teachers at Savage, but that didn’t necessarily mean I had access to the same grapevine of information that teachers seemed to share amongst themselves. Before I could ask Paul to elaborate, though, he abruptly changed the subject.
“You’re the counselor for students in the last part of the alphabet, right?”
“I am.”
“I’ve got some real issues with a student named Sara Schiller,” he said. “She’s cutting my class on a regular basis. Last week we started a scrapbooking project, and she has yet to even get started.”
“Scrapbooking? You mean like photo albums?”
“It’s a lot more than that,” he corrected me. “It’s actually an art form that goes back to the fifteenth century in England. It’s the creative selection and preservation of personal and family history through the use of photographs, literature and artwork. Most of the students really enjoy the embellishment techniques I teach them.”
Embellishment?
Embellishment?
Heck, I was still grappling with the photo album as art concept.
Paul checked the time on his watch. “I’ve got to go,” he said. “Would you talk with Sara, please?”
“I will,” I assured him, following him out the door to where I had parked in front of the store. I shifted my newly-purchased bag of flour into the crook of my arm and watched him walk towards the rows of gas pumps. While he wasn’t the biggest guy I’d ever seen, he carried himself with a certain swagger that reminded me of my brother-in-law, back when Alan and I were in college together. Alan had been, and still was, a talented athlete. Judging from his easy gait, it looked like Paul was in that same club.
Savage’s new art teacher also carried something else, I noticed.
Slung over Paul’s left shoulder was a satchel bursting at the seams with art equipment. I could see the tips of paintbrushes and the edges of drawing pads poking out … just above the silhouette of what looked suspiciously like two Greco-Roman wrestlers silkscreened on the satchel.
Paul Brand had an interest in wrestling.
Shoot. Had I bet on the wrong teacher?
Could the intimidating Bonecrusher have turned into a scrapbooking art teacher?
Not in my universe.
Then again, I was a birder who found dead bodies.
Go figure.
I popped the lock on my SUV and laid the bag of flour on the back seat. Whether he was the Bonecrusher or not, I was glad I’d run into Paul and that he’d given me the heads-up about Sara’s absences. As soon as I saw my favorite delinquent, she was going to not only get her baby back, but she was also going to get another lecture about skipping school.
Not that I had any illusions that one more lecture would make a difference. Sara was a habitual truant. With two workaholic parents who seemed to show little interest in her, I was fairly certain that her school-skipping behavior was a desperate plea for attention. In that sense, Sara was a wild success, because she got my attention all the time.
Unfortunately, it didn’t do jack for her visibility with her parents—from what I could tell, they hardly noticed they even had a child, which just encouraged Sara’s own irresponsibility and acting out even more. From years of being a school counselor, I knew that I could talk until I was all shades of blue in the face, but if a kid wanted to keep doing something, she’d do it … until the stakes got high enough to make her pause and hopefully make changes.
In my experience, that frequently meant that the stakes had to entail a close encounter with either the police or the Grim Reaper, or in some cases, both.
Seeing as Sara had already added the Wisconsin highway patrol to her list of acquaintances, I wondered what kind of near-death experience it would take to make her change her delinquent ways.
A vision of Sonny Delite, sprawled dead in the woods, popped into my head.
Yup. That would certainly cause a change in a person’s behavior—being dead. The downside was that it would also
“You’re the counselor for students in the last part of the alphabet, right?”
“I am.”
“I’ve got some real issues with a student named Sara Schiller,” he said. “She’s cutting my class on a regular basis. Last week we started a scrapbooking project, and she has yet to even get started.”
“Scrapbooking? You mean like photo albums?”
“It’s a lot more than that,” he corrected me. “It’s actually an art form that goes back to the fifteenth century in England. It’s the creative selection and preservation of personal and family history through the use of photographs, literature and artwork. Most of the students really enjoy the embellishment techniques I teach them.”
Embellishment?
Embellishment?
Heck, I was still grappling with the photo album as art concept.
Paul checked the time on his watch. “I’ve got to go,” he said. “Would you talk with Sara, please?”
“I will,” I assured him, following him out the door to where I had parked in front of the store. I shifted my newly-purchased bag of flour into the crook of my arm and watched him walk towards the rows of gas pumps. While he wasn’t the biggest guy I’d ever seen, he carried himself with a certain swagger that reminded me of my brother-in-law, back when Alan and I were in college together. Alan had been, and still was, a talented athlete. Judging from his easy gait, it looked like Paul was in that same club.
Savage’s new art teacher also carried something else, I noticed.
Slung over Paul’s left shoulder was a satchel bursting at the seams with art equipment. I could see the tips of paintbrushes and the edges of drawing pads poking out … just above the silhouette of what looked suspiciously like two Greco-Roman wrestlers silkscreened on the satchel.
Paul Brand had an interest in wrestling.
Shoot. Had I bet on the wrong teacher?
Could the intimidating Bonecrusher have turned into a scrapbooking art teacher?
Not in my universe.
Then again, I was a birder who found dead bodies.
Go figure.
I popped the lock on my SUV and laid the bag of flour on the back seat. Whether he was the Bonecrusher or not, I was glad I’d run into Paul and that he’d given me the heads-up about Sara’s absences. As soon as I saw my favorite delinquent, she was going to not only get her baby back, but she was also going to get another lecture about skipping school.
Not that I had any illusions that one more lecture would make a difference. Sara was a habitual truant. With two workaholic parents who seemed to show little interest in her, I was fairly certain that her school-skipping behavior was a desperate plea for attention. In that sense, Sara was a wild success, because she got my attention all the time.
Unfortunately, it didn’t do jack for her visibility with her parents—from what I could tell, they hardly noticed they even had a child, which just encouraged Sara’s own irresponsibility and acting out even more. From years of being a school counselor, I knew that I could talk until I was all shades of blue in the face, but if a kid wanted to keep doing something, she’d do it … until the stakes got high enough to make her pause and hopefully make changes.
In my experience, that frequently meant that the stakes had to entail a close encounter with either the police or the Grim Reaper, or in some cases, both.
Seeing as Sara had already added the Wisconsin highway patrol to her list of acquaintances, I wondered what kind of near-death experience it would take to make her change her delinquent ways.
A vision of Sonny Delite, sprawled dead in the woods, popped into my head.
Yup. That would certainly cause a change in a person’s behavior—being dead. The downside was that it would also
Similar Books
