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“Sweetie… Faeries aren’t real.”
Something in Andromeda’s eyes cracks. Putting the cookie back, she stuffs the container into the shelf, smudges a tear off her cheek, and murmurs, “I know humans don’t believe in things as easily as the fae do…but I also thought you were supposed to be different.” Sniffling, she runs back up to the school building before I can respond.
It takes me a minute to gather enough sanity to drag myself inside to check on her, but when I have, she’s already gone.
Chapter 17
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Hugs are science, dang it.
Zahra, deadpan and arms crossed, slips from the top to the bottom of one of the three slides that spill off the new playground. The second after her boots hit the wood chips, she states, “Zahra has found joy.”
I sigh from where I’m sitting precariously on the rail of the pirate ship, legs tossed over the side. The thing is some ten feet off the ground. It has a captain’s quarters. With a captain’s desk. And a carved ocean map—complete with sea monsters. And, for the love of all things good in the world, there’s a real sextant beside a telescope and compass on top of it.
The kids today went utterly ballistic when they saw their new playground.
Riley’s scream is still shattering the sound barrier.
“The fae know what they’re doing,” Zahra notes as she gets a cookie from a container at the Taco Bell window. The food really needs to go inside the kitchen. Shame I can’t move.
Gazing out at the roof of the school, and a gutter line packed with so many leaves it’s criminal, I say, “Hm…?”
“They made it all adult-sized. They are smart.”
“Right.” I’m glad she’s acting normal today. I hope she’s okay on the inside, too. Sometimes, she puts on such a tough exterior, it’s hard for me to tell if she needs help. And, if you try to ask, you get some comment about how it’s not as bad as something that happened in her childhood.
Like, I don’t know, that time her brother locked her in a closet for a few days because she offended him. No food. No water.
Sometimes, I want to murder people.
“Come down here and order some cookies,” Zahra says.
I drag my attention toward her and feel as though I need to sew an assortment of Taco Bell uniforms. Multiple sizes. Embroidered purple and white bells with themed quotes. Aprons, too. Because beside the little food prep area tucked into the back of the drive through, there’s an empty uniform closet. And I really, really need to get those cookies brought inside…
Swinging my legs back onto the deck, I take a slide off the pirate ship and make my way to the window.
Zahra beams. “Welcome to Girl Scout Cookies ’R’ Us. What can I get started for you?”
“Whatever has chocolate.”
Zahra meanders through the tubs and places four different cookies on one of the napkins I brought out earlier in a meager effort to keep some level of sanitation here. There is, after all, a carved sanitation rating with a comical 100 just to the left of the window.
It is my personal belief that the person who made it has either never met a child or accidentally added an extra zero.
Zahra presents the cookies with a blinding smile. “That will be five million dollars. I accept card, but there’s a three dollar discount for cash.”
I glance at the wooden register drawer, computer, and card reader. It’s not real, like the freaking telescope and sextant, but the drawer does have compartments when you pull it out, and childhood imagination can go such a long way. “I left my card and cash at home.”
Zahra pouts one hazard-green lip. “Oh no. In that case, you can always do the dishes for seventy million years.”
“Fast food doesn’t have dishes.”
Zahra blinks, thinks, huhs. “Well, then I guess it’s free.”
I take a cookie and nibble, realizing about a full school day and seven seconds too late that I probably one thousand percent should not have allowed the kids to have any cookies that potentially came from cult members. In a tragic turn of mental illness, this realization doesn’t stop me from my munching.
If we go down, at least we’ll go down together.
