Chapter 139: Break Through

“No,” I hissed to Chaz, “You don’t get it. Something is going down in the Nap Room.”

Chaz cocked an eyebrow and cast a careful look at the Amazons loading up the other Littles into our communal highchairs. I was still being toted around everywhere and Zoge had followed Beouf’s lead in loading us up first while the walkers waited patiently on their leashes.

The cafeteria was still buzzing with activity with kids finishing their breakfasts and being shooed off to class. The preschoolers were going through the breakfast line and being lead by a very exuberant Tracy and a chipper Jessica, providing more than enough sound cover.

“Like what?” Chaz asked, leaning over to the side as far as his seat would let him.

I held my tongue long enough for Beouf to plop Billy down on the other side of me. “I think they’re upgrading the cribs…”

Chaz’s nostrils flared. “Why?”

A simple question with a complicated answer. One that couldn’t be easily summarized with giant prying ears about.

The weekend had been a dreary quiet kind of hell. Janet had spent literal hours calling and texting people, asking for favors to help locate Cassie. She’d contacted every single member of the local Little Voices and joined every single online Little parenting group, and a dozen or so forums just to try and find leads.

She’d done all of it in front of me with me on her lap, and all conversations on speaker so that I could hear both ends of the conversation. If it was an act for my benefit, it was an elaborate one with no flaws in the execution. She never once gave away that she was looking for my wife; just an ‘old playmate’ who had also been showing signs of Maturosis around the same time as my diagnosis, and she thought it’d be neat if we could arrange a playdate given our similar backgrounds.

Obviously, there had been no leads. No Little fitting Cassie’s description stuck out in any of the so-called parents’ minds. But daycares, like classrooms, could seem chaotic and random to a parent. So many parents have eyes for only their child so that playmates become random background extras everyday at dropoff and pickup. Unless Cassie had formed something resembling a friendship with the mindfucked Littles -an unlikely prospect- she was unlikely to come up.

Salons were still a factor too. Cassie might not even look like Cassie anymore. So what use was giving a physical descriptor to search for? She might not even answer to her old name by now. I was legally Clark Grange; me being Clark was a courtesy. If I’d gotten a different Mommy I could have been Chauncey Thaddeus Fauntleroy and no clerk would have batted an eye; and I would have been spanked, drugged, hypnotized, or otherwise mindfucked until baby Chauncey was all that was left.

The whole exercise was like needing an organ transplant and cold calling hoping for leads on a donor. No affirmatives, just a lot of ‘wait and see’. It had only been a weekend, and every single Amazon promised up and down that they’d keep their eyes peeled for a Little matching my wife’s description but it all felt hollow. Thoughts and prayers turned to tots and pears.

Janet’s promise to take me to different daycares around the county this week was cold comfort everytime I looked at my hands. They were still in restrictive mittens. I was still being carried from place to place and left in my crib when unsupervised. My deep, conflicted, heart-felt confession via Lion hadn’t been nearly as successful in the long term. I’d gotten the help I wanted, but not the freedom I needed.

Even in the present, I still had the damn contraptions on. My fingers only knew liberation during bathtime. That’s right, I’d been demoted back to baths. Janet said she was just on her period and didn’t feel comfortable carrying me naked in the shower while she was bleeding, but even that felt like a justification to create some more distance between the two of us.

The long frog overalls were slightly better than a onesie, justified by the morning chill, but were also less stealthy after a fashion. The more room below the waist I had, the more my diaper crinkled. There was a reason Littles didn’t play Red Light, Green Light. The thick long sleeved rompers Janet was starting to hang up in my closet were a sign that the best and worst of both worlds was soon to be inflicted on me.

So why was Beouf altering the cribs in her nap room? Probably me. There’d never been an escape under her watch and my recent ‘success’ with the amateurs at Little Voices had likely lit a fire under her ass.

“It’s complicated,” I said.

Chaz looked confused. “Huh? No, I mean why do you think something’s different with the nap room?”

“Hey Chaz,” Billy yelled over me. “Did I tell ya that Clark drank his Mommy’s milk on Friday?”

