Beouf rubbed her eyes and replaced her glasses. “Places like New Beginnings need to be shut down. They don’t care about the Littles there. They just want to make them into…into…”

“Dolls?” I offered.

“Yeah. That.” Her tone turned angry. “I have a Master’s in Early Childhood Education and a Bachelor’s in Child Psychology with a minor in Maturosis and Developmental and Emotional Plateaus. Some people just want me to be a torturer.“ She looked at me. “I love my students. I really do. They’re my babies, too.” The most painful part of it is she really believed it.

“Yeah,” I said. “That sucks about Taylor. I’m sorry.” That part wasn’t a lie at least. Just not for the reason she might’ve thought.

“Thanks,” Beouf said. She stood up. “Ready to get to tell me where to move stuff?”

“Yeah…” I copied her, and instantly regretted it. Something shifted around. I clenched my stomach and gritted my teeth.

“I know that look,” Beouf said. “Bathroom’s over there.” My eyes were still closed, but I knew where she was pointing. Internally I did the math. I could probably make it back to my own bathroom. Probably. Maybe. “Clark?” Maybe if the door into my room wasn’t closed and I didn’t have to stop “Clark? Can you hear me? Mr. Gibson?”

That did it. Cheeks clenched, I ran to the class bathroom, quietly praying that I’d make it. It was a close one. The kind where things were pretty much on their way out and plopping into the bowl before my ass had completely settled around the rim.

I seemed to exhale from both ends at the same time, opening my eyes only after the first tidal wave of cramps passed out of me. The fuck was that about?! You abstain from coffee for two and a half months and the first cup hits your gut like a jackhammer!

Tenuously, I opened my eyes and looked down at my boxers. Spotless. Good. No excuse. It’s not that I didn’t trust Beouf; it’s just that I only trusted her so far. She’d just seen a Little run off into her kiddie bathroom, and was bemoaning a missing student. Ten years had bought her the benefit of the doubt, from me.

“Clark?” she called. “Mr. Gibson?”

I turned my head to the side and felt my pulse quicken. I’d forgotten to close the door! Rookie mistake, Clark! Rookie mistake! The door opened outward too! It was so big that I’d have to step out to close it! It didn’t even open in a way that I could use it as a barrier. It was either waddle out with my pants around my ankles (a non-option) or finish, redress, and then close it; (pointless).

I was so…so…vulnerable. So incredibly vulnerable. If Forrest or Brollish- even Janet, I told myself- had caught me like this, they would have had ample cause to adopt me on the spot.

“Mr. Gibson?” My title and last name were something of a safeword. Beouf didn’t call the Littles in her class Mr. or Miss. All the same, I couldn’t help but clench up.

“I’m in here…” I said. “I’m fine.” That was a lie. This was not fine. But fake it till you make it.

“Okay,” she said. “I’ll give you some privacy. Meet you in your room?”

“Sure.” I heard the heavy door to her classroom open and then close shut. Both ends of me sighed in relief. Ugh. I gave myself a courtesy flush.

I’d never been in Beouf’s bathroom before. Not surprising, all things considered, but in the quiet of the moment I took a minute to observe. It wasn’t that different from mine, actually. Roughly the same dimensions.

The toilet that I sat on was, in fact, a toilet; and not a potty. It was hooked up to the plumbing. No cutesy decorations. Near as I could see, it was the same white porcelain and black seat, too. Nothing too infantile. It was sized for me, but so was the toilet in my classroom.

That probably meant it was very clean, considering how long it had been since it had been used. Last person who had tried to use it was about to be shipped to Oakshire’s premier public brainwashing facility; and that was months ago. Beouf certainly wouldn’t want to use it; her knees would almost go up to her chest, funny image though that was.

No. This toilet was here simply because it was mandated that this room have a toilet in it; even if after today no one was going to be allowed to use it. The Amazons did love their insane rules and plays at fairness. Also, who knows; once upon a time, an architect or contractor might have thought that there’d be a big enough Pre-Kindergarten population to warrant two tiny toilets.

