Believing Cedric Read Online Free PDF

about reasoning, about seeing where the other person was coming from and, possibly, even admitting wrongs and apologizing. This is what it had come to. It was the only reasonable way out that she could think of.
    She felt edgy as she walked out of the bathroom and down the hall, where she paused for a slow minute before putting a hand on the door of the book room. She opened it quickly and stepped forward, standing tall, holding her chin as high as her husband would have. However, she could tell instantly, just by looking down at him, that this wasn’t the same person she had left in the room.
    Cedric was standing in the middle of the floor, gawping up at her, his face long, eyes glossy, his shoulders seeming to hang from his neck. His hair was somewhat dishevelled, like he’d been holding his head for some time, squeezing tufts of it in his fists. “Mrs. O’Donnell?” His voice was pitched high, meek, submissive. “Um,” he looked around at a few of the shelves, “why am I in the book room? I don’t . . . I . . .” he paused, as if wondering whether or not he should admit this next part, “I don’t remember coming in here.” Then he broke off, looking at the floor, and within seconds had started to cry, quietly, shamefully, like he’d wet his pants.
    She let him whimper for a while, watching him skeptically, churning over the absurd thought that this could possibly be a grown-up in a child’s body just pretending to be a child. But she heard the pathetic ring of paranoia and delusion in this reasoning. No. Intuitively, she understood that this was just a boy in front of her, a boy who was confused and afraid.
    Agnes crouched down and held on to his shoulders. “It’s all right. Everything’s going to be all right now. Okay?” But Cedric couldn’t look her in the eyes as she reassured him. He was discomfited, embarrassed.
    She flattened one of the raised clumps of his hair. “Come on,” she said, standing up. “Let’s get you back into class.”
    For the next hour, Mrs. O’Donnell’s movements were stiff and awkward, her instructions to the students imprecise and confusing. She found herself constantly checking to see that Cedric was still in his seat, still watching the class with his usual appeasing eyes, still writing in his usual complacent way. And, to her relief, he always was.
    The day passed without further incident. As did the next. And then the next. Until, eventually, Agnes began to have a hard time believing that anything strange had ever happened at all.

( ii )
    No one knew exactly
    how far to run
    Starting, stopping
    like deer spooked
    with that curiosity that
    has them lingering dangerously
    between the line of knowing
    and knowing it’s too late
    We’d watched him light the fuse
    and drop it into the pail
    with an unceremonious plop
    breaking the meniscus
    then scattered, wavering
    gathering, tightened
    How soundlessly
    the pillar of water
    geysered into the sky
    and held there, weightless
    towering colossal
    Until the spout fanned
    and began to drop away
    falling into an explosive rain
    that smacked at the pavement
    with swollen globs
    soaking some of the other boys’ shirts
    Cotton clinging to their backs
    as slick-tight as bravery
    Mine
    was dry

Being on the road, traversing the country again on the way back home, put Melissa in an odd mood. Particularly here, in the landscape of her father’s upbringing, which she had never before spent time in. She was leaning against a car, waiting for her roadtrip companion to come out of the gas station, when she noticed the train standing still on a set of tracks across the highway and decided to cross the asphalt to take a better look. She walked up to the car that was most heavily graffitied, an enormous rusted barrel with the fadings of the words “Government of Canada” on its side, in two languages, streaked with