Chapter 147: An End To A.L.L. things

Beouf shuffled my overalls back onto my body. “Gotta get your Mommy to modify these,” she chuckled. “Make it easier on all of us.”

“Yeah,” I sighed. “I guess.” I wasn’t pouting. I wasn’t raging. I wasn’t crying or having some kind of emotional breakdown. There was no despair. I just felt empty inside. Drained even.

It was darkly funny in a cosmic sort of way that I’d inadvertently played a hand in my own Adoption. It was still more of an inside joke, however, and it wouldn’t be nearly as funny if I tried to explain it. The giggles were completely out of my system by the time Beouf toted me back to her classroom. Only nothing came in to fill the void left once I giggled myself out.

“Maybe it’ll be a Solstice present,” Beouf said. “Some custom sewing.”

I didn’t know if she was hinting at or fishing for a gift to get me, or if she was just making small talk. It took all of my willpower not to stare at the diaper pail. I almost heard the muffled screams of office supplies as my latest balled up leavings were shoved down on top of them.

“Maybe.” I sat down and dangled my legs over the side of the changing table. “Down, please.”

Beouf helped me to the floor and I walked out of the bathroom. I didn’t want to be seen on Beouf’s hip if I could help it. Not by Tracy. My old assistant was waiting in Beouf’s seat at her kidney table.

“Hey, Boss.” She waved to me casually. A yawn squeaked out of her mid wave. “Oh. Sorry.”

Beouf washed her hands and joined us. “Tag out?”

“Tag out,” Tracy nodded.

Beouf started for the door. “Okay. Thanks!”

“No problem!”

“One of these days, Tracy,” the Amazon said, “I’m gonna teach you how to change a diaper.”

“Hard pass.”

“Wuss.”

“Whatever.”

Beouf cackled and headed out the door as if she’d just achieved some sort of victory, moral or otherwise.

I shrugged and took my usual spot at the table, sans my bottle of decaf. Tracy and I sat together in silence for what felt like a full minute, both of us just staring at the door, imagining that Beouf was still there.

It was my Tweener friend who finally broke the silence. “She doesn’t get it.”

“She totally doesn’t get it,” I agreed.

“It would be weird,” she said, referencing the idea of her changing my diaper for me.

“Way too weird,” I agreed again. That was one promise that she had still held up over time.

“Is it weird to her?” Tracy asked.

I shook my head. “Sadly no.”

“Is it weird to you?”

“Every time I think about it”

“I just don’t get it.”

“Me neither.”

“Amazons.”

“Typical.”

“Heh.”

“Chkkkkkkk”

“Huh huh.”

“Chkkkkkkkkkkk”

“Ha! Ha! Ha! Haaaa!”

“Chkkkkkkeeeee heeeee!”

“PPPWAA HAAAA! HAAAA! HAAA! HAAA!”

“HEEEEEE! HEEEEEEEE! HEEEEEEEE!”

“HAA HAAA!”

“HEE HEEE!”

“Ho ho.”

“Heeeeee.”

“Ohhhh.”

“Ohhhh.”

“Hhhhh”

“Hhhhh”

We slumped over on the table, spent from laughter, our bodies limp like deflated balloons. Evidently not all of the giggles had gotten out of me. Compared to earlier, though, this laughter was a relief. Laughing by myself was draining. Laughing with a friend was rejuvenating.

“How ya been, Boss?” Tracy asked when we were done panting laughter.

My heart fluttered at hearing my old pet name. Tracy was just humoring me, though. I had to blink slowly, swallow, and take a deep breath all at once to chase away that sour thought. “I’ve been pretty shit,” I admitted.

She exhaled and closed her eyes. “I can imagine.”

I doubted it, but that wasn’t her fault. “Yeah?”

“Is it the faculty party? You’re missing out right now and stuff is hitting home?”

I mouthed the words ‘faculty party’ as if they were alien to me. “To be honest?” I told her, “I completely forgot it was today. I just thought you were watching me for one of Brollish’s random meetings.”

Tracy’s eyebrows shot up in mild surprise. “Oh,” she said. “What’s bothering you, then?”

“Those things are boring, anyway,” I shrugged off the question. ”It’s just a faculty meeting with cheap dessert and stupid games. Complete waste of time. You know?”

My assistant wasn’t thrown off the scent. “What’s bothering you?” she repeated.

