular day done. While nothing major happened, it had been hard work. I’d been nervous about these two girls with all their tragic fame, and it had left me on edge. The others were unsettled by the change. Dirkie, especially, had remained impossible all day long, and I was ready to skewer him by the last hour. In an effort to hasten the end, I agreed to let everyone out on the playground five minutes early to wait for their rides. It was a clear, sharp September day, and I knew the tensions would evaporate more quickly in the brisk air.
    Mariana’s and Dirkie’s buses came. Then Shemona and Geraldine’s aunt arrived to collect them. That left just Leslie, holding my hand.
    “Where’s your mama?” I asked. “It’s not like her to be late.” I scanned the length of the street for Dr. Taylor’s dark blue Mercedes. Normally, she was extremely punctual, waiting at the wheel of the car when I brought the children down. She even occasionally came up to the classroom to get Leslie, if I ran a minute or two late.
    We waited for a few moments longer, and then I took Leslie around the corner of the building to the playground and pushed her on the swing. She adored swinging. It was the single activity to evoke any kind of genuine response from her. She would close her eyes and let her head fall back, her long, dark hair fanning out behind her. While swinging, Leslie came the closest I had seen her come to smiling.
    No doubt Leslie would have been happy to stay on the swing until dark, but I had a special ed. meeting at 4:45 in a nearby school, so my time wasn’t totally my own. Ten, fifteen, twenty minutes slipped by, and still no Dr. Taylor. By four o’clock, I decided things had gone on long enough. I let the swing come to a stop and took Leslie inside to the office, where I telephoned the Considynes’ home.
    No answer. I wasn’t sure what to do. Could I leave Leslie down here? Should I take her to her house myself and trust someone would be there by then? Or should I just keep waiting? I dialed the Considynes’ number once more and let the phone ring and ring.
    Upstairs in the classroom again, I got Leslie settled with some toys while I sat down at the table and looked over my notes for the meeting. As 4:20 approached, tension returned. The Considynes lived at the opposite end of town from where I was going; if I left with Leslie now, I wouldn’t get back in time for the start of the meeting. And what if no one was there? What then?
    Where the hell had Dr. Taylor gotten to? I went out in the hallway and down to the end, where I could see the street in front of the building from the stairwell window. I searched up and down the tree-lined road for some sign of the Mercedes. This was definitely atypical of her. I had