I sat at my desk grading papers after Jake left.  His cocoa mug waited for me to take it to the sink, and I noticed his book bag tucked under the chair.  It could wait until the morning, I decided; or if he needed it, he could come back.  The math quizzes attempted to attract my attention again.  They competed with the fire as it crackled and threw strange shadows across the small room.  With each shifting shadow, Jake’s concerned voice echoed in my ears.  In the pit of my stomach, I knew he was right.

Parent teacher conferences were one week earlier.  The eminent dread of a confluence of events had distracted my preparation for the long evening of fifteen-minute talks.  Amy’s mother was the last of the evening.

Normally I can pick up on the subtexts of battered women or the leers of the politically corrupt.  Amy’s mother sent warning bells throughout my entire conscious.  She was holding a secret, but she wasn’t battered.  And, unless she chaired some committee I was unaware of, she wasn’t filtering money from community accounts.  No, her secret was much darker.

“Amy is doing exceptionally well,” I told her.  “Her focus is a little chaotic, but she can do anything she puts her mind to.  I’m really fortunate to have her as a student.”

“Chaotic?” her mother asked in a tone that seemed to be asking for a definition of the word.

“Yes,” I tried to explain, “she is very eager to help out the other students when she should be working on her own worksheets.  If she could apply that eagerness to her own work, we could start seeing better scores on her assignments.”

“Oh, I am so sorry she is interfering with the other students.  I’ll talk to her about it.”

Amy was sick for half the week following conferences.  I truly did miss her in my classroom.  When she arrived late with her mother earlier today, I was surprised at the amount of relief I felt when I saw her. 

My red pencil was marking up the quiz on the top of the pile.  Every answer was wrong.  In a disconnected fog, I had been grading the papers.  I looked at the top of the page.  In big, all capital letters, Amy scratched her name into the paper so ferociously that the paper was torn.

New thoughts started to roll through my mind, accompanied by Jake’s concerned refrain.