One Moment - 3. Chapter 3

One Moment

Chapter 3

Dr. Marshall looked up and smiled at Matt as the boy stiffly walked into the room, he could easily read from Matt’s facial expression and body language that he would rather be anywhere but his office at that moment.

“How are you feeling?” He asked deciding not to comment on it for the moment as he motioned to one of the chairs in front of his desk, the same one Matt had sat in before. He watched him sit down not surprised his body stayed rigid and his hands gripped tightly to the arms of the chair. He also wasn’t surprised when he didn’t receive an answer to his question.

“You look like you’re feeling a little better.”

Matt raised his head a little bit to that comment and nodded slightly hoping that would suffice as an answer.

“Any problems with anything here so far?”

Though he wanted to speak up and say just being there was a problem he found himself shaking his head figuring the moment he opened his mouth he would be expected to keep talking.

Dr. Marshall pulled a couple of items out of his desk and set them on the opposite side of it within easy reach of Matt. “This card here,” he said pointing to the manila card he’d placed on top that was a little larger than an index card, “You have to carry this with you at all times. It tracks your points; do you remember me telling you about having to earn days to get on a higher level?”

Matt nodded leaning ahead a little bit his interest peeked enough to at least show a little interest. He looked at the card that had a space for his name at the top with a grid below it that had three columns across it and ten rows down it as Dr. Marshall continued to talk.

“You can earn points and lose points on this card. If you display good behavior a staff member will tell you and have you write here,” he said pointing to the larger of squares on the grid, “what you did that was good, then tell you how many points you earned which you’d write here. They initial in this last slot here.” He said running his finger along the card. “It works the same way for bad behavior except you have to put a negative sign before the number in the points section. At the end of the day, before bed, you take your card to the person sitting at the desk in your room and they total it up to let you know if you earned another level or not then give you a fresh card for the next day.”

“You can go ahead and put your name on that, you’ll start the card system as of now.” He added setting a pen on top of the card. “You want to keep it with you at all times. If you earn points and don’t have your card on you, you’ll lose the points you just earned. If you lose your card you’ll have to start the day all over and any of the points that were on it when you lost it won’t count.”

Matt took the pen and wrote out his name.

“In the future you only have to write your first name.” The doctor added seeing him writing out both names. “Also you did very well doing what I asked you to do, so you can give yourself two points for following instructions.”

Matt raised his eyebrows figuring it’d be damn easy to earn points if they handed them out that easily, though he didn’t really care either way as this whole points system seemed completely ridiculous to him. Despite his feelings about it he wrote down what he’d been given points for, the points he’d been given then slid it over to the doctor who signed it.

“This,” he said pointing to the next item he laid on the desk, “is going to be your journal. I want you to write in it everyday, write out your thoughts, your feelings, or any questions you have. I don’t want one or two sentences either; I really want you to use it as a means of release. I’ll be checking it every time we meet and we can go over what you’ve written in it.”

Matt took the small notebook, mentally swearing, as he knew he wasn’t going to write about anything the doctor wanted him to write, which meant he would have to come up with a bunch of crap that either wasn’t true or just was a bunch of nonsense. He wouldn’t mind it if he didn’t have to share it, in fact he’d always loved to write, but he wasn’t about to share the stuff he liked to write, not with just anyone and especially not this doctor.

“I will be meeting with you every Tuesday and Friday at 10am. Someone will get you from class and bring you here at least until you are not at risk of running away. After that you’ll just leave class and come here every Tuesday and Friday at ten.”

Matt spent an hour in the man’s office, which he kept close track of with the clock on the wall behind his desk. When the hour was over Mark showed up at the door just as he had said.

“I checked on it for you,” Mark said as they made their way to the back hallway where the bedrooms were. “Your laundry day is going to be on Sundays. Do you know how to do your own laundry?”

Matt nodded having done his own laundry as long as he could remember, of course that didn’t mean he knew the proper way to do it but he got the feeling, as Mark led him to his hamper that really had very little in it so far, that he was going to be shown.

“I know you haven’t got that much yet to do, but I wanted to at least have you do a load so I can show you how these machines run. When it’s your laundry day you can just take this whole basket with you into the bathroom, but since you only have an armload of stuff you can just take it out today.”

Matt nodded taking his cue and reached in and grabbed the two pairs of boxers, the pants, and shirt he’d worn there the first day and the pajamas he’d thrown in the hamper that morning. He then followed Mark out of the bedroom and into the bathroom.

