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“Wait a minute, we haven’t heard from Jackson yet,” Landon says. “Depending on what he says, I think we’ll be closer to the truth.” Jackson’s eyes remain down, his arms around his mother’s waist. Landon kneels down, pulling him in front of him. “I need you to tell the truth, Jackson. It’s important. If you don’t, you understand that one of your friends can be in serious trouble for something they didn’t do, and that would be wrong. Do you want someone to be punished for something they didn’t do?” He shakes his head, eyes still cast down. “Jackson, look at me.” He holds his chin up, making eye contact.
“No, sir. I don’t want that.”
“Good. Did Jacob hit Garrett first?” He shakes his head no. “No? I need to hear you say it and tell me what happened,” Landon says to him.
“Garrett said those things, and Jacob cried. He called him a crybaby and flipped paint on Jacob’s shirt with his paintbrush. I told him to stop it. But he didn’t, so Jacob threw paint on us. Then Garrett pushed him, and that’s when I threw paint on Jacob and pushed him. Jacob hit Garret in the face when he tried to sit on him.”
“He just said my son was the victim of being punched in the face!” Garret’s mother says.
“Yes, and my son was defending himself. He was not the first to hit either,” Bree says.
They are not going to do this to him. “What it looks like is my son was being provoked and harassed, Principal Kramer. I’m not trying to make excuses for him hitting, but under the circumstances, with so many hurtful things being said to him, you can understand why he would lash out. If he’s going to be in trouble for defending himself against being bullied, I expect action to be taken against the bullies also. Let’s be fair.” I hold my head up, looking at everyone in the room, waiting for just one of them to say otherwise.
No way am I going to let him be punished alone, when he was the one being harassed.
“Jackson, next time something like that happens, I need you to tell the teacher. Do you hear me?” Landon says to him, standing. He nods his bent head yes. “Good, we’ll talk more about this later.”
Principal Kramer starts in. “I believe I have the idea of what happened. Here’s what’s going to be done…”
