irwin bullying

“Earlier this year,” she said, “he started coming home with injuries. Nothing serious—abrasions and bruises and scratches. But I suspect that the injuries were likely worse before the boy came home. Irwin heals very rapidly, and he’s never been sick—literally never, not a day in his life.”
“You think someone is abusing him,” I said. “What did he say about it?”
“He made excuses,” Pounder said. “They were obviously fictions, but that boy is at least as stubborn as his father, and he wouldn’t tell me where or how he’d been hurt.”
“Ah,” I said.
She frowned. “Ah?”
“It’s another kid.”
Pounder blinked. “How . . . ?”
“I have the advantage over you and your husband, inasmuch as I have actually been a grade-school boy before,” I said. “If he snitches about it to the teachers or to you, he’ll probably have to deal with retributive friction from his classmates. He won’t be cool. He’ll be a snitching, tattling pariah.”
Pounder sat back in her seat, frowning. “I’m . . . hardly a master of social skills. I hadn’t thought of it that way.”


Brief Cases, B is for Bigfoot, Page 37-38