“You normally will need to separate all the light colors from the dark colors.” Mark said as they stood in front of the washer and dryer. “Since all you have that’s light in there is two pairs of underpants and this is just a run through you can throw all those in the same load.”

Matt lifted the cover of the washer and tossed in his clothes then stood back waiting for further instruction, not wanting to have to feel as stupid as he had that morning when he’d thought he known how to make a bed.

Mark showed him the cupboard right near the washer that held the largest container of soap powder he’d ever seen. “Since that’s a small load you can probably get away with only half a cup of detergent. On regular loads though you’ll need a full cup.”

Matt followed the instructions while Mark continued. “You also have to wash your sheets every week, and once a month you’ll have to wash your blankets.”

After Matt had deposited the detergent into the washer, he closed the cover and Mark went over the dials and settings. Leaving the washer running they then left the bathroom again. Mark gave him another two points for following more instructions so he took the card out of his back pocket, wrote down the information, and then after Mark signed it he tucked it back in his pocket.

The rest of the morning was incredibly boring with Mark showing him each and every possible chore that he could get and even showing him how each one was properly done, including drying his laundry and getting it folded the proper way. They were in the living room where he was learning the proper way to vacuum when he heard what sounded like a herd of horses out in the hallway.

He turned to look and swallowed hard seeing all the other boys and some staff members heading into the dining room. He had to admit he was hungry but he really hoped he wouldn’t have to join them all in there. As usual, his hoping for something did him no good.

“Oh looks like its lunch time.” Mark said from beside him before he pushed the vacuum back into the utility closet near the corner of the room.

Matt wanted to say he wasn’t hungry to try and save himself but knew it had to happen sooner or later and figured maybe it was best just to friggin get it over with.

Once they made it to the dining room the incredibly large table was surrounded by 11 other boys all sitting quietly and three other adults. There were only two free spaces side by side, which was where Mark led him. Mark sat down in one while he sat in the other next to another boy that had bright blonde hair and deep blue eyes. ‘Rather cute’ Matt though idly as his nerves ran rampant through his body. He was not going to be caught checking anyone out. He didn’t need to be labeled the fag as well as the charity case. Some things were just better left unsaid in certain types of environments and this was an environment that he was sure would prove hostile if any of them were to find out he was gay.

Even though he kept his eyes cast downward, he could still feel every eye at the table on him. Mark’s next move only made his nervousness much worse.

“Everyone, this is Matthew, I’m sure you’ve all heard by now there was a new kid.” He said referring mostly to the kids that were in the other room. “Let’s introduce ourselves.”

Matt heard more than one sigh as one by one each boy from across the table starting with the far left side stood up said his name then reached out to shake his hand. Flushing a deep red Matt didn’t dare refuse to shake figuring it would only make him stand out more. He heard each and every name but didn’t look up at all to be able to connect it with a face. He didn’t figure that mattered very much though as he didn’t plan to interact much with these kids no matter how long or how short his stay was.

Shortly after everyone made their introductions, Mary and the other woman he’d met in the kitchen that morning appeared carrying plates of sandwiches, cut up vegetables like carrot sticks and cucumbers and jugs of milk and juice. Within seconds, the table was full of food.

The boys dug in hungrily like any group of teenage boys would do and as soon as there was room for his arms to reach out he grabbed himself what looked like a ham and cheese sandwich. The tray of vegetables was passed around, he helped himself to some carrots, and cucumbers then poured himself a glass of milk.

There wasn’t much conversation during lunch, which he was very glad of, he didn’t want to be expected to join into any conversations and certainly didn’t want to be the topic of any conversations.

When every bit of the food was devoured, the boys trickled away one by one while Mark told him they had to stay there. Not knowing why but sure he’d find out soon enough he watched as another one of the boys cleared everything off the table. Figuring that one had dish duty he looked up to the white board, found the listing for the chore of dishes and the name Andy beside it. He wondered why that kid got to be called Andy instead of Andrew when everyone kept calling him Matthew, though he had to argue with his own resentment as he’d not bothered to tell anyone that he didn’t like the full name of Matthew.

The house grew very quiet again, a few minutes later as the boys all headed back to the classroom. Matt didn’t miss the sudden ease of tension in his body once they were all gone again.

Still sitting at the table feeling foolish he looked over at Mark. “What are we doing?” he asked his curiosity finally getting the better of him.

“You have to take placement tests, for classes. Someone should be out in a minute.”

“Why? There’s only one class why do I have to get placed?”

