Messiah GXG : BOOK ONE (Completed) The Other Side Of The Game Series

TWENTY-FOUR

G R A C E

The whispering of random sounds danced around the classroom to create an echo of unfamiliarity. Each student's nervous habit spoke aloud in the discomfort they received from utter silence.

From Antawn's slapping of his pencil against the desk mixed with Keneta's tapping of her shoe, to Deshane's random scratching of his growing bread and Tanisha's tapping of her nails against the desk.

They all held a certain discomfort once it came to silence, all but one, Keylen. He was quite the opposite, his discomfort was found in noise so with this silence he thrived. It was probably the most relaxed I had seen him in class, even though he was still very small and uncomfortable, but it was less than usual.

All five students sat side by side at their desks in front of me, but somehow he always seemed to fade to the back even though he never moved. If I wasn't paying attention most days I would believe he wasn't even here.

He was the one who seemed to suffer the most from verbal and non-verbal alterations in the classroom, and I couldn't help but wonder what his home life was like. I had sent a request up to the office to have it checked out because based on what he displayed in class it couldn't be that he was coming to school from a loving situation.

It was hard to get most kids out of their home, especially when the parents were still present. One year I had a girl in class who was getting touched in her house by her step father and uncle. The mother knew but made no move to stop them or remove her because the men were paying her bills and what they weren't paying, the money she received for the girl simply being in the home was.

So the child was stuck, but the thing is we cared, and with a request we were able to get her help, and find out that the father had left prison years ago and has been trying for custody.

He was a good man, and an amazing father but his record made it hard for him to get his child, and because people don't really care no one saw past that. A black man with a record. In the end, he got her, he still does, and she is now a year away from graduating.

Every year.

Every year we get some who hate silence and some who hate noise, usually the ones who hate silence bury the trauma they face, and those who hate noise don't know how to bury the trauma and simply dwell in their mind. I don't know which one is more destructive.

I could only hope he had someone, somewhere who loved him enough to take him when the time was right, so he wasn't stuck in a group home that would either leave him to hate noise or grow him to hate silence.

"You guys can go get something to eat if you want to," Leann, my colleague, who had been busy sitting on the edge of my desk announced, and before her words could fully fall from her tongue the group of four who despised the silence arose.

With drawing of their seats and desks against the floor, they left with speed that had Leann shaking her head in slight entertainment as she lifted her tablet to make what I assumed to be notes. Keylen stood as well but he did so slowly and he lingered as Leann moved out of the classroom leaving me alone with Jeff, who had now pulled out his phone to probably check in on his family like clockwork.

"Keylen," I called out, and he shifted his gaze to me. "Come here,"

I watched as he walked to me as if each step drained him of life, and when he finally arrived his eyes still never met mine, they moved from my neck to my desk.

"Can you stay back after school for me today?" I asked him since I knew they would be going to his house today, and from experience if he was there it would make the situation worse.

"How late?"

"Not long sweetheart," I promised, half-expecting his first question to be why, and also in the same breath not being surprised at his inability to question things in a manner that requested more.

"Okay," He agreed and I nodded. "Can I go now?"

"Yes," I confirmed, and with that he left.

Hopefully this would go smoother than the two kids I had like him last year. House gets checked, he is removed the same day, stays with someone while they contact another family member or close friend and he gets placed with them within a week at the latest.

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I hope you guys enjoyed the chapter.