Reye's Gold by Ruthie Robinson Read Free Book Online

little more time and try again.

Chapter 3
    Reye was slowly getting used to working with the children at the center. There were seven of them who attended every day. Anthony, Eric, and Jésus were Hispanic. Shondra, Tyson, and Deetric, D for short, were African-American. Shane was the lone Caucasian. They all needed varying degrees of tutoring in reading, writing, and math. They all had distinct personalities.
    Anthony was the youngest and shortest of the group and all energy, like a tornado. He was funny, a happy kid, already working on his playa status. She imagined him growing up to be a heartbreaking, multi-tasking adult.
    Shondra was the only girl in the group and had rap idly reformed Reye’s understanding of divas. She now understood that divas were born, not made over time, as she’d originally believed. Ms. Shondra was a little African-American princess with long hair, usually worn in multiple pigtails. She was all sass and ruled the world with an iron hand, or at least the boys in the class.
    Shane was the student she’d worried over the most. He’d fallen way behind in his classes at school, requiring a big portion of her attention. He was a sweet kid, painfully shy, and one who could get easily lost in school. She’d hoped to talk to his parents so they could coordi nate their efforts. Reye had called his mother at the only n umber listed on his application. She hadn’t received a response yet. Reye knew from experience that being the only anything, anywhere was tough. She’d attended pri vate schools where, with few exceptions, she’d been the ‘only one’, so she felt a specific kinship with Shane.
    Before now she’d never considered working with ele mentary-age children. She’d thought she was better suited to teach middle and high school, but her time spent at the center so far had her revising her opinions, rethinking old assumptions about herself.
    Today had been special. She’d witnessed the imple mentation of a lesson she’d taught the kids a couple of days ago. She’d overheard one of the kids last week give voice to some pretty hurtful things about another child in the program. In response, she’d sat down with them and discussed how hurtful insults could be, the damage they could cause. To demonstrate, she’d located darts and a pic ture of a dart gun, explaining the purpose and use of them by vets to calm animals to prepare them for capture. “When you’re hit with a dart you feel a sting, like getting a shot,” she explained. “A tiny pain at first, but the damage comes later, when the poison or medicine gets under your skin, knocking you unconscious. Our hurtful words can be darts that sting each other at first, but as you remember the hurtful words later, those words can hurt more and for a long time afterward.” She sat waiting for her words to sink in, before continuing. “We are going to make our room a dart-free zone.” Enthralled, the children watched her as she demonstrated the procedure for dart removals if any were to make their way into their room.
    T oday was Friday, the end of a long week for the kids. Tempers and nerves were frayed. Reye was supervising the room’s cleanup when she heard Shondra shout out in frustration, “Shane, you’re so stupid!” Reye looked up to see Shondra walking towards her dragging a tearful Shane along behind her. Before Reye could intervene, Anthony, D, and Eric shouted “incoming” at the top of their lungs, startling Reye with their intensity. All three ran over to Shane, grabbed his arms from Shondra and proceeded to remove a make-believe dart from it. “It’s a dart, right, Ms. Reye, when someone tells you that you’re stupid,” Anthony said, looking grave.
    “That’s right,” she said, getting into the game. “Are we ready to remove it, guys?”
    All three heads gazed up at her with too-serious expressions on their faces that had her pinching herself to keep from laughing. At this moment they were not chil dren in an