“There’s one classroom but lots of little side classes going on. Some people are stronger in certain subjects than others are. These tests will indicate what areas you do well in and what areas you may need to focus on.”

Matt looked back down at the table and nodded. He hadn’t been to school in nearly a year. Even when he’d been in school, he hadn’t been very good at it.

As Mark had said a few minutes later a woman he’d not yet seen walked into the room with a stack of papers in her hand. She sat down across from where they were at the table and smiled warmly at him.

“Hi Matthew, I’m Joanne, the one in charge of education around here.” She said reaching out her hand and again Matt found himself shaking yet another hand. “As you probably heard our school days run from 8:30 am to 5pm Monday through Friday. You won’t have any work that you can’t complete during class time. That’s why the school day seems so long, we incorporate the time normally spent at homework right into the school day.”

“After each subject you have a half hour to do the work assigned and if you need help the teacher is still right there to assist you. If you don’t get it done in that time frame there’s another forty-five minutes at the end of the day to finish anything that still needs to be completed. If you do have everything finished the last forty five minutes can be spent on special projects or studying for tests.”

“The day starts with Math, then we go into History, then English, after lunch there’s Art, then Social studies and current events. You get a lot of individualized attention here. There are three fully accredited teachers and three teacher assistants plus I’m usually around in there if they need any extra help.”

She rifled through the papers she’d brought with her, pulled one away from the pile, and set it in front of her. “First I just have a quick questionnaire.”

Matt nodded liking her though he wasn’t sure quite why yet and figuring it’d be okay to answer her questions as long as they weren’t too prying.

“Did you like school? Back when you attended?” she added the last part as they’d gotten his last transcripts and knew enough about him to know he’d not gone to any school in quite some time.

Matt shook his head having no doubt in his answer, he had detested school.

“Can you explain why?”

“I just wasn’t too good at it.”

“Wasn’t very good at it.”

He furrowed his brow at her and nodded wondering why she was repeating it for him.

“One of the rules here is if you are corrected on what you say you then need to repeat it properly.”

Not sure what that was all about and not sure what he’d said wrong he repeated exactly what she’d said remembering that night he’d been pretending to sleep and hearing Andy repeating how Mark had corrected what he’d said.

“Great job, you can put two points on your card.”

Again slightly amused at how easy this point’s thing was he pulled his card out of his pocket, wrote it down, and handed it to her where she quickly signed it and handed it back to him.

“Out of the subjects you took at your last school would you say there was one that you excelled at?”

He quickly shook his head knowing he sucked at all of them.

“Was there any you preferred over the others?”

“English.”

“Why did you prefer that one?”

“Because I like to read, and I like to write stories.” He noticed her eyes lighting up at that and found himself pleased that he’d pleased her but again could not figure out why that would make him happy.

“What kind of stories do you write?”

“I don’t know, just made up stories.”

She nodded getting the impression he really didn’t want to go into it and continued on to the next question. “Would you say you had good study habits or do you figure that maybe the reason your grades weren’t very good was because you didn’t spend a lot of time studying?”

He nodded knowing he should have studied more. “I didn’t study very good.” He muttered quietly which caused a smile to pass between Mark and Joanne that he didn’t see since he was staring at the table during his admission.

Joanne pulled another piece of paper from her pile and slid it across the table to him. “This test is for math to get an idea where you are.”

Matt frowned detesting math and almost wanting to tell her he’d just have to start at the beginning of wherever math started, instead though he took a deep breath and started going through the problems. The first section even he had to admit was easy, just simple addition and subtraction, he even got partway through the sections on multiplying and dividing until it came to large numbers and he just had no clue on where to even begin.

He wanted to turn away from them and hide his paper so they wouldn’t see his senseless movement of numbers as he was trying to remember how to do it, he didn’t like that he was being watched during this test one bit.

He didn’t even try to put down any answers when the questions moved onto algebra and geometry; he just didn’t have any idea where to begin how to do them. He slid the paper back to her trying not to show any of the shame that was billowing through him.

She smiled though he didn’t see it as he wasn’t looking her in the face, then slid another piece of paper over to him. “This is one for reading comprehension. You just read the story and answer some questions. Don’t stress out too much.” She said seeing his turmoil whether he’d wanted to hide it or not. “It’s just a placement test, they only help us to see what you need to work on, it’s not a matter of how smart you are, and it’s only a matter of what you’ve learned so far.”

Matt nodded and set to work reading the story, he felt much better after completing that test even though he figured any idiot could read a story and answer questions about it five seconds after they read it.

