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  I get there just as his van pulls up. The door opens, and he steps out. He looks different. I’m not sure what it is at first.

  “Hi, Ms. S,” he says.

  “Hi, Donny. Glad you’re back.” He nods. Did he get a haircut? No, that’s not it. What is it?

  “I don’t live with my mom anymore.” He blurts it out at me. He looks surprised that he said it out loud.

  “I know. I’m sorry to hear it.” I look at him again. I know what it is. He’s clean. His face is scrubbed, and his hair shines a little in the morning light. His hands aren’t gray, and his fingernails aren’t black. He doesn’t look like an unkempt little waif anymore. Now he looks…kempt.

  But not very happy.

  “I live with Maggie and Steve. They’re old, and they live about a gazillion miles from here. From anywhere.”

  “I hear they’re nice.” I’m making it up. I shouldn’t do that, but I can’t think of anything else to say.

  “They’re okay, I guess. They’re not mean. Not exactly nice either. Just not…anything.”

  “Well, let’s get you settled back into the classroom before anyone else comes. There’ve been a few changes since you left that I need to tell you about.” Changing the subject because I can’t think of anything remotely helpful to say.

  His eyes fly up to meet mine, and the panic in them at the thought of something else in his life changing breaks my heart.

  “It’s okay. It’s nothing too drastic.” Just a new classroom, new staff person, and new classmate. Basically new everything. Except me. And Cory. And Kevin. Oh, and Baby. That should be a comfort to him.

  I take him down and show him everything. Sean is cool as usual. Donny is wary and keeps his distance. He looks around the room, and his eyes rest on the poster he’d brought in the day after he became one of my students. He looks pleased for a second. Almost as pleased as I was that second day when I saw that it was a nice, appropriate picture of Harry Potter flying on a broom.

  “This my desk?” he asks.

  “Yes. You’re beside Kevin. I thought that way you could help him with things.”

  He nods, and I silently congratulate myself on my wise choice of seating arrangement.

  The other three arrive relatively calmly. Mike completely ignores Donny when he sees him. Kevin looks at him briefly.

  “Dickhead.”

  We really have to work on his vocabulary. Maybe Baby can help.

  “Hey Kev,” Donny says and flashes him the briefest of smiles.

  “You’re back,” Cory says, always observant.

  “Yeah.”

  “Did they put you in jail? On account of smashing me in the head?” Cory rubs his head, which is long-since bump-less.

  “No. Just a foster home.” Judging from his tone, to Donny the two things are pretty much equal. I take a second to wonder if he really believes that his punch is the one that put him in foster care. Didn’t anyone explain it to him?

  The morning is strangely—eerily—easy. Donny is unnaturally calm. So much so that I start to wonder if they’ve overmedicated him at the new home or something. Not that calm is bad. But he’s slowed down to the point of being almost immobile.

  Mike is working at being disinterested, and the effort of deliberately ignoring Donny keeps him quiet for a change. His day-one blowup hasn’t been repeated, but he has a mouth on him, and he uses it to escalate Cory on a daily basis. He’s sneaky about it and smart. He knows exactly what to say and when to say it for maximum impact and minimum adult detection.

  Kevin is never very loud. He’s mostly passive resistant so far. Very good at doing nothing. Then again, I haven’t tried to make him wear sleeves yet.

  By the time one o’clock rolls around, I start thinking that this might be quite the anomaly—a whole day with no exploding children in it.

  By the time one fifteen rolls around, things have changed—with a vengeance.

  “What did you fucking say to me?” Donny flies up out of his seat with the force of a cannonball escaping. He lands directly beside Mike’s desk. Sean is over there in a split second, but Donny already has the front of Mike’s shirt bunched up in his hand.

  “Nothing freak. You must be, like, hallucinating or something.” Mike smirks at him and grabs Donny’s wrist, twisting it hard enough to make him let go. Sean puts his hand very lightly on Mike’s arm.

  “Let go, Mike,” he says calmly. Mike glares at him. He’s made it clear he doesn’t like to be touched. We’ve made it clear that we won’t touch him if he doesn’t give us a reason to.

  He drops Donny’s wrist, and I try to stifle the sound of my sigh of relief.

  Sean is still looking at Mike, watching his face for signs that will tell him which way this situation is going to go. And that’s why he misses the look on Donny’s face just before he takes a swing and makes contact with Mike’s cheek.

  “You stupid, fucking asshole. You don’t say anything about my mom!” Donny screams, while Sean switches gears and gets him into a restraint.

  “What mom is that? The stupid bitch who sent you to a retard home?” Mike laughs at him. I haven’t seen him laugh before. It’s not like any laughter I’ve ever heard. It’s a cold sound, an icy wind whipping into the room, making me shiver.

  “Mike, that’s enough.” I’m standing beside him, as Sean tries to move Donny away from the desk.

  “Mike that’s enough? You’re seriously fucking kidding me, right? He hit me! And I didn’t even hit the freak-faced faggot back. And you’re giving me shit?”

  “He called my mom a whore!” Donny screams, kicking backward at Sean. They’re slowly moving toward the door, folded together in a gyrating mess of body parts, a bizarre parody of a dance move sliding across the floor.

