Page 59 of Grin and Bear It

“You got it.”

“You’re here early,”Meg said as I walked into the office. “You shit the bed?”

“What? Jesus, no. How was your weekend?”

I moved through the customary greetings as I went to the photocopier, punching in my request for today’s lesson. As it began to whir, I let out a sigh of relief.

“Ah, not too bad,” she replied. “Finished my marking. Caught up with some friends on Saturday night. How about you?”

How did I answer that? It felt like I saw a kaleidoscope of everything that had happened in two short days and while I sucked in a breath to answer, only a small part came out.

“I met up with the Walker twins' uncles. The boys are struggling, really struggling.”

Her eyes hardened in the way some teachers’ do.

“Struggling.” She let out a sigh. “I know they’ve suffered a terrible tragedy but—”

“But their parents died,” I said, despite feeling my heart race when I did. I was the least experienced in this staffroom, and sometimes it felt as scary as hell to speak up.

“Yeah…” Meg seemed to deflate. “They did.” She looked up at me. “So what do we do?”

“Change deadlines?” I suggested. “Reduce their workload? I know the two of them are feeling so bloody overwhelmed that they’ve basically stopped trying, hence the shitty behaviour.” I turned to face her then. “They’re giving up, Meg.”

“Shit…” She raked her hands through her hair. “Bloody teenagers. Always with the drama.” My eyebrows shot up at that, because, damn, becoming orphans wasn’t exactly the same as infighting over comments made on social media. “But yeah, these are special circumstances. OK, so let's sort this out.”

Later that day,we did just that, all of the twins’ teachers meeting in the same room to talk to Sally, the year coordinator. She smiled as we filed in, then stood at the front of the room.

“We all know the tragedy that the Walker boys have gone through,” Sally said, looking at each and every one of us. “Unfortunately but not unexpectedly, that’s resulted in a downturn in their behaviour and performance in class. June and I had discussed our concerns about this before.” She nodded to June who smiled tightly in response. “But a conversation that Ellie had with the boys and their guardians has made the issue more pressing.”

Everyone turned to face me, which made me want to shrink down in my chair.

“We all have reports to get written, that need to be submitted for editing by the end of this week.” Sally’s tone firmed then, taking on that of a teacher nagging their kids about their work. “But with the boys… We do have to record a result, but giving them the marks that reflect what they have currently achieved, or more likely not achieved, is not going to help. So, I’m not proposing that we take work away from the boys.”

A small mutter amongst my colleagues at that.

“But that we look at this as more of a long term thing. Kids in senior school get special dispensations for more time or other adjustments for different medical or psychological conditions and I’m proposing something similar. They do the same work as everyone else, but we give them an adjusted timeline…”

There was a lot of conversation after that, about what to do and how to do it and what work we should be marking right now for their progress reports. I listened to what was said, but didn’t quite hear it. My brain instead worked to try and put together what information I’d read last night and what the guys had told me, of their expectation that Knox and Maddox would become… bear shifters as well.

How did that work? How did they cope with that knowledge while trying to be normal kids? And what role did losing their parents play in this? Was it somehow connected…? I couldn’t answer any of those questions, something that irritated me. The bell went and the meeting ended, and I walked down the hall to find the twins waiting outside my classroom.

“Guys,”I said, listening to the rush of students moving now that the bell had gone. “It’s lunchtime. Shouldn’t you be outside getting something to eat?”

It was weird how those old instincts kicked in, like they were just any other kids.

Because really, they were.

“We got our essays done last night,” Maddox said, holding out a flash drive for me to take it.

“You have extra time—” I started to say.

“We wanted…” He looked at Knox. “I wanted to just get it done, and I made Knox do his too.” The aforementioned brother let out a huff of breath then. “They’re done. Might not be very good, but they’re done.”

“Well.” I took the flash drive from him. “Since you have some extra time, do you want me to consider this a draft? I could look at it and give you some suggestions on how to make it better.”

Knox grumbled at this, but Maddox nodded quickly.

“Please, Miss, that would be freaking awesome if you could do that.”

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