"Not your best work, Hotchner." The test paper fluttered to the boy's desktop, a thick-lined red letter "D" so heavily drawn that the double-underlines beneath it etched a tiny ragged tear in the paper. The sarcastic tone continued, "I want that back, signed, on my desk tomorrow morning."
The footsteps continued up the aisle between the lab tables, leather-soled oxfords squeak-clicking slightly as the teacher returned to his desk. The boy's eyes remained fixed on the glaring red letter, and one word whispered out, deafening in the silent classroom.
"Motherfucker," and before he could bite it back, students on either side snickered. He squeezed his eyes shut, tightly.
The boy was well and truly damned.
The boy didn't have time to apologize, explain or defend; he was forcibly jerked from his seat and hauled unceremoniously down the hallway, the furious biology teacher sputtering red-faced threats and angry promises. He stood silently as the situation was recounted to the principal, who had sighed somewhat sadly, then reached for the telephone to ring the boy's father.
Again.
Twenty minutes later, the boy left school, a copy of the disciplinary form outlining his three-day suspension tucked into his backpack. Ass still smarting from the vigorous paddling, blinking back tears of humiliation, the boy briskly began the three mile walk homeward, where the real punishment waited.
The boy's father was well-admired by his fellow attorneys and sorely feared by his legal opponents. A keenly-tuned legal mind, fierce and relentless in pursuit of the facts and figures to support his case; it was not uncommon for defense attorneys to refuse a case if Hotchner was prosecuting. His surgical precision in dissecting testimony was legend.
This was not a suitable opponent for a twelve-year old boy.
The boy stood before the big dark-paneled room downstairs, the heavy oak door that he eyed with apprehension every time he came in, right there in full view of the front door. That room held threats greater than those faced in any court of law, any prison, any imaginary film torture chamber.
He wanted to walk in, confident but sneakers dragged on the thick Persian rug, crimson threads weaving through the cream and grey, tiny lines of fear. He often thought that the red threads were blood, his own blood, shed in the countless hours, the endless sentences in his father's office. He was on trial, guilty as sin, guilty as guilty could ever hope to be. Any plea would be stared down, scoffed at, as he squirmed under his father's scornful glare.
"You are some piece of work, boy."
Then as if anything was more important than his son's fate, his father's eyes would slide back downward to the page that he wrote on, scanning, initialing, pen nib scratching on the thick legal paper. Moments passed, minutes as sweat beaded on the boy's forehead, trickling down the neck of his itchy starched school uniform shirt. Fists clenching, fingernails digging bloody crescents into his palm. Standing straight at attention, trying so very hard not to move.
Don't flinch, because one single motion could set off that one tendril of fear, curling up from the boy's stomach, inching it's way up into his throat. He could feel it, like a blade of grass, time-lapse unfurling like those seed-sprouting films in science class; pushing it's stiff green fingers up his throat, and that was all he could feel, this thing. This thing growing and prodding, and he clenched his jaw but the feeling was still there. He was so very afraid that he might try to force it down and clear his throat and retch, but the thing would shove it's was out of his mouth. The long green growing fear would burst out and he would vomit from the sensation, puking his guts out all over his father's desk.
So he chewed the inside of his lip instead, biting hard to take his mind off the fear in his stomach. The boy's chipped front tooth pierced hard enough to draw blood. It tasted coppery, like pennies, and he felt a flood of relief, knowing that he had drawn first blood, feeling a morsel of triumph.
"No, Dad, no, I made myself bleed, I punished myself, you don't even have to do anything because I already did it..." and he sucked and swallowed the blood, as quietly as possible, but his father's pen paused on the paper, mid-word.
Eyes still fixed on his report, pen hovering above the paper, his father would ask, slowly "What did I say?"
And the boy would try to take a deep breath, but the air somehow stuck, and instead of the confident, assured answer he dearly hoped to utter, he would whisper.
"You said..." and the boy frantically thrashed about in his mind, trying to recall his father's exact words, his precise command. "You s-s-said...'S-s-stand quietly while I think about … w-w-what to do with you.'"
The thing that had been creeping up the boy's throat snapped and recoiled sharply back to the hiding place in his stomach, and he flinched as his gut clenched painfully.
This was not going well at all.
Eyes downward still, the boy's father sighed, carefully placed his pen on the desk and closed the manila folder over the notes he had been writing. Palms down on the desk, spreading fingers out to flex his cramped hands. Closing his eyes, head leaning back, stretching the tight muscles in his neck. He rolled his shoulders, then inhaled slowly.
Eyes still closed, the man addressed the boy with slow, careful, measured words. Simple words that even this stupid, clumsy child could understand...