  “Hey, I’m just telling the truth man!” Mike calls out.

  “Shut up, fuckhead,” Cory decides to join in. I would rather he didn’t.

  “Both of you be quiet!” I try to keep my voice calm as I raise the volume. “Cory, I would appreciate it if you would just help Kevin with his math. And Mike, that’s enough out of you. Donny had no right to hit you, but I need you to stop this. Now.”

  Cory opens his mouth and then changes his mind and goes over to sit with Kevin. I’m pretty sure neither of them is planning on doing math, but at the moment, I really don’t care.

  Sean and Donny are heading out the door. Donny is crying now. I know that Cory slows down the physical acting out once the tears start to flow, and I’m hoping the same thing is happening right now with Donny. Sean has switched his hold, escorting Donny to our newly decorated time-out room with one arm firmly holding his shoulder, ready to switch back if he starts to escalate again.

  I stand in the doorway to watch their progress. I look across the hall and shake my head as a pair of solemn brown eyes stares up at me from about three feet off the floor.

  “Go back into your room, honey. Go find your teacher,” I say to the tiny junior kindergarten student who will most likely have nightmares for a week. The eyes widen a bit, probably in fear, because I’m pretty sure they all think I’m some sort of evil witch lording it over a dark and dusty lair filled with loud-mouthed, profanity-spewing monsters. She looks at me for another second and then disappears back into the safe haven of the bright and colorful land of crayons and circle time.

  I turn back to the classroom. Mike seems to have forgotten the whole incident. He’s staring down at a book, doing a reasonable facsimile of reading. Cory is laughing as Kevin makes Baby dance across the top of his desk. I know I should go and talk to Mike about what he said to Donny, but I don’t want to escalate the situation again. I want to keep things calm long enough to have a chance to talk to Donny.

  I’ve never seen him cry before. I’ve seen him scream and yell and kick and punch. But never cry.

 
“Ms. S?” I turn back to the hallway at the sound of my name. Sean is standing at the door of the time-out room.

  “Yes?”

  “Donny would like to talk to you. He’s pretty upset. Can we switch?”

  I look back at the kids. Still calm enough. I shouldn’t really leave Sean with three students. Technically, an EA should not be left alone with groups. The time-out room should really be attached to my classroom, but this arrangement is the only one I’ve got, so we have to make do. Which means bending the rules—all the way until they break.

  “Okay.” I feel like calling out “one, two, three—go!” as we dash down the hall, trying to make it seem like no one has been left alone.

  Donny is still crying. No, more than crying. Sobbing, great big hiccupping sobs accompanied by a flood of tears as his nose runs into his mouth. I dig through my pockets looking for a tissue. I manage to find a restaurant napkin, which will have to do. I hand it to him. He looks at it like he has no idea what I want him to do with it.

  “For your nose,” I say, gesturing toward his face as if I’m not sure he knows where his body parts are. Maybe a rousing chorus of “Head and Shoulders, Knees and Toes” would cheer him up.

  He wipes his nose, smearing the mess across his face. He looks at me with anguished eyes, and it occurs to me that cleanliness is not the issue here.

  “Donny? You aren’t this upset about Mike, are you?”

  “No. He’s just an asshole.”

  “This is about your mom?” Brilliant deduction, Professor Holmes.

  “Yes.” He starts to cry harder—if that’s even possible.

  “Oh, honey. You have to calm down.”

  “It’s too late! I already blew it!”

  “No. This wasn’t your fault. The fight with Cory isn’t the reason you went to the foster home.” I’m getting out of my depth here. Again. I don’t know what to say to him.

  “No, not that! Today! I blew it today!”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I blew my visit with my mom! I’m supposed to see her Saturday, and now I can’t!” He starts to wail at the top of his lungs. The little ones next door are getting an earful. Their teacher, Sharon, told me they call the sounds coming from here “the boogeyman in the closet.” She’s tried to explain, but the reality is actually worse than the fantasy, so none of us has figured out what to do about it.

  “I don’t understand.” I don’t feel very helpful right now. I really don’t get what he’s saying.

  “My social bitch Melanie said that if I messed up at school, I couldn’t go see my mom.”

  “Your social worker said that?” Emphasis on the “worker”—everything’s a social-skills lesson. Although maybe his word is more accurate.

  Did she really tell the kid that his whole life hinges on how he behaves at school? That the payoff for being a good boy is something as astronomically important as spending time with his mother? That won’t stress him out at all. Nothing like a little incentive to cure an emotionally disturbed kid and make him a model student.

  One thing anyone working with these kids figures out quickly is that making the stakes too high generally results in creating an impossible situation. These children find positive reinforcement just as hard to deal with as the negative. Actually, harder most of the time. Their self-control is so fragile that setting wonderful, and distant, goals for them basically sets them up for disaster.

  If I’ve figured it out, a social worker who does this full-time would have to know it. What the hell was she thinking? This is ridiculous. I can’t see it working with any kid, let alone one of my students. It would be like telling my daughter that she can only go see her dad on the weekend if she passes her math test. She’d be so uptight, she’d probably forget how to count to ten.

