9-1-1, Post Bombing

Words

Buck was off work recovering from the surgery he needed after he was caught in the truck bombing not that long ago, Carla had suddenly been called out of town for a family emergency, so he was watching Chris while his dad was at work. Using Uber to pick Chris up from school and bring him over to the loft for the night.

Generally, Chris had no problems doing his homework, but recently he was getting depressed over his teacher assigning him baby stuff instead of what he should have been doing. Well, since Buck was listed at the school as Chris’ guardian when Eddie wasn’t available and it was signed recently by a judge as a way to get around Eddie’s parents, he sent the driver on once he got Chris calmed down and the two of them made their way in to make their complaints known to the Principal immediately, who took one look at Chris’ first grade level English assignment when he was in the third grade and called in Ms. Flores to answer just why she had done so. She tried to smarm herself out of trouble by stating the Buck had no official capacity to call her on the carpet. Till she saw his tablet up facing her with the face of a man sitting in judges robes behind a bench frowning at her then stuttered to a stop.

At that point, the judge pointed his finger offside to bring in an officer of the court, handed him a document he signed in front of his camera, and sent off to force Ms. Flores to come before him with the Bench Warrant for mental and emotional abuse of a minor and refusing to obey the law where the legally designated guardian was present.
From there the judge ordered the principal to remove the minor in question out of the woman’s classroom and make sure that if she stays working with her school she stays away from the minor, she obviously hates.
Until then, said minor was to be dismissed from school for the rest of the month until everything was taken care of one way or another. His classes were to be organized as being online.

At which point two police officers who had been nearby as the school had just let out, arrived to take Ms. Flores in to see that judge and with that Buck and Chris left to get a ride with another Uber home and call in pizza as a treat for what they had to go through.

Buck pulled out a book on their shared kindle account to have Chris start for his next reading assignment.
The book was The Phantom Tollbooth and had a short movie that went with it that they’d watch after Chris finished the book.
Handing over the book, Buck quoted a passage from it:
“In this box are all the words I know…Most of them you will never need, some you will use constantly, but with them you may ask all the questions which have never been answered and answer all the questions which have never been asked. All the great books of the past and all the ones yet to come are made with these words. With them there is no obstacle you cannot overcome. All you must learn to do is to use them well and in the right places.”

The book and the quote became a favorite of the two of them and was held as sacred between them for as long as at least one of them was alive.
Ms. Flores never returned to the classroom or education in general as she became listed on the general national city lists as a registered child abuser.

Fin
8/4/2026