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5
Wayward Elementary
Twenty-three Years Ago
Lucas slouchedin the wooden chair, attempting to look as small as possible.
This was so stupid.
He faced Principal Welch’s desk, with a prim and proper Bernadette, his foster mom, sitting next to him.
His elbow propped on the chair arm, his chin leaned on his fist. He noticed a new hole in his shoes, his toe wiggling through. His pants were too short.
Bernadette wore a dress she reserved for Sunday church service, carrying her fancy purse as if this were a special occasion.
It wasn’t.
He didn’t ask to be here and he didn’t ask the other kids to snitch on Birdie. Otherwise known as Bird the Turd. Wayward Elementary’s meanest school yard bully.
All he wanted was to be left alone.
Not to mention his foster mom didn’t have time for this.
He wondered who Bernadette had found to watch the younger kids at home and all the trouble she had to go through in order to come to school. For. No. Good. Reason.
Principal Welch checked his watch and sighed.
All while Birdie sat on the other side of Bernadette, kicking her feet back and forth, looking like she couldn’t care less. That made Lucas even more angry. Why wasn’t she scared and crying?
She could get detention or even suspended for bullying, but as usual, Bird the Turd didn’t care.
Birdie Wellborn didn’t care about nobody. Sometimes, least of all herself.
“Birdie,” the principal said, clasping his hands in front of him. “I think we need to proceed without your mother. I’m sure she would have been here if she could.”
She responded by staring straight ahead, as if bored.
Wait, was she eating something?
Lucas’s eyes narrowed, watching her, and then he almost came out of his chair.
OMIGOD. Was she chewing gum?
In the principal’s office?
Who would have the nerve to sit across from the principal with a forbidden wad of pink bubblegum in their mouth?
Bird the Turd Wellborn. That’s who.
The principal, unaware of the current crime hidden between her gums, asked, “Birdie, do you know why you were called to the office?”
Seriously?
She’d been bullying him since third grade. Two straight unbearable years. This wasn’t the first time he’d been pulled into the office with her. Him, the victim.
The girl was whom Bernadette referred to, with an unreadable tsk-tsk, as a repeat offender, and who knew exactly why she was sitting across from the principal.
Birdie shrugged one skinny shoulder and did the unthinkable. She blew a bubble with the offensive bright pink gum and popped it right in front of the principal.
