Unrevealed

while the eyeball itself was straining to the left. Three scars, varying between two and four inches in length, cut across his left cheek and temple. He gave me his goofy grin.
“I like the way you think, cop lady,” he said, tapping his finger to his head.
    I have to tell you that I felt like I was in a dream at that point. This couldn’t be happening, but it was. “You read minds?” I asked him.
    Fletcher stared into the sky and then to his right, suddenly lost in the moment. “I hear…and I see,” he said. Then he looked me straight on. “ I see . But they don’t listen. But I can hear you and I can see you.…You’re real. Your cover is your book!”
    It was his callback to my “You can’t judge a book by its cover” comment. But then he started rambling and not making any sense. Poor kid. I hope the asshole who did this to him went down hard for it. “What happened to you, Fletcher?” I asked, motioning to his face.
    He quickly covered his left eye with his left hand, as if to protect him from the memory. “Jack and Jill went up the hill and Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Jack together again.”
    “You fall?” I asked.
    “Yeah. Pow! I fall down. Pow! I fall down. Pow ! I fall down and don’t get up. And then, nothing. All black,” Fletcher explained, still sheltering his face. “But I’m lucky. At least I’m not in the wall.”
    “In the wall?” I said, furrowing my brow.
    “Yeah. In the wall. Bull’s-eye marks the spot.”
    I was about to disregard him but something…something pulled me in. “What are you talking about?”
    “There was an old woman who lived in a shoe, she had so many children, she didn’t know what to do, when the bough breaks, the cradle will fall and down will come baby, cradle and all. Bulls-eye marks the spot.”

    Fletcher looked at me with probing eyes. For a millisecond, he was normal. The soul inside him that hadn’t been beaten to a pulp bled through his brown orbs and reached out to me in a desperate plea.
    “Fletcher!” a voice yelled out.
    I looked up and saw the principal making a beeline toward my car. Fletcher quickly backed away from me. The principal gave the kid a tongue lashing for being off school grounds and having the nerve to talk to me. She told him to go over to the curb, sit on the bench and wait for the “special bus.” Then she turned to me with a roll of her eyes and told me how terribly sorry she was that I had been troubled by the kid. I asked her to tell me his story.
    “He’s a mess,” she stated, tossing her hand in the air dismissively. “His father beat him when he was a baby and on up until he was six years old. It wasn’t until his father put him in a coma that the state transferred him to foster care. He’s bounced from one foster family to another. He’s got special needs, since he has seizures due to the beatings. They said he suffers from something like a combination of autism and Tourette’s syndrome. We’re just warehousing him here until they can find a more suitable school.” She leaned closer to me, talking to me as if I was her best buddy. “You want to know his biggest problem? He makes up stories that sound quite absurd. The social worker told me to ignore the fanciful tales. He’s most likely rehashing some trauma from his childhood.” She turned and saw Fletcher standing at the curb, staring into the sky. “Sit on the bench, Fletcher!” she screamed. Turning back to me, she shook her head. “Jesus Christ! Anyway, thank God he’s with a decent foster family now. The woman’s a saint . She takes in kids who have been abused and no one else wants. There’s a place in heaven for her! I sure as hell could never do it!”

    I asked her where Fletcher lived and she told me. “That’s on my way back to DH. I can take him home.” My first thought was that this had to be against school policy, but because I was a cop and wore a gun and ate up thirty minutes of classroom time that day, she figured I must be a safe bet. After all, don’t most people believe that cops, ministers, teachers and doctors are all here to help us? If you judge a book by its cover, you sure do. She had no reservations about summoning Fletcher back over to my car and telling him to get in. Fortunately, I actually happen to be a trustworthy person.
    The ride took less than ten minutes. Every time I tried to get him back on his odd tale about being “in the