Unfair-Chapter 136: Uncertain (Patreon)

Chapter 136: Uncertain

The morning of my escape was one of incredible, unfathomable relaxation and utter calm. I rode in the backseat of Janet’s car, mentally running through the steps that the night would entail, again and again.  Marvelously, it lacked the component of fear and anxiety normally so ever present in my thought processes.

My imagination wasn’t a Choose Your Own Adventure, one where I was meticulously going through every fork in the road nervously skipping ahead with my thumb on the page in case there was a bad outcome.  It was more like I was replaying my favorite episode of an old television show; one I’d watched a thousand times and could quote verbatim if I so chose.  I knew exactly what was going to happen at every turn and loved it.  The only thing I had to do was stop myself from tapping everyone else on the shoulder and annoying them with giddy giggles and reminders to pay attention or spoilers that a good part was about to come up.  Let them be as surprised as I was the first time.

The comfort I felt had nothing to do with the bottle of milk I’d guzzled down. The massive amounts of oxytocin in my system did make me feel calmer and more cuddly as it tended to do, but the real euphoria came from this sense of absolute emotional certainty.  

Certainty wasn’t confidence or cockiness. Rationally speaking, I knew my plan might fail completely.  Unforeseen circumstances might yet arise and a monkey wrench could be tossed in the works, leaving me stranded.  In the next twelve hours or so, Amy might still prattle off about something and tip my hand. Janet might decide she didn’t have the energy to go out tonight and keep us both at home.  My “socko” friend might become so paranoid that she never shows.  There were too many variables to count.  

What I was certain about was my commitment. No more planning, scheming, plotting, or brooding. No more indecision and second guessing myself. No more justifying my continued presence or passively ‘looking for an opening’.  I’d made my opening and was allowing myself to be sucked into it.

There was no longer time for indecision. I had no real choice in the matter. The dominoes had been set up and the first one had already been knocked over. It didn’t matter how much I’d miss Janet, Melony, Tracy, or Zoge.  I didn’t have to care that Ivy would likely be a wreck; Amy too though she’d never admit it.  Who cared that I was leaving my classmates behind? It was regrettable that I never got to thank Emiliano or Jessica for the bits of kindness they’d shown me each in their own way, but it was too late for that.  There was no point.

There was no point, and that was okay. Tonight, I was going to escape, rendezvous with my contact and take the first real tangible steps towards taking back my life and it didn’t matter how I felt about it.  It was all out of my hands and was going to happen, so I might as well choose to be happy about it.

I had all the answers I needed, and the end was coming.  Yes there were variables and particulars to be worked out, but the end was going to be the same no matter what the journey looked like. That’s how certain I felt.  

Was this what growing up was like for an Amazon?  Was this how they felt all the time? So sure of their place and actions in the world, never fearing because why fear the inevitable?  If so, then so much of what they did made sense. It’s easy to be comfortable and confident when you’re that secure all the time.

Speaking of Amazons…

“Hey, Janet…?” I called from the backseat.

Janet’s voice was whimsical and melodious. “Yyyyyyeeeessss?”

“I was wondering…” I said, sounding bashful and embarrassed. “Could I wear the Feast Friend outfit tonight? At Little Voices?”

“I don’t think I’ll have the energy to do all the makeup and stuff, but the rest of the outfit is still in your diaper bag,” she said. “Any reason?”

“Promise not to laugh?”

“Sure.”

“I might have bragged and told Amy about the stuff at the airport with your parents. The driving and stuff. I kind of want to um…” I paused, searching for the right words.

Her eyes sparkled. “You want to show off for your friends and their parents, don’t you?”

I grumbled and looked away. It was so embarrassing to admit it.  “Maybe…”

“Sure, hon,” Janet teased. “You can show everybody what a good driver you are. I’m sure some of the parents will talk about how grown-up you are and the other Littles will be super impressed with how big you are.”

I growled something under my breath.

“What’s that, sweetie?” Janet said.

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome!”

The whole exchange was that easy. The ruse was so good that I believed it myself in the moment. I didn’t have to try and fake anything; there was nothing buzzing in the back of my brain be it guilt or fear.  I wasn’t lying as much as reciting the lines to a favorite episode of a T.V. show.