My face flushed. The brief passage of time had done nothing to dull Billy’s memory. “So you uh…um…don’t?” I stammered out.

“Not at school,” Billy grinned.

In his own way, Chaz had my back. “Jealous, Billy?”

A fresh blush painted itself across Billy’s cheeks.. “Huh? No!”

“You sure?” Chaz teased. “I’ve seen your Mommy. You saying you wouldn’t want to suck on Ms. Grange’s big…bottle?” My lips chapped and dried, forming a tight cement seal. This was not the kind of support I’d needed.

“Yeah…” Billy tried to say, “but…she’s…uh…Clark’s Mommy is…I mean…”

“Go on,” Annie chimed in from the other side of the table. “What about Clark’s Mommy?” Her eyes were lightning and her grin was pure malice. Billy was digging himself deeper with every syllable.

“Eat up, kids.” Beouf interrupted before anyone dug themselves deeper. “Gotta keep your energy up. We’ve got a lot to do today.” I opened my mouth, feeling my lips separate like tearing off a bandaid.

The conversation about the Nap Room went silent. Beouf had me in the middle of the semicircle so her attention was always partially on me, Billy was too embarrassed to keep yapping, Annie and Chaz were too clever and Tommy had become a more subtle kind of brat. But I’d also kept an eye on Beouf. Between spoonfuls of oatmeal she kept glancing at her watch and jerking her head towards Zoge’s table. This was more than the practiced vigilance of a teacher monitoring her students; this was Beouf stepping out of her comfort zone.

She was quietly bracing herself, practicing lines in her head, measuring attitudes and temperaments, anticipating unforeseen obstacles in stuff. The fact that she was leaning into phrases like ‘We’ve got a lot to do today’ instead of careful and cautious warnings was a sign of her picking and choosing battles in preparation of larger ones ahead.

Not that I needed any of that to know that something was going down in the Nap Room in particular. The whole crew had been waiting for me and Janet outside the front door; Beouf, Jessica, and Tracy still huffing and puffing, slightly glistening and reeking of freshly applied deodorant and baby powder; and with school T-shirts that were too neatly pressed and unwrinkled to have been worn for longer than five minutes.

If that weren’t a giveaway the stacks of steel frames, wooden crib bars, and mattresses leaning up against the outside walls was a dead giveaway. The Nap Room no longer had cribs in it. But what had filled that void?

My mind raced with possibilities. Cages so we couldn’t climb out? A giant television with hypnotic cartoons playing on loop to ensure compliance ? Motion sensors in place of the usual monitor so that movement was impossible to go unnoticed? Strap in swinging cradles ensuring even less mobility than a standard crib?

None of that made any sense to me. Besides all of that being extremely extravagant and likely unaffordable on a teacher’s salary, it was also hyper impractical. I made it out of Little Voices because of lax supervision, easily created distractions, and normalizing my various eccentricities until they were effectively beyond suspicion until it was too late. If Melony really wanted to contain me in the Nap Room all she really had to do was lock the door and keep an ear on the baby monitor. If she really wanted to go overboard, she or Zoge could literally just park a chair inside, crack a book, and watch us snore.

More than that, all of those treacherous accusations popping into my brain felt wrong; forced even. I was actively looking for reasons to suspect the worst from Melony Beouf and I knew it. A few months ago when I was at my angriest and most bitter I would have given these thoughts legitimate credence and consideration. Now that the shock had worn off, I legitimately knew what I’d told Chaz way back when to be true.

Beouf was crazy; just like every other Amazon in the world. But she also legitimately cared about the Littles in her room as if they were actual children; her children, too. In the same way that my preschoolers had been my kids; we were Beouf’s. The typical form of Little management wouldn’t square with her world view. Such things were fine for tiny adults, but not adults who were also babies.

She’d be more likely to force us to ‘Dancercise’ until we were too tired to escape than anything that would further rob us of our autonomy. So then the question was: ‘What was she doing to the Nap Room?’

“The…hell?!” The question came from Sandra Lynn of all people when we rounded the corner and everyone else saw the evidence of Beouf’s redecorating.

“Are those the cribs?” Mandy asked.

