Author's Notes: A particular word of note for a reviewer whose most recent comment I had to unfortunately delete. While it's fine to express your excitement for the upcoming developments in my story, the one thing you do NOT get to do is control the pace or the content of the story in question. I will not be rushed, spammed, bullied, or coerced into doing things faster and reviews that tell me to do so will sadly have to be deleted. Anyway, that's all! Enjoy this next chapter everyone.

Chapter 8

A Game of Telephone

Mrs. Groggery's nurse's office always smelled like mothballs and ammonia. It was always a pungent combination and little Utonium always ended up plugging his nose whenever he was forced to sit in there.

Like today that is.

"That's the smell of sterile objects, kiddo." The old, graying lady told him sagely. "You'll thank me later in life, when you don't have to deal with pests or fungus or mold."

"Yeah, whatever." The boy replied unappreciatively, the sound coming out muffled through his plugged nostrils. "Can we just get this over with?"

"Well gee, you don't have to ask me so nicely." She deadpanned at him, before asking the boy to take his shirt off so she could get a good look at his bruises.

She saw a cluster of bruises over the top of his shoulders and spread out mottled over nearly the entirety of his upper back. There was redness and violet and it did look pretty problematic.

"Now you said this doesn't hurt at all?" She asked gently, testing whether it did or not by applying a bit of pressure to the spots of discoloration.

"Nope! I'm fine."

"Hm. Then perhaps you simply have delicate skin. Can you tell me what happened then, as far as how this happened?"

"Well, I was making farting noises in the bathtub with my back and my shoulders."

There was a large pause after that, like the nurse needed time to process the absurdity of his words. "You were making fart noises in the bathtub, huh?"

"Yeah! It was like this weird, cool suction cup effect that created this vacuum on my skin!"

Kids never ceased to amaze her. They could always find such weird ways to get hurt... if she could even call this being hurt, since he claimed he couldn't feel any pain.

"Does your mother know about this?"

"Not yet." Little Utonium admitted.

"I think that she should." The nurse said. "I can apply a cream to make the bruises disappear faster, but you might need to be looked at by a proper doctor just to make sure it's nothing serious. You might have a bleeding disorder that makes you bruise more easily."

"Eh, probably." Utonium shrugged, not really finding it a big deal.

"Are you sure that something else couldn't have happened, John? Something that you're not telling me?"

"Something like what?" The boy asked, genuinely curious as to what she thought he was hiding.

"Well, I know your mother spanks you. Was there ever a time where she hit you on your shoulders or your back?"

"No. Why would she do that?" Who spanked a kid on their back?

"Well, that's something you'd have to tell me—if it actually happened that is."

"Well no, it didn't happen. So can you hurry up and apply the cream so I can go now?"

She clicked her tongue at him. "Impatient youth as always. Always in a hurry to do absolutely nothing."

"Uh, I do have things to do! I've gotta go to recess!" Recess and lunch were the main things he looked forward to when it came to school. Everything else could go die in a dumpster fire.

"Yes, yes, time for running around and acting all silly." She dutifully picked up her jar of ointment with her hands and changed into different gloves so there wouldn't be any cross-contamination when she applied it.

John sat still for the most part and kicked his legs out over the examination table as she did her job, commenting only once on how cold the cream was when she first applied it.

Once she was finished, he prepared himself to put on his red polo shirt again and jump back down, but she made him stay a bit longer and even took out a clipboard.

"What the heck are you doing now?" He asked in lingering aggravation.

"Patience John," The old lady scolded him, and then explained the reasoning behind her actions. "I'm just taking note of how many bruises there are and how you said you got them, okay?"

"What for?" He whined.

"Don't worry about it! Just hush!"

The rest of the school day had been uneventful as far as John and trouble were involved. He really was trying to get better, especially after that fateful day during the big science lab blow up where he'd been kidnapped by a creepy green monkey and subsequently saved from being thrown into a volcano by three strange little girls. They were all smiling at him when he looked up at them from the ground and they practically resembled guardian angels to him before he passed out shortly afterwards.

It was pretty suffice to say that the boy came home quite happy from school, strutting through the front door feeling very proud of himself. His mother was the only one home for him to brag to so far (his dad was the primary breadwinner and still at work at the factory), so brag he did with a smile on his face.

"No phone call, right? Told ya I'd be good!"

"Well you're not going to get a brownie for doing what you were supposed to be doing in the first place," His mother lightly warned him, reeling in his enthusiasm a bit. Then she ruffled his pompadour of black hair and said, "But I'm proud of you anyway, kiddo. Good work."

"Yes!" He had a brief fist pump moment before excitedly babbling about what after school activity he could do now. "So can I go outside and ride my bike? Play with my train set? Watch Tom and Jerry?"

