Bullying by Anastasiia Kohtieva

 His screaming mum came into my class again.

“Why do you allow other students to bully my son?!”

“I’ve already told you. I haven’t noticed any case of offending James by others,” I answered with a calmness in my voice.

“You are a really inattentive teacher, then. I will call the police next time so that you will never be a tutor again!”

“So, what happened this time?” I asked, flipping through the pages of the school report.

“These bullies plunged him into concrete! That is so cruel!” she showed me his photo on her phone with her trembling hand and went away with a bang crying.

I couldn’t believe these words. My students cannot behave like this. The previous accusations were not so serious. I talked with them, but they denied doing all that James and his mother told me. And, actually, they were shocked to hear that, so I cannot accuse them. They don’t do such kind of thing, these «bullies» have entirely different interests.

This time, I cannot observe how his nervous mother is blaming me for that I couldn’t prevent. This week I will wear a role of a detective. No one will hide from me!

***

As expected, boys have not done any cruel things. They played mobile games during the breaks or just ate and chatted about the last Dota 2 tournament of Navi (a so-called game and a famous cyber-sport team I`ve heard about for the first time) during the long lunch break at school. After the study, they just said “Goodbye! Let`s go to Discord at five.”

“Maybe, that`s a kind of secret language?” I thought. Therefore, I called their mothers, and you know what? Each of them said they came home, had lunch, and went to their rooms “to do homework” making noises when they lost or won since five o’clock. Yes! How could I suspect them? Of course.

The next days James got better and was present in school. Now it is his time to be followed by me! This way it will be much easier to catch the so-called bullies.

After one boring and exhausting week of spying on James later (since nothing interesting happened) I`ve decided “That’s it! Let’s meet my fate. If my children won’t protect me, I will find a new job, less interesting, however.”

This day my students had a PE class as the last one, so I came to the sports gym to say that they won’t have the last lesson tomorrow (the History teacher is ill). How shocked was I when I came in there! I open the door and see James standing in front of a working tennis ball machine with closed eyes. The balls flew directly at him pushing, but he endured this pain. I ran to turn it off. The bullying victim was totally confused. He started shouting “It was them who forced me to stand there!” However, I know that the group of boys are helping in the library and it couldn`t be them.

“Why do you do this? You know that your mum wants me to go to prison?” I asked with a trembling voice.

He turned away and sat on the bench hiding his face. I sat near him and he said “You know, I wanted just your attention, but that didn`t work.”

I stare at the floor shocked and cannot understand what is happening. We keep silent and he continues “You light up my life! I didn’t know how to confess, but you make me feel something interesting. What would you do if you fell in love with your teacher?”