Chazz shook his head. He was quiet. He was listening. Good.
“This isn’t exactly a big town” I said. “Not everybody knows everybody, but the locals know the lay of the land. There are a couple of private daycares for Littles, but those can get expensive.” I waited for Chazz to interrupt or say something. “There are two state funded programs in town, too. Beouf’s is one of them. Your…” I had to choose my words carefully just in case someone walked in at the wrong moment. “Amazons…Your Amazons, I’m guessing are more the thrifty sort.”
“I’m not getting the premium diapers if that’s what you’re asking.”
“I wasn’t. You done?”
He stared at me. Then finally let out a “Yeah…”
“The two units are here and New Beginnings. Here, with Beouf, you stand a chance.”
“A chance of what?”
“A chance of still being Chazz.” I said. “New Beginnings is where they send the so-called Bad Littles.”
“Yeah? What happens?”
I chose not to directly answer the question right away. New Beginnings had a bad reputation among local Littles, but if he was going to survive it had to be on more than fear. “Melony Beouf cares about you. It might be you as if you were a baby, but she genuinely cares. I’ve seen her cry when her students couldn’t get with the program and ended up getting expelled. Those Littles end up in New Beginnings.”
The color was draining out of Chazz’s face. It took a lot to imagine an Amazon crying. “Why? What happens to them?”
“Beouf’s toured the place years ago. Turned a job down there on principle.”
“What happens?”
“Littles like us go into New Beginnings. But we don’t come out the same.” Silence. “Stay here and Beouf will do everything she can to get you to act how they think you’re supposed to act. If you do it right, that’s all it’ll be. An act. You’ll still have your marbles. You’ll have a better chance…”
“You’ll help me escape?” The look of hope and fear welled up in his eyes, spilling out into a hopeful trickle down his cheeks.
No making promises I can’t keep. I kept going. “If you get expelled and sent to New Beginnings. They’ll scramble your brains so hard that you’ll stop being a person. You’ll just be a system of hypnotic and conditioned triggers that reacts to specific stimulus wrapped up in a Little shell.”
“Like a doll…” he said.
“Like a doll.”
Chazz looked over my shoulder, past the kidney table and to the door leading out of my classroom. “Has anybody ever escaped here?
I chewed on my lip. “Here, here? Naw.” I closed my eyes and shook my head. “But go along with the program. Make them think you’re happy here, and they’ll let their guard down at home most likely.”
“How often does that happen?”
“Not sure,” I told him. Only once had I seriously been asked or accused of helping one of Beouf’s students “run away”. Brollish was interrogating and Beouf, as my Union Rep, had spoken in my defense. In ten years it was the only time I was certain that a captured Little had gotten away. “A couple times…?” I lied.
In truth, Beouf was frighteningly good at her job. Most Littles either learned to accept their fate or they went full native like Ivy. “The point is you’re in prison right now,” I told Chazz. “Life sentence. No parole. But do you want to live in a minimum security or a SuperMAX with solitary confinement? Which gives you the better odds?”
I saw Chazz slump down. Defeated. I hated giving this speech. I felt like such a Helper when I did. There was too much risk in helping other Littles break out directly. I was first on the list of suspects if anybody got away. Having this talk gave me a clearer conscience, too. The lesser of two evils might still be evil, but it was also lesser.
Chazz’s lip started quivering. “I made boom-boom,” he said. He started crying in earnest, losing any semblance. “Mommy! Daddy! HELP!”
Yikes! “Tarnia?” I called out. “Do you mind starting Circle Time a bit early?”
“You got it, Boss!” Good ol’ Tarnia. I’d have to update her later, but she knew the urgency in my voice.
Scooting over closer to him, close enough to smell the mess he’d made in his pants, I whispered. “Why are you talking like that?”
In muffled sobs and gasps he told me. “I made…boom-boom…” he said. “Poopy in my pants…whenever…I need…changies…I start talking…wike…wike a baby…”
