Get Into James Shorts - 48. The Counsel

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The Counsel

Foster King sat on an uncomfortable, hard-bottomed bench outside Vice-Principal Chuckles’ office. The man tried to be an affable clown, but most of his corny jokes fell flat on the middle schoolers who had to endure them. The man seemed to have a tone-deafness about him that made him immune to the idea that his students were laughing at him, not his jokes.

His best friend, Rebel Stuart, sat in the chair beside him, but they were forbidden to talk until Chuckles was done with them. The rule was enforced by the office secretary, a seemingly humorless old crone. Foster wished he could. Rebel had frequent flyer points in Chuckle's office and knew how this worked.

A man with a company logo on his shirt came out of the back office and said, “I replaced two rollers and the drum. That copier shouldn’t give you any more problems.”

She thanked him, and he hastily departed. Foster guessed being in the principal’s office, with its intimidation by design, even made adults jumpy.

The office secretary stood, picked up a pile of papers, and said, “You two little hooligans stay here. Mr. Tanner will be right with you.” She went into the back office and began making copies.

Foster said, “Hey, when we get in there, what are we supposed to do?”

“Play dumb,” Rebel said. “Grownups think we’re stupid, so show’em what they expect.”

Foster paused and said, “Is there anything I should look out for?”

Rebel considered the question and said, “Yeah. Expect him to lie. We would get in more trouble for lying, but grownups lie all the time.”

“What’ll they lie about?” Foster asked.

“Everythin. There are a few that are ‘specially dangerous. If he starts out saying, ‘tell me the truth, nobodies gonna get in trouble’, you know somebodies gonna get in trouble.”

Foster said, “That sucks.”

“That’s a bad one, but not the worst,” Rebel opined. “He’ll say he knows you did sumthin’ just to rattle you into a confession.”

Foster said, “Rat bastard!”

Rebel chuckled and said, “Tell me about it. Last time, they accused me of wetting toilet paper and leavin’ big paper mache spitballs on the roof of study hall.”

“What did you say?”

“They had to know it wasn’t me because nothin’ was broken.”

Foster laughed, “Fair point.”

Rebel’s temper has been explosive since his parents' recent divorce. His fuse was short, if not instantaneous. He had been loads of fun to be around, but not so much lately.

Rebel said, “Their worst lie of all is everything will be all right.”

“What if we just told the truth?” Foster asked.

“Try it. He won’t believe you. That’s just how grownups are.”

Exasperated, Foster asked, “Well, how do we win?”

Rebel said, “You don’t get it. We don’t. It’s their game, their rules, and their say. Ours is not to reason why, ours is just to grin and bear it.