Practically no conscious thought was required on my part. This was a bad thing. A very bad thing. Some people, when given a mindless activity, just zone out and let their minds go numb. They literally think about nothing. Hum to themselves. Get lost in a haze of their own amorphous thoughts. Other people, lacking mental stimulus, invent their own. Fixate and go deep into their own heads, whirling and whirling about until their brain starts turning into a blender.

If you’ve read this far, you don’t need to guess which type I am.

The front door opened and Zoge came in. She was still carrying Ivy, but the babied Little’s wails had downgraded into sniffles. The pair walked around our play circle in a wide berth headed for the bathroom.

I do everything I’m told and I have to play a dumb baby game in a wet diaper. Ivy throws a tantrum and gets changed afterwards. How was that fair?

A stray thought: What would Cassie think about Ivy kissing me?

Surely, she wouldn’t be jealous, or possessive. Ivy had gone Full Native. She was a Doll; the Amazon ideal of the perfect perpetual child. It’s not like some strange woman off the street had hit on me. Even if a stranger had made advances, it’s not as if I had reciprocated. I hadn’t kissed back.

It wasn’t cheating by any measurement. None whatsoever.

Cassie would be furious with me, though. I knew it. Deep down, she’d hate me for it. Not because a Little Girl had planted one on my cheek. That was a big nothing burger for my wife. What would make her livid beyond words was everything else.

I was adopted by my work friend.

My mentor was now my teacher and her assistant’s pet was my classmate.

I’d lost my job, my name, my identity, and my marriage.

I had been betrayed at every conceivable level. The very same support system of ‘good’ Amazons that had protected me from Brollish and the others hadn’t been saving me as much as saving me for themselves.

Cassie wouldn’t be furious with them, though. She wouldn’t be surprised. She’d be angriest with me.

How had she reacted with that Little in the restaurant? Or the one on the bus? If I had seen them with a kind of quiet pity, she’d viewed them with a simmering contempt. They’d played the game and they’d lost. They’d done something to deserve the treatment they were getting. Littles that ended up being rocked in a giant’s arms weren’t victims, they were losers who lacked the common sense and ruthlessness to survive in the cruel real world, and so were sentenced to a plush pastel one.

When I’d made Amazon and Tweener friends, my wife had warned me against playing with fire. She’d helped up our standard of living, and still maintained ties to her survivalist family. My own folks were locked up in a retirement fortress.

I was the only one stupid enough to play the game the Amazon’s way. I’d lost. I was a loser.

So how would she look at me? She wouldn’t even see me, would she? Even if Janet kept her word and Cassie would be safe, she’d never forgive me for leaving her alone. I was just another deadbeat husband who couldn’t pay the bills. Went to my job and didn’t come back thanks to management.

Just another statistic. Just another anecdotal post on mistuhgwiffin.web. A tragedy. A loser. My very existence right now was offensive to her. What if the love of my life didn’t want to see me?
Should I even bother trying to see her the one last time? And if I didn’t, what did I have left to hope for?

“Is he okay?”

“What’s he doing?”

“I think he’s pooping, again.”

“Nobody looks like that when they’re poopin’.”

“You do.”

“I do?”

“Clark?” I heard Mrs. Beouf’s voice break into my thoughts. “Clark, baby? Are you okay?”

I had stopped. At some point, unbeknownst to me, I had walked into the middle of the circle. And stopped. Frozen. Knees locked. Fists clenched. Eyes slammed shut. I was shaking again. Trembling. I wasn’t crying. I would not cry. Between all the terrible thoughts bombarding my mind, a single automatic command snuck in.

Don’t cry.

Don’t cry don’t cry don’t cry don’t cry.

My breathing slowed and my teeth gnashed. I would not cry. I would not break.

Don’t cry don’t cry don’t cry don’t cry don’t cry.

“I think he’s flipping out.”

“Awww, is the poor baby gonna cryyyyy?”

“Clark?” Beouf asked again. “Can you hear me? Clark?”