The only difference between Beouf’s bathroom and my own was the furniture. Straight ahead of me, looming over me, in fact, was a giant, sturdy, unmovable changing table. It was a heavy thing; at least as thick and almost as wide as my own teacher’s desk. It was taller to boot. It took up most of the bathroom. Unlike my father-in-law, my spatial awareness wasn’t the best, but chances were only a single Amazon could squeeze in here at a time. Them and whatever Little they were diapering, anyways.

The cabinet in front of me was already stocked, because of course it was. Wipes and baby powder were in the upper levels for easy Amazonian reach mid changing. At the foot end, a packet of wipes was already resting in a little nook near the edge.

The lower shelves were of course, already stacked with diapers. White ones. Colored ones. Plain ones. Decorated ones. All arranged in neat and tidy stacks of four or five. Beneath each stack, was a piece of masking tape and a Little’s name written beneath.

Chaz. Ivy. Tommy. Shauna. Mandy. Billy. Sandra Lynn. Jesse. Annie. There but for the grace of some capricious and fickle god go I. These were leftovers from last year, I knew. Their so-called parents hadn’t bothered to take the diapers home because most of the Littles would be coming back at the end of summer. Beouf hadn’t bothered to throw them out, because it’s not as if her ‘students’ would grow out of them. Ever.

Taylor’s actually had some Pull-Ups on top. Poor girl wouldn’t even get that much at New Beginnings. I wondered who would replace her. Someone always did, it seemed.

Idly, I craned my neck up and away and caught sight of my reflection. That was weird. Why would there be a mirror on the ceiling? Maybe to make sure that whatever Amazon was on diaper duty didn’t miss a spot? But that didn’t make sense.

Best not to dwell on it, I decided. I finished and cleaned myself up; even daring to snag an Amazon sized baby wipe, just in case. Beouf was on my side now, but a skid mark was practically a death sentence. It all got flushed down the toilet anyways; and it’s not like anybody counted wipes. That’d be like counting squares of toilet paper.

Come to think of it, how old was this bathroom’s toilet paper?

It was a morbid and fatalistic curiosity that overtook me when I pulled one of Chaz’s diapers from the top of the stack and looked at it. Chaz, the last fellow Little that had gotten my bullshit “find a way to quietly rebel” speech. Poor kid. Literally. Most of us got at least a taste of adulthood before one of the giants took an unhealthy interest in us.

Chaz probably still had his peach fuzz before a laser zapped it off his lip for ever. Pubes too. Now all of his underwear crinkled and had balloons on the butt; and the only thing that would change that is if his captors switched to a new brand.

I shuddered at the thought and placed it back on top of the stack. Not me. Never me.

I flushed and walked back through to my classroom. Mrs. Beouf had been considerate enough to leave the doors open for me and was waiting. I hadn’t yet attached my pull-chords. “Ready to get started?” I asked.

“Did you remember to wash your hands?” She sounded like a mother just before supper time.

My mind went on full alert. My body didn’t even miss a beat. I made a hurried but confident bee-line for the step stool in front of my classroom sink. “Sink in your bathroom is a little high, actually,” I lied.

“Yeah?” my coworker asked. I was gambling that she didn’t pay attention to how tall or short the sink was. Like the toilet, it was something that was largely ignored in her class.

“That and I didn’t want to take soap from your classroom,” I added. “Your guys need soap too.”

My gamble paid off. “Nah,” Mrs. Beouf waved my remark off. “We stick mostly to wipes and hand sanitizer in my room. Mrs. Zoge and I are the only ones who wash our hands, and we use the bigger sink.”

I figured as much, but the faux consideration made the lie more believable. Beouf was talking to me like I was a person again; not a doll.

“Where do you want these chairs to go?” she asked.