Miss Thompson stood at the chalkboard with her back to the class; the words “Oral Report” printed neatly over her head. He eased the heavy door closed.

“Corvan’s here, ma’am.” Billy’s voice broke the silence like the brash call of a raven. Corvan’s jaw clenched as he headed toward his assigned seat.

Miss Thompson did not turn around. “You’re late again, Corvan. You will stay after school to write lines.”

Corvan headed toward his desk at the back of the room. Normally, the shorter kids sat closer to the front, but Miss Thompson had agreed to let him sit at the back with the oldest children, thankfully one row behind Billy. As he walked up the aisle between the wooden desks, the bully shook a fist at him and mouthed a nasty slur. The next row over, Corvan caught a flicker of sympathy in Kate’s eyes.

Miss Thompson’s voice pulled him up short. “Since you’re already standing, Corvan, you might as well be the first to give your oral report about what you did this past summer.”

An oral report? She must have given that assignment on one of the days he arrived late. Corvan racked his brain for a topic as he dragged himself to the front of the class. It had been a boring summer as there was not enough money for gas to go camping in the mountains. The weather had been unusually hot and dry, and his father had stayed in the cellar most days or had gone to the caves by the river.

But … something significant had happened in the past week, something the others would find interesting. Coming alongside Miss Thompson’s desk, he turned to face the class and found everyone looking intently at him. Straightening his shoulders, he cleared his throat. He was good at telling stories. This was his time to impress them with a fantastic tale, and for once it was completely true.

“This past week,” Corvan said, pointing out the side window, “I discovered strange tracks around the large rock in our field. The tracks were three toes with claws and sometimes there was a thick tail dragging behind. The tracks would come and go at night from our rock into the fields. Sometimes the even lead into town so I had to find out what it was up to.”

Kate frowned at him, and Corvan paused. He was going to tell Kate about the tracks when they were together again, not here in front of the whole class. The rest of the students, however, were fully engaged and waiting for him to go on. A few of the younger children at the front began to fidget nervously, and the ones at the back were leaning forward to hear more. He’d never had the entire school so intent on what he was saying. He stepped to the front of Miss Thompson’s desk and lowered his voice.

“Last weekend, I saw it up close. I was hiding inside our outhouse and spying out a knothole when it crawled out of our woodpile. It was a huge lizard, this high!” He held a hand past his waist. “There were dark blue markings around its chest and face, and it walked like this, upright on its hind legs. It had long sharp claws and—”

Miss Thompson’s ruler smacked her open hand, and Corvan whirled around. “Corvan, the assignment was an oral report about your summer vacation, not another of your tall tales.” She shook her head. “You know as well as I do, there are no three-foot-high blue dinosaur-like lizards around here. This is the 1950s, not the Mesozoic era. After school, you will write that out on the board one hundred times.”

She continued talking to the class, reassuring the younger students that dinosaurs went extinct a long time ago and were not roaming through their town at night.

Could she be wrong? Corvan thought. In a recent story in one of his favorite science fiction magazines, the Mad Scientists club had hatched a dinosaur egg. His own town was close to one of the largest deposits of dinosaur bones in the world. Was it possible for an egg to be preserved deep underground and then hatch when it was pushed to the surface by the spring thaw? Could that be why the lizard was so large and walked on his hind legs?

“Corvan!” Miss Thompson’s voice pierced his mental fog. “How many times do I need to tell you to sit down?”

Corvan flinched as he looked up to rows of laughing classmates. His face burned as he walked dejectedly past the younger children to the back of the class. True to form, Billy Fry stuck his foot into the isle. Corvan jumped over the boy’s leg, stumbled against his own desk and scattered his pencils across the back of the room.

Easing himself into the seat, he opened his desk and hunched down to hide behind the lid. At a touch on his leg, he peered over the top. Kate was leaning back to him from the next row, one of his pencils in her hand. Corvan smiled her and mouthed “thanks.” Closing his desk, he took the pencil and unwound a narrow piece of paper wrapped around it.

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We need to talk. Meet me at the fort after supper.

Corvan looked up and nodded eagerly to Kate. Now he could tell her all about the lizard and get her help in finding out where it might be hiding.

He was about to write back when the thin strip of paper disappeared into Billy Fry’s grimy hand.

“Billy, what are you up to now?” A weary Miss Thompson walked up the aisle.

