Five times

by ishotsherlock

The five times Gil and Sara were called into their son's school. A little sequel to my Bruno's discovery story.

The five times… by ishotsherlock.

A/N: a little sequel to my Bruno's discovery story.

The five time Gil and Sara were called into their sons school.

The first time.

Robert Grissom, age nine, sat in-between his parents, nervously nibbling on his bottom lip, he knew exactly what was going to happen when his mom and dad went into the principles office.

A few minutes later an elderly woman emerged from the door in front of them "Mr and Mrs Grissom, Robert will you please come with me." she led them into her office "Please have a seat." Mrs Cooper said as she sat behind her large desk.

"Can I ask why we have been called in, the letter you sent didn't explain much." Gil said as he took a seat.

"Okay, we need an explanation on why after the first incident you allowed your son to bring in another large python for show and tell."

Gil and Sara looked puzzled and Robert looked at the floor "What incident, this is the first either of us have heard about it." Sara said looking at the principle.

"We sent a letter to you last time."

"Our post has been sketchy at the best of times." at the puzzled look on Mrs Coopers face Sara had to explain "We live up on the mountain, and apart from making sure Robert gets on the school bus every day we only come down to go into town every three months, the post office holds all of our mail and sometimes it gets a little lost for a few months."

"Ah okay then that would explain it, but we also gave Robert a copy of the letter." they all looked at Robert.

"I lost it." he said in a small voice.

"Why don't you just tell us what happened." Gil said to Mrs Cooper.

"The first time he brought in the large snake it escaped during lunch period and ate the cat in the cage next to it, we asked Robert not to bring it in again but three weeks ago he brought it in and it escaped again, we found it yesterday in the biology department after it had eaten all of the class specimens."

"Class specimens." Sara asked even though she knew she wouldn't like the answer.

"Yes the three rabbits and six hamsters they were studying."

"Oh." was the only reply Sara could give.

"We'll replace them." Gil said and was really glad that he had retired from the school the previous year, he looked at Robert "Okay grounded for one week, no bug hunts and no TV."

"Yes dad." Robert said quietly, but he was glad that his dad had gone easy on him.

"Where can we pick up frank." Sara asked.

"Frank… oh the snake, he's secured in one of the biology labs, Robert can show you where it is. Thank you for coming in today and hopefully we wont have to call you back in."

"Yeah that would be good wouldn't it Robert." Gil said handing over a hundred dollars for replacement animals for the biology labs.

"Yes dad." Robert said as he got up and held onto Sara's hand.

The second time.

Robert Grissom, now aged ten, once again sat between his parents waiting for the new principle to come out of his office "Mr and Mrs Grissom, Robert follow me please." he led them into his office "Please have a seat he said as he sat behind the large desk "Now you have been called in here so we can clear some things up about the sudden … retirement of Mrs Cooper. My name is Mr Mercury, I'm temporarily taking over as principle until a replacement can be found. Now the reason Mrs Cooper left was because a rather large bat attacked her in this very office. Now to most people that wouldn't have been a problem, but Mrs Cooper had a very bad bat phobia."

"Is she alright." Sara asked.

"She's in therapy at the moment but hopefully when the nightmares stop she will be fine. Now for the reason I have called you both in is because the bat was brought in by your son for show and tell. Now I have gone over Robert's record and have seen that this isn't the first time you have been called in about your son and his show and tell projects."

"That's right." Sara said as she looked at her son "But I check on the bats every night and none of them are missing."

"I caught it after the paramedics left." Robert said, still looking at a spot on the floor.

"From now on I think it would be a good idea if Robert didn't bring in any animals into the school."

"Yeah I think we can all agree on that." Gil said then tapped his son on the shoulder, making him look up "Grounded for two weeks, no sleep over's, no friends over and no TV for two weeks."

"Yes dad."

"Good I'm glad we have that sorted." Mr Mercury said as he got up to escort them out of his office. When they had gone he sat behind his desk and wondered to himself about the family who had just left, he wondered what sort of parents would allow their son to go to school with snakes and bats, he made a note in Roberts file to call child welfare if anything else happened.

The third time.

Robert Grissom, now aged eleven, sat opposite his parents, he knew exactly why they had been called in and thought it wasn't fare that the teachers were doing this. He looked up when the door opened and seven teachers walked into the conference room.

"Mr Grissom, Mrs Grissom, Robert." Mr Mercury said as he took a seat at the other end of the table, the other teachers took seats near him.

