Hey y'all! This is the beginning to what I think will be a much longer piece, but I wanted to know what you guys thought. Anyways, there might be some errors as far as formatting goes, it seems to be a problem when I transfer it from Word. Did my best, hope it's not too much of an issue. Anyways, hope you like it: A WORD ABOUT ERIC Principal Sanders sighed a big, heavy sigh as she shut her office door and walked slowly but purposefully to her desk. John and Mary stood uncomfortably for a moment, looking anxious and lost before the principal invited them to have a seat on the two wooden chairs that sat before her desk. “Thank you for coming,” she said to the both of them with a smile that was strained with worry. Eric had never met Principal Sanders before, and her British accent took him by surprise. “As I told you over the phone,” she continued, “It seems Eric has gotten himself in a bit of a scrap at school earlier today. Thankfully, nobody was hurt, but we do have a zero-tolerance policy for fighting here at Kennedy Elementary School, and I’m going to have to suspend him.” John sat calmly in his chair, his expression blank, and turned to see his wife’s mouth agape. He knew his wife would feign shock like this no matter how minor the punishment was. “Suspended?” Marry said, practically gasping for breath, “You can’t be serious. He’s in the third grade for Christ’s sakes. I wasn’t even aware they had suspensions at elementary schools.” Principal Sanders kept smiling her smile, which was almost painful to look at this point, and took a moment before answering Mary. “Well, it’s not too uncommon. I’m sorry Mrs. Thompson, but the school’s policy is very strict on fighting.” “How long are you going to suspend him?” Asked John, trying to progress the conversation along. He didn’t want his wife to start making a seen, and Principal Sanders kind of gave him the creeps anyway. “Because this is his first time in my office, I think one day out of school is fair.” John nodded in agreement, and stole a glance at Mary, who was palpably fuming in her seat. He didn’t understand why she was being so defensive of her child. Fighting was wrong, they’d taught Eric that, didn’t they? After thinking a moment he couldn’t remember. How many other lessons had they forgotten to teach their child while caught up in their own, meaningless existences? “You said there was something else you wanted to talk to us about?” Mary asked nervously. “Yes,” said Principal Sander. Her smile had vanished completely now. Even John squirmed a bit in his chair, really feeling how truly uncomfortable it was. “When Eric’s teacher brought him down to my office, she said that Eric had started hitting the other child unprovoked. When I asked Eric about it, he said it was his imaginary friend, Billy, who told him to do it. Has Eric ever mentioned anything about an imaginary friend before?” John and Mary turned to each other, their expressions now both unmistakably concerned and disturbed. “No,” John said after taking a moment, “I don’t believe he has.” Principal Sanders nodded, and exhaled deeply. “While it’s not unheard of for children Eric’s age to have imaginary friends, it is a bit rare. And that his friend has such an… influence over Eric is troubling.” There was a moment of intensely awkward silence that filled the room. Marry narrowed her eyes. “What are you getting at?” She said, slowly. John was also a bit confused. He tried to remember back to when he was Eric’s age. He’d never had an imaginary friend, but he had gotten into plenty of fights, for little to no reason. Whatever happened to “boys will be boys”? Principal Sanders turned, looking Marry right in the eyes, and swallowed hard. “Well,” she started, “It’s just that the imaginary friend, given what it’s caused him to do, is a bit of a red flag. I’m not trained in psychology, so I’m not at liberty to diagnose Eric with anything, certainly, but I would recommend that he be checked out.” Again, the room went silent. The tension in the room was so thick, John could feel the pressure squeezing him, compressing his essence into a tiny mass of nothingness. Finally, he did all he could to muster a smile. “We’ll certainly consider it,” he said. “Thanks for your time.” “And yours as well,” said Principal Sanders. Mary and John got up, left the room without a word or glance at one another, and proceeded to exit the school, with Eric in tow. **** It was an odd thing to have to be told that their could be something wrong with your child. It was disarming, first not to have known but then to have to be told by somebody- a goddamn stranger for godssakes. Eric, both biologically and emotionally, was a part of John, and to say there was something wrong with Eric was to say that there was something wrong with John. This is what John thought about, driving back to his house, on a day when he should have been at work. He couldn’t believe he had missed work because his son had gotten into a fight. In John’s day, if you got into a fight, you were put in a corner and you just sat, staring at the wall. Your parents never heard a word about it. But these days, the school was a regular on the caller ID list at the Thompson household. Ever bump, bruise, and demerit was documented and recorded, sent home with a page long report from the teacher. The thoroughness and obsessive nature of it all mad John sick to his stomach. John pulled into his driveway, and let his family file out of the car before locking it. He then went to the front door of his house, inserted his key, and unlocking the door and setting the alarm off, which he quickly disarmed with the password (04/13, the date of their wedding anniversary), silencing it until the next time they left the house. John almost resented how safe and secure everything was these days, and in such a safe neighborhood, too! This was Richards County for fuck’s sake! Nothing ever happened here. And all this for what? The illusion of security. Because John knew that it would be all to easy to take a crowbar and pry open the backdoor. How simple it would be to smash the drivers window of his Volvo and hotwire it. Nothing was safe, really. He marched silently, upstairs to his room to hit the shower, his sanctuary from the world that he did not understand.
