Mrs Rosewood's Arc

Chapter 2 of 5

Three days after the tower, Mrs Rosewood's classroom cracked apart. The two boys and the small girl no longer shared paint. The girl sat alone again. One boy hissed that she had lied about him. The other refused to look at either of them. Mrs Rosewood watched the friendship she built dissolve, and she knew someone had pulled it loose thread by thread. She found the source at the back table. The jealous boy leaned toward the smaller girl, whispering. He straightened when Mrs Rosewood approached, arms crossing, chin up. She had seen that hard look before. He'd spent days telling each child a small poison about the others. Mrs Rosewood did not lecture. She knelt by his desk. "You wanted a wall too," she said. "Nobody gave you one." His jaw tightened. His eyes went wet, then furious. He said nothing, but she had her answer. That afternoon a fashion designer named Kaitlyn came to help. Rapunzel had sent her, a fourteen-year-old girl from Paris with strawberry blonde hair and pink eyes. She carried a sketchbook and studied the room like a case to solve. Mrs Rosewood had asked for someone who understood how a person turns pain into weapons. "He's not breaking them because he hates them," Kaitlyn said, watching the boy. "He's doing it because he's alone. I know that move." Her voice went flat and careful. "You don't fight it. You take away the reason for it." Mrs Rosewood brought the class outside the next morning. A rose bush bloomed heavy with pink flowers near the schoolyard. She set two glowing crystals on the grass, one blue, one pink. "Watch," she said. She pressed them together. Their light merged into one soft color. "Alone, two lights. Together, one." Then she turned to the jealous boy. "You get the last wall," she said. "But you can't paint it alone. You have to choose your partners." The boy stared. The other three children waited, tense. Kaitlyn gave a small nod from the fence. The boy looked at the small girl. His hands shook. "I told them stuff," he said. "About you. It wasn't true." The words fell out fast. The girl blinked. Then she picked up a pink rose and held it out to him. By noon four children painted the last wall together. The lies unraveled the moment the boy named them out loud. The group held. Mrs Rosewood stood in her white dress and watched her class become whole again. But Kaitlyn found her at the fence, frowning at her sketchbook. "You fixed these four," she said. "There are thirty. And word travels." She showed a page. Other students had watched the special treatment through the window. "Now they all want a wall. And some of them will do what he did to get one."