“If anybody told me it was today,” I went on, “I completely ignored and forgot it. That’s how little I care about it. Missing that is a silver lining to….” I gestured to myself, “...this.”

“Clark,” Tracy said, firmly. Her head was still planted sideways on the desk. “Don’t make me say it again.”

I sat up, groaned, and flung my arms and head back in my chair. “I’m trying to get gifts for people, and I don’t want it to be just stupid refrigerator art or something.”

“Oh, wow,” Tracy said. “Yeah. I can see how that’d be a problem.” Half a moment passed. “Can I get anything for you? I’m guessing toys would be a bad idea.”

“No toys,” I moaned. “Please, no toys. What about you?”

“If I think of something specific I’ll let you know.”

“Same,” I said. “Right now I’ve only got Beouf and it’s not going well.”

“Why?”

I fell forward like a scarecrow that had just lost its back support. “Because my classmates are assholes and I turned them into assholes and I’m an asshole and I’m trying to get them to be less of a bunch of assholes but I just keep turning into an even bigger asshole and I’ve been an asshole all along and maybe all this is some kind of karmic punishment.”

When I pushed myself back upright, Tracy was sitting up as well. “You’re not an asshole.”

My left eyebrow shot up. “Really?” I asked sarcastically. “Me? Not an asshole? Really? You sure about that?”

“Okay,” Tracy rephrased, choosing her words slowly and carefully, “you can be an asshole. You’ve been an asshole before. But being an asshole is an action, not something you’re born with or that you can’t get rid of.”

“I’m still an asshole.”

“So stop being an asshole.”

“I can’t,” I whined.

“Why not?”

“It’s complicated.”

“We’ve got time.”

So I caught her up. She wasn’t surprised about the pep talks I’d given to Littles in time out over the years (She’d been in close proximity for enough of them). She held her tongue and nodded respectfully when I told her how Beouf’s diaper count being off had been used as evidence that I’d been stealing in an effort to hide growing Maturosis based incontinence. Her brow knitted in consternation when I explained to her the concept of ‘Chump Dumping’, and how I had inspired it. But she continued nodding when I looped it all in with me trying to reduce behavior problems as a kind of long term gift to Beouf.

“Okay. Yeah,” Tracy agreed. “That is pretty shitty.”

I hung my head. “And I’m the asshole that caused it all.”

Tracy smacked the table with the flat of her hand and barked out even more laughter. “Really, Clark? Really? You do know that Annie, Billy, and Chaz were assholes before you talked to any of them, right?”

I cocked my head. “How do you know?”

“Because,” Tracy snorted, “Zoge and Beouf gossip about their students all the time. Especially Zoge.” I must have made some sort of face. “Seriously. TA’s gossip all the time. What do you think we do on break? We vent. Same as teachers.”

“Yeah,” I said, “But Zoge?” Imagining her pecking away and venting at our behavior the way that Beouf and I would groan about our problems seemed out of character for her.

“You’d be surprised,” Tracy said. “She goes by rank, not height.” Support staff at Oakshire Elementary was much more mixed than the teaching staff, and Tweeners were in the majority of those departments. “Anyways, yeah,” she continued, “Did you tell Annie, Billy, or Chaz to steal diapers?”

“No,” I said. “Not specifically.”

“Hinted at?” she needled me. “Implied? Intended result?”

“No,” I growled, already seeing where this was going.

“And where did you have these talks with them?”

“Our room,” I grunted.

“And why were they in our room?”

“Because they were pissing Beouf off so bad that she wanted to bite their heads off,” I droned.

“Sounds like Annie, Billy, and Chaz have always been assholes and would have done something like this, anyways. And Tommy must not have been that great if it was that easy to get him to join in.”

“Yeah…but…” I stalled. I literally had nothing. “Maybe not…?”

“Were the missing diapers something that guaranteed you being Adopted?”

“Yes and no,” I said. “I’d already…had an…” I just couldn’t say ‘accident’ out loud to Tracy.

“Something went wrong,” Tracy helped.

“Something went wrong,” I accepted the phrasing. “And the diapers were tacked on as a charge after the fact.”

“If things had gone wrong and the diapers weren’t missing,” Tracy continued, “Would you have been off the hook?”

“No.” I sunk down in my chair.

“Will telling Beouf or Janet about this change their minds about y-?”

