Unrevealed

explanation?
    The kids were told to quiet down, and the floor was turned over to me. Suddenly, I had thirty pairs of tiny eyes staring at me, waiting for wisdom to pour from my mouth. I’m not counting Fletcher in the pack, as he was staring into space at this point with his mouth loosely hanging open, like his jaw had broken hinges, and looking quite lost. It was a tough audience because they seemed at once curious and judgmental of me. I started talking with my usual cadence, which is crusty and forward. I don’t have a “voice” for kids and a “voice” for adults. It’s all the same voice, and I think my tone kind of scared some of the kids in the front row because I saw them leaning back in their little seats. That made me feel uncomfortable, so I attempted to change my voice to make myself sound “safer” but then I started to sound like I was tripping on Halcyon. I was reminded of Sergeant Weyler’s admonishment before I left DH. “Watch your mouth, Jane,” he warned me. I have a tendency to use crude language, which my job tends to perpetuate. Frustration was building by this point and I thought, “Fuck this shit.” It wasn’t
a second later that Fletcher jerked his head away from the window and screamed, “Fuck this shit!”
    Half the class giggled as the other half said, “Oooooh.” The principal was about to “pull him” when I intervened. I told her to let Fletcher stay. The fact was I wanted to try a quick experiment. I thought , “Hey, Fletcher. Calm down. Can you hear me?”
    I swear to God, the kid stared at me and said, “Yeah! I’m calm.”
    The rest of the classroom time is a blur. When I opened the floor to questions and answers, it went something like this:
    “Can I touch your gun?”
    “Is that a real gun?”
    “Can I touch your gun?”
    “You ever kill anybody with that gun?”
    “Hey, seriously, can I touch your gun?”
    “Did you ever shoot yourself by mistake with your gun?”
    “Hey, lady cop, can I please touch your gun?”
    Finally, the teacher piped up and introduced a new question. She wanted to know if there was any adage that I’ve learned from being a detective. I thought , “If you get a call that there’s an incident on Colfax Avenue, it’s a guarantee that someone’s been capped.” Not a half second later, Fletcher raised his right hand with his thumb and index finger positioned like a gun and softly said, “Bang!” But then, instead of staring out the window again, a look of sorrow filled his face and he buried his head on his desk.
    I turned to the teacher and came up with the first clean, age-appropriate answer I could think of. “I learned that you can’t judge a book by its cover,” I offered. She seemed disappointed in the answer, so I elaborated. “In my line of work, criminals don’t always look like what you all see on television.
Sometimes the bad guys look like the good guys. Sometimes the clean-cut person is really a monster and sometimes the strange-looking ones are the kindest.” I tried not to look at Fletcher when I said that, but out of the corner of my eye, I could see him peeking out from where he’d buried his head in his arms. He was sizing me up.
    “So how do you tell the good guys from the bad guys if you can’t judge a book by its cover?” the teacher asked me.
    “You listen to your gut and let it guide you.”
    I could see that she had no damn clue what I was talking about. We all have the ability to use our intuition, but we’ve been conditioned to always let logic override the process. Hey, I’m all for using logic; God knows I incorporate logic all the time, especially when I’m listening to a perp’s interrogation and I hear an inconsistency in his/her statement. But you need to use a blend of logic and intuition. Too much logic and you ignore your gut; too much intuition and you lead with your heart more than your head. But it was obvious from the look on the teacher’s face that she’d been programmed to call a spade a spade even though it might actually be a shovel.
    Outside in the parking lot, I was walking to my Mustang to finally get the hell out of this pedagogic prison when I suddenly heard a voice behind me.
    “Hey, cop lady!”
    I spun around. It was Fletcher. Usually, people can’t sneak up behind me. “Hey, kid,” I said, trying to hide my startled self.
    He leaned forward. I could see clearly how horribly his left eye was injured. The eyelid dropped over the outside of his eye