Vivian and Amelia led the students to lunch. Amelia wasn’t very hungry after all of the stress she experienced in the classroom, but she was still going to have her afternoon coffee to help her stay energized. Slowly, she sipped from her cup while she and Vivian kept an eye on the class.

“Ms. Greentree!” one of the students yelled. “I can’t get this open!”

The teacher turned to her Little student teacher. “Would you help Billy get that ketchup packet open?” Amelia nodded, got up from her seat, and walked to the other side of the long picnic-style table. Expertly, she took the packet out of Billy’s hand and ripped through the top of the ketchup packet.

“Thanks,” Billy said.

Amelia nodded her head in acceptance and walked back to her place by the kindergarten teacher. When she sat down, she noticed Bobby was sitting beside Vivian and the two were laughing. The two were joking about something. She huffed in disapproval as she took her seat. That kid had given her so much grief in the little time she’d known him.

“Oh, Amelia, I need to take a bathroom break. Could you watch the class while I’m gone?” Amelia kind of looked lost. “All you need to do is walk around the table a few times and make sure they’re eating their lunch and not pranking each other.”

With that piece of information delivered, Vivian got up and walked out of the cafeteria, leaving Amelia alone with the class. No sooner had the teacher left had someone spilled a drink on the table. Amelia ran to get napkins to clean it up before it got onto the other students’ trays.

While she was cleaning up the spill, she noticed a few kids get up and walk to her place at the table. She was so anxious to get the spill taken care of that the incident didn’t really register when she returned to her seat.

Amelia took one quick look at the kids to make sure they were all sitting down before taking a sip of her coffee. She immediately noticed that it tasted off, kind of chalky with a bit of an artificial sweetener aftertaste. The idea that it could have been tampered with didn’t cross her mind, though. Instead, she attributed the bad taste to the cafeteria coffee itself. She thought about maybe bringing her own from home in the future to keep from having to put up with the odd flavor.

Once she’d finished the cup, she moved her tongue around to get rid of the chalky taste that was coating her mouth. As she was dealing with the aftertaste of the coffee and debating whether or not to finish her lunch, Vivian returned from the bathroom.

“It’s time to have the students put up their trays and return to the classroom. I’ll take care of this, and you can take a potty break if you need one?” the teacher asked.

Amelia frowned slightly. “Are you reminding me to take a bathroom break? I’m an adult you know. I don’t need reminding.” Amelia was annoyed at how sizeist Vivian was being.

“I-I wasn’t insinuating that you–I just meant that you should–” the teacher let out a sigh, “you know what? Forget it. Sorry I mentioned it.” Amelia let out a small huff of satisfaction. The teacher was finally learning to treat her like an adult and not a child. Maybe she was going to have success on this internship after all?

The two adults helped the children clear and clean the table, and then they all returned to the classroom.

Vivian put on soft music and had the kids sit down and color for a few minutes to keep them out of trouble while she prepared an easy lesson for Amelia to teach.

It was going to be science or history because they were taught as a combined period, and teachers usually chose one or the other to teach that day because trying to cram two subjects into an hour and a half didn’t make a lot of sense.

She found an easy lesson about the difference between rivers, streams, and lakes and decided to make it easy enough for one of her students to teach. First, she outlined the lesson, marked pause points where her student teacher was supposed to pause and talk about key points, and then explain the lesson and take any questions. Cutting out the actual lesson planning would give Vivian a chance to see how well Amelia interacted with the class. It would also give her a chance to observe her and see if see she expressed any more signs of deteriorating maturity.

Vivian thought about making an excuse to let Mr. Field the Pre-K teacher look after Amelia at first, but she decided against enlisting his help unless she was sure it was needed. It would be hard convincing Amelia to switch her assignment, and now that she was thinking about it, maybe Amelia wasn’t showing all of the signs necessary to be diagnosed with maturosis. Maybe she’d just misjudged her?

She turned her focus back to Amelia who was patiently seated by her desk. She tried to stop herself from mentally dressing her in baby clothes and a diaper. She’d look so cute like that! Vivian briefly found herself imagining Amelia in a short yellow baby dress and a big thick poofy diaper that spread her legs far apart and forced her to waddle and toddle for balance when she tried to walk. All of the kids would be so much more accepting of her and her little mistakes if she was just a baby, after all.

Vivian blinked a few times to clear the image from her mind before focusing on the actual Amelia. She looked like a kid playing dress-up, honestly. She was wearing plain white yoga pants with a black shirt and a blazer, and the pants were so tight that they showed the outline of her butt and underwear.

She remembered from her Little Education courses that tight revealing clothes were one of the ways Littles showed everyone they were physically mature–potty trained, developed breasts, able to reproduce, things like that. It made them all look like maladjusted middle school students, though! If she had any say about the girl’s wardrobe, she would have her in an actual suit, with actual trousers or maybe even a pencil skirt. She was wasting what she had. She looked so adorable, just like a little doll.

Vivian shook herself. She was doing it again, cossetting. Don’t cossett the Little she told herself. She pinched the bridge of her nose and rubbed her forehead. Amelia looked up from her place next to her desk.

“Are you okay?” Amelia asked.

Vivian straightened herself and smiled nervously as she was pulled out of her fantasy. “Yes, yes, I’m fine, dear, and I have your lesson plan all ready for you. They’re yours whenever you’re ready.”