[Wk50] How Was Your Day?
Mina Montgomery set the table while her husband, William, helped their daughter take the macaroni and cheese from the oven. Cassie scanned the breadcrumbs across the top for brownness, telling the tale of ‘Anthony Got In Trouble In Math Again’ as she placed the tray in the center of the dining room table. She served her parents large spoonfuls of creamy noodles as she confessed her suspicion that their third grade teacher just didn’t like Anthony.
Mina poured William a glass of wine and smiled at her daughter. Cassie paused for the barest of seconds as her long brown plaits made a last ditch effort to overwhelm her dinner plate. Cassie tied her tails in a loose knot behind her head and peered eagerly into her pasta.
“Everyone forgets their pencils all the time,” she said, making sure to get an exact one-to-one ratio of bacon to noodles on her spoon. “Mrs. McCullom doesn’t even notice when the rest of us forget. Only Anthony. It’s like she can only see one or two bad things a day and the rest don’t count.”
Cassie shoveled in a cheesy mouthful and beamed triumphantly at her dad. “So today I yelled that I forgot my pencil, too, even though I had my pencil.”
William stifled a chuckle, hiding his smirk in his wine glass.
“Then Marcie and James and June all yelled they didn’t have pencils either and then Mrs. McCullom got confused, and that’s why I got detention.” Cassie eyed the broccoli along the side of her pasta bowl with vague resentment and cast a hopeful glance at her mom. Mina raised an eyebrow. Cassie sighed and slid a chunk of shrubbery onto her spoon.
“Did Marcie and James and June all get detention too?” Mina asked, as she cut her broccoli into precise pieces and carefully chewed each one.
“Yes. But not Anthony. He already had detention because he farted during history and everyone laughed.” Cassie shrugged. “It smelled really bad so I felt ok when he got detention for it.”
Cassie’s sagas at school had begun her first day at Park West Elementary. Family dinners soon pivoted around her tales of spelling test espionage and chalkboard graffiti. Mina used to tell her daughter she was a brilliant storyteller, but the past year had Mina wondering if Cassie’s stories shone because she invested so much in the conflict. She watched Cassie’s fascination with social interactions bloom into an unrelenting, if frequently impetuous, disdain for hierarchy.
Cassie tried to hide the last bits of her broccoli underneath her pasta bowl while both her parents looked on in amused resignation. She tugged her knot of plaits to tighten it, and reached across the table to serve herself more macaroni and cheese. She said,
“But that’s not even the weirdest thing that happened today.” Cassie reseated herself in front of her brimming bowl of pasta and continued, “The desks get moved around at night. I thought it was just a weird accident but everything is in a different place all week now.”
Her parents nodded. Mina guessed a plot twist involving the implementation of new, slightly larger desks, loomed in the next few minutes.
“But that’s not all,” Cassie said, grimacing as Mina fished out a smushed broccoli from under her daughter’s pasta bowl and placed it in plain sight. “Today, Mr. Archer’s classroom was switched with Mrs. Dent’s classroom. Half of us were late!”
“Why just half of you?” Mina asked. Cassie attempted to hide the repulsive flavor of her broccoli by eating it in a series of microscopic, barely-chewed, bites. Mina rolled her eyes.
Cassie shrugged. “I don’t know why half. June says she would have been late but she was walking with Miranda and Miranda just went straight to the right class.” Cassie pursed her lips thoughtfully, a shred of broccoli falling in quiet consideration to her placemat. “She also said Miranda ate her entire apple at lunch. That’s weird.”
“Miranda doesn’t like apples?” Mina asked as they began to clear plates from the table.
“No,” Cassie called from the kitchen. “She never eats her fruit. She says it’s too warm. She likes for it to be really cold.”
Cassie trotted upstairs for homework time, and Mina turned the dishwasher on so its quick wash cycle could let her know when it was time to go upstairs and reprimand Cassie for not having started her homework. William wiped the broccoli crumbs from Cassie’s area and muttered to his wife about why didn’t he sneak it in the actual mac and cheese this time.
Cassie’s insistence that the school was rearranging itself did not wane over the course of the week. By Wednesday, none of the classrooms were in their normal spots. Cassie said June wasn’t June anymore and she couldn’t be sure her teachers were themselves, either.
“What on earth do you mean, Cassie?” Mina was exasperated. She’d had eight walk-ins at the hospital and three nurses call in sick last minute. Cassie’s ongoing saga had lost its allure and was beginning to sound more like outright fiction than imaginative recounting.
“Like…Miranda and the fruit. She’s eaten all of her fruit all week long, you know. And now June thinks Miranda is funny.” Cassie shook her head. “Miranda is not funny. But June laughs at everything she says and when I spilled my pencil bag on the floor so Mrs. McCullom wouldn’t see Anthony come to class late, June frowned at me.” Cassie slammed her fist on the table with a heartbroken whack. “Frowned!”
“So maybe June is going through something? Why can’t she think Miranda is funny? What does this have to do with your teachers not being themselves?” William asked. He’d had had a good day at work, but had told Mina just that morning that Cassie was starting to border on obsessed. He watched his daughter’s flushed face over the rims of his glasses, and wondered if her stories were hiding something more awful, something she couldn’t spin into a mystery.
“It’s not June, Dad. June doesn’t think Miranda is funny. I don’t know who that person is. And my teachers are all like Mrs. McCullom, like today, Mrs. Dent gave Anthony detention and she never picks on Anthony.” Cassie’s eyes glistened and she bit her lips to hide their quiver. “She told Anthony if he got one more detention, he would be kicked out of school and no one would remember him.”
“Wait, what?” Mina cast a hard, perusing, look at her daughter and then at William. “We’ll get that sorted, hon. Mrs. Dent should not have said that to Anthony. Thank you for telling us.”
But after a phone call, several interviewed students, and a meeting with the principal and Mrs. Dent the next day at lunch, it was determined that Mrs. Dent had said no such thing. Mina and William found Cassie a therapist.
“I already told you the teachers aren’t my teachers. So you’re calling me a liar because of what some strangers said?” Cassie refused to touch her dinner. The BBQ pork tenderloin shone resentfully next to her congealing rice. “So now I have to see a therapist so they can also call me a liar?”
“Cassie, the therapist just wants to understand why you’re saying these things. We all just want to understand.” Mina clenched her napkin in her lap, her concern pulling the creases of her eyes taut against the dark circles above her cheekbones.
“You all want to understand the wrong thing!” Cassie said. “Anthony didn’t come to school today. Do you care? Do you care that my fake teacher was right, and no one remembered him? Do you care that I asked and was told to be quiet or I’d wind up just like him? No, you don’t care.” Cassie pushed away from the table and headed towards the stairs. She looked over her shoulder and hissed, in the broken way eight year olds have when the awful has become too big for moderate tones, “You just want to understand why I’m lying.”
The next morning, Cassie stomped off to school without a glance at either Mina or William. When she returned home, she went quietly upstairs to her room and shut the door. Mina and William fixed dinner in silence.
Cassie emerged for dinner, her long hair hanging straight down her back in smooth, unfettered, strands. She placed herself tidily in her seat and smiled broadly at her parents. The large chunk of broccoli crunched gleefully between her teeth as she chewed.
