The Gorging by Kirk Thompson Read Free Book Online Page B

standing in the corners with expandable batons and tasers, but the hall monitors and the No-Talking Observers have just about the same effect on the kids, holding their little notepads to write down names of talking violators and loiters. They were treated like prisoners. No talking, no walking slow to class, no this, and no that. Just get to class.
    Eddie wasn’t feeling good by the time lunch rolled around. The steak biscuits he had for breakfast weren’t sitting that well in his tummy. Of all the times he played hooky, this time he really did feel sick, but didn’t want to say anything. He didn’t like for his parents to come pick him up in the middle of the day. It would be his mother if one were picking him up and he knew she would usually be sleeping. He knows that she needs her rest for her job and she wouldn’t have a good night at work if she had to go in tired. It wouldn’t be good for her patients either. He may only be ten years old, but he’s got a smart head on his shoulders. He doesn’t want the other kids to think he was a wimp or a sissy, so he sucked it up the entire morning, pretending the sickness was just in his mind.
    Eddie could feel the bubbling in his stomach and felt it filling his intestines. The thought reminded him of the time he had put a water balloon on the sink faucet and turned the water on slow. The balloon had burst and shot water all over the sink and the floor. His intestines were starting to feel like that balloon. He wondered as he was standing in line, waiting to get his tray of cheap food, which consisted of a slice of pizza that could pass for a piece of floor tiling and a small carton of milk that usually sat at room temperature, if he would be able to look at it without his breakfast coming up onto the tray along with it.
    Eddie grabbed his tray and stood in line with the other kids. He looked pale and his eyes were wondering wearily. Kathleen Winston, a girl that took a liking to Eddie at the first of the school year, noticed that he looked a little different this morning. She skipped the line and walked up next to Eddie.
    “Hi Eddie,” Kathleen said, smiling from ear to ear. “Are you okay?”
    “I don’t feel so good.” Eddie started to sway back and forth. He looked as though he were about to do a face plant onto the cafeteria floor. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
    “You look sick.”
    “I...feel...sick.” Eddie dropped his tray and fell to the floor. The tray bounced on the floor and made a loud clanking noise. The kids standing in line around him dropped their trays as they jumped back, screaming. Screaming bloody murder because they thought that Eddie had just died. Kathleen dropped her tray and ran away out of fear that her speaking to Eddie made him collapse.
    The cafeteria lady behind the counter ran around and pushed the children out of the way. “Move you little brats.” She knocked over two as she pushed them away from standing over Eddie. She yelled to another teacher, Mrs. Harrison, to come help her.
    Eddie lay there breathing, but unconscious. Mrs. Harrison ran over and knelt down with her.
    “What happened?” asked Mrs. Harrison. She put her fingers on Eddie’s neck to check for a pulse. “He still has a pulse.
    “He’s still breathing, too,” said the cafeteria lady. “I can see his shirt moving.” Everyone was scared, the children, the cafeteria lady, and Mrs. Harrison, but Mrs. Harrison wasn’t as scared as everyone else was at the time. She had taken college courses in nursing and did her fair share of studying about children. She thought that when she became a teacher it would be a good idea to learn about child illnesses just in case anything happened like what is happening to Eddie. It’s the first time she had to apply the skills she learned, but she held together in the thick of it.
    “Go call 911 right away,” said Mrs. Harrison. She rubbed Eddie’s head and reassured him that everything is going to be okay.