Connor My Dear Boy (FINISHED)

26

Haytham found it difficult to concentrate at school on Monday.

Not that he was particularly trying to focus on his work, at all. In fact, he had spent much of the morning making up a meaningless project for his students to do. He had more important things to do than to talk over a bunch of teenagers who weren't going to be listening to him anyways. He needed to wait for the phone call from the police to see if they had found any clues as to where Connor had gone.

None of his students were really focusing on the project. They were all huddled in groups, gossiping about how whomever was seen hanging out with whom or how so-and-so had gone vegan or, of course, Malik and Kadar. Only Altaïr seemed to be silent, but even he was not doing the project. He had his book open to a random page, which he seemed to be staring at without really seeing. Once again, Haytham felt a twinge of regret when he realized that, had Malik been there, he would have been able to keep Altaïr on track.

Still, Haytham did not talk to his students for much of the day and mostly left them to their own devices. Even when it was a few minutes before the end of class and his students began to start putting their things away and head to the door, he did not insist that they wait for the bell to ring like he normally did. Mostly he spent his day alternating between pretending to grade some papers, pretending to read a book, or staring intently at the phone, waiting for it to ring.

At lunch, Haytham waited in his classroom instead of going to the teacher's lounge like he usually did. He tried to convince himself to eat, but the sandwich he had made and the string cheese he had brought tasted ashen in his mouth.

The day seemed to crawl by, with no call from the police OR any social workers. Haytham grew more and more anxious as time went by.

He hated this. He hated feeling so… powerless.

When the bell rang, signalling the end of the day, most of his students from his last period were gone, a couple of stragglers were slowly packing up their things and getting deep into a discussion about… politics, Haytham thought, but he wasn't really listening. Sometimes he would eavesdrop on his students' conversations, but he wasn't really interested at that point in time.

Once the last students were gone, Haytham had half the mind to stay in his classroom for another hour or so, just so that he wouldn't accidentally miss a phone call while he was driving back home.

He didn't want to go back home anyways. He had spent much of Sunday hanging around the house, waiting for the police or Lucy Stillman to call, when he realized how… empty the entire place seemed without Connor there. It was empty in a way that it hadn't been before Haytham had even known about Connor's existence. It just felt completely wrong.

Still, it would have been ridiculous to just sit around his classroom all day. Nevertheless, Haytham made a point of going impossibly slow as he packed up his things, taking several minutes to decide what stack of papers he wanted to "grade" and making sure that the whiteboard was completely clear of any ink or smudges.

Haytham had been sitting at his desk, reorganizing his binder for the third time when someone knocked on the door, causing him to jump. Haytham really was not in the mood to talk to anyone at the moment, especially if it happened to be Charles. However, years as a teacher had honed him to automatically respond, "Come in."

The door pushed open slowly to reveal a timid looking Aveline. She had her hands knotted in the skirt of her long green dress and she was biting her lip. Haytham tried to look more inviting and smiled at her, although he could tell that the smile didn't quite reach his eyes.