Free Just Another Kid by Torey Hayden

elective mutes that I’d videotaped it and used it in presentations of my research. One colleague, intrigued by the results shown on the tape, maintained it was a kind of hypnosis. I’d never thought of it that way. To me it was simply mental sleight of hand.
    It took effort to get Shemona going. She was more interested in drawing with the chalk and wanted to make her drawings carefully. She would erase with her finger and try again in an effort to make her triangles exactly straight or her circles exactly round. So, in the end, I had to take the chalk from her and tell her she could use it afterward.
    “Show me an eight. Show me a four. Show me an eleven. Twelve. Six. One. Fourteen. Zero.” I went faster and faster. Shemona was getting caught up in the process by this time. Some of the numbers were written a bit too high for her to reach, and she had to jump to point to them. This pleased her and she giggled. “Six. Nine. Three. Thirteen. What’s this? Five. What’s this? Seven. What’s this? Two. What’s this? Fifteen.”
    On and on and on. Faster and faster and faster. The whole board was covered with my quickly scribbled numbers, and Shemona was panting to keep up with me. She was smiling and giggling loudly enough that I could hear sound.
    “What’s this? Four. What’s this? Ten. What’s this? Eight. What’s this?”
    Silence.
    The next answer was six, and Shemona knew it. She’d already leaped up to point in that direction, waiting for me to say six. When I didn’t, she fell back abruptly, her arm still raised. She was panting. An expectant smile was still on her lips, and I was reminded of my Labrador dog and the same enthusiastic, expectant expression he had, when I paused, midgame, with the ball in my hand.
    “What number is this?” I asked, pointing to the six.
    She looked at it. The smile faded and she regarded the number a long moment, as if it were written in a foreign script.
    “What number is it?” I tapped the board.
    She continued to gaze at it.
    “What number is this?” I knew the impetus was gone. I knew I had failed. If I hadn’t caught her in the excitement of the moment, I knew I wasn’t going to now. I smiled in an effort to keep the good feelings between us. “It’s a six, isn’t it?” She gave a halfhearted little jump to point to the six, wanting to keep the happiness in the situation as obviously as I did.
    I handed her the box of colored chalk. “You did that really well, didn’t you? You know all your numbers. Here. You may use these until recess time.”
    Carolyn and I had worked up a system whereby we alternated playground duty at recess. Because of her aide, Carolyn wouldn’t have needed to stay down on the playground during the fifteen-minute recess period. I did, as there was no one else to look after my children. However, Carolyn, understanding the pressures of this sort of job when there was no break, had offered to alternate with me, watching my kids as well as hers. So every day I had a fifteen-minute break, either in the morning or the afternoon.
    Usually, I used the period to catch up on miscellaneous tasks, such as running off the children’s worksheets on the mimeograph or setting up art projects. Some days I did no more than collapse in the teachers’ lounge. On this particular morning, I’d gone to get the keys from Bill, the janitor, to open his cleaning closet on my floor so that I could wash out the mucky gray from our easel. I had the tap running, and dirty water was gurgling noisily down the drain, so when Leslie appeared in the doorway of the closet, I jumped with surprise.
    My first reaction was to glance at my watch, because I was suddenly alarmed to think I’d lost track of the time and my children were back in the room. But there were still five minutes remaining of the break.
    “What are you doing here, sweetheart?”
    Leslie was red cheeked from exertion and looking a whole lot more alert than usual.
    “What do you need?”
    She turned