Little Tim, Big Tim Read Online Free PDF Page B

to walk around the grounds clanging the bell, yelling ‘five minutes to next bell’.) This bell means that class captains are responsible for ensuring that all students are seated by the time the next bell rings. When it rings, most of my class is seated; I am seated too, however, frozen rigid.
    The fear within me revolves around unanswered questions that have surfaced since I told Miss Freeman my distasteful tale. I am alone and have to bear the associated anxiety and pain without help from Peter. It isn’t physical pain, and Peter only surfaces now when I have to endure physical pain. I fear I have created trouble by being bad and telling Miss Freeman my story.
    I wonder if Dad has been told about my accusation and has done something to Miss Freeman.
    This thought scares me as I pray to God to let her walk into the classroom with her usual smiling face.
    ‘Sit down children,’ a man’s bellowing voice commands.
    It’s the school principal that glares at us to obey his command. Within sixty seconds the class is silent, sitting at their desks, looking to the front.
    ‘Miss Freeman won’t be teaching you anymore. She has left the school’ he informally states.
    ‘I will be your teacher until we find a new one.’
    Tears well up in my eyes. I’m in the front row and only the principal can truly observe my weakness of the fear of the unknown. What really happened to Miss Freeman? The girls of the class start to cry and ask the principal if we, Miss Freeman’s class, have made her leave. The rest of the boys are querying collectively if they have been too bad and made Miss Freeman leave school. They too start to cry.
    By now the whole of the class is crying about missing their favourite teacher. I’m crying due to the fear and shame that what I said to her may have got her hurt from the bad people. The principal is losing control and realises that the callous way he approached telling sensitive third graders their teacher and friend won’t be coming back is not appropriate. He leaves the room with all of us still distracted with the sudden shock of the unpleasant news.
    Miss Pearson enters our room and starts to quieten us down. This doesn’t take her long as we are slightly exhausted from howling, sobbing and crying and, as the last of us quieten, she tells us the truth of Miss Freeman’s sudden departure.
    ‘Miss Freeman has left due to the fact she is going to have a baby,’ she gently informs us.
    The girls are first to respond to the news; ‘Oohs’ and ‘ Aaahs ’ echo throughout the room. The boys all have relieved faces too, as now there is a logical explanation to her departure. I feel shame, a new emotion: Shame for wondering if I’ve gotten Miss Freeman hurt or sacked. I run out of the classroom all the way to the park with the trees and heaven’s gate at the front. Shame overwhelms me as I sob, asking the same question over and over again. Did I get Miss Freeman hurt? I don’t believe adult truth.

STUD FARM
     
LITTLE TIM
     
    James and I are involved in another satanic ritual. On the drive out to the property where we are to be used as meat for the ceremony, I notice James mumbling to himself. Commanded not to talk to each other, I assume that he too has extra friends to help him through this depravity. It’s interesting to observe this interaction from the other side. His voice inflections from one persona to the next are slightly different; his facial expressions change with the moods and emotions he is expressing silently to himself. His angry and scared face show the only true expression available to a little boy who is about to be violated.
    The horror ride ends at a stud farm as our car, a Ford Squire station wagon, pulls up next to the black and grey Jaguars and Mercedes. James, loving cars, distracts himself with the phenomenal sight of some of the richest cars on the earth in one place. I hate rich cars and rich people, and this mob is the cream of the crop. Dad is bragging how his