Ms. Swanson looked out onto her first grade class, all of the students working on crafts. They were drawing pictures to be put up as decoration on the walls for parent night, and they would stay up as the teacher did her beginning of the year individual meetings with parents.
For this activity, students were allowed to move around the room as they pleased. Yes, the room got rather loud as the children happily squealed and played with each other, making scribbles and then pointing out to each other what they had drawn, but they were happy, and having fun, which made Ms. Swanson happy.
There was one little boy, though, who was not joining in on the fun. He sat in the back table all alone, all his table mates already abandoning him to talk with their own friends. He had light blond hair that sat fluffy and almost spiky around his face, his bad eye covered up with a combination of light hair and a white eye patch, but the pink warped skin around it was still visible. His little legs were swinging, not quite touching the ground even in the small first grade chair that would be torture for any adult. He had a pretty box of his own unused crayons sitting before him, and one of them was gripped tightly in one hand as he looked at the paper, and then started with feather light strokes on the paper.
"Heya, Toby." Ms. Swanson knelt beside the boy, letting her red hair brush him gently.
"Hi, Ms. Swanson," he looked at her through the corner of his eye, looking over his nose and eye patch.
"What are you drawing?" his paper had hardly any color on it, and the crayon he'd been drawing with looked brand new still.
"I don't know." his voice had a wispy quality to it, and he never quite made eye contact with her.
"Maybe you should try pressing a bit harder with your crayon? It would be easier to see the color if you did that." the young woman in her fifth year of teaching suggested, as the boy moved his lone eye back to the page on the table.
"No." was all he said, adding another delicate line of yellow to the drawing.
This made Ms. Swanson's brow furrow. "And why not, Toby?"
His eyes briefly flashed to the crayon box. "I don't wanna run out of colors. They're special." he had no change of face. He seemed very meek and remorseful.
"Why are they special?" at this point Ms. Swanson pulled up a chair. Sitting in the little child seats was not fun, but the floor was worse.
"They were bought for me." another delicate line in yellow.
That worried Ms. Swanson, just a tad. "Did your dad buy those just for you?" she had read the brief paperwork given to her that contained the basic information of each child. On all of Toby's paperwork—very little, as this was his first year in school—she had never seen mention of a mother, and was sure to not broach the subject with him. You only make that mistake once.
He looked like he wanted to correct her on something, little mouth open, and sucking in air, before he seemed to change his mind."Yeah." Toby looked down even more, looking more at his lap than his drawing. He delicately set the yellow color back on the desk. "I don't think he'd like to have to buy me more."
The teacher smiled softly at the child. "Why don't you go play with the other kids." she suggested, gesturing with her head to the other kids.
"Okay." he slid off the chair with his things in hand, and sat at an empty seat in a more crowded table. The other kids there tried to start conversation with Toby, as children will do, but the meeker boy only looked at them like they had kicked a toy griffin. He was such a kind kid, but he was just so quiet, and meek. He seemed almost scared of other people.
"Ms. Swanson! Lookie what I drawled!" a little voice not quite high enough to be a pixie but high enough to be comparable came with a tug to her long sleeve. Toby was an issue that would have to wait a little while longer.
Toby's father was not at the open house, Ms. Swanson had noticed. Parents were all huddled around their child's desk, while the child excitedly pointed out what they'd been doing, and pointing to their art on the walls, but the Pines child's desk was empty of both child and adult. That made Ms. Swanson frown, but a glance at her schedule assured her that yes, she would be meeting with him individually the next day.
And there he was that next day, leaning up against the wall next to her room at four-thirty just like they had worked out. Actually, it was four-forty. She was the late one.
"I'm very sorry, Mr. Pines, a staff meeting went long." she apologized profusely, shaking his hand.
"No problem at all." he assured.
"Good afternoon, Toby." she smiled at the fair haired child also leaning against the wall as she grabbed her key card and swiped the door unlocked.
"Hello, Ms. Swanson." he addressed his shoes.
She led them into her classroom, into the back where her oval table where she sat in a normal sized seat, and the man and child before her sat in children's chairs.
"Sorry about the chairs." she apologized, before beginning the compulsory 'I'm so glad to get to work with your child this year, he's a good boy ready to learn' speech, before launching into the specifics of Toby.
Mr. Pines—Tyrone—seemed like a normal enough person. He was a string bean, fairly tall and slim, with ruffled hair and a mischievous smile paired with brown eyes that would look fine on a child or adult. Apparently, he was a scholar of the Transcendence and the times right before and after. He looked and acted nothing like how Toby's demeanor had made her suspect him to be like. He seemed genuinely interested in what was going on with Toby, and sucked in the praise for his character just like any other proud parent would.
She slid the affectionately named 'Mommy Homework' across the table to him, on a tablet. It was all the normal things, 'What medical issues does your child have?(Check all that apply)' and 'Do you like in a permanent or temporary residency?'. For being a scholar, the man was rather clumsy with the fairly simple technology.
