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 Fry’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. This time 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 older children, one row behind Billy. As he walked up the aisle between the desks, the bully shook his fist at him. One 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.”

Oral report? She must have given that assignment on one of the days he came in 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 the past week, something the others would find interesting. Coming alongside Miss Thompson’s desk, he turned to face the class and found everyone was looking intently at him. Straightening his shoulders, he cleared his throat. This was his time to impress them with a fantastic tale, and this one was completely true.

“This past summer,” Corvan said, pointing out the side window, “I discovered strange tracks around the big rock in our field. The tracks were of three toes with claws and sometimes a tail dragging behind. The tracks would come and go at night from our rock into the fields and sometimes even lead into town. 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 alone, not here in front of the whole class. The rest of class, 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 took a step to the front of Miss Thompson’s desk and lowered his voice.

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

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 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? Was that why the lizard was so large and walked on his hind legs?

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

Corvan flinched as the words yanked him back 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 out. Corvan jumped over it, 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 shoulder, he looked up. 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.

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

We need to talk. Meet me at the rock 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 he turned around. “Sorry, ma’am, but Corvan’s writin’ notes in class.” He held the strip of foolscap up to the teacher.

She took the paper from Billy. Corvan slouched further into his chair.

Miss Thompson checked the handwriting and 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 Billy Fry twisted to face Kate and mouthed a few nasty words about Kate’s mother behind the teacher’s back. Kate’s eyes blazed, and Miss Thompson’s back stiffened. “Then today you will eat your lunch inside with the younger children and write your lines.”

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 as she pushed her shoulders back.

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

Miss Thompson whirled about and the crack of 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 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 never coming back.” In a flash, she was gone, leaving the students in stunned silence.

Corvan ground his teeth while staring at Billy as the boy rubbed his head. What right did Billy 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 deeper into his desk and put 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 and forced himself to listlessly eat both the sandwiches.

After lunch, Miss Thompson announced that she would be gone the following day, so there would be no school that Friday. With Kate wanting to meet up again, the long weekend was looking much 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 boys pick on you. I will do my best to see that it stops, but you add fuel to the fire when you tell the class 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 believe it paid to be truthful. People took advantage of his father’s integrity and mocked his dad behind his back. A surge of anger bubbled up in Corvan. His father was a good man, but some nicknamed him Tonto, referring to the Lone Ranger’s sidekick. Others made jokes about his height; 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. In the past, he had tried to win their respect by telling fantastic stories, but now that had earned him a reputation as a liar.

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

Stopping at the top of their lane, he put a hand on the fencepost and looked back toward the schoolyard. His parents had told him that turning fifteen was when he would leave boyhood behind. If telling the truth only brought more mockery, then it was time to stand up for himself and not back down from what he knew to be real.

I’m going to catch that lizard and prove I was right all along.