A Murder of Crows Read Online Free PDF Page B

Schiller said, pointing her chin at the five-pound sack of flour she cradled in her left arm. “I’m not supposed to leave it unattended for a minute, or I get an F for the assignment. How stupid is that? It’s a bag of flour! I can’t believe I let you talk me into taking this dumb child development class. The new teacher is a pain in the rear.”
    “Gee, Sara,” I sympathized as I unlocked my office door and flipped on the light switch. “Why don’t you tell me how you really feel about this class?”
    She gave me a blank look.
    “I thought I just did.”
    Clearly, Sara’s ability to discern my incredibly witty sarcasm was not her strong suit.
    When it came to insulting her teachers in the middle of lectures and skipping classes, however, she was a virtuoso. Just last Thursday, she’d gotten halfway to Milwaukee before our attendance office ascertained that she was, indeed, missing from school, and the only way we knew for sure she was truant was because I got a call from a Wisconsin state patrolman who had pulled her over for tailgating him.
    She may have been a mistress of deception, but no one could accuse Sara Schiller of being the smartest kid on the block, that was for sure.
    “I’ve got one, too,” Vicky Coen said, turning her hip towards me.
    Sure enough, there was a five-pound bag of flour riding on the low-slung waist of her jeans, protectively secured there by some kind of make-shift sling she’d draped across her chest.
    “I named mine,” she said. “It’s Zoey.”
    “That is so stupid,” Sara told her as the girls followed me into my office. “It’s just a bag of flour, Vicky. No joke, Mr. White, I really hate this teacher.”
    “You mean Ms. Knorsen?” I asked.
    Sara rolled her eyes. “Yes, I mean Ms. Knorsen. She’s my teacher for the child development class that you forced me to take.”
    Not surprisingly, Sara’s memory wasn’t exactly accurate. By the time she came to me to change her class schedule for the third time in the first week of the school year, there were only two courses left that still had open seats: advanced calculus or child development. Suffice it to say that Sara wasn’t a math prodigy, which had narrowed her options down to the child development class. I’d felt a little badly about turning Sara loose on a new faculty member, but after getting to know Gina Knorsen during our back-to-school workshop, I was pretty confident that if anyone could handle Sara Schiller, it would be our newest Family and Consumer Science teacher. With five years of inner-city classroom experience behind her, Ms. Knorsen knew all the tricks in a delinquent’s book, which meant she was going to be the one teacher Sara couldn’t manipulate.
    I could hardly wait for their first classroom confrontation. The very thought of it gave me goosebumps of anticipation.
    “So you have to do me this favor, Mr. White,” Sara continued. “I have to meet with Officer Cook about my truancy last week, and no way am I walking into his office with a bag of flour. Vicky can’t help me because she’s already got her own baby to take care of. So you have to watch my sack of flour while I talk to Officer Cook because you’re the reason I’m in this stupid class.”
    I dropped my briefcase behind my desk and looked from Sara to Vicky.
    “You can’t handle twins?”
    “Ms. Knorsen said we can’t babysit for each other,” Sara informed me. “Please, Mr. White, I really don’t want an F in this class.”
    That was a first. From what I’d seen of Sara in the last two years, she always wanted an F in class. Maybe Ms. Knorsen was already working a little turn-around magic on my perennial problem child.
    Given my own less-than-stellar track record with straightening Sara out, it would be awfully nice if someone could.
    But babysitting a bag of flour?
    As I studied the girls’ earnest faces, I had a sudden recall of Baby Lou’s soft weight in my arms at the Arboretum. I had to admit that there was