Toby was swinging his legs in a way vaguely reminiscent of running, and was looking down at his knees, which were devoid of the normal scrapes children receive while roughhousing. He looked bored out of his mind, but not at all like he was about to complain about it as most children would.
She leaned across the table a little bit to talk to him. "Heya Toby, how you holding up?"
He gave her an almost startled glance with his sole eye. "Fine."
"You can go pick out a book from the library if you want, and read while the adults talk." she suggested. When Toby had first arrived to her class, he already knew how to read—in normal, every day writing, and the ancient script from the Transcendence Era, and whenever he was given the expressly-stated opportunity he would go and bury his nose in one of the tablets in the library, curled up in a bean bag.
Toby's eyes lit up at that, but he looked up at his father before doing anything. "Can I?" the whisper was aimed at the man best trying to decide what to put down for 'Guardian Contact Info.' and 'Emergency Contacts if You're Unreachable' (Of course he would always be able to go out of his way to get Toby). He smiled a little at the kid, looking almost guilty.
"Yeah, course you can kid. This'll probably be while." he patted the kid's head a little, and the kid shrunk down into his shoulders, like a turtle.
Toby sung his legs to back his chair out from the table, and plopped his way down to the floor, walking at a fairly fast pace to the library, where he picked a book he'd been reading a lot off the shelf and snuggled into his favorite bean bag chair, in the very back corner, facing away from the rest of the room.
Tyrone briefly whispered under his breath, something sounding like 'I need to get a bean bag' before turning back to the teacher, and handing back the paperwork all filled out with bogus information.
"Wonderful," the woman stated off-handedly, briefly scanning through the paper work to ensure it truly was all filled out, and not with silly things like 'Dick Buttkiss', sometimes it got ridiculous what these "adults" wrote down. She made a mental note that Toby had asthma, which was definitely a good thing to know.
"Now, I do have a few concerns over Toby's... behavior." she prodded gently, and took her time in deciding the best words to use.
The way Tyrone's face changed when she mentioned that was interesting to say the least. He looked, angry, and suspicious like this was something he knew was going to happen, and that he was waiting for and dreading. His mouth curled into a slight snarl before quickly settling itself out. This all happened in less than a second after she spoke.
It scared her.
"Has he been acting up?" he said in a calm voice, that revealed none of the micro-expressions that had flashed across his face so fast Ms. Swanson entertained the thought that it had all been nothing but her imagination.
"Quite the opposite, actually," she wanted to get out, out, out. Her legs began to bounce up and down below the table, sensible flat-heeled shoes making a slight clacking, and she clenched her hands together so tight it hurt to keep them from trembling and spasming, and hoped her smile would draw attention away from the sweat gathering at her brow. "Actually, I'm concerned with how quiet and... submissive he is." hopefully her voice wasn't as weak as she heard it.
The man across from her did seem to calm with that, not in his face, which never really changed, but just in that the air in the room got lighter, and she no longer wanted to run until she couldn't move anything. She tried to lay her hands on the table relaxed, but they wouldn't unclench. She was calmer, not calm.
"Ah, yes." the man leaned back in his chair slightly, like he was considering the best way to say something. "He did have... some people in his past that would lead to that." he would probably be the only one to ever truly understand the meaning of those words. "Those people are gone now, and should stay that way, but, the road is long, you know?"
The woman who did not quite know just how young she was nodded, both relieved and horrified that her theories were half right. Horrified, because this sweet little boy had been abused, she assumed, but relieved at the same time because it was not the man before her, as he had said and his word was so compelling, and that those people were in jail, most likely.
"I am very glad to hear that." her voice quivered a little. The tone Tyrone had taken when speaking of the 'gone' people had shaken her up quite a bit more than she was willing to admit to herself. Her two hands making one fist darted under the table, and became tangled in her skirt.
She hurriedly gave the little speech she gave at the end of all her meetings, saying once more how glad she was to get to work with Toby, and how she was sure it was going to be a great learning experience for them both, and giving him her contact information if he ever needed her for whatever reason.
Both adults stood, and shook hands, Ms. Swanson praying he couldn't feel how clammy her hand was, and Tyrone relishing how panicked he made her and how he could make her so much more-
"C'mon Toby, time to leave." he walked over to the deep blue corner of the room assigned the task of 'library'(nothing like The Library) and slightly nudged the bean bag(need to get one of those, good for mental stability).
The child swung his head around odd to get a look at the man. "Okay." Toby agreed, powering off the tablet he'd been reading on, and wasted no time shoving it back onto it's proper place on the shelf, moving fast as he often did.
"Bye-bye guys, it was very nice to meet you!" Ms. Swanson bade them farewell from her doorway, listening to their conversation all the way down the hall.
"Sorry for you having to do that."
"No problem. Hey, lets go get some ice cream."
"Really?"
"Yeah, the good stuff with all those glittery toppings and such."
"Thanks."
Ms. Swanson smiled as she stepped back inside, and closed the door, leaning against it, breathing heavy. She liked seeing that little happy moment.
She never wanted to meet Tyrone Pines again.