Chapter 12

“Mom?”

Sherry looked up from her ebook. “What?”

“My teacher wants to talk to you,” Otterly said holding out a piece of paper.

“They have telephones for that,” Sherry said.

“She wants you to meet with her,” Otterly said.

“What did I do wrong?” Sherry asked.

Otterly rolled her eyes. “I don’t think you’re the problem.”

“That’s good,” Sherry said.

Otterly waved the piece of paper and said, “This is the note from her.”

“She sent a real piece of paper home with you?” Sherry asked, looking at it.

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t she send an email?” Sherry asked.

“I don’t know. I’m supposed to give it to you,” Otterly said.

“That’s not a very good way to run a business. If people had to rely upon me to shuttle notes back and forth, nothing would ever get done,” Sherry said absently.

“Well, I’m trying to deliver it to you,” Otterly said waving the note around trying to get her mother to notice it.

“Oh. I guess I should read it,” Sherry said taking the note from Otterly.

Sherry read the note and frowned. “This is ridiculous. She demands that I be there at ten in the morning. Doesn’t she know how early that is?”

“It’s actually kind of late in the day,” Otterly said.

It had been a major revelation to her that most parents woke up in the morning rather than headed to bed or slept through it. She’d never given the matter any thought. However, she had to admit that her parents were always awake when she went to school and when she came home even though they tended to take naps at odd hours of the day.

“That’s just so wrong,” Sherry said. “She doesn’t say why she wants to talk to me.”

“I know,” Otterly said.

Sherry and Alex walked through the halls of the elementary school school feeling like a giants. Sherry was dressed in her normal tee shirt and jeans. In an attempt to show that she cared about education, she was wearing at tee shirt with the caption, ‘You either know binary or you don’t.’ Alex was wearing a tee shirt with the caption, “I added 10 and 10 and got 100.”

She stopped in front of a display board with all kinds of hand drawn pictures on it. She muttered, “These kids need a good drawing program.”

“You can say that again.”

“May I help you?”

Sherry turned around to look at the middle-aged man standing behind her. She answered, “We’re looking for Ms. Walters.”

“She’s in the room across the hall,” the man answered.

“Ah! We would have found it eventually,” Alex said.

Sherry said, “You know there are some good drawing programs on the market that produce much better pictures than those.”

“You must be the Cages,” the man said.

“How did you know?”

“Lucky guess,” the man said.

“I guess we should go over there and talk with Ms. Walters.”

“She’s been waiting for you,” the man said.

“I’m sorry, but I was sleeping,” Sherry said.

“She expected you five hours ago,” the man said.

“I had Secretary call,” Alex said pointedly.

He was a little irritated that the teacher thought she could set an appointment the day before it was to occur without any discussion of when would be a good time to meet. Individuals much more powerful than her wouldn’t have dared to make that kind of demand upon him or his wife.

“We did get a call from your computer, but it isn’t like talking to a real person,” the man said.

“Sure it is,” Alex said.

“She shouldn’t have scheduled the meeting so early in the day,” Sherry said.

The man said, “She would normally have left school thirty minutes ago.”

“Well, I guess we better go in there and face the dragon,” Sherry said.

Alex said, “I’m so not looking forward to this.”

“Dragon?” the man echoed.

The Cages entered the classroom. A young woman was seated at a desk at the front of the room. Little desks with little chairs were lined up in front of her. Sherry looked around at the little desks wondering where they were supposed to sit. There was no way that she was going to struggle into one of those little things. She shrugged and took a seat on the teacher’s desk.

Sherry leaned over the teacher and said, “Hi! I’m Otterly’s mother.”

Alex moved some papers out of the way and joined his wife on the desk. He crossed his legs tailor fashion.

He waved a hand at the teacher and said, “Hi! According to what she says, I’m Otterly’s father.”

Sherry laughed at the joke.

Intimidated, Ms. Walters edged her chair away from the desk. Usually parents sat in the little chairs in front of her desk. They normally had to look up to her. She had not expected to find someone taking a seat on her desk. She was now looking up at the Cages.

“You’re the Cages,” the teacher said.

“There are rumors to that effect, but...” Sherry said.

“ ... no one has substantiated them,” Alex finished.

“I’m sure you’ve wondered why I asked you to come here.”

“That was asking? It was more like a demand,” Sherry said pointedly. She pulled out the note and read, “You have an appointment with me at 10am tomorrow.”

“There wasn’t even a please,” Alex said.

Ms. Walters chose to ignore their complaint. “I asked you to come here because ... well. It’s Otterly.”

“What about Otterly?” Sherry asked.

“I’m sure that she’s a bright girl, but...”

“But what?” Alex asked frowning.

“She’s just different than the rest of the kids,” Ms. Walters answered.

“That’s a bad thing?” Sherry asked.

“Yes, and I don’t think you’re helping her by helping her,” Ms. Walters said.

“Huh?”

“What?’

Ms. Walters pulled out a paper and said, “During the first week of every new year of school, I ask my students to write about something they did that summer. It is my way of determining how much they have forgotten over the summer. This is what your daughter turned in.”

Sherry grabbed the paper and looked over it. She read it from beginning to end. She said, “She left out the trip to the Naval Research Labs.”

“Let me see that,” Alex said.

Sherry handed him the paper. He read over the first page with a frown and then turned to the second page. He said, “She goes on and on about becoming an honorary Marine.”

“She wrote all about the tour of the Pentagon and didn’t say one word about the tour of the Smithsonian,” Alex said.

The government was interested in buying Sherry’s new robotic dog, Digit II. They had spent a week on a Marine base, demonstrating some of the things the dog could do. They had then visited the Pentagon, the Naval Research Labs, and the Smithsonian. The tour of the Naval Research Labs had been fascinating. Their visit at the labs had lasted two days.

“I’m kind of disappointed. It could have been a very interesting report,” Sherry said.

Ms. Walters said, “You don’t understand. You’re not supposed to type her papers.”

“What?”

“This is a sample of what the other kids turned in,” Ms. Walters said holding up a piece of paper.

Sherry looked at the handwritten scratches on the piece of paper. She read it aloud, “We went to the lake. We swimmed. We had fun.”