Retard by Daniel I Russell Read Free Book Online

of contribution. In the playground he prefers to spend his free time alone, and on a few occasions the duty teacher has needed to search for him once class resumed.”
    “He…” Christine bit her bottom lip, carefully picking out her words. So far the teacher hadn’t said anything truly negative. Wesley refused to interact because he’d been outcast. No one wants to play with the poor retarded kid. “He has a fantastic imagination. Wesley’s a daydreamer, that’s all.”
    Amber nodded. “I have to agree with you there. He has quite the fixation with The Fabled Four, doesn’t he? No matter what activity I give the class, he always finds a way to bend things back around to the cartoon. The toy he’s getting for Christmas, what is it now? Globin the Wizard? All he talks about. You’re going to have a very happy boy Christmas morning.”
    Christine’s guts tightened and curled like a slug coated in salt. She cleared her throat. “Yes. He’s really excited about it.”
    They shared an awkward silence.
    Christine peered past the teacher out of the window. A small girl with pigtails and huge glasses on her freckled nose wandered past clutching what might be a register, doing jobs for teacher. If only Wesley would do that kind of thing, Christine thought. Play the game a little. That’s what it’s all about. It doesn’t matter how you behave in class or what your test results are, it’s your position in the game that counts. It wasn’t too late for him. Her own piece had been removed from the board, only able to watch from the side as everybody else made their moves, negotiating and conquering.
    “I wouldn’t have asked you to come all the way here, especially with Wesley being sick, over a little day dreaming,” said Amber. It appeared the primary school teacher had done tiptoeing around the issue and had finally found some mettle. “I believe Wesley attended David’s Birthday party last Saturday. Did that go okay?”
    “I suppose,” said Christine with a shrug. “You know kids’ parties. All pretty much the same.”
    “Okay…” Amber shuffled the papers and slowly began to replace them in the file. “I guess no one mentioned an incident last week involving Kelsey Bremner, another child in the class?”
    Christine stared at her blankly. “No.”
    “Okay…”
    She says that a lot, thought Christine. Look how nervous she is.
    What the hell is going on?
    Amber crossed her arms and leaned forwards. “During dinnertime last week, I think it was Thursday, the bell had sounded for afternoon classes. As I mentioned earlier, it’s not out of the ordinary for Wesley to go for a wander and not come in right on time. The duty teacher went to look for him. We know his, how can I put this, regular haunts by now. Sometimes he likes to hide in the large bush at the front of the school. I don’t know why we haven’t removed it by now. The number of kids that are scratched by the thorns… Anyway, Wesley calls it his forest and braves the thorns to crawl inside. Thankfully he always comes straight out when we find him.”
    “So the problem is he crawled into a bush?”
    Amber sighed and glanced out of the window herself, perhaps looking for an excuse to leave herself.
    “When the teacher found him, Wesley… There’s no easy way to say this, Miss. Stephenson. He’d…taken Kelsey inside with him. He had the girl lying on her back in the dirt, his hand was inside her underwear.”
    The teacher’s body sagged, the burden lifted.
    Christine blinked.
    “Kelsey’s parents haven’t returned her to school. With the Christmas break coming up, and Wesley being ill, I imagine them both returning in the new year, which gives us time to put a plan into place. I don’t think this is a straight forward disciplinary matter—”
    “Disciplinary?” Christine spat. “Why should this be a disciplinary matter?”
    Amber’s eyes grew wide. “This is a very serious incident.”
    “Yes, it is. I see Wesley has been