"Hi." Sara said "I know we haven't been called in because Robert brought in one of our animals, so what has he done this time."

"He has been teaching the other students how to swear in sign language." one of the other teachers said.

"Is that true Robert." Gil asked.

"No dad, I have never taught them that."

"But you have been teaching them." Mr Mercury said glaring at Robert.

"Why have you been teaching them sign language." Gil asked him.

"Because in some classrooms something is interfering with my hearing aid, and when the teachers have their backs to me I don't know what they're saying, so I have been teaching my friends to sign so I wont fall behind with my work again."

"Why didn't you just tell your teachers." Sara asked.

"I have told them but they don't listen, they say its nonsense and that none of the other children with a hearing aid has complained, but there is only one other kid here who has one and she doesn't go to those classes."

"So the solution will be to take Robert out of those classes." Mr Mercury said as he closed the file in front of him.

"No I would say the solution would be to find out what is interfering with my sons hearing aid so that my son doesn't have to be taken out of his classes in the middle of the semester."

"That could take a lot of time and money just for the sake of one child." a female teacher to Sara's right said.

"I may be able to find out what it is." they all looked to Sara "Robert I'll need you hearing aid and for you to show me what classrooms you have the problem in."

"Mrs Grissom we cannot have you traipsing around the school in the middle of the day."

"Fine then I'll come back later, it will give me time to rig up something." Mr Mercury looked at her funnily "Or we can go to the press, we still have our contacts from Vegas and I'm sure the school board will be interested to hear what's going on in this school." she looked at her husband and winked at him.

"I could give Jim a call and have the school investigated." he said playing along with her.

"There's no need for that." another teacher spoke up "We'll get an engineer in tomorrow to sort it out."

"Good, then we'll hold off calling our friends." Sara said as she got up and led her family out of the room.

Mr Mercury waited until everyone had left before picking up the phone and calling child services. Four days later he was fired by the school board for making false allegations of child abuse. Six days after that he was caught on the Grissom's property trespassing, when he was questioned at the police department later he confessed that the Grissom's had put his brother away for armed robbery and he wanted payback.

The fourth time.

"I never thought we would be sitting here again." Sara said looking at her purple coloured son.

"It wasn't my fault." twelve year old Robert said as he held a bloody tissue up to his nose, he looked up as his dad came in the room.

Gil handed him a large gauze pad to use instead of the tissue "Care to explain what happened."

"We would all like to know what happened." the new principle said as she came out of her room "Why don't we all go inside." she led them into the room, Gil and Sara took their normal seats with Robert in-between them.

"Robert would you like to tell your parents why you ended up with a broken nose." Mrs Gibson said.

"It wasn't my fault."

"Then who's was it." Gil asked.

"I'm not at liberty to say." he said around the gauze, that was quickly filling up with his blood

"Excuse me." Mrs Gibson said.

"I'm not going to rat, in the marines you rat you die."

"But you're not in the marines." Mrs Gibson said.

"He's been watching a lot of NCIS lately." Gil said "So what happened."

"There was a mishap in the chemistry lab." he said pointing to his clothes.

"We can see that." Sara replied.

"One of the students was mixing the chemicals in the lab, it went boom, they went ahhhh, I went purple." he laughed.

"That doesn't explain the broken nose." Sara said.

"Oh I tripped over in the slim that is now covering the whole room and slammed my nose into one of the desks."

"That still doesn't explain why we are here." Gil said.

"We need you to get Robert to tell us who it was."

"Cant the teacher tell you that." Sara said as she tried to wipe some of the purple goo off her son.

"No, at the time the teacher wasn't in the room."

"why not."

"It happened while the teacher was on her lunch break."

"So what your telling us is that your teacher left the lab unlocked with volatile chemicals left out while she had her lunch." Gil said.

"Robert had permission to be in there while he finished up his science project."

"And who was supervising him in there." Gil asked.

"No-one, the teacher trusted him to be left in there on his own."

"Then the blame for this is up to your teacher and not my son." Gil said as they stood up "I don't think the lemons will work on this." he said to Sara as they left the room.

It took two weeks for Robert to turn back to a normal colour.

The fifth and final time.

Thirteen year old Robert slouched in his chair, he had his earphones in and was playing his music as loud as he could. Gil and Sara sat next to his waiting for the principle to come into the room. She entered five minutes later "Sorry to have kept you waiting but I had to sort out some of the other parents."

"That's okay, what has he done now."

"We have three things to talk about today. First, for some reason your son decided to bring a rather large tarantula into school last week."