I called Janet by her name and gave just enough to make her feel like she won the exchange and that I was giving in to her perceptions of me as her adorable pretend player.  It had to happen. There was no other choice.  Pure certainty.
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It was mid morning and the back half of the week.  Winters, Sosa, and Skinner had popped in and stolen half of us away. Beouf and Zoge took it as an opportunity for some structured creative play.  The easel had come out, along with the sand table.  Zoge’s desk was covered with colorful clays to free hand sculpt and the blocks and toys from the play center were allowed to emerge and be used all over the carpet.

The nap room door opened and Mandy trudged out, her head hung low.  I stopped scooping sand and sifting it through the water wheel long enough to notice.  

“You okay?”

Mandy kept walking like I wasn’t even there.  She let out a disheartened “I’m fine,” and plopped herself into an empty beanbag in the reading nook.  

I simply shrugged and went back to playing. I’d been so absorbed in watching the spinning wheel get whirled by spilling sand that I hadn’t even realized she’d been in the nap room. My certainty-based euphoria had evolved over the last few hours into giddy anticipation.  Glorious fantasies of how my plan would play out danced in my head.

I had a lot of variables left to consider:  Distractions to plan, lies to weave, escape routes to calculate, and so on. My escape was a jazz concert with me as the headliner.  Lots of room for improvisation but a hidden framework underneath it all and an end goal in mind. Ready or not, the concert was happening and the band was warming up. It was certain.

Beouf came out of the nap room, bent over Chaz and whispered something to him. Safest bet was that he’d leaked and she was trying to discreetly inform him so that he didn’t cause a scene when she picked him up and took him into the bathroom.  I was only half right. She picked him up and toted him away back the way she’d come.

Odd, but unconcerning.  Beouf was a baby crazy Amazon nutter, but she was safer than most.  Chaz was probably just getting checked for lice or subjected to a vision and hearing test, or any other mundane diagnostic that teachers had to do to their kids throughout the year. He already had to endure crawling and diaper changes. What else was Beouf gonna do to him; put him down for an early nap?

Minutes later, the door cracked back open and Beouf stuck her head out. I could only see her from the shoulders up, but it looked like every muscle in her body was tensed up and cringing.  Behind her, Chaz’s muffled sobs leaked out.

It was the saddest, most heartbreaking, most pathetic sound I’d ever heard. It was like Chaz had just been told that he had a terminal disease and that the moment he passed away, someone would also find his dog, shoot it, and his ghost would magically be forced to attend both funerals knowing that no one would show up for either.  

The hardest part of it all, was that Chaz knew it to be true.  He wasn’t crying like a child begging for something in the world to be made right. He was more like an adult who was grieving and coming to terms with the fact that the world cannot be made right in every instance. He was certain.

If Chaz was the dead man crawling, then Beouf was the doctor who’d just had deliver the bad news.  Her face was trying hard to mask it, but she was clearly hurting from whatever had just happened to Chaz.  “Mrs. Zoge,” she said, “Change of plans.  Free play. All day.”   

“Yes ma’am.” Zoge said.

Now that surprised me.If Beouf was throwing up her hands and calling the day a wash, something truly awful had happened.  

Beouf slid out and shut the door behind her. She quick stepped right by me over to the reading nook and picked Mandy up.  She said something to Mandy, Mandy nodded her head, and then started quietly crying into the Amazon’s shoulder.  It wasn’t nearly as loud as Chaz’s, but it had the same air of grieving to it.

Stranger still was how Beouf held the Little girl.  She still had an arm scooped up beneath Mandy’s backside and one against her back for balance and support, but there was nothing else to it.  She didn’t pace or bob the girl in an attempt to soothe her.  She didn’t gently pat her back or make shushing noises.  She didn’t coo or casually check her diaper like she was an infant that didn’t know why she was upset.  She was just a woman holding another, smaller woman, and trying to give her respect and comfort at the same time.

Melony had never really picked me up before I became her student.  I never would have let her.  If I had, though, I imagine it would have looked a lot like what I was seeing here.

Zoge was slowly walking around the room monitoring the rest of the Littles; an easy enough task since half of us were out and the other half were on edge.  I crinkled up to her and tugged on her dress for attention.  “Mrs. Zoge? What’s wrong?”