“Hell no,” I cut her off before she finished the question.

“Then why beat yourself up about it?” Tracy asked.

“Because I still deliberately did some fucked up shit and I want to fix it, now.”

“Maybe you can’t fix it,” Tracy said. “Maybe it’s something you could never fix. Maybe you ddin’t break it. Maybe it doesn’t need fixing.”

“Oh, it definitely needs fixing,” I said. My mittens clunked on my head, nervously brushing my hair. “It’s driving me crazy!” I stopped myself and sat up straighter at the realization. Oh wow. Interacting with them really had been draining me lately.

“Why?” Tracy asked. “Or how? Or why or whatever?”

I rubbed my temples as best as I could, using the heel of my palms. “Imagine having a conversation where no matter what you do, you’re wrong unless you can convince the mob that someone else is worse.”

“So any kind of staff review or observation meeting,” Tracy said. “Got it.”

“Imagine that. Every single day.”

“Middle school.”

“Yup.”

Tracy played with her lip. “Got any examples?”

“Let’s say Billy is talking smack and I tell on him,” I explained. “Then I’m either a sellout or I’m a big baby.”

Tracy folded her arms and leaned back in her chair. “Because you’re either snitching on him to hurt him, or you’re genuinely acting like a toddler.”

“Yup,” I said. “But if I don’t stop him, I’m also a baby because I’m oblivious or too scared.”

“And if you escalate or help him do something more than smack talk?”

I winked up at the Tweener. She was getting it. “Then I’m clearly an adult Little who is messing with the fucked up system.”

“So if it’s something he likes,” Tracy said, “It’s mature and a sign of showing that you’re still an adult on the inside. If it’s something he doesn’t like, it’s babyish.”

“It’s not always him,” I confessed. “It’s whomever starts the ball rolling. Could be Chaz, could be anybody. It’s like improv, except the audience is supposed to get hurt on purpose. A lot of times, it’s me. Hence, I’m an asshole.”

“This makes so much sense,” Tracy whispered to herself.

“It’s not just if one likes it or not,” I continued. “You can spin anything into an accusation or attack if you feel like it. Like, if you pooped your pants, you’d be accused of having mush for brains.

Tracy furrowed her brow, not quite getting it. “But if I’m a Little, I’m literally unable to take my diaper off. I’d have to poop my pants at some point.”

“Yeah,” I said, “but if you did it in front of me, that’d make you a baby because just messing yourself in the middle of the floor is something a baby does.”

“Okay…” Tracy replied. “Then I got behind a garbage can or do it in a corner or something.”

“Ha!” I smirked. “Just like a toddler who isn’t ready for potty training. And why are you talking to me with a load in your pants you loser?”

“I go get changed,” Tracy pointed over to the bathroom. “Immediately.”

“So you’re going to start whining and crying the second your diaper is a tiny bit dirty?”

“I go and play elsewhere.”

“So you’re going to go play…in your own mess?”

“Rrrrraaaaaagh!” We burst out for yet another, albeit shorter, round of laughter. “There’s no winning this, is there?” Tracy asked.

“There literally isn’t,” I said. “No matter what you do, I can make it sound like you’re a baby.”

“Why do y’all care if you’re babies or not?” Tracy asked.

All the grim mirth stopped up inside me. “Excuse me?”

“Shit,” Tracy sneered at herself. “Not what I meant. I get what you’re scared of. I do,” she promised me. “I was threatened with it and about ready to quit, remember? I just mean it like, why do you all tear each other down? You’re all in the same spot, more or less.”

I averted my eyes. “Because it feels better to be at the top of the bottom.”

“‘At least I’m not a crawler’; ‘You drink more bottles than me.’; ‘At least I don’t wet my bed’. That kind of thing?”

My arm moved in a wide lazy arc across the surface of the table, reaching for the bottle that wasn’t there out of pure habit. I didn’t dare ask Tracy if Beouf had left anything for me to drink. “Yeah,” I said. “We’re all failures, but there are degrees of failure.”

“At least I’m not that guy,” she reiterated.

“Yup.”

Tracy rested her hand on her chin and hummed to herself. I stayed quiet inside my own head, reliving all the nasty moments I’d already caused. “So you’ve got a classroom culture,” Tracy said, “where you’re constantly monitoring one another and policing each other to make sure you’re not too babyish.”

