Free The Empty Desk by Steve Lockley

ten-dollar bill, but somehow it had slipped her mind. She hoped that he hadn’t spun some tall tale that was about to be passed on to the rest of Aiden’s classmates. She was making her way to the main school door, with her burden held out in front of her, when Dana waved to her in welcome.
    â€œPerfect timing,” she said as she held the door open to allow her to maneuver her way inside. “I’ve just told the children that they have a visitor coming to talk to them, but Aiden has been great. Word has spread to a few of them that it’s you coming in, but he hasn’t told even me what you’re going to talk about.”
    The whole place had received a lick of paint since she had last visited the school. Pictures by the children adorned the corridor, and a notice board had photographs of the children taking part in different events over the years. They all seemed so happy, but she wondered if the child whose ghost Aiden had seen in the classroom was somewhere among them. Even if she saw her today, would she be able to find her in any of these photographs?
    â€œThis way,” Dana said, pausing to open a door. They were hit by a wall of noise from the children that immediately stopped the moment they entered. Some of the children recognized Melinda. A couple of the girls smiled and waved at her in greeting, while Aiden sat perfectly still, not letting on that it was his mother to anyone who did not already know. Whispers spread around the room as people tried to work out who she was.
    â€œOkay, everyone,” Dana said, bringing the whispering to an end. “This is Melinda, and for those of you who don’t know, she’s Aiden’s mother. Melinda owns the antique store in town and she’s brought a few things in to talk about. Maybe she’ll have something that might help us with our history project later in the year, so listen very carefully to everything she has to say.”
    Melinda set the box down and glanced around the room. Every one of the faces was looking straight at her, even the little girl sitting at the desk that stood a little apart from the others, as if the piece of furniture itself was being shunned. There was no mistaking the fact that she was the ghost that Aiden had spoken to. While all the other children were in various states of excitement, the girl exuded sadness and sorrow. Melinda wanted to sit down with her and try to get her to talk straight away—she looked like she had been suffering for more than long enough—but Melinda could not do that without getting Dana to take the rest of the children out just when they were expecting her to talk to them. She had a feeling that might not go down too well.
    The girl’s clothes looked a little dated but not so old that she belonged to a different era. Her hair hung loose and lacked a mother’s love. She was a lost child who maybe had nowhere else to go. Melinda knew that she had to help her far more than she did so many of the others who came asking for her aid. She wanted to hold her and tell her that everything was going to be all right, even though that was impossible.
    Melinda opened the box as she told the children about her shop and the kinds of things she sold there. Some of the children had their pencils in hand, poised to write down anything they were told to, while others swung their feet under their desks, unable to keep still.
    â€œI have brought a few things with me today that I thought would be fun to show you,” she said as she pulled out the first item. “Now, I know that lots of you probably like all the superhero movies, like
Spider-Man
and
X-Men,
but how many of you know when the first stories were written about these characters?”
    A couple of hands went up from boys who were keen to reveal what they had to say. She listened as one boy told her that his father had read comics when he had been a boy, another said that his grandfather had a collection of old