The older woman didn’t need further context.  She bent over to me and in a voice so low that only I could hear it, she whispered, “I think it would be best if you ask Mrs. B after school.”
I stumbled back.  “Yeah…okay…”
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I guzzled my second bottle of coffee and slammed it down on the kidney table.  I was going to miss this, of that I was certain.  But like the milk I had this morning, I decided to enjoy it while I could.  The sweetest strawberry is the last one you know you’ll ever taste.

“Good coffee, huh?” Beouf asked.

I wiped my mouth. “Yeah. Great stuff.”

Her pupils shot to the corner of her eyes towards the clock on the wall.  “I think I’m gonna call in sick tomorrow.’

“Yeah?” I raised an eyebrow. “You okay?”

Melony’s lips retreated inward. “Yeah. Just gettin’ old is all.”

“Who’s gonna be the substitute?” I asked.  

“Who knows?” Beouf said. “Doesn’t really matter. Mrs. Zoge could run this place blindfolded.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “She could.”

“We’ve been doing this for so long, the only real difference between her and me is I’ve got the degree.”

“Mhm,” I replied.  “Same with me and Tracy.”

“If they can’t get a sub in time, they’ll probably just mash mine and Miss Starke’s class together.”

No shudder overcame me.  The thought of my students seeing me as a baby again didn’t bother me like it had.  Tomorrow I wouldn’t be a baby. They already weren’t my students anymore.   “I could see that.  But they’ll get a sub. Most people think this is the easiest job in the school.”

“Yeah,” Beouf agreed again. “They do.”

“It isn’t.”  I offered. “I don’t think that.”

“I know you don’t, bud. I know you don’t.”

There was an aura of awkward falseness around the whole conversation.  It was like trying to go back to normal after a big fight.  Even if apologies were exchanged, blood was still hot and emotions hadn’t been fully processed.  The weird thing is that neither of us were fighting.  Both of us were going through the motions, while simultaneously thinking of more important things.

For once I didn’t have a clue.

The afternoon had objectively been a shitshow. Both Mandy and Chaz had to be picked up early.  Mandy had stayed mute and Chaz had been inconsolable and incoherent.  The story that had been stuck to was that they had been sick. We were still allowed to play the rest of the day, barely structured.

I hadn’t felt a need to look too deeply into things. The problems of a world I wouldn’t be in come the dawn weren’t mine.  I just fantasized about going underground like some sort of rebel, making a dangerous and covert trek until I finally got to some place resembling home safe and sound.  

The dread of having to look Bert Braun in the eye and tell him I had no idea where his daughter was would come in time; that was certain. But on the immediate horizon was the thrill of escape.

I held out my empty bottle. “More coffee?”

“Careful,” Beouf warned me, a smile creeping up her face. “drink too much at once and you’ll be leaking.”

“Not like it’ll be my problem,” I joked. I chuckled at my own cleverness.

Beouf gently took the empty bottle out of my hands, but did not rise from her seat.  “Then I’m cutting you off for your Mommy’s sake.”

I stuck out my tongue.

She copied me.

“Meanie.”

“Brat.”

We both laughed in earnest, whatever tension we were carrying lifted for the moment.  It wasn’t gone, but we were in the eye of the storm. Calm if not peace.  I really would miss these talks we had.

Aw, what the hell?

I sat up straight and folded my hands. “So what’s bothering you, Mel?” I asked in my best ‘co-worker’ voice.

“Nothing,” she lied.
“You sure?” I said. “Because all day you’ve looked like I do when a lesson just backfires and I’m trying to figure out what went wrong.” My oldest friend shifted in her chair, uncomfortably.  “That or you need to poop. Do you need to poop, Mel?”

Beouf didn’t laugh at my joke.  Whatever this was was really eating at her.  

“Come on,” I coaxed. “Talk to me.  What happened? What was wrong with Mandy and Chaz?”

I counted down in my head from ten and watched Beouf as her face twitched and her head fidgeted.  She was wrestling with something inside herself.  Her mouth opened and closed, searching for the right words.  “The Unification letters started coming back.”

“Letters?” My head lulled to the right.

“The letters we wrote before Unification Break?” she reminded me. “To your first families?”

My everything pricked up. My periphery narrowed into tunnel vision. I was no longer going through the motions or following a script. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Beouf said. “They’re bad.”

“How bad?”

