Memories of the Future Read Free

principal won’t hurt you.”
    “I—I never knew there was a principal,” Ronnie said, hanging back. “Miss Smith never said anything about him.”
    “Naturally there’s a principal; there has to be. And he wants to talk to you before you go back. Come on now, like a good boy, and don’t make it necessary for me to turn in a bad report about you. Miss Smith wouldn’t like that at all, would she?”
    “No, I guess she wouldn’t,” Ronnie said, suddenly contrite. “All right, sir, I’ll go.”
    Ronnie had learned about principals in school, but he had never seen one. He had always assumed that the little red schoolhouse was too small to need one and he still couldn’t understand why it should. Miss Smith was perfectly capable of conducting the school all by herself. But most of all, he couldn’t understand why the principal should live in a place like the terminal—if it was a terminal—and not in the valley.
    However, he accompanied the truant officer dutifully, telling himself that he had a great deal to learn about the world and that an interview with a principal was bound to teach him a lot.
    They entered the building through an entrance to the left of the archway and walked down a long bright corridor lined with tall green cabinets to a frosted glass door at the farther end. The lettering on the glass said: EDUCATIONAL CENTER 16, H. D. CURTIN, PRINCIPAL .
    The door opened at the truant officer’s touch and they stepped into a small white-walled room even more brightly illumined than the corridor. Opposite the door was a desk with a girl sitting behind it, and behind the girl was another frosted glass door. The lettering said: PRIVATE .
    The girl looked up as the truant officer and Ronnie entered. She was young and pretty—almost as pretty as Miss Smith.
    “Tell the old man the Meadows kid finally showed up,” the truant officer said.
    The girl’s eyes touched Ronnie’s, then dropped quickly to a little box on her desk. Ronnie felt funny. There had been a strange look in the girl’s eyes—a sort of sadness. It was as though she was sorry that the truant officer had found him.
    She told the little box: “Mr. Curtin, Andrews just brought in Ronnie Meadows.”
    “Good,” the box said. “Send the boy in and notify his parents.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    The principal’s office was unlike anything Ronnie had ever seen before. Its hugeness made him uncomfortable and the brightness of its fluorescent lights hurt his eyes. All the lights seemed to be shining right in his face and he could hardly see the man behind the desk.
    But he could see him well enough to make out some of his features: the high white forehead and receding hairline, the thin cheeks, the almost lipless mouth.
    For some reason the man’s face frightened Ronnie and he wished that the interview were over.
    “I have only a few questions to ask you,” the principal said, “and then you can be on your way back to the valley.”
    “Yes, sir,” Ronnie said, some of his fear leaving him.
    “Were your mother and father unkind to you? Your real mother and father, I mean.”
    “No, sir. They were very good to me. I’m sorry I had to run away from them, but I just had to go back to the valley.”
    “Were you lonesome for Nora and Jim?”
    Ronnie wondered how the principal knew their names. “Yes, sir.”
    “And Miss Smith—were you lonesome for her?”
    “Oh, yes, sir!”
    He felt the principal’s eyes upon him and he shifted uncomfortably. He was so tired; he wished the principal would ask him to sit down. But the principal didn’t and the lights seemed to get brighter and brighter.
    “Are you in love with Miss Smith?”
    The question startled Ronnie, not so much because he hadn’t expected it, but because of the tone in which it was uttered. There was unmistakable loathing in the principal’s voice. Ronnie felt his neck grow hot, and then his face, and he was too ashamed to meet the principal’s eyes, no matter how hard he