"Ah, ah, ah. I think the first thing to do since it's summer and I can see you perspiring through that shirt is to get out of the uniform and take a bath."

"Another one?!" He groaned. This time he wasn't looking forward to it.

"Yes. You stink." She told him bluntly. "Now hop to it, young man!"

And when she used that tone with him, only a fool would dare to refuse her. Those words were final. So their routine began as it normally did, that is until little John took off of his clothes and sat down in the tub again, giving his mother a full view of what had happened just a day previously to his back.

It made her stop in her tracks to get a good look at the black and the blue on his shoulders and spine, pausing with a bath brush in hand.

John, what happened to your back?"

His eyes widened at her tone. Oh no, he thought. I forgot all about that! Well, he could go ahead and kiss his rear end goodbye. Once she found out the reason behind this, she was gonna tear him up again.

He thought about telling a lie, but if she found out later, his whooping would only be worse. So instead, little Utonium tried to downplay it. "Nothing!" he said. "I was just playing around, mom. That's all."

"And WHEN were you playing around?"

"Um..." he swallowed. "During my last bath? Last night?"

He winced. This was it. She was gonna get him good. He could already feel his backside throbbing now. He could also hear those words, "What have I told you about fooling around!" before that faithful cuff around the back of his ear.

And yet... it never came. Was she building up the suspense?

"Your bath? How did your bath cause these bruises?" She didn't sound angry for once. For once, she just sounded perplexed.

Since she wasn't wrathful quite yet, little Utonium felt brave enough to explain it to her. "You know, while I was laying on my back, after you told me to pull the stopper up? I was playing around and making rude suction noises... with my back and shoulders."

He dipped his head low after the explanation, offering a low, "Sorry mom."

Now would she hit him? The suspense was truly killing him!

"John, are you lying?"

"Lying?" That one threw him for a loop.

She took him by the back of his naked arms and scrutinized his discolored skin darkly. There was a tense pause before she asked something else that felt like a curveball to him, "John, what did your teacher do to you today?"

He actually turned his head back at her with that one. "Who? Ms. White?"

"Yes. Her." The woman replied tersely. There seemed to be some carefully leashed anger in her tone.

"She didn't do nothin' to me today! I was bein' good, remember?"

She didn't look like she believed him so he put emphasis into his words. "Honest, mom! I'm not lying this time! It's not like she paddled me or anything-"

"She better not have!" The woman suddenly thundered, finally reaching her peak as far as anger. She began to get more passionate as she ranted, "I don't know who that lady thinks she is but I believe I made it clear to her that I'm the only one who gets to administer any discipline around here!"

"Mom, chill out!" Little Utonium tried to calm her down. The problem was, when she got THIS worked up about something, it was hard to bring her back down again. "I already told you what happened, okay?"

"First of all, don't take that tone with me, young man! I'm not in the mood! Second, get out of that bathtub and put your school clothes back on! It's still early enough to where we can catch her before she leaves that building for the day..."

It was futile to try to resist what his mother was telling him when she got into THIS sort of state so he did what she asked begrudgingly and sourly, not looking forward to the drama that would be playing out shortly at school.

And so they were back at stupid school at 4:30pm, bothering his science teacher because of his mom's own overreaction to his unfortunate bruises. Poor unsuspecting Mrs. White had just been in the process of packing up her lesson planner binder for the day when she saw two members of the Utonium family walk right back into her classroom; Mr. Utonium (her pupil in class) and Mrs. Utonium. One of them just looked sad to be here and the other one looked furious and determined to make her point.

"Mrs. White, may I have a word?" The woman requested politely, or at least, it would've been politely if it weren't for her rather clipped, angry tone.

Mr. Utonium just winced, stuck in the middle of this inescapable mess.

"Mrs. Utonium? I was just packing up for the day. What can I do for y-"

"Sit." The woman ordered, which was shocking to a ten-year-old Utonium. He gaped at his mother, taken aback by her authority. No one told one of his own teachers what to do! Didn't that go against the nature of well... everything?!

"I think we should have this conversation sitting down rather than standing up." That way, the woman thought in her own head, I won't end up breaking anything.

Mrs. White gave her a shocked, perturbed look, doing what was asked of her rather slowly while still trying to maintain her dignity. She wasn't a dog or a puppy after all. She wouldn't be cowed by a simple parent. "Is there a problem, Mrs. Utonium?"

"Well, Mrs. White, unfortunately there is." She pulled up two chairs and sat them down in front of the educator's desk.

Little Utonium sighed and decided to pull out two pens from the little basket he saw in front of him holding several writing utensils and play with them while they had their caps still on. It would at least allow him to better shut out this upcoming chaos.

"Now, I came up here to you today because I happened to spot some bruises over my son's back?"