“What happened to the cribs?” Jesse wondered. “Are we not having naps anymore?”

Billy tried to start a chant. “No more naps! No more naps!”

Zoge stealthed behind him and snaked a finger to his lips. “Billy? Shush, my love.”

I craned my neck and locked eyes with Chaz in the back. ‘See what I mean?’ I asked without actually speaking.

Chaz leaned sideways to see better from his stroller and nodded seriously back. Yeah. He did.

“We’ve got something new to try today,” Beouf said kindly but authoritatively, brooking no room for comments or question. “Let’s all get inside and get things sorted out like we usually do, and then I’ll explain everything. Okay?”

She got no argument, even from me.

The door was shut behind us and everyone save me and Chaz were sitting in their Circle Time spots. All eyes were on Beouf, though, waiting for explanation and the mix of novelty and uncertainty that came with a break in routine.

“Everyone here?” Beouf asked. “So…how to begin with this…?” She’d barely started when the door to the Nap Room opened up. Slipping out one at a time were Sosa, Winters, and Skinner. They weren’t as sweaty as Beouf and company had been, but their hair was frazzled, their clothes worn in, their eyes tired, and their breathing was the light huffing and puffing of fatigue and satisfaction. It wasn’t even seven-thirty in the morning and already nearly every Amazon in my orbit already looked ready for bed.

Oh, if only I’d an escape plan…

“It’s ready,” Sosa said, wiping sweat from off her brow.

Beouf straightened. “Are you sure? If you need more time we can do Circle Time and Center.”

“No,” Winters replied. “It’s all good. Everything there is set up and ready to go.”

My skin started burning. I was clutching onto Beouf’s bra strap before I realized what I was grabbing. Beouf was one thing. The therapists were another. The Nap Room might very well be filled with impossible puzzle boxes meant to induce frustration or ringing bells to force euphoria and destroy gross motor coordination. It might be filled with devices that sought to softly condition us by forcing us to use infantile terms in order to access them.

And Beouf would be all but oblivious to it.

“Do you want to stay and watch?” Beouf offered. “See how it works up close and how they react?”

Skinner wagged her head. “No thanks. I’m not even supposed to be here today. I gotta hot foot it across town.”

“And get some water,” Sosa panted. “You kids have no idea how much your teacher loves you.”

Winters held up a single finger. “Maybe film their reactions and send it to us later?” I must have been staring something awful at her. Her eyes shifted over to me on Beouf’s hip and she hastily added, “Assuming their parents are okay with it, of course.”

“Well okay, then,” Beouf clucked. “Thanks again, ladies.”

“Welcome,” Skinner said. “Hope it goes well.”

“Me too.’ Beouf said.

We collectively held our breath until the three Little-breakers trotted out the back and closed the door behind them.

“What was that about?” I demanded. I was on high alert and all of those ridiculous scenarios no longer seemed quite so preposterous anymore.

Beouf bobbed me and worked the hand that had been cupping my bottom, basically groping me while ignoring my question. “Mrs. Zoge,” she said. “You’ve got a better sense of smell than me, are any of the kids poopy?”

“One moment,” Mrs. Zoge said. She put Chaz down on the floor,stuck her head outside the door and took a long, deep breath outside. When she pulled her head back in, she walked into the middle of the semi-circle, closed her eyes and took another deep breath. “Wet? Yes. Messy? I don’t think so. Not yet.”

Beouf looked down at the class. “Is anybody poopy that they know of?” she asked. “I don’t want anyone getting a rash.”

Nervous, embarrassed looks were exchanged across the circle. No hands went up. No fingers were pointed.

“What about leaking? Does anybody need changing because they’re about to leak?” A beat passed. “It’s okay if you are. Did anybody’s Mommy or Daddy forget to change them when they got up this morning? That can feel real yucky too.”

Again. No replies. There was something distinctly unnerving about being asked about the state of our pants. None of us had been trusted with that before.

Shauna’s hand went up to titters and giggles “Why are you asking us?” she said. “Don’t we normally get changed first thing after breakfast no matter what?”

I was front row for witnessing the wry grin appear on Beouf’s mug. “Normally, yes, Shauna. I just didn’t know if anyone wanted to wait long enough to find out what happened to the Nap Room or not.”

