“Look at his ear!” another child squeaked: “He has the scar!
Just like Clara’s poster!”
Ms.
Harrow’s dry-erase marker slipped from her fingers.
The plastic tube struck the floorboards with a sharp, hollow clatter, rolling through the pulverized chalk dust:
*click-clatter-roll.*
Her face did not merely pale; her capillaries collapsed inward, leaving her skin the exact, curdled shade of sour skim milk.
“Excuse me!”
Ms.
Harrow snapped, her voice climbing into an indignant, defensive screech as she stepped between the desks and the door:
“This is an instructional classroom!
You cannot bring an animal into a public school!
Who authorized an active military service member to breach this building?!”
Ben Reed stopped two paces from her lectern.
Scout halted beside his boot, sitting on his haunches in textbook mechanical symmetry, his tail giving one single, definitive thump against the linoleum:
*thump.*
Ben did not look at Ms.
Harrow.
