chapter 28

Around Midnight I received a phone call from a secret number,"Hello, may I speak to the person who delivered a keynote address at The Genius School today!""Yes, speaking!" I replied while rubbing my eyes."You are warned of dire consequences if you try to interact with that young boy called Vishesh in the near future!" The caller threatened me in a cool breeze-like manner as if he was giving me best wishes for my future venture.I almost shouted at him,"Listen carefully, I don't care who you are but let me tell you one thing that I will talk to his father and will come in search of you so that I could talk some sense in you before handing over to the police!""Then I must tell you one thing that you are talking to the right person. I can clear all your doubts about your young friend who is unfortunately under my control! Simply forget about him or else...!" He disconnected the phone call and left me wondering about the meaning of his words.I called the principal of the Genius School and he took my phone while suppressing his yawn,"Hello Palash, are you alright? Why are you calling me in the middle of night?"I was still grinding my teeth and muttering under my breath as I told him,"Can you tell me anything about your student called Vishesh?""Yeah, he is a sweet child but he mostly keeps to himself. As you know that our discipline is quite famous so he doesn't speak much in fact no one does, otherwise how could we mange to keep eighty students under one teacher?" Barry replied.I told Barry,"There is something odd about the atmosphere in your school, children were unusually quiet and were hardly forthcoming. When I talked to Vishesh, someone called me tonight and threatened me of dire consequences if I would talk to him again!".Barry had regained his composure as he told me,"Earlier my school was like a hard core discipline oriented school but later on due to inflation we couldn't charge higher fees so we kept less number of teachers with minimal qualification. We were under lot of pressure to keep running our school on minimal budget so we asked people like Vishesh's stepfather to help our school but he told us to be extra critical of his step son Vishesh if we wanted his help!"I was fuming with anger as I asked him,"What about his mother? At least she should try to be his friend!"He told me while clearing his throat,"Actually, her mother married Vishesh's stepfather after the death of her husband but unfortunately she died recently and his step father got married to his secretary who is also the step mother of Vishesh."