The Boy Who Cried Wolf

A few nights ago, after indulging in a Buffalo chicken sandwich at Hooters, I found myself with an upset tummy and an overactive brainpan. I got up and went to the bathroom, got back into bed, tossed and turned, and tried to find a comfortable position. Nothing. My husband was sleeping on his back and snoring. "Honey, could you roll over?" That did the trick and he was silent, but I still couldn't get to sleep. When he started sawing logs again sometime later, I decided to get up. I pulled on my mangy fleece robe and wandered into the dark towards the back bedroom.

One of the benefits of living in the trailer is having an extra bedroom. If I can't sleep or I don't feel good, I can go there and read until I get sleepy. The second bedroom in our Oregon house had a treadmill, a china buffet and a piano. No bed. Our second bed now is not particularly comfortable, but it's covered in old quilts and has these ugly squishy chenille pillows I like. Also, it's at the opposite end of the house, so if I go there, it seems like I'm all alone with just the dark blot of the night pressing against the window. The other night, I switched on the lamp beside the bed and looked at a mail order catalog until I felt sleepy.

I started thinking about Scott, a kid in my first period class. Several weeks ago, Scott was absent from school. This was unusual because he rarely misses school. Scott is a sixth grader who lives a few miles away. In fact, he lives on a street that I travel to and from work each day. One morning, I saw him, hunched and hurrying to the bus stop at the end of the street. Scott's a good kid -- quiet, polite, normal. But, the day that he was absent, one of my other students came up to me and said, "Ms. Parker, Scott's been kidnapped!" I figured it was a rumor flying around the school, a middle school myth in the making.

The next day, Scott was back in first period. Turns out, he had been kidnapped and he had the police report from the paper to prove it. He wasn't pushy or showy about it. In fact, he reluctantly took it from his binder when the other kids asked him what happened. They crowded around the scrap of newsprint and finally asked me to read it aloud. I asked Scott if that would be okay and he said "Yes," quietly.

According to the police report, this is what happened: "a 12-year-old boy" had been accosted by a Hispanic man and forced, at gun point, to get into a vehicle. The man and boy drove around and the boy was released "without injury." Scott told us that he had given the police a description of the man (which was later made into a composite drawing), and that he had described the man as speaking very broken English. Scott did not remember the vehicle. He also said he had been given a polygraph test by the police.

I tried to imagine what happened to that boy that sits in the front row in my first period class. Why didn't he remember more? Had something happened that he did not want to talk about? In the days that followed, Scott seemed more withdrawn than usual. A quiet boy began to fade away. One morning, he was called to the front office and was checked out of school at 7:30. Where did he go? What was going on?

This past week, Monday morning, one of my students came running into my room with the news, "Ms. Parker! Scott lied! He was never kidnapped!" Again, I was reluctant to believe, but when Scott showed up later, he silently confirmed the news with a head nod. Evidently, the disclosure had been on T.V. Several of the boys taunted Scott, "Why did you lie? I don't want to be around a liar!" I stopped the name calling, but had just as many questions myself.

Why did he lie? What prompts a kid to make up a horror story when you can read true ones in the paper or hear them on CNN every day? I thought about the two boys who had been found recently in the Midwest. Was Scott so desperate for attention that he made up his own horror story? Evidently so, but the question remains, "Why?"

I lay awake thinking about all this and getting no closer to sleep. There used to be a time when it was okay to be a shy, quiet kid. Maybe you didn't have as many friends, but you had one or two you could trust. Now, the quiet kid in my classroom, wants to be popular in the worst way. It makes my heart hurt, and if I feel that way, I wonder what Scott feels like?