Free The Lesson by Suzanne Woods Fisher

the tree again. The front door closed and the sheriff drove away. He waited awhile to make sure no one would see him and quietly strolled home.
    Oh, this was too good.

5
    M .K. couldn’t stop yawning. She didn’t even mind that Eugene Miller and his cronies had left after lunch again. It was easier to get through the afternoon’s work without them. She hoped the boys were smart enough to stay out of sight until after half past three, though she doubted it. She almost fell asleep as second grader Timmy King puzzled over subtraction problems at the board. The warm air in the room, the gentle buzz of a bee on the windowsill. “Nicely done, Timmy,” she said. She glanced at the clock. Two and a half hours to go. She read out loud for a while, but no one seemed to hear. She thought about dismissing everyone early because it was so hot.
    Could she do that? Why not? She was the teacher.
    She put down the book. “Let’s try again on Monday.” Barbara Jean, the youngest of everyone, clapped her hands, making M.K. laugh. Just as M.K. stood and opened her mouth to say, “School’s out! Go on home!” the school door opened wide. In walked Eugene Miller, Josiah Zook, Davy Stoltzfus, and his brother Marvin.
    And Fern. In walked Fern.
    The boys took their seats. “These boys seemed to havegotten lost after lunch,” Fern announced, as if she was on a mission to find them. “So I helped them locate the schoolhouse. They won’t be getting lost anymore.”
    A few snickers circled the room. Fern went to a chair in the back and sat down. M.K. knew that look on Fern’s face. It was the look that said she was going to be staying for a while. For the next two and a half hours.
    M.K.’s heart sank. She turned to the third graders. “Rise, please, and bring your readers.”
    Tick. Tick. Tick. The clock inched forward, painfully slow. Finally, it was half past three and the class was dismissed. Fern waited.
    “Where did you find the boys?” M.K. asked.
    “Hank found them fishing at Blue Lake Pond. He’s been worried that all the rainbow trout will be gone by the end of September with those four spending their afternoons fishing, so he ran them off and I happened upon them.”
    M.K. closed up the cloakroom and locked up the front door. “Why do you have the buggy?”
    “We’re not going home.” Fern pointed to the buggy. “Hop in. We’ve got someplace we need to be.”
    “Fern, it’s Friday! My first free afternoon—”
    “Nothing is as important as this.”
    M.K. knew not to push it. The ride home from the sheriff must have been a shock to her dad and Fern. It was ridiculous, really. All a simple misunderstanding. She had gone out to see if there might be another clue, something the police missed. There was a problem and it needed solving. Hadn’t she learned in life to just solve the problem herself?
    And suddenly she was under threat of arrest. Again! How was she supposed to know that the police were patrolling the area? Why hadn’t they been patrolling when the murderoccurred? She would have liked to ask Sheriff Hoffman such a bold question, but of course she didn’t dare.
    Fern slapped the reins on Cayenne’s rear end and the buggy lurched forward. “Is that the way you’ve been teaching?”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Was today a typical afternoon? Class by class comes up and reads out loud?”
    “That’s the way Alice Smucker ran the classroom.”
    Fern was silent, so silent that finally M.K. couldn’t hold back another minute. “I told you that I wouldn’t be a good teacher! Dad said I’ve never failed at anything I’ve tried to do, but this—”
    “Well, see, that’s the problem right there.”
    “What is?”
    “Tried. You’ve never failed at anything you’ve tried .”
    “I’m failing at this!”
    There was a silence, then Fern’s voice, sounding soft and hard at the same time. “You haven’t tried to teach. You’re just babysitting. Not even that. The trouble with you, Mary Kate, is