Believing Cedric Read Online Free Page B

of shoes in the hallway, walking slowly past her door. She could imagine the gossip: “The old woman’s finally coming undone,” they would be saying later in the staff room, murmuring in a volume just loud enough for everyone to hear. “I mean, we all know she’s been losing her grip for a while now . . . ever since Frank died really. Poor thing. She can’t even bring herself to come to our bridge games.”
    But Mrs. O’Donnell didn’t care. What was important was that it was over. It was clear that Lyle wasn’t going to be causing problems any time soon. He was slumped over in his seat, trying hard to hold back tears. True, she wasn’t proud of her outburst, nor of the cruel bite of some of the things she’d said, but it had been necessary. That much she knew. And now it was over, and time to move on, time to release the class from the tension she had created and return to the lesson. She cleared her throat and was getting ready to turn around when a noise came from Cedric, a noise that didn’t fully register at first.
    â€œJesus Christ ,” he whispered as if to himself.
    She felt her neck pivoting slowly in his direction, her expression wildly dumbfounded.
    Cedric was shaking his head, looking at the rim of his desk. But when he realized that the teacher had heard him, he looked up at her, levelly, calmly, and spoke in a matter-of-fact tone. “That was a touch excessive, don’t you think?”
    The other students shifted, not knowing whether to look at Cedric or Mrs. O’Donnell. Some of them looked back and forth at the two of them in rapid succession, as if watching a ping-pong match, trying to get the look on both of their faces at the same time.
    â€œ What ,” she spat, “did you just say to me?”
    He grinned, raised an eyebrow. “I—uh . . . was just pointing out that you might’ve been a little out of hand there. That’s all.”
    Mrs. O’Donnell’s eyebrows were moving in strange ways on her forehead. Her mouth was agape, but it seemed very unlikely that any sound was going to come out of it. She turned to make eye contact with a few of the other children, as if checking to see that they were hearing what she was hearing. It seemed so. They were almost giddy with excitement, watching to see what would happen next, enthralled.
    â€œI mean,” Cedric’s voice broke into the quiet again, everyone turning back toward him mechanically, including Mrs. O’Donnell. He waved a flippant hand in the air as he relaxed in his seat, “That’s my take on it, at least.”
    Mrs. O’Donnell swallowed. She noticed that her breathing had become quick and that there was a musty taste in her throat, the taste, in fact, that precedes the acrid tang of bile. Then she heard her voice, speaking as if it were far away, dampened and muffled like something was covering her ears. “Cedric, I want you to go out into the hall. Right now. Do you hear me?”
    He shrugged his shoulders. “Sure.” He stepped out of his desk and walked through the classroom, slowly, with a confident gait—not cocky, not a strut, but like someone who knew how to walk away from a confrontation with the air that he had won.
    She followed closely behind him, almost drunkenly, the heels of her shoes catching on the floor in ways they never had before. When she closed the door behind her, she led Cedric into a book room across the hall. There was a single chair in it that the teachers sometimes used to stand on, to reach the books on the higher shelves. She pointed at it, feeling like everything she was saying and doing was automated, empty. “I want you to sit there until I come back. Understand?” She watched him carefully as he stepped past her, and without even meaning to, she added another banal disciplinary remark: “And I want you to think about what you said to me.”
    Cedric