Tennyson Street School: fugitive
Fugitive: (n) a person who has escaped or is in hiding to avoid persecution from his fellow man
Miranda was reassigned to outdoor recess duty. Another day, another lunch duty with Chloe was wrapping up, the fourth-graders dumping the leftover food from their plastic trays into large trash cans and hopping back to their tables on two feet, reaching over to thump a buddy on the head or joining the rugby scrum at the doorway to be let out to play.
I held back the shoving mass of energy at those open doors. “Make a line,” I told them. “Line up for outside.” Eager to run, the boys in the front immediately organized themselves into a zigzag that approximated a line.
“Know what this is?” one buzzcut bruiser asked; he looked like a future football lineman. He held his hand up, palm facing himself, as if looking at something there before his eyes. I cocked my head toward him. He then licked his hand with a wide tongue and shoved his palm to within inches of my face, faking a spitty swipe down to my chin.
“Spit shine!”
Instinctively I pulled back. He and his buddies laughed. “I didn’t really do it,” he added good-naturedly. “Can we go?”
Chloe made her way through the throng to the head of the line. “This group.” The boys launched into the hall, speed-walking and then hurtling through the playground doors out to freedom.
Like the red-green light of a freeway on-ramp at rush hour, Chloe dismissed small groups of comparatively calm, less-frenzied kids – until a familiar character squeezed past her and loped down the hall the other way, toward the office. “Wait! Where’s he going?” she asked me.
I turned and strode after him, and the wave of children broke past Chloe and dashed out the exit doors to the playground. Chloe swept away with them, holding the doors open as they poured out and lining up the next class from the playground to come in for lunch.
My trickster plunked down on the cushioned benches outside the front office. “Hey there,” I approached him casually. “Where are you supposed to be right now?”
“Here,” he told me coyly.
“Here,” I echoed. “The hall? So, if you’re supposed to be here, why were you just in the lunch room?”
“I just needed to put something away,” he answered, cuddling a pillow to his chest and wiggling on the bench. He pulled a stress ball out of his jacket pocket and began tossing it a few inches into the air and catching it.
“You probably want to put that ball away, don’t you think?”
“Why?”
“I don’t think you’re supposed to throw balls in the hallway, do you?”
“I think it’s okay,” he disagreed.
“Can you tell me your name?”
His eyes narrowed. “Why – so you can tell the office?”
“Mm, mostly so I can make sure you’re where you’re supposed to be, so I know you’re okay.”
He shook his head.
“Okay,” I said. I walked in to the office, a fishbowl of windows at this corner. The Office sees all, knows all, with this vantage.
“Hi,” I said to the secretary.
“Oh hi!” she greeted me, trying to sound welcoming while vaguely recognizing me as the new person.
“So, our friend out here says he’s supposed to be sitting on the benches – is that right?”
“Yes, he’s going to be there this week and next.”
“He’s got a squeeze ball he’s playing with for now – he told me it’s okay,” I added.
“Yes, several of our kids do that.” The secretary looked at me with a mildly patronizing expression. “You know, any time you have questions, you can just ask us.”
Isn’t that what I’m doing right now?, I thought, annoyed. “The reason I’m asking is that he popped into the lunch room, where we were on duty, and then he skipped right back out, and we didn’t know if he was supposed to be with us or where….”
“Oh, that was my fault,” the secretary said breezily. “He finished his lunch in here and still had his fork, so I said, ‘Well go take it back, but be quick.’”
“Ah, great, okay thanks,” I responded with a half smile. I recognized this boy as one who had been reprimanded in the lunch room previously. Now he was having lunch in the office and spending recesses on the entryway benches, squeezing his stress ball and hugging the cushions. For two weeks. A kid eternity.
Send the kid who gets in trouble so often that he’s eating lunch in the office – send that kid, carrying a fork, through the halls without a pass. The secretary had been friendly and helpful to me every other time I had walked in. Now she felt almost protective of our young friend benched in perpetuity. I held in a sigh of frustration, yet I couldn’t help thinking as I turned away from the tall front desk and back out the office door: you – set – him – up. Without meaning to, of course. Thoughtlessly, the way we most often cause harm. Through unintended consequences.
I slowed my steps as I reached the benches. “Well that was easy,” I confirmed, the boy looking up at my approach. “I wish I knew your name, so I could thank you for helping me understand where you needed to be.” I kept my dawdling pace and started to pass on by.
“DeLeon.”
His clear voice behind me carried no attitude, no hostility, no evasion. I half-turned, looking back over my shoulder. “Thanks, DeLeon.” I smiled.
DeLeon gave me a confident and curious expression, inscrutable as the Mona Lisa, the same thoughtful eyes, almost but not quite a smile.
I reached across and raised my hand over my shoulder, palm toward him, like waving goodbye; but really, more like a salute. No spit shine. Then I walked back down the hall to the lab.