" You're after Sarah, Dayton, " Ms Andrews voice echoed slightly in the silent hallway and all eyes swung toward the unfortunate Dayton. He froze, finger still wedged in the crack in the wall he'd been examining when called out.
"Sarah," she pointed to the girl with the braids, "who is behind Anthony," a boy with interesting shaved designs half grown out of his hair, "who is behind our leader, Jordan." Jordan straightened slightly, the small click of his shiny black heels loud in the still needs.
"Do you understand your place? Everyone else is ready to celebrate." Her smile didn't reach her eyes.
Dayton hung his head, unkempt hair flopping across his glasses as he shuffled his scuffed sneakers. He muttered an affirmative and moved, perhaps too quickly, to step to his assigned spot. His finger, however, had different ideas, refusing to leave the crack in the wall and jerking his entire body to a stop.
“Dayton.” Ms Andrews’ disapproval rang out as red crept across the boy’s half-hidden ears. “Can’t you even follow a simple direction?”
Dayton tugged again at his finger, stubbornly plugged into the hole, but failed to budge from his unassigned place.
“Dayton! Come now!” His face crumpled as Ms. Andrews stalked toward him and he shrank back against the wall, finger firmly ensconced. She grabbed the offending hand and tugged, hard, and Dayton cried out in pain.
“You must be joking. Get. To. Your. Place!” Each word was punctuated by a hard tug on his hand and a whimper from Dayton. Anthony cleared his throat and Sarah fidgeted with the end of her braids uncomfortably. “Stop holding on!” Ms Andrews face was red now, in anger, and her free hand crept up, ready to really pull when -
Jordan raised a hand. “Ms Andrews? Could I help Dayton?”
“What?” She seemed to notice the children all around, and her stranglehold on Dayton’s arm. “Oh. Yes. Yes, Jordan. Please. Such a help.” And she backed away quickly, breathing hard.
“Hey, Dayton,” Jordan whispered. “What’s going on?”
Dayton could only sniffle and shrug.
“Hey, we’ll get you out. Let’s try moving back to where you were and seeing if that helps, okay?”
Dayton nodded and wiped his nose with his free hand. Jordan guided him back to the wall, peering at the crack as he did so.
“Let’s try pushing. Can you push your finger back in, slowly? It might be like one of those Chinese finger trap things that pull tighter when you go fast. Do you remember how Mr. Green couldn’t figure it out and had to teach math with his fingers trapped?”
As Jordan whispered, he coaxed Dayton through the slow push-and-gentle-pull-back-out motion. Dayton’s finger slide free of the crack, no problem, and Jordan smiled at him and trotted back to the front of the line. Dayton sniffed, wiped his nose, and hid the finger in his pocket, shuffling to his place behind Sarah, resolutely staring straight ahead, ignoring him.
Ms. Andrews cleared her throat. “Now that we are finally in order, we can proceed to the auditorium for the celebration.” She swept up the hallway, past Dayton, and the line shuffled along behind her, silently.
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