  “Ye-e-e-s!” The word is one long gulping sob.

  “Well, you can stop crying because I have no intention of telling your social worker about today. It’s your first day back. You have a lot to deal with.” Like losing your whole entire world in one single moment. And being told that you can keep on losing it over and over again every time you have a bad day—when you’re in a class for kids who can’t seem to stop having bad days.

  What the hell was she thinking?

  It’s time to have a talk with the social bitch.

  Chapter 11

  Social skills

  I have the greatest respect for social workers. It’s a desperately tough job. It’s hard enough to deal with children from troubled homes at school, but it’s immeasurably harder to be the one who actually has to walk into those homes. The one who has to make life-altering decisions every day. The one who is constantly confronted with the most desperate of human nature within a system where there are never enough people or resources to get the job done.

  All social workers are not created equal, however. Just like teachers—and every other profession out there—there are great ones, good ones, mediocre ones, and then there are those who should be looking for another line of work. Luckily, I’ve met very few of the latter. I’m afraid that Donny’s new worker might be one of the few.

  I’m not exactly sure of the protocol here, so I call Daniel and explain the situation.

  “I wouldn’t worry about it too much. I’m sorry Donny got upset, but it sounds to me like someone who’s just trying too hard and maybe doesn’t have a lot of experience with the whole school versus home relationship. I’ll give her a call and politely explain it to her from the school’s point of view and make sure she talks to Donny.”

  That’s diplomatic of him. Guess that’s why he’s the board office guy and I’m teaching in the Cave.

  I would have called and said, “Hey listen, social bitch, back off my kid.”

  Well, not really, but I wanted to. My she-bear instincts come out with my students the same way they do with my own children sometimes, and I strike out first and think later.

  Sounds like a few young boys I know.

  “Okay. Just make sure she tells him that nothing he does at school will screw up his home visits. I already told him that, but he really needs to hear it from her too.”

  “Will do. Talk to you later.”

  As I hang up the phone, Mrs. Callahan pops her head in and reminds me that another social worker is waiting for me. Mike’s this time.

  Social workers, teachers, doctors, parents, principals—so many adults in the lives of these kids. It reminds me of an old joke: how many adults does it take to screw up a kid?

  Too many cooks throwing random stuff into the frying pan with no consistency at all, making a total mess of these kids’ lives. Everyone expecting different things from them and telling them different stories until they literally don’t know if they’re coming or going.

  It’s amazing that they survive at all.

  I walk into Mrs. Callahan’s super cozy office and shake hands as I’m introduced to Steven, the social worker who visited Mike’s home.

  “So, it was quite interesting, to say the least,” he says with a rather rueful smile.

  “How so?”

  “Well, both parents were there and started off by insisting that nothing was really wrong. That Mike was just having a bad day when the neighbors saw him on the hood of his mother’s car.”

  “I’ve sat on the hood of my mother’s car.” Doesn’t sound too exciting to me.

  “Oh, but have you thrown yourself onto the hood of your mother’s car, grabbing the windshield wipers and screaming at her that she’s not allowed to leave, while she’s backing out of the driveway?”

  “Oh my!” Mrs. Callahan looks startled. I can’t blame her this time. Steven’s words paint quite the mental image.

  “Oh, it gets better. First they tell me that he’s done that before but that it’s no big deal because he always gets off wh
en she stops the car and comes back into the house.”

  “She gives in to him?” Yikes. I start to judge, but then my mind flips back to this afternoon and my decision not to talk to Mike about Donny…just because it was easier than letting him escalate.

  “Oh, yeah. Then we go on a tour of the house. They show me his room, which contains every toy and gadget you’ve ever seen, most of them broken and thrown around the place. Then they show me his little sister’s room, which has a lock on the door about an inch from the ceiling.”

  “They lock her in her room?” Will she be in my class next? Might be nice to have a girl.

  “I’ll get to that. Then we see their room. Pretty normal-looking master-suite deal. Until they close the door and show me how it’s covered in gouges—big jagged slash marks all over the wood. They tell me—all calm and cool—that those are just the marks from when Mike has one of his tempers. It wasn’t like they were showing it to me to demonstrate how bad things are either. It was just part of the tour.”

  “His…tempers?” Mrs. Callahan is growing pale.

  “Yeah. His tempers. When he grabs a kitchen knife and chases them into their bedroom. When they go in and shut the door, he stabs it with a knife until he calms down.”

  “Oh my God! And his sister?”

  “Well, usually she’s in the master with them. Only sometimes, when he’s in a ‘mood’ and they have things to do, they lock her in her room, just in case.” He shakes his head, and I shudder a little at the thought of a young girl locked in her room so that her brother can’t—

  And that’s as far as I can take it.

  “So what happens now?” I’m not sure I want to know.

  “I don’t really have a clear answer. It’s a strange case. There’s no evidence of abuse here. He is clean, clothed, and healthy. His sister has never been hurt. The parents haven’t either, as far as I know. It’s a volatile situation and will be put under investigation, but there’s no quick or easy answer. Chances are, there will be a recommendation for family counseling and maybe parenting courses.”