She Used Her Son to Almost Kill a Child

§01

Two a.m.

The phone shrieked, slicing through the dark silence of my apartment.

It was her.

Of course, it was her.

The screen glowed with a name I’d come to dread: Candace Whitaker.

And I knew, with the certainty of a recurring nightmare, that this wasn't a call.

It was a detonation.

“Ms. Hawkins,” her voice, sharp enough to etch glass, drilled into my ear. “Why isn’t the girl in the red shirt drinking her milk?”

It took me a moment, my brain still thick with sleep, to even process the question.

The girl in the red shirt?

Who?

Then it clicked.

The red shirt.

Next to her son, Brody.

The refusal to drink milk.

She was talking about Amelie Mayfeld.

A three-year-old.

A sweet, timid little girl who had just started at The Briarwood Patch School last week.

And this woman, this predator of peace, was referring to her as ‘the girl’.

“Mrs. Whitaker,” I said, forcing my voice into a placid, professional tone that felt like swallowing sand. “Amelie has a severe dairy allergy.”

The explosion on the other end of the line was immediate and predictable.

“An allergy is no excuse! My Brody saw her refusing her milk, and now he’s doing the same thing! He came home tonight and pushed his glass away!”

“You need to make that girl drink her milk,” she snarled, her voice dropping into a low, menacing register. “Or I’ll make sure she can’t go to preschool anywhere in this state.”

She paused, letting the threat hang in the dead air between us.

“And you,” she added, her tone turning venomous. “You won’t get off easy, either.”

§02

Before I could form a response, she hung up.

The silence that followed was more jarring than her shouting.

My phone immediately began to vibrate again, a frantic, insistent buzzing against my nightstand.

Candace Whitaker.

Again.

And again.

Then the message notifications started, a relentless cascade of pings.

I swiped the phone into airplane mode, the digital equivalent of slamming a door in her face.

With Wi-Fi still on, I opened *Call of Duty: Mobile*.

My thumb hovered over the icon, my sanctuary.

Dealing with Candace Whitaker required a special kind of decompression.

In my six months as a preschool teacher, I’d met my share of difficult parents.

But Candace wasn’t just difficult.

She was a category-five hurricane of entitlement and paranoia.

This wasn’t the first late-night call.

Not by a long shot.

There was the time she’d called, screaming, waving a class photo from a day her son had been sick.

“Where is my baby boy? Why isn’t he in the picture? Do you have any idea how a mother feels when she can’t find her child in a photo you send?”

When I finally managed to explain that Brody had been absent, her only response was a flat, unapologetic “Oh,” before she disconnected.

Then there was the Annual Spring Gala incident.

A midnight call, not a request, but a royal decree.

“Ms. Hawkins, for tomorrow’s gala, Brody needs a separate costume. Something unique. If the other children are in red, he will be in gold. My son is not a common child.”

I had tried to explain.

“Mrs. Whitaker, the performance is choreographed. We’ve been rehearsing for a week. A last-minute change isn’t feasible…”

It was like reasoning with a tidal wave.

Her tantrum echoed all the way to Director Albright’s office, who eventually caved just to restore peace.

The day of the gala, Brody was a no-show.

The text from Candace arrived mid-performance: *Brody didn’t get his nap in. We won’t be attending.*

But the most bizarre incident, the one that truly defined her, was what I privately called ‘The Moncler Jacket Affair’.

Brody, like most four-year-olds, had a minor accident with a bottle of blue paint.

It splattered across the sleeve of his designer jacket, a ridiculously expensive padded coat that probably cost more than my monthly rent.

I had meticulously cleaned it with a special, fabric-safe stain remover, proud of my handiwork.

That evening, Candace stormed into the classroom, her face a mask of fury, accusing me of “defiling her son’s purity.”

It turned out, her version of the story, twisted from Brody’s innocent retelling, was that I had touched his jacket.

She, his own mother, never touched his outerwear without gloves.

The chemicals I used could have given him a rash.

I had violated his personal space.

The resolution?

A formal demand that any future incidents involving Brody’s attire be handled exclusively by a male staff member.

She was a walking, talking caricature of privilege.

Rumor had it she came from money, married into more, and was coddled by everyone in her orbit.

I shook my head, trying to dislodge her grating voice from my memory.

Time to kill some virtual enemies.

It was the only way to silence the real ones.

§03

The next morning, I woke up to a digital firestorm.

Dozens of missed calls and hundreds of messages had flooded my phone the moment I switched off airplane mode.

Before I could even process the backlog, Director Albright’s name flashed on the screen.

Her voice was strained, tight with anxiety.

“Corinne, what on earth did you do to Candace Whitaker?”

“Me?” I was still half-asleep. “She’s the one who called me at two in the morning.”

“She’s... well, she’s not easy to deal with,” the director stammered. “Please, just check the parents’ group chat. And the local news aggregator. She’s posted something.”

My blood ran cold.

I clicked open the link she sent.

It was a screenshot of a *Call of Duty: Mobile* player profile.

My profile.

My ID: CoriGunner.

The timeline of my game history was laid bare, a relentless series of matches from last night until six in the morning.

The headline, written by Candace, was a masterpiece of malicious insinuation:

*Briarwood Patch School Teacher: Shaping Young Minds by Day, Obsessively Playing Violent Shooters All Night. Is This Who We’re Trusting Our Children With?*

The comments section was a warzone.

*What kind of person plays video games all night? Can’t be a good role model.*

*If my kid’s teacher was doing this, I’d pull them out immediately. She’s probably exhausted and irritable in class. This is negligence!*

*It’s a violent game, too! What is that teaching our kids?*

Of course, there were voices of reason.

*It’s her personal time. What’s the big deal?*

*God forbid a teacher unwinds after dealing with… well, parents like the one who posted this.*

*If we start policing what people do in their own homes, we might as well all quit our jobs.*

But reason is always quieter than outrage.

I then opened the parents’ Facebook group.

Candace had, of course, posted the link there as well.

Her caption was deceptively innocent: *Fellow parents, I saw this trending locally. It says it’s a teacher from our school. I’m so concerned. I hope it isn’t one of our teachers.*

Her closest ally, Janice Polson, was the first to reply.

*Oh my goodness, Candace! This is horrifying! I’m sure it’s not Ms. Hawkins, though. She’s always seemed so dedicated.*

It was a classic pincer movement.

Praise to feign objectivity, while simultaneously planting my name directly into the center of the scandal.

The other parents were mostly posting shocked emoji-reacts, unsure how to respond.

A few tried to change the subject.

But the damage was done.

The seed of doubt had been planted.

§04

Just then, a private message from Director Albright popped up.

*Corinne, I need you in my office at 8 a.m. sharp. We need to discuss this.*

My stomach churned.

This was no longer about a glass of milk.

This was an all-out assault on my career.

Candace was trying to get me fired.

I spent the next hour in a cold fury, showering and dressing for the day that would decide my future.

Director Albright’s office was a carefully curated space of calming beige tones and educational posters, none of which were working on me right now.

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