Читать книгу Time - Stephen Baxter - Страница 22

… June, I know you want me to tell you everything, good and bad, so here goes.

The good is that Tom loves the Heart you sent him for his birthday. He carries it around everywhere, and he tells it everything that happens to him, though to tell you the truth I don’t understand the half of what he says to it myself.

Here’s the bad. I had to take Tom out of school yesterday.

Some kids picked on him.

I know we’ve had this shit before, and we want him to learn to tough it out. But this time it went beyond the usual bully-the-Brainiac routine. The kids got a little rough, and it sounds as if there was a teacher there who should have intervened but didn’t. By the time the Principal was called, it had gotten pretty serious.

Tom spent a night in hospital. It was only one night, just bruising and cuts and one broken bone, in his little finger. But he’s home now.

If I turn this screen around … wait … You can see him. Fine, isn’t he?

He’s a little withdrawn. I know we discourage that rocking thing he does, but today’s not the day.

You can see he’s reading. I have to admit I still find it a little scary the way he flips over the pages like that, one after the other, a page a second. But he’s fine, just our Tom.

So you aren’t to worry. But I’ll want assurances from that damn school before I let Tom go back there again.

Anyway, enough. I want to show you Billie’s painting.