A simple farmer receives a horse from the gods, a man sells ice creams named after missing schoolkids, the demolition of a hotel brings an old horror to light, a wounded soldier finds the real enemy is in his own camp, a family inherits a peculiar r...
Miss Radcliffe gave me a page full of new sums to work on and made me sit at the front of the classroom to do them, then she went back to pretending I wasn't there. I looked up at the clock. Three fifteen. The Ice Cream Man would be serving the last few stragglers.
That was when I had an idea.
I don't know where it came from. Some deep, dark place that I hardly knew was inside me. We like to think that we don't have a place like that inside us, but we all do. We just need someone like Miss Radcliffe to help us find it.
I took a deep breath. My heart was thudding in my chest. "Do you know about the Ice Cream Man?" I said.
Miss Radcliffe looked up from her book and pushed her glasses up her nose. "What nonsense is this now? At this rate you'll be here until -"
"It's not nonsense," I interrupted. "Haven't you heard of him?"
"I've heard just about enough of -"
"Sells us ice creams every Friday," I said, warming to my topic. I was starting to find my rhythm. And the more confident I got, the more uncertain Miss Radcliffe seemed to become.
"You're making things up," she said, but she sounded unsure now. I'd never heard Miss Radcliffe sound unsure. If I'd known it was so easy I would have done it ages ago. And for the first time I saw her for what she was: a scared little person who bullied kids because it made her feel better about herself.
I knew if I waited too long she'd get back in control. I couldn't give her the chance. I had to strike.
"If we go now you'll catch him before he leaves," I said.
But about this I couldn't be sure. There was a good chance he'd left already. On the other hand it was a hot day. Perhaps the line had been extra long today. I could only hope.
"I don't –" she began, then swallowed. "You say an ice cream vancomes to the school?"
"Right in," I said, using my hand to make the motion of a van zipping in through school gates.
"That's – does he have a permit?"
"Probably not," I said. How the hell should I know if he had a permit? "You should ask him," I said, and almost laughed out loud at my own wickedness.
"Maybe I will," she said. She'd lost control over me and she knew it. What she needed to make herself feel better was to find someone else to bully. Someone doing the wrong thing. Someone without a permit.
I got up and went to her desk and said, "Come on, I'll show you."
"Okay," she said. "But if this is a wild goose chase you're going to be in detention until you're sixty."
I shrugged. She could keep me in detention until I was dead for all I cared. I wasn't scared of her anymore. I wasn't the boy I'd been five minutes ago.
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Now reach down into that dark place you hardly know is inside you.
