Believing Cedric Read Online Free

clinging to the authority she’d once held in her third grade classroom, and meanwhile, somewhere above the veil of blue sky over the school, astronauts were peering out of their windows and watching the Earth shrink like a playground ball that had been kicked impossibly hard into the air. She flopped the newspaper onto her lap and turned to look down at the schoolyard again, where students were arriving in ever-increasing numbers, fanning out across the snow like ants whose colony has been disturbed, funnelling through the small opening of the front door and into the network of corridors, filling what was serene and wooden and quiet with their collective bustling. She breathed a tired sigh.
    As the children made their way into the classroom and hung up their coats, she leaned farther away from the gap where she could see the main room, hoping to avoid acknowledging any of them prematurely—which was the gesture that finally signalled how far she had let herself slip. This couldn’t go on. She had to do something, had to take a stand. She was an experienced teacher who had somehow allowed herself to be strong-armed by a child, who had succumbed to the same juvenile tactics she had spent years effectively suppressing. Yes, she thought, reluctantly standing from the windowsill, yes, she had no choice but to end this Lyle business, and today, definitively, in a way that was severe enough that it would never come up again.
    She tossed the newspaper onto the table and walked out of the resource room, standing beside her desk and giving a slow nod to the students. “Good morning, class.”
    The children droned in unison, “Good morning, Mrs. O’Donnell.”
    â€œLet us stand and say the Lord’s Prayer.”
    The class rose and stood facing the cross, hands clasped in front of their chests, and proceeded to mutter the syllables in a perfect monotone. She joined them as she always did, hitting a slightly higher note in an attempt to give the words weight and meaning, but doubted it worked. While she recited the prayer, she eyed a few of her students: Julie, already staring out the window, something she would continue doing for most of the day, mouth ajar, her gaze remote and unfocused; Carol, rocking back and forth on her feet, whom, once sitting, would not stop fidgeting for a consecutive thirty seconds throughout the morning; and then there was Lyle, watching his feet as if he were already bored, no doubt wishing he could be out in the playground where he was lord of all he surveyed. He was wearing two poppy pins today, probably in response to the lesson she’d given the day before. She had told them that the pins were made in “Vetcraft” workshops in Montreal and Toronto, by ex-servicemen who’d fought in the wars, then went on to explain the poppy’s symbolism, that the red was for the blood shed in battle, the green for the hope of a better future, and the bent pin for the broken bones and suffering endured. It seemed the kind of thing that Lyle wouldn’t be able to undermine, but he’d somehow found a way. He’d asked why the poppies were made of plastic and not of flowers—did the plastic mean anything? He wanted to know. She’d answered, quite simply, that it was owing to there being no real poppies in Alberta. They didn’t grow here. At which point every student paused to look down at his or her pin doubtfully, at this emblem that had no connection to their immediate world, or even to their landscape entire. It had suddenly become something disassociated, outlandish. She could have sworn she saw Lyle fighting back a smirk.
    When the children finished the Lord’s Prayer they hurriedly crossed themselves and broke into the singing of God Save the King, which they finished off-time and off-key, sat down, and waited for her to begin. She asked them to take out one of their workbooks, and there was a collective creak as they all hinged open their