The Mammoth Book of Kaiju by Sean Wallace

Author:Sean Wallace [Wallace, Sean]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Anthology, Short Stories, kaiju
ISBN: 9781607014843
Publisher: Prime Books
Published: 2016-09-18T04:00:00+00:00

With Bright Shining Faces

J.C. Koch

“You can’t draw monsters!”

Mrs. George looked up from her lesson plan. It was Quiet Time and her first graders were normally quite good with coloring quietly for a few minutes, especially because Story Time came right after.

Cody, the boy who’d just broken the main Quiet Time rule, glared at Sukie, who sat next to him.

Sukie was busy drawing. She didn’t look up, just shrugged. “Can too,” she said mildly.

“Can not,” Cody insisted. “Especially not like those.” He punched his finger onto Sukie’s drawing. Sukie shrugged again and moved her paper further to the left, away from Cody.

Sukie was a small, quiet girl with straight honey-brown hair, big, bright blue eyes, and a serious demeanor. She normally kept to herself, and this should have made her the class outcast. But it was quite the reverse. As opposed to being shunned by the other children she was always invited to play with them, and most of the class wanted to partner with her whenever a buddy was required.

Whether it was because she didn’t like any of her classmates more than the others, or because she knew she was popular without seeming to try or care, Sukie never chose the same partner twice in a row.

But other than when she was required to be a part of a couple or a group, Sukie kept to herself. The other children were respectful of her apparent wish to be solitary, and none of them ever mocked her.

Cody wasn’t normally a belligerent little boy, and the other children were rarely this confrontational with Sukie. Mrs. George could reprimand him, and her first instinct was to do so, lest whatever hold Sukie had over the other children be broken and she be turned into the class victim and, by extension, Cody into the class bully.

However, there was something in the way he was upset—there was fear in the little boy’s tone, easily as much as there was anger.

Mrs. George got up and went to see just what Sukie was drawing and to provide the calming influence the teacher standing next to a student normally enforced.

Cody looked up at her, eyes wide. “Make her stop it, Missus Gee. She’s drawing bad things.” Yes, he was frightened.

“May I see, Sukie?” Mrs. George asked gently.

“Sure.” Sukie moved her drawing back to the center of her desk.

Mrs. George was prepared for something horrible—many times students drew things they experienced at home, terrible things, and part of her job was to determine if the drawing was real and, therefore, if the child needed to see the school psychologist, nurse, or on-campus police officer.

Sukie’s father was an oil rigger and her mother worked as a cocktail waitress in one of the more popular casinos in Gulfport. Those professions didn’t necessarily provide a stable home life, though most of the children in her school had parents working on the rigs and/or in the casinos.

Sukie’s grandmother took care of her and her older brother, Spradlin, and Mrs. George had met her when she’d had Spradlin in her class.

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