I wouldn’t cry. There was as much chance of that as the morning dew raining upwards. No crying, as much chance as the sky turning green. No crying. There was as much chance of that as…as…

There was as much chance of me crying right then as my own wife being happy to see me one last time…

I wasn’t crying. I wasn’t crying, but it felt like there were fishhooks lodged in the corners of my mouth, pulling them downward towards the floor. And just as much as I knew I wouldn’t cry then, a little voice on the inside of my head also told me that I might never smile again.

My feet tilted and my knees buckled. Eyes still shut, I could feel the floor rushing up to greet me. Should I tuck my head? Or should I ragdoll and just bash it against the carpet. It probably wouldn’t hurt. Too much.

Giant arms snatched me and lifted me off the ground. “Gotcha! It’s okay, Clark. I gotcha. I gotcha, hon. It’s okay. I’m here. I gotcha.”

Finally, I decided to open my eyes. Melony Beouf was looking down at me, an expression of genuine worry on her face. The last time I’d remember her looking that concerned was when we’d found that essay. I’d cried in front of her then. I’d felt safe enough too.

Humongous steps carried me into the nap room. “Clark, can you understand me?”

I nodded.

“Can you talk, hun?”

“Yes,” I said weakly.

She placed me in a crib. I didn’t resist. I didn’t see much point in resisting just then. The back of her hand pressed against my forehead. “You don’t feel feverish. How are you feeling?”

Like the world was crumbling around me in new and devastating ways. I just shrugged.

“I think you’re a bit overwhelmed,” she said. “And that’s okay. You’ve got a lot to get used to. Things are changing all over the place and it’s all happening very fast. That’s common for early Maturosis.”

I gazed down at the pastel train bedsheets, not bothering to look at her. What the fuck do I do? Where did I go from here?

“I’m going to give you some quiet time to be in your thoughts,” Beouf said. “Give you some time to just be alone. You don’t have to take a nap but if you want to, you can. Okay?”

My head lifted just enough to make eye contact; it felt like my frown deepened to compensate. I nodded.

My mentor turned babysitter raised the crib railing and left the room briefly. She came back with my bottle and a rattle. “If you get thirsty,” she said. She leaned over the railing and shook the rattle.

The jingling pulse threw my brain for a loop. It was one of those rattles; like the kind from the shower. I swooned and laid back in the crib. Started sucking down even more water. Why not? I needed to be soaking if I was going to go to lunch dry and two hands holding a bottle left no room for a rattle that messed me up like a double shot of tequila. Problem solved.

“You can play with this if you want. If you don’t, that’s okay too.” Beouf walked back to the door. “Do you want the lights off or on?”

“Off,” I said. I didn’t want to see myself right then.

She obliged. “I’ll check up on you a little later, okay?”

I made no reply. Beouf left me alone.
What to do? What to do?

The tunnel vision that had kept me going forward now had a light at the end, but the light burned. What choice did someone make when every choice was a bad one?

If Janet had told me the truth, there was no need to visit. Cassie was smart. She’d figured out why I hadn’t come home last Thursday. The house was hers now. As was my bank account and any money the school still owed me as an employee. She was as set as she was going to get.

What could I say besides ‘Sorry’? Would it matter? Was there a way I could escape? A way she could rescue me? A way we could be together without us looking back over our shoulders for the rest of our lives? Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.

Life had given me a concussion, and I didn’t have a plan as much as I had scraps of hope, kind little lies that wouldn’t even let me get through the day.

Cassie didn’t need me. She probably wouldn’t want to see me. I just couldn’t let her go.

I might have dozed off, or I might have entered a gigantic feedback loop of jouskas on what I’d do IF I got through this first day. The second day still seemed so far away. I might have wet a little more or just strained my bladder trying to pass the time. No clue.

The bottle was about half empty, when something inside the room changed. The door to the nap room slid open and I sat up, hands shooting over my pelvis as if I had anything left to hide. I’d been left with my thoughts long enough to feel embarrassed again, so at least I had that going for me.

It wasn’t Beouf who walked in. Nor was it Zoge. This person was much shorter than either of them. Still, she was a sight taller than me. The Amazon fifth graders towered over me. She stood just barely the same height as them, on average.

There in the shadows of the naproom, Tracy looked at me on the other side of the crib bars… “Hey, Boss…”