“Next we need a writing sample, be sure to pay attention to grammar and punctuation because we gauge your comprehension of that from this part also. You need to write a descriptive paragraph about anything you want, a person, a place, just pick something, and describe it to us.”

Taking the paper he was handed Matt nodded again and set to work, the paragraph coming out easily as his pen soared across the paper, he didn’t even realize until he was done writing and looked down at what he’d done that he’d written four paragraphs instead of one.

“Is four okay?” he asked as he handed it over to her worried he’d have to reduce what he’d written into one small paragraph. He was relieved when she smiled.

“The more the better.”

Dr. Jack Marshall was in his office an hour later at one of the few moments during the day when he didn’t have a client or parent in there with him when Joanne walked through his open door. He smiled up at her always having really liked the woman.

“How are you?” He asked motioning her to sit in the chair in front of his desk. Though they both worked in the same place they didn’t generally get to speak to each other unless it was in staff meetings, mostly they just passed each other in the halls and gave a quick nod or wave both being too busy to have much time to socialize at work.

“I’m very good.” Joanne said returning his smile as she sat down in the chair in front of his desk. She took the piece of paper she’d brought with her and handed it over to him. “I thought this might interest you.”

Jack took the paper, and despite the messy handwriting, he was able to make out all the words and read it through thoroughly once, than even more closely a second time. “This is Matthew?” he asked looked back up at her.

She nodded. “He’s not only very good at writing, but I think that cabin he describes is something very important to him. You can’t get that descriptive and use those type of words if a place isn’t extra special to you, at least I’ve never seen it.”

Completely agreeing Jack looked it over again. “I wonder if he had good memories of the place, like maybe his family went on vacation there. It’s not a very fancy place to vacation; even though he talks about it fondly, he also describes its pretty run down. But his family really had very little money. So it’s highly possible their family vacation destination would be a humble cabin in the woods.” He stood up from his desk and walked to the photocopier in his office. “I’m just going to take a copy of this for his file. Maybe he’ll actually tell me about it.” He laughed a little as he placed the paper in the machine.

“He’s not talking to you?”

Jack shook his head, he took both pieces of paper out of the machine, kept one with him and took one back to her. Before he returned to his desk, he shut the office door for more privacy. “To be honest, he’s not uttered one single word to me. Did he talk much with you?”

“Not a lot but he talked. He answered direct questions mostly.”

Jack sighed. “I can’t even get him to do that, the most I get is a head shake or a nod and that’s only if I get anything at all. How did he do on his other tests?”

“Math wasn’t good, he’s at about a fourth grade level, and that may be being too generous. I am going to have Barbara work on Math with him every day to get the basics down then we can go from there. His reading comprehension is good, grammar skills not so good. All things we can deal with though, he’s not beyond our abilities, in fact I think he’s pretty bright, I think mostly the problem is he didn’t pay attention before, he himself admits to not studying.”

Jack took off his glasses and rubbed at the bridge of his nose. “I wish he was more open to being here. I’m certain he’s not done trying to run away, I think he has just been too weak and sore to try it. We need to make him see this is a good place.”

“They all see it after a spell.”

He nodded. “I know, it’s just hard for me to believe it with some of the kids, and Matthew is one of them. I can see he’s angry but there’s more to it than that, I can’t put my finger on it, but it’s almost like desperation, like he feels he needs to get out of here, like it’s a life or death situation to him or something.”

Though she’d not gotten that impression at all she didn’t argue as she was a teacher and knew he knew a lot more of what he was talking about in this situation than she did. “Well it will take time. He’ll come around.” She stood up smiling. “I better get back I have more paperwork to fill out on him and have to decide the rest of his curriculum.”

“Okay, thanks for showing me this, its shed more light inside his brain than anything else I’ve gotten so far.”

Jack sat back in his chair as she walked out of the room and read the paragraphs Matt had written over again. If his initial inclination was right then at some point he’d have to have had a happy childhood, he knew he wouldn’t have written so fondly of a place if it held any bad memories. He’d need to figure out what happened, what had made a happy family into one that fell apart so bad the child would run away and the parents wouldn’t want him back.

Was it something Matthew had done? Was it the fault of the parents? Was it a mixture of both? He didn’t know and his thinking only resulted in more questions. He had a feeling there was a lot to Matthew Creighton, a lot he was determined to find out. He just had to figure out how to get the boy to talk to him. A task he was still certain would prove to be one of his greatest challenges. Yet a task he was up for, of that much he was sure