Shauna’s hand yanked itself down.

“Does anyone want their diapers changed right now?” Mrs. Zoge asked. “Or can we wait long enough to find out the special surprise Mrs. Beouf has prepared?”

An enthusiastic consensus of ‘I can wait’ was reached. Even if they were dripping through to their good clothes, I honestly don’t think anyone would have said otherwise. Who wanted to be the kill-joy to delay a surprise just so they could have their bottom wiped. Simultaneously, Beouf had just tricked almost a dozen Littles into actively agreeing to staying in wet diapers. Planned or not, malicious or not, this would undoubtedly all be cataloged as ‘data’ and put into all of our future progress reports concerning Developmental Plateaus. I had no room to complain; I kept my mouth shut too. Better to get it over with and cut short the suffering of not knowing.

“Okay,” Beouf chirped. “I’d like it if everyone would follow me over to the reading nook. No pushing or shoving, please”

The reading nook?

Our heads collectively whipped from left to right, away from back door and the Nap Room towards the bookshelf barrier that separated Zoge’s activity station from the place where a Little with bowel control was most likely to poop. The focus on the Nap Room and what secrets lay behind its door had been so intense that no one had noticed the drastic change that had occurred right in the very same room.

The bookshelf where Beouf kept her collection of children’s books and propaganda disguised as children’s books had been moved and pushed to the back wall all the way next to the visual schedules. Where it had been was likely the one remaining intact crib on campus, its sturdy yet aged railing slid down away from Zoge’s table.

Chaz was hoisted up again, and the rest of the crinkling mob toddled towards the much emptier space, yet more cramped space. The bean bags were also noticeably nowhere to be seen, and the carpet had been obscured by something new yet familiar.

“Nap mats,” Mandy said. “They’re nap mats.”

Tommy pointed a finger. “They’ve got extra ones stacked underneath the crib! Blankets too!”

Sandra Lynn gasped. “Stairs! The cribs got stairs we can crawl…I mean climb up!”

Beouf bobbed her head up and down, approvingly. “That’s right. I’ve noticed that most of you don’t like reading. You prefer to lie down and enjoy the quiet. So I turned our reading nook into a quiet corner.

Ivy’s hand went up, but even she was too impulsive to wait to be called on. “Does that mean we’re not allowed to read anymore?” Her lip bouted and her voice quavered in anticipated disappointment.

“Not at all,” Beouf chuckled. “If you want to read, you just have to go take a book off the shelf and come back to the corner with it.” No one else was nearly as relieved. “If you don’t want to read, you can just plop down and chill for a few minutes. Climb in the crib if you want. Lay on the floor. Stare at the ceiling. Whatever. As long as you don’t disturb anyone else, and stay in the corner during your time, you’re doing a-o-k.”

“Is that where we’re going to be taking naps now?” Billy spat.

“Good question, Billy!” Beouf praised. From the look on his face, that was clearly not the response he’d hoped for. “I’ve been thinking, plenty of daycares use nap mats instead of cribs, so why not me? You’re all well behaved enough to find your spots at Circle Time and to follow your schedules, so why shouldn’t I trust you with a smidge more trust?”

“What’s going to happen?” Annie asked.

“Every afternoon, right after lunch, we’ll come inside, same as always. Then Mrs. Zoge and I will check and change anyone who needs it, same as always. But instead of putting you down in those cribs, we’re going to trust you to grab a blanket and a nap mat and pick a spot on the floor to lay down. And I’ll be here watching the whole time.”

Ivy’s jaw dropped and she couldn’t help but coo. “Just like the big kids…!”

Preschoolers. Ivy meant the preschoolers. Minus the diaper checking, my three and four year olds literally did this every afternoon under my watch.

A ripple of excitement made its way through the long suffering Littles. We didn’t even get to choose what crib we were stowed in. Now we were being trusted to choose our own spot to sleep? Such freedom had never been afforded us!

“Why’s there still the crib?” Billy asked, trying his best to be impudent and failing. It barely sounded like a challenge at all.