“Pretty much.”

“But really,” Tracy went on, “it’s more of a way to kick down, right? ‘You’re a baby!’, ‘No, you’re a baby!’,” her voice went nasally mocking the hypothetical Littles. “That kind of stuff?”

“It’s more complex but…yeah.”

“But it’s not based on anything,” Tracy asked, “right? Like, you decide that someone is babyish, and make it so that whatever they do, is also babyish? If Tommy goes and wrecks things, you could call him babyish for throwing a tantrum, but if Annie takes care of things you could call her a baby because she was deliberately being good and showing restraint, meaning she was into it.”

“You get the gist of it, yeah.” I agreed.

“You know what the funny thing is?” Tracy asked. “That doesn’t sound very mature, does it? Sounds really manipulative.”

“Yeah, yeah,” I sighed. “I know. I’m working on it about myself.”

“You’re just running around and pointing fingers at one another, calling each other ‘baby’ and stuff, and ‘baby’ is this big diss that needs to be addressed right away. Doesn’t seem like something an adult would care about.”

“Yup,” I groaned. “I know.” There was analysis and there was just rubbing it in my face.

“Do you know what that makes you look like?” she asked me. “What you and the others are acting like by doing that?”

I grit my teeth and took a deep breath. “Babies. Right? It makes us look like babies. Or toddlers? Preschoolers at most?”

“Pfffft!” Tracy went. “No, stupid! It makes you look like a bunch of Amazons! You’re treating each other exactly the way they treat you!”

******************************************************************************************************

“Clark?” A voice called out for me the next day on the playground. “Clark?”

“Clark?”

“Claaaaaark?”

“Gibson?” Billy added to the chorus.

I wasn’t that hard to find. I was at the top of the slide on the playground. Easily reachable and approachable. My cohorts just kept calling me because they were too lazy to walk over to me from the tree, and I was ignoring them. I’d climb the ladder, take a seat, enjoy the view such as it was, and then rocket down the slide into mulch. Then I’d pick myself up, dust myself off, hope that no splinters or flakes of mulch ended up in the back of my pants, and I’d march back round to the ladder.

On lap number seventeen, I spied Annie toddling over to Beouf and Zoge’s bench. She wasn’t subtle when she pointed to me on lap eighteen. I couldn’t make out the whole of the exchange, but by lap twenty-two Beouf was shaking her head and shooing Annie away. Whatever Annie was selling about me, Melony wasn’t buying.

Me? I kept on sliding.

Eventually, at about lap thirty-five or so, my determination beat the groups’. “Gibson,” Billy called. “Come hang out with us.”

I skidded and crashed for the thirty-sixth time that day. “No thanks.”

“It happened,” Tommy said with too much excitement. “He went Full Native! He’s basically at Ivy’s level. Or Sandra Lynn. Maybe Mandy.”

I picked myself up using Billy’s outstretched hand. “Yup,” I said, dismissively. “Pretty much. Gah-gah-goo-goo. I’m a baby, now.”

“Come on, Clark,” Chaz said whilst I circled round and climbed the ladder.. “What are you doing?”

“Literally?” I said once I’d reached the top. “I’m playing on the slide, Chaz. I thought you’d recognize that.”

“I’m not a baby!” Chaz blushed.

I sat down. “I didn’t say you were. I’m just telling you what I’m doing.” I demonstrated for him.

“Yeah, but…why?”

I sat up. This time I didn’t grab Billy’s offered hand. “Because I’m bored, guys. Yesterday was fun, but I think I’m done. New game.”

“New? Game?” Tommy looked gobsmacked. “You think this is a game?”

“No disrespect,” I said. “But yes. Fundamentally yes.” I circled round. Annie had taken a spot at the top of the slide, blocking me from going up. “And it’s been fun, guys. But I’m bored now.”

I started to walk away. The four of them followed. “So you’re just giving up?” Annie called after me. “Is that it?”

I crawled into the crawl tunnel. “I’m saying I’m bored and I want to try something different,” My voice echoed out. “You guys can keep doing whatever you want, but I’m not contributing.”

“You gonna snitch?” Billy asked, his head poking out at the other end at a sideways angle.

I crawled out the tunnel and stood up. “Hmmm,” I said. “Yeah. That could be fun.”

