Daryl Ralston and John Hampton waved their hands.
Mrs. Fuller ignored them. They always had an answer. Often it was not the one she wanted the class to hear.
She looked over the faces suddenly studying the floor or looking for something in their notebooks.
"Can anyone define justice for me?" she repeated to the class.
Daryl and John continued to wave frantically. Mrs. Fuller looked hopefully around for someone else to respond. No one did. She sighed.
"All right, Daryl," she said. "Tell the class the mean­ing of justice."
"Justice is the opposite of injustice," said Daryl, looking around for the laughter that was sure to follow. It did.
"Quiet, class," ordered Mrs. Fuller. "I am afraid that doesn't tell us much, Daryl. Can you be more specific?"
Mrs. Fuller had a special reason for discussing justice today. As she pulled into the school parking lot, she had seen Daryl and John and some of their friends holding a bird's nest. The baby birds were dead on the ground. With solemn eyes, they swore to her they had not done it, but she knew better. She had seen them laughing.
They laughed at her sometimes, too, when they thought she wasn't aware of it. She knew. They left feathers on her desk, and she heard them call her the Bird Lady or Old Crow behind her back, but she didn't care. She loved the little helpless creatures.
She was aware suddenly that she had drifted off. When she had these spells, the students said she'd "tripped south for the winter." She'd done it again. She forced herself back to the classroom. The class was watching her closely.
"Well, Daryl, I'm waiting for an answer," she said.
"I just told you," said Daryl. "Justice means that somebody gets what's coming to him."
"Yeah," John put in. "Like somebody kills someone and then has to die for it."
"Yeah," agreed Daryl. "Like that."
The two boys exchanged the look that said it was time to bait Mrs. Fuller.
"For instance," continued John, "take those itty bitty birds that we found dead in the parking lot. Whoever killed them ought to die a painful death. I don't ever want to see anything like that again. If those guys got what was coming to them, now that would be justice."
The mock-serious tone brought giggles from dif­ferent sections of the room. Only a few fell sorry about this daily routine that the two boys put Mrs. Fuller through.
They waited to see what her response would be today. She was quiet so long, they had begun to think she had "tripped south" again.
"Perhaps you're right," she finally said. "We've talked in this class about how you feel when, as teenagers, you experience unpleasant things, unjust things, because of your age or sex or color. Sometimes you have no more control over the injustice of a situation than those innocent little birds did yesterday. But it seems that learning to value all life is a lesson some of you have not learned.
Maybe fate will teach you what I have not been able to."
The bell rang.
The class filed out silently for the first time. Mrs. Fuller had never said anything like that before. They stood by their lockers and watched as she walked down the hall and stopped by the front door.
Daryl and John were a little uneasy. This was not the reaction they had hoped for. They didn't feel quite so much in charge as they usually did.
"Come on," said Daryl. "Let's go find some more birds' nests."
John laughed and started down the hall behind Daryl. Slowly the others followed. Mrs. Fuller stood by the door and the students filed past her on their way home.
John and Daryl sat on the school steps out by the street wondering what had gone wrong. Mrs. Fuller didn't seem upset with them. She was just standing in there watching them.
"I’m getting out of here," John said at last. "I think the old bat is off her rocker."
As John stood up, a feather floated down and brushed his face. Startled, he looked over at Daryl.
Daryl was looking up.
There was a loud swishing sound as two huge birds swooped down on the boys. Sudden screams filled the air, and students walking down the street stopped in their tracks and turned around. They stood frozen in disbelief. Two gigantic birds were covering John and Daryl, clawing their faces.
The door opened and Mrs. Fuller came out. Daryl and John waved their hands frantically in the air. Mrs. Fuller ignored them. This, she thought, was the answer she'd been waiting for.

Roberta Simpson Brown
The walking trees and other scary stories
Little rock, August House publishers, 1991