Whisper Down the Lane, Clay Chapman [best short books to read txt] 📗

stabbing the scissors through the exterior, puncturing the rubber beneath. The newspaper shell remains intact. “See? All hollow.”

I notice Eli lean over and whisper into Sandy’s ear. I can’t dwell on it, not at the moment. I clock the developing rapport between those two so I can mention it to Tamara later.

I promised Tamara I wouldn’t give Elijah any preferential treatment in class. He’s had a hard time of it this year. We knew it was coming. Once the others caught on that I was married to his mother, well…you know how kids are. Always looking for their way in to needle you.

Tamara and I married over the summer. A small backyard service just next to the weeping willow. Nothing fancy. But now there’s no getting around the fact that Elijah’s stepdad is also the art teacher. It kills me. For all its progressive pedagogy, Danvers is just like any other school dealing with peer pressure. Kids’ll be kids. The students surrounding Elijah right now, the boys and girls home-birthed from parents who moved to this quaint Southern town, dragging Danvers out from its blue collar decrepitude, are just like any other kids. Bullies.

Sandy is a target, too. I haven’t quite figured her out yet. She’s a bit of an odd bird. She even looks like a bird, a hatchling fresh out of the egg. No feathers yet. Just pale skin, her veins starkly visible. She’s new to school. Just moved to Danvers over the summer. She doesn’t have many friends from what I gather. Until Eli. But when I see her in class, working on her art, I swear I can spot that spark. I don’t want to go too far. She’s only in kindergarten. Lord knows I’ve slogged through enough shitty stick figures to know what most kids draw like. But Sandy’s work is different. There’s a hint of something fundamentally other to her sketches. Yes, they’re still the drawings of a five-year-old. And yet…I see it. Maybe she’ll rub off on Eli a little.

And who knows? Maybe their burgeoning friendship will be a good thing. For both of them. Perhaps they’ll drag each other out from their shells.

I’ve prided myself on establishing our classroom as a safe haven. Our own clubhouse. No judgment. Each kid gets a sketchpad at the beginning of the year. It’s theirs, nobody else’s. They can take it home or to their other classes. All I ask is that they fill it up. Each and every page has to have its own drawing by the end of the year. Doesn’t matter what. No critiques.

All I’m after is the art. I want them to take in the world around them and try to capture it on the page. I want to see life through their eyes. See the world how they see it.

The walls of my classroom are covered in kids’ drawings. The Museum of Modern Masterpieces, I call it. I want my kids to take pride in their work. Hanging them up gives the students a sense of contributing to something special. To history. They’re adding to a legacy. Each kid writes their name at the bottom of their painting, along with the date. That’s their timestamp, so subsequent students can see how far back their legacy goes.

For as long as I can remember, I always doodled. I had a lot of time on my hands when I was younger, so I found my way to the page, sketching whenever I had a free piece a paper. If there was a blank space, I’d fill it with whatever was in my head. Let it possess the emptiness.

The images I sketched had an unsettling maturity to them, Mrs. Kittle, my seventh-grade art teacher, said. He seems to have a wealth of imagery to pull from. Where does it come from?

Then the real clincher: Did something happen to him? When he was younger?

Tim and Nancy caught on and started subsidizing my passion right away. Buying me blank notepads. Colored pencils. Magic markers. Anything and everything. They noticed that fledgling bit of talent within me and started to nurture it at whatever cost, no matter what.

They even paid for a two-year art program. Watch out, Basquiat…

Look where it got me.

“All right, gang.” I pull out the sawed-off broomstick. “Who wants to take a whack?”

All cheers. Even Eli lets out a rebellious yell along with Sandy. No wonder I’m considered one of the more popular teachers around here. I let my kids hit things.

“Care to join us, Mrs. Condrey?” I hold out the broomstick for her, almost as a challenge.

She demurely laughs off the invitation, but her eyes tighten. Her face, the surface of herself, remains completely congenial—but I swear I can see something pinch. “You all have fun. But be safe! No accident reports.”

I find myself breathing a bit easier as soon as Condrey’s gone. It’s just me and the kids again. I have a bag of candy stashed in the bottom drawer of my desk for special occasions such as this, filling my horse up with it like stuffing inside a Thanksgiving turkey. “Follow me, everybody!”

Professor Howdy is still fresh in everyone’s minds, so it seems ever-so-inappropriate to take the kids over to the soccer field. I could still see where the blood had seeped into the ground when I biked through, the grass vaguely stained in a ruddy hue. The hose hadn’t rinsed all the red away. We string our piñata up from the basketball rim instead. The horsey dangles a good foot over everyone’s head, spinning through the air as if it’s dancing. The kids all try to grab it with their hands, but it’s just out of their reach. They look like they’re dancing with it. Spinning.

“Is that a goat?” Sandy asks behind me. I turn around, taken aback by the sound of her voice. I didn’t know she was standing so close to me.

“Good question.” I examine my papier-mâché horse, or whatever the hell it is. “I thought it might be