Ms. White's eyes widened. She was surprised that his mother didn't already know about those. Utonium's mother however took that expression as a possible indicator of panic at being found out and narrowed her own eyes viciously at her, dipping her head forward in a menacing glare.

"Yes, I'm well aware of those. Mr. Utonium-" The mother wouldn't allow Ms. White to finish her sentence.

"Right. And what I'd like to know is how exactly do you discipline my son and how exactly do you discipline the rest of those kids in your class?" She went on to ask pointedly.

Ms. White didn't back down. She gave the mother a steady look. "With the Kiddy Korner." She answered firmly, knowing she was guilty of no form of maltreatment or abuse to a child. She pointed helpfully to the stool and the dunce hat in the far right corner by the chalkboard. "Students sit there if I feel they're misbehaving and they have a time-out. That is all."

"And do you ever hit them?"

"Absolutely not. I would never hit a child."

"Not even with something like a ruler? Or a paddle? Because I definitely see a ruler in your class." She pointed out a rather long and wooden one just behind her desk.

"I have never used that to strike a child. Not on their hands or their bodies. I only use that to point things out on the blackboard."

Ms. White told no lies. She had never tried to implement any form of corporal punishment to her students to try to make them fall into line. This was actually a radical thing for her to do at this point in time and many other teachers called her soft for refusing to do so.

"Now, did Mr. Utonium happen to tell you something different?" Ms. White asked, wondering if one of her more problematic students really had the capacity to be that vindictive and manipulative towards her.

"No." Mrs. Utonium told her instead. "He told me he was fooling around in the bath and that was how he got the bruises."

So his story remained the same then... she couldn't help but give him a small smile of relief at this, something he didn't quite catch since he was too busy playing, using her two pens as legs on the desk.

"I just came here to make sure that that wasn't simply a cover story to protect you from proper consequences if things happened to be different-"

"I can definitely understand that, Mrs. Utonium." Ironically enough, those were her own thoughts about Mr. Utonium's original story about how he got those bruises. She too had wanted to make sure that wasn't just a cover story to protect his mother...

"No child should feel like they're being threatened by an adult to stay silent about things like that."

"Well... I was." The woman admitted quietly.

Ms. White's expression changed to one that held mild shock and surprise again. "Care to share?" she asked gently.

"It was during Catholic school. The nuns there had a rather... strict regime to keep the kids there in line and part of that involved beating us. A lot."

That sounded rough. The educator's brows furrowed in sympathy from behind her glasses. "I'm sorry." She said, and she truly meant that.

"One time one of the nuns actually managed to injure me by striking me with a ruler on the hands hard enough to break two of my fingers. My parents had to get it treated at the hospital and I was afraid to tell them the real reason behind my injuries because I thought they would just punish me for disobeying one of my instructors."

Ms. White took a sad look behind her to the tall ruler in the background. So that was why she had such a harsh reaction to it. She had felt its painful rap once before too.

Even Mr. Utonium paused in his playing to give his mother a shocked and disbelieving expression. He had no idea his mother had been bullied by her own teachers before.

"Okay. I understand. Well you can rest assured that I would never treat a child like that and I would never condone such behavior from another teacher either. It isn't right."

His mother softened then and sighed before wrapping an arm around her son, looking at his teacher with much less accusation and hatred. "I'm sorry for my overreaction then. I guess I was reacting to my own trauma. So could you tell me what really happened then since you said you were already aware of the bruises?"

"Gladly." Ms. White said, relieved to now be able to have a civil discussion with this previously angry parent. "Mr. Utonium came to school with the bruises. His classmates actually discovered them before I did and I questioned him on where he got them before sending him to the school nurse."

"Okay. Was there a reason I didn't get a phone call about that then?"

Oh right. Ms. White's eyes widened again for that little mistake. She should've been notifying his mother about what happened to her child while he was at school but since it was seemingly an injury he had sustained from home and she had her suspicions, she ended up spending more time with ANOTHER type of a phone call instead.

The only thing she shared with his mother however was, "That was an oversight on my part and I do apologize for it. I was making... another kind of phone call that ended up distracting me a bit. Sorry."

Now she felt pretty bad for making it, even though at the time, she thought that it might be necessary.

"Alright. Well I'm sorry for wasting your time then."

"See mom, I told you!" Little Utonium spoke up brashly now, vindicated from being proved right. "All you had to do was listen to me! I mean, what kinda kid wants to show up to school twice in one day?"

Ms. White winced for his sake at THAT particularly rude comment and he faithfully received a light cuff behind his ear for this bit of ill-humor.

"That's enough, John! This was grown-people business!" After she was done scolding him and he was done rubbing his newly sore and red ear, she took him by the hand and led him out of the building.

Out of the frying pan and into the fire.