Bailey

• Max Turner, Grade 9
• Short Story
• 2015

Bailey gazed at the script before him with a contorted smile. As simplistic as the words were, he still enjoyed the wonders of learning them. He grasped his pencil, seemingly putting no care into his grip as he stabbed at his note-book. Farm, Horse, Pig. The group was learning about agricultural related literature this week.
He examined his book when he had finished. A garbled mess of symbols lay strewn about his page, as if the letters were completely unrelated to each other. An ocean of tears began to well in his eyes, and his mouth delivered broken words throughout the room. Two teachers swarmed to him like bees to a hive, sympathetic expressions plastered against their faces.
‘Are you okay Bailey?’ one of the pair asked. But he continued his wailing. The duo fussed about him, encouraging him to calm, but they dare not touch him. He was now a deranged cat, tied down by its owner and unwilling to comply.
He paused long enough to scan the room in a sentry-like fashion, to reveal the class of twenty students staring at him in annoyance as if he had interrupted their insurmountably important tasks again. Bailey continued. Before long he was relocated and placed outside in the adjoining hallway.
A glance back at the classroom window confronted him with his unfortunate complexion. This only added to his many causes of emotional pain. He couldn’t express his problems. He was trapped within this ogre of a being, sometimes unable to convey even the simplest of thoughts.
Bailey’s mother walked down the hallway, fire at her heels, motherly love displayed forcefully upon her face. Bailey had seen this face many times. She sat beside him embracing him gently.
‘Why can’t we do this anymore?’ she whispered to herself.
He evaluated his mother. He knew the struggles she was facing and how much strife he was putting her through. Sometimes he would even attempt to escape his crumbling world, but his appalling coordination would always leave him scrambling on the floor like a beetle by the time his mother found him in a heap.
I’m sorry were the words that replayed like a broken record over in his mind, forever echoing. He tried to relay this to his mother through uninterpretable language. This only made her collapse against the bench, sighing heavily, a tear escaping her normally reassuring eyes.
The pair of them just sat there. For how long, his mother wasn’t concerned. Time seemed to continue all around them, as if they were a rock in a river, displacing the calm flow of water. His mother finally rose breaking the blissful spell and assessed her son, trying to peer into every crevice of the boy, searching for answers.
‘Let’s go home Bailey,’ were the only words she was able to utter, her glazed eyes making it nearly impossible to concentrate. And so, hand in hand, they stood and left, their silence rippling through the corridor behind them.