“Real bad.”  Beouf looked like she might start crying. “I pulled Chaz and Mandy aside so that I could let them down easy.”

“They didn’t take it well.”  It wasn’t a condemnation. Nor was it a question.

“Poor things,” Beouf sniffed. “I’m worried how I’m gonna tell the others.”

My hips scooted up to the edge of my seat. “Others?”

Beouf’s voice was just above a stage whisper. “I wanted to do something nice. I wanted to listen to my kids.” She took her glasses off and laid them down in front of her the way a defeated knight might lay down his weapons. “I wanted to help you connect and process. Get some closure or something….”

Not a word of that registered with me. “Did anything come for me?”

Beouf didn’t reply. It didn’t matter. Her silence and the struggle playing out on her face was enough confirmation.

“Can I see them?” I asked. “Please?”

“You’re not going to like it,” Melony said.

“Let me be the judge of that.”

The Amazon put her glasses back on and rose up from her chair, more weighted down than I could.  She opened her desk drawer and took out two envelopes. One old, and one new.  She sat back down and slid them both across to me.

I’d been allowed to write two letters, one to my parents, and one to my in-laws.  With the exception of who was addressed at the top- one to ‘Burt and Ida’ the other to ‘Mother and Father’- they had both been identical.  I’d written:

“I’m writing this to tell you that I’ve been Adopted.  I know I won’t get to see you this year, but with Unification coming up, I’d hoped to be able to make contact and send you my love. I miss you terribly, and I am still very much who I’ve always been. How are you? I’d love to know that everyone back home is safe.  A friend of mine has agreed to send this letter on my behalf.  It’s admittedly awkward, but not dangerous. Maybe we could start a kind of correspondence?

Love,
Clark G.”

I opened the unfamiliar envelope.  It gave no return address, and Oakshire’s address had been machine printed so as not to give away any handwriting.  Inside, typed on printer paper were the words:

“Dear baby boy,

My wife and I are well aware of the fate that has befallen our son. The courts notified us as soon as your caregiver filed a 2235 upon Adoption to officially end his legal existence. We sympathize with your current circumstances, but as we have never officially met, we have neither condolences to express nor congratulations to offer, though we are sure you are very well taken care of and as happy as any baby can possibly be.

We have written this to you as a courtesy and do not wish for further correspondence with you at this time. Please allow my wife and I the privacy we request to grieve.  If you are having trouble comprehending any of this, we suggest you ask your Mommy or Daddy to explain it to you in language you can understand.

Sincerely,
Ward and Debra Gibson.”

I felt completely numb inside. No feeling. No shock. No anger. No sadness. If I felt anything, it was confusion.  Did my own parents just tell me that I was dead to them? I think they did.

I took a look at the other envelope. It was the same one that had been mailed out to Cassie’s folks.  It hadn’t even been opened.  Scrawled over the top in dark black marker was “RETURN TO SENDER”.  

They hadn’t even opened it.  I looked at the front again and again.  Had I misprinted something?  Did I get the address wrong?  No. Of course not. I was sure of it.  Why didn’t anybody open it?

I was escaping tonight. My master plan was falling into place. I was going to reclaim my old life. I was going to be an adult.  I was going to escape. I had been certain of it.  Absolutely certain.  Death and Taxes certain.

If I got away, now.  Where would I go?  Who would take me in? Would anyone from my old life want to see me, or was I Persona Non Grata with or without these baby clothes?

Who did everybody think I was, now?

What would I do after escaping?

Where would I go?

When would I be able to stop running?

Why was I suddenly persona non grata to my own flesh and blood?

How would I survive all by myself?

“Clark?” Beouf reached over and placed her hands over mine. “Are you there? How are you feeling, buddy?”

The back door opened. In walked Janet, unaware of everything that had just happened. “Hey, hey!” she chirped. “I’m all done for the day. All we need to do is swing by the house and get your big boy outfit and the stroller. Then we can get a quick bite to eat, go to the community center early and you can show everybody what a good driver you are!”   She put her hand on the back of my shoulder. She missed Beouf’s worried, pensive looks.  “Ready to go, Clark?”

“Clark?” Beouf repeated. “Mommy’s here. Are you ready to go?”

I sat there frozen, teetering over the abyss. One false move would send me over the edge. “I don’t know.”