A Charter to That Other Place

by Sean Boling

  Chapter Thirteen: Dale

  He was running a P.E. session for Jay Quintero’s fourth grade class when he saw the bus drive by on the frontage road.

  The fourth graders were playing capture the flag in the most trampled-down part of the meadow, where Dale and a gang of Dads had cleared some brush for just such an occasion.

  “Wrap it up and bring it in!” he hollered as Jay emerged from the upper cluster to collect them. Quintero was a young teacher who had little else to offer besides energy when the school year had started, but was starting to show signs of fulfilling the promise of his interview.

  Dale could hear the bus shifting into a lower gear as it turned into the parking lot around the front of the building, and decided to jog over and greet them.

  With a high-five from Jay as he hit his stride, Dale made it in time to wave like an ecstatic tourist pulling into port on a cruise. He got some laughs and some imitations from the faces in the windows before they stood up to disembark. Moving over to the door, he held out his hand for two dozen more high-fives as he welcomed them back and intermittently asked the passing line how it went. They responded with either a ‘good’ or a ‘fine’, with an occasional over-the-top “awesome!” from one of the boys trying to be funny.

  He expected Artie to be one of them, but he was unresponsive.

  Since Artie was one of the last to exit, Dale only had to wait for a couple of girls to pass before Isaiah came down the steps with a discreet announcement.

  “We may have a situation.”