AllFreeNovel
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In the living room, my father laughs at the Hallmark Christmas movie he’s watching. I swear they come earlier and earlier each year. And Dad loves them more than Mom, who is probably in their bedroom reading inside a bubble created by the noise-canceling headphones I got her for her birthday last year.
Neither of them know what’s going on with Andromeda.
Dad gets too upset when I suggest that any of my littles aren’t living perfectly happy lives, and I can’t exactly have him hunting down the parents himself.
My realm of control is so limited. Sometimes, the only thing I can do is keep a secret stash of extra lunch foods, or offer to wash clothes while my kids wear something I picked up at the local church thrift store in the meantime. Sometimes, I have to sit and watch and know…it’s all out of my control.
Zahra knows that the system isn’t built to help kids. If it were, the kids who need help would be too much of a burden on the government. Even parents like hers could pull themselves together long enough to avoid failing grades when CPS appeared on her doorstep. Even parents like hers, who blamed and beat their kids after the doors closed behind the authorities, knew how to pretend well enough to avoid penalty.
The systems are broken, and we can only do so much the right way if they fail us.
I sit on the foot of my peach-colored comforter, complete with a hundred peaches I embroidered myself all over the fabric. In another second, I’m on my feet again. Pacing some more.
Logic demands I recognize my own helplessness.
Logic demands I paint a smile on and do the feeble amount I can—legally and safely—because there will be another Andromeda in my future. And I can only offer that little girl extra food or a change of clothes if I’m not brutally murdered by a giant man who the authorities can’t find.
I whisper a swear. Sit down again. Pop back up and pace some more.
My mind is racing.
I love Zahra, really. I adore her, actually. But the woman has a way about her that demands respect and attention. Maybe it’s the hair. Or the bold makeup. Or the leather. Or the sheer capable disposition that compels anyone she talks with to share their deepest, darkest secrets.
I…do not have any of that.
For starters, even though we’re the same height, I am many pounds lighter, several tones brighter, and severely allergic to stepping on toes.
She’d stomp and grind if the situation called for it. Merciless.
Although I am certain we both would do anything for even the nastiest of our students, she would get away with murder.
I’d be caught before I so much as get over a state border with Andromeda squashed in my carry-on.
The reason I’m wrestling with myself right now is because Zahra sincerely believes what she told me earlier.
We’ve talked about her voices before. We’ve deep dived into the horrors she’s heard.
Zahra is an enigma of brutal honesty and pathological lies.
She’ll stare you dead in the eye and tell you the grass is hot pink just as easily as she looked me in the eye during her school board interview seven years ago and told us about her auditory hallucination condition.
She loves kids.
Because of some stuff that happened to her when she was a kid, she can’t have children.
Zahra does not bend when it comes to child safety.
She thinks Andromeda is safe.
Because Andromeda is a faerie.
And her father is a faerie.
And—
“I’m going out!” I call through the small house as I grab my purse and march from my room. Mom doesn’t hear me, because I got her the good noise-canceling headphones. Dad is too lost in his movie to bother with more than, “Stay safe, Kasserole! Message if you’ll be out past midnight!”
I have Andromeda’s address plugged into my phone GPS before I make it to my blue Kia Soul. She’s minutes from me, minutes from the school. Which, somehow, makes the fact no one bothers to take her the short distance worse. Two minutes without an adult could be the end for a little girl, but four minutes isn’t much time to spend on making sure it isn’t.
