Oh…fuck.
It took fifteen minutes of calming her ass down to get the story.
Her teacher, in her infinite wisdom, decided to assign a “fun end of school project” for all the students to do.
Tell us of the time when you found out Santa wasn’t real.
God. Fucking. Dammit.
I’d told Searcy this would come back to bite us in the ass!
She’d begged me not to tell Anders, though. She said that she needed to continue being a kid, because we never got to do that.
And she was right.
But still, the world was a cruel place, and it was humiliating to find out that you were the only twelve-year-old in your class who didn’t know.
Shit, shit, goddamn.
My gaze moved to the door where a woman stood, looking annoyed but resolute.
“I presume you’re the teacher responsible for this?” I asked.
The teacher crossed her arms over her chest. “I wasn’t aware that she didn’t know.”
And that made it okay?
“Anders still believes—believed—in Santa, Mrs. Lancaster. She may be twelve, and she may be past the age where kids usually find out, but that doesn’t mean that you go ahead and steal away all their illusions! You don’t know her home life. You don’t know that it took literally everything we had to keep at least one single thing good about Christmas in our family. My mom was awful, Mrs. Lancaster. The only thing we had to give Anders sometimes were little things like this. So yes, she may be too old to be believing in Santa, but that doesn’t change the fact that she does, and you just ruined that for her.”
The teacher’s lips pinched together.
That only made me more mad that she didn’t immediately apologize.
I gritted my teeth and looked down at Anders. “Do you want to go home?”
She hesitated.
“Okay, well you can go back to class then,” I said. “You’ll be okay?”
“Y-yes.” She nodded resolutely.
“Okay. You’re riding the bus home?”
She nodded.
“Call me again if you need me,” I ordered.
“About that.” The office lady crossed her arms. “You know the punishment for having your phone out, Ms. Hodges.”
Was she talking to me or Anders? Because I had no fucking clue.
“Yes, ma’am,” Anders apologized, holding her phone out.
When Mrs. Lancaster went to snatch it away, I beat her to it and put it in my bra. “I’ll handle this.”
“That’s not how policy…”
“Your policy can suck my dick,” I snapped. “Anders, back to class.”
