The New Kid

The class went silent when the knock on the door came. Sixty eyes turned toward it.

“May I help you?” Miss Scopa asked.

“I’m your new student,” a strained and nervous voice replied. The English was accented and tense. Willy Brown half stood in his desk, but Miss Scopa’s glance sat him down right away.

‘New kid,” he mouthed, flashing his snaggled, yellow teeth in a wolf-like smile. As the not infrequent recipient of Willy’s bullying, I felt sympathy for whoever it was, coming like a lamb to the slaughter.

“Sammy, isn’t it?” Miss Scopa was smiling, but her eyes flickered over Willy and his gang of hoodlums one by one, daring them to start anything. “Your seat is in the third row over, four desks down.”

I suppose Miss Scopa thought it was a safe seat. The neighbours on all sides were girls, but Willy saw his opening, right away.

“Oh, Sammy sits with the giiiiirls,” he said, drawing the word out to make it ridiculous. Sammy, shorter than any boy in the class, sank into the seat. I did not need to read minds to know he was praying for the floor to open up and swallow him.