“Fun?” Chaz screeched out after me. I slowed down so he could keep up with my journey towards the swingset. “If we were doing something and you found out about it, you’d tell on us and that would be fun?”

Over at the swings, I gave Ivy a high-five. Every Little sized swing on our playground required help getting in and out of, making it more of a landmark than a piece of playground equipment. Ivy had been lazily dangling from the planted posts, hanging with one arm while using the other to scrape at the ground. “Hi, Clark.”

“Hi, Ivy.” To the group following me, I said. “Yeah, that could be fun. Make it so you guys have to be extra careful with your plans.” They followed me around as I made a figure eight using the swings as turn posts.

“So you’re a Helper,” Billy spat. Ivy had joined the procession while we paraded away. I hopped on a spring pony and started bobbing back and forth.

“Or a big baby,” Tommy said. “Full Native.”

I just kept bob bob bobbing along without consideration for how I appeared. “Yeah. Maybe. Or maybe I’m just bored and want to do something different.” I dismounted and started doing laps slowly around the big tree. Shauna and Mandy hopped off their spring ponies and joined us.

“Look,” I said. “You guys do you. I’m just tired of spending every afternoon here doing our best to try and embarrass each other in between bouts of figuring out ways to mess with the Grown-Ups. If that brings you joy, I won’t judge you for it, but I’m tired and bored.”

Jessie and Shauna had gathered round while we were doing laps around the tree. It was practically a caucus race out of Alice in Wunderland.

“So what are you saying?” Chaz asked. I wasn’t sure if he was annoyed or anxious. Both?
Among the A.L.L. Chaz was my most faithful disciple; my truest believer. I wanted to let him down gently.

I stopped walking, causing the assembled Littles to pool and puddle up around me. “I’m saying that I feel like playing on the playground instead of hiding behind a tree and talking.”

“Forever?” It was Ivy who asked. She looked like she didn’t know whether to celebrate or mourn the end of an era.

I shrugged. “Maybe. I just feel like doing something else. No hard feelings.”

“But…,” Chaz stammered, “but…”

“You can totally hang with me. If you get any fun ideas, let me know and maybe I’ll play.”

“But…but…”

“But for now, I’m done. New game”

“They got you,” Chaz snarled like an angry dog. “They finally broke you.”

“Maybe,” I agreed. “But that doesn’t stop you from doing it if you want.” A sting rattled my lower earlobe. “Or that,” I remarked without flinching. “But if you think I’m a Helper or something it might not be a great idea to antagonize me like that,” I said in a low menacing voice. “Mrs. Beouf literally likes me best.”

No one argued with that.

“You can’t stop,” Billy begged.

I walked back to the slide. “Maybe I won’t,” I said. “Not forever. I just want to do something different for now.” Stringing along an impulsive Little boy by saying ‘maybe’ instead of a hard ‘never’, it was the most Grown-Up thing I’d done in a while.

“Like what?” Annie asked.

I climbed up to the top of the slide. “Like this.”

“So?” Tommy asked, what “What do we play next?”

“I don’t know,” I said, laying flat on my back in the dirt and wood chips. “Is there anything we can do with the swings that isn’t us sitting there like a lump while an Amazon pushes us?

“Could we push each other?” Jessie asked.

“Sounds tiring.”

“Could Ivy push?”

“I bet I could push longer than Ivy without getting tired.”

And the conversation drifted off and mutated from there.

“Thank you for the present,” Beouf told me not even an hour later.

“What present?” I asked before it clicked. “Oh. You’re welcome. I don’t think I did anything. It probably won’t last.” I took a swing from my bottle to ease the tension.

“We’ll see,” Beouf tilted back her own mug. “We’ll see. Either way, I’m proud of you for trying.”

The thing of it was that I wasn’t doing it for Melony. That whole ordeal hadn’t been with her in mind. The conversation with Tracy the day before had continued and weaved in and out of itself as conversations with dear friends tend to do; but something stuck with me when the Tweener said that my peers and I were behaving like Amazons.

I couldn’t keep doing this same old shit of reading the worst into others and then using it as justification for treating them poorly. I had to stop putting energy into that mindset and those kinds of relationships; at least if I wanted to be able to live with myself.

I’d been trying to escape long before my glorious flaming trainwreck of a runaway attempt went off with the worst hitch ever. In some ways, I was still running, just not physically. That week just before Winter Break, I finally managed to stop.