Somebody Else’s Kids Read Online Free PDF Page B

would lean back in her chair every few minutes, close her eyes and shake her hands at her sides to relieve the pressure. Edna was not escaping unharmed either. She redeveloped migraines.
    The next Monday things came to a head. At Lori’s appointed time with me she did not arrive. I waited. Over by the animal cages with Boo, I talked to him about Sam in his shell. Yet my eyes were on the clock and my mind on Lori.
    I knew Lori was not absent; I had seen her in the halls earlier. Finally when fifteen minutes had passed and she still did not show up, I took Boo by the hand and we went to investigate.
    “I sent her to the office,” Edna replied at the door of her first-grade classroom. She shook her head. “That child has had it in this room, let me tell you. She took her reading workbook and threw it clear across the room. Nearly whacked poor Sandy Latham in the head. Could have put an eye out, the way she threw it. And then when I told her to pick it up, she turns around as pretty as you please, just like she was some little queen and says … well, let me tell you, it was a
tainted
word. Can you imagine? Seven years old and she uses words like that? I have the other children to think of. I’m not going to have them hearing words like that. Not in here. And I told her so. And sent her right down to Mr. Marshall. She earned that paddling.”
    I too went right down to Mr. Marshall’s office, dragging Boo behind me because there was nothing else to do with him. There, sitting on a chair in the secretary’s office, was Lori, tears over her cheeks, a mangled tissue in her hands. She would not look up as Boo and I entered.
    “May Lori come down to class with me?” I asked the secretary. “It’s her time in the resource room.”
    The secretary looked up from her typing. First at me and then, craning her neck to see over the counter, at Lori. “Well, I suppose. She was supposed to sit there until she finished crying. You done crying?” she asked across the formica barrier.
    Lori nodded.
    “You going to behave yourself for once? No more trouble this afternoon?” the secretary asked.
    Another nod.
    “You’re too little to be getting in all this trouble.”
    Lori rose from the chair.
    “Did you hear me?” the secretary asked.
    Lori nodded.
    Back to me, the secretary shrugged. “I guess you can have her.”
    We walked down the hallway hand in hand, the three of us. My head was down as we were walking and I looked at our clasped hands. Lori’s nails were bitten down to where blood caked around the little finger.
    Inside our room I let go of both of them. Boo minced off to see Benny. Lori went directly to the worktable while I shut the door and fastened the small hook-and-eye latch I had purchased at the discount store.
    On top of the worktable was one of the pre-primers I had been using with another student earlier in the day. Lori walked over to it and regarded it for a long moment in a serious but detached manner, as one views an exhibit in the museum. She looked back at me, then back at the door. Her face clouded with an emotion I could not decipher.
    Abruptly Lori knocked the book off the table with a fierce shove. Around the table she went and kicked the book against the radiator. She grabbed it and ripped at the brightly colored illustrations. “I hate this place! I hate it, I hate it, I hate it!” she screamed at me. “I don’t want to read. I don’t ever want to read. I
hate
reading!” Then her words were swallowed up in sobs as the pages of the pre-primer flew.
    Tears everywhere and Lori was lost in her frenzy. She clawed the book, her nails squeaking across the paper. Her entire body was involved, bouncing up and down in a tense, concentrated rage. When the last pages of the pre-primer lay crumpled, she pitched the covers of the book hard at the window behind the table. Then she turned and ran for the door. Not expecting it to be locked, she fell hard against it with a resounding thunk. Giving up a wail