Adam and Evil Read Online Free Page B

mean—” They couldn’t mean. It was too insane. “The other day I had to restrain your son, stop him from—”
    “Restrain, hah!” He’d gone from yaps to a bark.
    “He was about to hit another student. I put my hand on his arm to stop him. That’s all.”
    “Save your story for court,” Parke Evans said.
    All the air in the room was gone. My story? Court? These words did not compute. Language had lost all sense.
    But not for Parke Evans, who was back on the scent. “What about his college applications? Have you gone after him there, too? Did you put your insane suspicions on evaluations? Adam trusted you.”
    I refused to be dragged down to the level the little dog sought. “I asked you to come here today to talk about finding a way to help your son.”
    “I’ll bet you did, or you want to now. You get your way and it’d look really good on applications, wouldn’t it? ‘Dear school, by the way, Adam’s under psychiatric care, on medications,’ or whatever else you dream up!”
    “You don’t like him, do you?” Dorothy Evans spoke with vigor, her voice matching her ramrod posture. The lioness was guarding her cub. “He told me you don’t, that none of you teachers do. I thought it was all youthful exaggeration, but he was right. You don’t like creativity. You treat originality as a problem. You must really hate him if you’re trying to derail him at this point.”
    “We don’t think you’re fit to be in a school setting,” Mr. Evans said. “You’re dangerous to children.”
    At least he was now talking in terms of
we
. They were showing a unified front. If this went on much longer, they’d reconcile right here in the counselor’s office.
    “What is Dr. Havermeyer’s position on your accusations?” Mr. Evans demanded.
    “Nobody’s made accusations,” I said. “Please, can’t we help Adam instead of … of whatever it is we’re doing?”
    “You haven’t answered my question,” he snapped.
    “Dr. Havermeyer doesn’t …” The last presence I would have willingly invited into the room, even if only in name, was my headmaster, to whom the only sin was upsetting a tuition-paying parent. “It isn’t procedure to keep him informed of every conference as it happens, although of course there will be a note to that effect in Adam’s folder.”
    “You kept this secret from him. This is a personal vendetta with you, isn’t it?”
    I had no intention of responding to his nasty, bullying tone, but it didn’t matter, because he didn’t require a response.
    “This doesn’t end in this office,” he added. “You’re a hazard, Miss Pepper. A fanatic. How many young lives have you destroyed already? And you don’t have one iota of concern. I may be just an appliance store owner because I didn’t have advantages growing up, but I’ve made sure Adam has everything I didn’t. That’s why he’s here—to grow his own way. This school says it’s for the unusual student. The one who isn’t standard issue. You should be ashamed of yourself.” He stood up, smoothing his jacket and trousers and waiting until Dorothy stood as well. “I’ve been advertising on TV and radio for twenty years,” he said. “I have friends in the media. This is not going to be a quiet episode you can all ignore so you can go on smacking kids around and wrecking their lives.”
    “I want to help your son.” I watched my words fly, fall, and burn. Kamikaze hopes.
    Mr. Evans paused at the doorway. “I’ll have your head for this.”
    Rachel appeared behind him and stepped aside as he and his wife stalked out. “Ouch!” she said. “If looks could kill— what happened?”
    “Basically, they did to me what I assume you did to the toilet bowl.”
    She sighed and gathered papers and a booklet from her desktop. “I could have predicted that.”
    “They did a you’ll-never-work-in-this-town-again thing. And an I’ll-have-you-arrested thing. I am now a hazard to children’s health. A batterer. Parke