In the Principal's Office

In the Principal's Office

A Short Work of Fiction by Selina De Luca

Written for a Creative Writing Course Portfolio April 2013

Inspired by the music video from David Guetta's song Titanium featuring Sia

“So what happened this time?”

Jesse watched his running shoes kick the bottom edge of Mr. Burke’s desk and shrugged.  He didn’t know what happened.  He didn’t understand it at all.

“Do you want me to tell you what Mrs. Pelletier said?”

Jesse shook his head.  He needed new shoes – he could see his sock. He wiggled his toes.

“You tell me what happened then.”

He was going to get lace-up shoes this time.  Velcro was for kids who didn’t know how to tie their shoes.  Jesse had been tying his own shoes for four years now.

“Jesse, look at me.”

Jesse looked at Mr. Burke’s tie. It was red, like a long tongue hanging down all the way to his pants.

“At my eyes.”

Jesse looked at Mr. Burke’s glasses.

“Why did Mrs. Pelletier send you to my office?” Mr. Burke asked.  Mr. Burke’s glasses looked like his aunt’s glasses.  Was Mr. Burke wearing girl glasses?

“Jesse. Answer me.”

Jesse pushed the toe that stuck out of his shoe into the edge of the desk until it almost hurt.  Mr. Burke leaned down so that his red tie touched Jesse’s hand on the desk.  He quickly moved it away.  Now he had Mr. Burke germs on his hand.

“Jesse – look at me – the sooner you answer me, the sooner you can go back to class.”

Jesse looked at Mr. Burke’s glasses a moment longer before he dropped his gaze to his shoes again.  They were blue, and new this month.  His mom probably wasn’t going to buy him another new pair of shoes.  These ones broke in the last explosion.  It was a small explosion, not even a quarter the size of the one at the park when Riley had – Riley had –

“Well!” said Mr. Burke, standing back up. “Shall I tell you what Mrs. Pelletier said?”

Jesse shrugged and held it, his shoulders nearly touching his ears.

“She said you were threatening some of the other students at recess,” Mr. Burke said.  “That would make this how many times you have come to the office because you were bullying other students?”

Jesse’s shoulders dropped.

“Bullying, Jesse.  The students keep saying that you told them to run away because you are going to blow them up, and whatever else it was. How many times have we told you that it isn’t nice to make up stories to scare the other students? I know it’s hard to fit in to a new school, but you’ve been making trouble for yourself ever since you’ve come here.”

“I didn’t make up a story,” Jesse said.

“What was that? Speak up.” Mr. Burke sat in his royal principal’s throne and delicately placed his fingers together.

“I didn’t make up a story.”

“Did you tell them the truth?”

Jesse nodded.

“What was the truth?”

            Jesse frowned.  How was he supposed to explain the truth, when nobody ever believed him?  Everyone demanded “the truth,” but nobody understood when he told it.  Not his friends, not the police, not his mother, nobody.

            When his mother first started noticing him coming home from the bike park with ripped clothes, she immediately told him not to go back.

“It’s no place for seven-year-olds, wait ‘til you’re older,” she’d said.  “You get bullied in a place like that.”

But Dad had said it was okay.  He said he knew the families of the other kids.  He said he was only seven when he started hanging out at the bike park. 

“Explain the broken shoes, then,” Mom would demand.  Jesse would listen at the heat register to them arguing about shoes and pants and bikes and bullies.  That was before they moved here.  Before what happened to Riley.

 “Jesse, are you listening to me?” Mr. Burke asked.  “Tell me the truth please.”

“I told them,” Jesse started to say.

“Speak up, Jesse.”

“I told them, they better be careful, ‘cause I might blow them up.”

“Why did you tell them that?”

“Because, I was angry.  When I’m angry, things blow up.”

“Do you realize that people get scared when you tell them things like that?”

“Ye-es,” Jesse said.  “I’m just warning them.”

“That you might blow them up.”

“Yeah.”

“Do you think you will blow them up?”

“Yeah.”

“How will you do that?”

“I don’t know.”

“With bombs? Dynamite? Grenades?”

Jesse glowered at Mr. Burke.  Mrs. Findlay, the principal at his old school, and said the same things as he did.  Jesse knew it meant they didn’t believe him.  His parents hadn’t believed him either.  Now, two schools and hundreds of shoes later, nothing had changed.

“I don’t know how it happens, or why it happens,” said Jesse. 

“Jesse, that’s enough.  If you don’t stop threatening to blow up the other students, things will get much more serious than just a detention.”

Mrs. Findlay had said that too.  There were worse things than detentions.  They were big words, but Jesse knew what they meant.  SUS-PEN-SION. EX-PUL-SION.

“I didn’t threaten them,” Jesse said.  “I warned them.”

“It’s the same thing.”

Jesse didn’t think they were the same thing in his case, but he wasn’t sure how to explain why they were different.

“Can I go back to class now?” he asked.

“Are you going to stop telling your schoolmates you’re going to hurt them?”

Hurt them?

“I don’t want to hurt my friends,” said Jesse.  “If I blow them up, it’s an accident.”

“Jesse,” Mr. Burke said, “quit playing games.”

“It isn’t a game,” Jesse replied.  “It’s real life.”

Mr. Burke raised his eyebrows.

“You think you will blow people up in real life?”

“Yeah.”

“Jesse, I am being serious.”

“Yeah.”

“Am I going to have to call your mom?”

Don’t cry, Jesse told himself.  He was too old to cry.  Besides, he was used to this.

“Please don’t call my mom,” he said in a small voice.

“Are you going to stop threatening to blow up the other kids?”

“But what if I did blow them up?”

“Jesse,” Mr. Burke sighed.  “What have you learned about being truthful?”

Jesse just shook his head.  He didn’t know what he had learned about being truthful.  When his mother looked at his torn shoes, or opened his bedroom door and asked him why it literally looked like a tornado had just been through, or whether or not the big boys at the bike park were hurting him, Jesse never knew what to say. 

And when Riley had wandered away from her at the park that day, Jesse hadn’t known what the truth was then either.

“JESSE!” she had screamed for days.  “TELL ME THE TRUTH! WHAT HAPPENED!?”

Jesse didn’t know how to explain it, though he had seen it with his own eyes.  An explosion, his mother kept crying to everyone, what explosion? How, from what, from where? Why?  What kind of people, what kind of stupid kids, bullies, would play with explosives near other, younger children? What had happened? 

There was something crawling across the floor.  One of those land-tadpoles, skimming along under Mr. Burke’s desk.  Jesse wished he could shrink himself to the size of a bug and follow it.  Anywhere but here.

“Jesse.”

There was no way to describe what it was like, to feel angry at someone, and to feel it bubble out of you and explode away like a burst of lightning.  The feeling of being thrown backward and watching everyone around you fly in every direction away from you and get hurt.  The feeling of – something – ripping out of you and blasting everything around you, of watching things close by smash to the floor.  There was no way to describe it.

Maybe the truth Jesse should tell Mr. Burke was the part where people actually did blow up.  Maybe the part where Riley had taken Jesse’s skateboard, his brand new skateboard he got for his eighth birthday, a skateboard like the bigger boys had – “give it back! Give. It. Back! Riley, give me my skateboard! Ri-a-leey! I’m gonna tell Mom. Riley! Let go! I’m telling Mom.”

But there was nothing to tell Mom.  There had been an explosion.  Riley had taken his skateboard. 

Jesse looked Mr. Burke dead in the eye.

“I won’t threaten to blow up any kids,” he said.  “I promise.”

There was a pause.

“Alright, Jesse,” said Mr. Burke softly.  “You can go back to class now.”