She turned over and the children were staring down at her. They were ringed in a tight little circle, like
mourners around an open grave. And at the head of the grave was Robert, a small sober sexton ready to
shovel the first spade of dirt into her face.
From far away, the bus driver’s shaken babble: ‘…crazy or somethin … my God, another half a foot . . .’
Miss Sidley stared at the children. Their shadows covered her. Their faces were impassive. Some of them
were smiling little secret smiles, and Miss Sidley knew that soon she would begin to scream again.
Then Mr Hanning broke their tight noose, shooed them away, and Miss Sidley began to sob weakly.
She didn’t go back to her third grade for a month. She told Mr Hanning calmly that she had not been feeling
herself, and Mr Hanning suggested that she see a reputable doctor and discuss the matter with him. Miss
Sidley agreed that this was the only sensible and rational course. She also said that if the school board wished for her resignation she would tender it immediately, although doing so would hurt her very much. Mr
Hanning, looking uncomfortable, said he doubted if that would be necessary. The upshot was that Miss
Sidley came back in late October, once again ready to play the game and now knowing how to play it.
For the first week she let things go on as ever. It seemed the whole class now regarded her with hostile,
shielded eyes. Robert smiled distantly at her from his front-row seat, and she did not have the courage to take him to task.
Once, while she was on playground duty, Robert walked over to her, holding a dodgem. ball, smiling.
‘There’s so many of us now you wouldn’t believe it,’ he said. ‘And neither would anyone else.’ He stunned her by dropping a wink of infinite slyness. ‘If you, you know, tried to tell em.’
A girt on the swings looked across the playground into Miss Sidley’s eyes and laughed at her.
Miss Sidley smiled serenely down at Robert. ‘Why, Robert, whatever do you mean?’
But Robert only continued smiling as he went back to his game.
Miss Sidley brought the gun to school in her handbag. It had been her brother’s. He had taken it from a dead German shortly after the Battle of the Bulge. Jim had been gone ten years now. She hadn’t opened the box that held the gun in at least five, but when she did it was still there, gleaming dully. The clips of ammunition were still there, too, and she loaded the gun carefully, just as Jim had shown her.
She smiled pleasantly at her class; at Robert in particular. Robert smiled back and she could see the murky
alienness swimming just below his skin, muddy, full of filth.
She had no idea what was now living inside Robert’s skin, and she didn’t care; she only hoped that the real
little boy was entirely gone by now. She did not wish to be a murderess. She decided the real Robert must
have died or gone insane, living inside the dirty, crawling thing that had chuckled at her in the classroom and sent her screaming into the street. So even if he was still alive, putting him out of his misery would be a
mercy.
‘Today we’re going to have a Test,’ Miss Sidley said.
The class did not groan or shift apprehensively; they merely looked at her. She could feel their eyes, like
weights. Heavy, smothering.
‘It’s a very special Test. I will call you down to the mimeograph room one by one and give it to you. Then you may have a candy and go home for the day. Won’t that be nice?’
They smiled empty smiles and said nothing.
‘Robert, will you come first?’
Robert got up, smiling his little smile. He wrinkled his nose quite openly at her. ‘Yes, Miss Sidley.’
Miss Sidley took her bag and they went down the empty, echoing corridor together, past the sleepy drone of
classes reciting behind closed doors. The mimeograph room was at the far end of the hall, past the lavatories.