"I thought we told you no more pets are to be brought to school." Gil said as he turned to his son.

"I know but Debbie wanted to see it."

"Why didn't you just invite her to the house."

"Her parents wouldn't let her come over."

"That's not the bad part, the tarantula escaped and found its way into the girls locker room while they were showering, it landed on one of the girls who screamed. The girls all came running out."

Sara heard Robert snicker, she signed to him under the table "What's so funny mister."

"Heather McCloud came running out of the locker room completely naked, she ran straight into me, we ended up on the floor. That was one heck of a fun day."

"We'll be having a talk when we get home." Sara said to him.

Gil nudged his shoulder "And we'll be having a chat about the birds and bee's son ,I think it may be a little over due." Robert shuddered at the though but Sara had to contain her laugh as she imagined how it would go.

"And the second thing, we would like to know where Robert got the idea that you can get DNA from maggots."

"Why." they both asked suspiciously looking at their son.

"Derrick didn't believe me when I told him that uncle Greg used to get it from them all the time."

"Oh god, what did you do Robert." Sara asked.

"Apparently your son was showing a few other students in his science class how to get DNA out of maggots, where he got this idea we don't know." both Gil and Sara looked at each other trying their hardest not to laugh as they both signed Greg to each other "But they didn't have the right sort of blender in the room so they went to the cafeteria. They had just blitzed their third batch when the lunch staff arrived back from their break, all of the students hid and watched as the liquefied maggots were put in the soup for the lunch menu. Your son could have told the staff what they had just done but apparently decided that the children and teachers could do with more protein in their diet. It was only when one of the other boys told a friend what he had eaten at lunch that we found out."

"I did try and tell them but they wouldn't listen." he looked to his parents "They said I was just protesting about the meat on the menu and escorted me out of there."

"Why would they say that." Sara asked.

"Because the week before all of the student body protested about the quality of the meat the school uses, fifty seven students contracted E-coli from the meatloaf they served."

"There is no proof those students picked that up here." she said before Robert had finished talking. Sara and Gil looked at the woman in front of them, but she could not meet their eyes.

"We'll look into that when we get home okay." Sara signed to Gil who nodded minutely.

Onto the last thing over the summer break we asked the children to document everything they did, where they went, who they met and so on. All the other students handed in papers about their holidays and camping, but the paper Robert handed in was quite far fetched and disturbing." she passed the folder down to them.

Sara opened it and began to read with Gil leaning in close to read as well. When they had finished they looked up at the teachers "What about this is far fetched." Sara asked."

"What do you mean, the whole thing is a work of fantasy and the details he goes into are disturbing, to say the least, we think it would be a good idea for Robert to see a child psychologist."

"I don't think that is necessary, because all of this is true." Gil said, again looking at the woman in front of him.

"Is your whole family sick or something." she said clearly shocked.

"No we are not, we are ex CSI's from Las Vegas, my husband and I travel the country in the summer months teaching classes on forensic science and a lot of the time we go to body farms. Our son has always come with us on these trips because he plans on being a CSI when he graduates."

"I think it is sick for you to drag your son to see dead bodies and will be personally putting a call into child services."

"You do that, and in the meantime we will be removing Robert from your school."

"You cant do that."

"Yes we can." Gil said as he got up and led his family out of the room.

She sat there for a few moments stunned at the turn of events, she picked up the phone and dial the school board to see what her options would be, she explained to the gentleman on the phone what had happened and was surprised with his reply "what do you mean I cant do anything about it, that boy needs to be in school and not at home with those people."

"Sam do you know who those people are." the man on the other end of the line said.

"No and it doesn't matter who they are their son is disturbed and needs help."

"Their son has a higher IQ than all of your teachers combined, they only kept him in school all this time because he has friends there. They both have friends in very high places, so If I was you I would forget about it and get on with your job." he hung up the phone. She sat there and thought for a moment then looked at the very thick folder in front of her and smiled, she thought to herself if they wanted to take him out of the school then it was fine with her because she wouldn't have to deal with the unruly child any more.

On the drive home Gil thought about how he would be explaining sex to his son, Sara thought about how she was going to investigate the E-coli outbreak among the children and Robert was sitting in the back seat texting his friend about what had happened and enjoying the thought that he wouldn't have to get up early to go to school tomorrow. Little did he know that his dad would have him up and dressed and out of the house and checking on all of the bee colony's and the other animals before the sun came up.

THE END… OR IS IT.