Billy grinned at Corvan, then turned around. “Sorry, ma’am, but Corvan’s writin’ notes in class.” He held the strip of foolscap up to the teacher.

As she took the paper from Billy, Corvan slouched deeper into his seat.

Miss Thompson checked the handwriting, then turned to Kate. “Miss Poley, you will also stay after school today and write one hundred times on the blackboard, ‘I will not pass notes in school.’”

“I can’t, Miss Thompson,” Kate pleaded, her voice trembling. “I have to clean the house before my mom gets home.”

Miss Thompson’s posture softened, but when Billy Fry twisted to face Kate and mouthed a few nasty words behind the teacher’s back, Kate’s eyes blazed, and Miss Thompson’s back stiffened. “Today you will eat your lunch inside with the younger children and write your lines,” she said to Kate.

Corvan’s heart sank. Kate never ate lunch with anyone else, as she rarely brought any. He always made sure that the second sandwich his mother put in his lunch box found its way into Kate’s hand.

Pink crept up Kate’s cheeks and she pushed her shoulders back.

A smug grin spread over Billy’s face. “I bet her mom spent her lunch money at the bingo hall,” he snickered.

Miss Thompson whirled about; the crack of her wooden ruler breaking over Billy’s head brought everyone to attention, except Kate. Kate was halfway up the aisle before the pieces hit the floor.

“Kate!” Miss Thompson’s voice brought the girl up short at the classroom door. “You do not have permission to leave class.” Her tone eased. “Please take your seat. We can talk about this later.”

Kate’s lower lip quivered as she pulled the bangs of her red hair even farther over her eyes. She had cried only once in front of Corvan. There was no way she would let the class see her tears.

Kate put her hand on the doorknob. “I don’t need permission to leave because I’m not coming back.” In a flash, she was gone, leaving the door wide open and the students sitting in stunned silence.

Corvan ground his teeth, staring at Billy while the boy rubbed his head. What right did the bully have to make fun of Kate’s home life? It wasn’t like living alone with his father on their run-down farm was any better. If he had the strength of one of his comic book heroes, he’d make Billy pay for all the misery he caused others.

But he was no hero. He hadn’t even stood up for Kate and taken the blame for the note. He slumped further into his desk and rested his hands on his knees. Once again, he had given in to his fears. Billy was right; he was a chicken, a runt, a pathetic excuse for a human being.

A dark cloud hung over Corvan for the remainder of the day. Fortunately, Billy left at lunch, complaining of a headache. To avoid taunts about his “blue lizard”, Corvan ate by himself in the dugout of the ball diamond, forcing himself to listlessly eat both sandwiches.

After lunch, Miss Thompson announced that she would be gone the following day, and that meant there would be no school that Friday. With Kate wanting to meet up again, the surprise long weekend was looking brighter.

As soon as classes were over, Corvan wrote his assigned lines on the chalkboard with fervor. He did not want to waste precious moments of freedom. By the time he was finished, his fingers were cramped into a claw. On his way out, Miss Thompson called him to her desk.

“Corvan, I know some of the big boys pick on you. I will do my best to see it stops, but you add fuel to the fire when you tell the class such an outlandish story about a giant lizard.” She leaned toward him. “Honesty is a basic building block of a successful life. Think of your father, Corvan, and try to follow his example.”

Corvan nodded but couldn’t look her in the eyes. Mumbling an apology, he turned away and dragged his feet out the door.

On the walk home, he turned her words over in his mind. If he were honest, he didn’t really believe it paid to be truthful. Many people took advantage of his father’s integrity or mocked his dad behind his back. Mr. Fry nicknamed him Tonto, referring to the Lone Ranger’s sidekick, and others made jokes about his height as he was the shortest man in town, most likely the whole county.

Unfortunately, Corvan had inherited his father’s skin tone and stature. He was a good ten inches shorter than any of the other kids in his grade, and that gave the larger boys ample opportunity to make his life miserable. He had tried to win their respect by telling them fantastic stories from his science fiction books, but now it had earned him a reputation as a liar.

He kicked a stone up the gravel road. By tonight, the whole town would be laughing at his description of the lizard and talking about his big lie.

Stopping at the top of their lane, he put a hand on the fencepost and looked back toward the schoolyard. It was time to stand up for himself and not back down from what he knew was the truth.

Tonight he was going to catch the lizard and prove to everyone it was real.