Our teacher shrugged. “Because they’re comfy,” she said. Then more darkly she said, “and some people might still need a crib to behave themselves. Understood?”

Billy suddenly found his sneakers extremely interesting. “Yes, ma’am.”

“What about the Nap Room?” I prodded.

“Thank you for asking, Clark!” Beouf said. “Let me show you! Everyone, please follow me over to the door to what used to be the Nap Room. Remember, no pushing.”

The not pushing mandate was only gently followed with all of my classmates lightly nudging and jockeying into position behind Beouf. My feet finally touched solid ground for the first time that morning so that Beouf could peek inside. “Hey! No fair!” Tommy whined. “Clark skipped!”

“Perfect,” Beouf clucked in approval. “Just perfect!”

“Miss B!” Tommy said again. “Clark skipped the line!”

“Well he should,” Mrs. Beouf said. “He gave me the idea for it.”

If I couldn’t have balled my fists up inside the mittens I would have. I settled for nervously smoothing my palms over the sides of my thighs as hard as I could. I looked over my shoulder just in time to see Tommy put his flicking finger away and the color drain from his face. Most things that I’d necessitated were unpleasant at best.

“Oh…you can go ahead then, Clark.”

“Thanks,” I said, leaving the ‘asshole’ unspoken.

Beouf opened the door to the Nap Room wide and ushered us inside. What had once been a room meant for fake children to lay down and be quiet in had become an incredibly elaborate playroom.

A small circular table balanced precariously on a single plastic pedestal, its rosy pink plastic tea-set artfully arranged. The stuffed animals once confined to the depths of Beouf’s supply closet had been reintroduced and stacked precisely in a pile so that every cotton filled animal head was accounted for and clearly visible.

Another table featured a deck of cards stacked into a pyramid. A play kitchen was ready to go and fully stocked. Tiny bowling pins and dominoes were set up and readied to be knocked down. An open toy chest appeared to be brimming with hard plastic and tin objects, all already scratched and dented from the looks of it. Blocks both plastic and wooden were stacked up into teetering towers.

The only thing that wasn’t bright rainbow colored or pastel was the beige pillow padding covering the walls. It was a cross between something out of an insane asylum and a carefully curated toy aisle.

“It’s…a playroom?” Annie said.

No. She was wrong. This wasn’t a playroom. It was a display. It was a model of a play room with all of the buzzers, doo-dads, and whistles, and none of the mess or disorganization that comes with actual use. It was a China shop. Now where were the bulls?

“Mel- Mrs. B!” I gasped. “What have you done?”

“Miss Skinner and I were here all weekend putting in the sound dampening panels,” she said with no small amount of pride. “Cleaned out my closet and attic too. And Mrs. Zoge went through I don’t know how many garage sales looking for toys to donate.”

“Fifteen,” Zoge quietly volunteered.

“Fifteen!” Beouf repeated. “Wow!”

“Are we allowed to play in here?” Chaz asked, still in Zoge’s arms.

“If you’re good and feeling good,” Beouf promised. “But that’s not what this place is for.”

Like a master showman she was giving us hints, waiting for us to invest and ask the questions that needed to be asked. I couldn’t take it anymore. I took the bait. “What’s it for?”

Beouf made a sweeping gesture across the room. “Pick something to knock down.”

This was a trap. Every impulse I’d been raised with told me this was a trap. I played it safe, stepped deeper into the space, and knocked over a single domino with the tip of my mitten, creating the whole predictable chain reaction.

“Pffft,” Melony snorted. “Come on, Clark. I know you can do better than that. Kick something!
The bowling pins felt my wrath immediately. It wasn’t a strike, but the pins I’d made contact with got some air and went sailing. Most satisfying. “Atta boy!”

The others puzzled at what kind of game Beouf was playing at. Truth be told, I didn’t know either.

“Ivy,” Beouf instructed. “Tip that tea table over.”

Ivy looked as if she’d just been ordered to commit blasphemy. “But that will make a mess!” Her head lifted, begging her mother for guidance.

“It’s okay, Ivy,” Mrs. Zoge said. “It’s for class.”

Ivy walked timidly up to the table and placed her hands underneath it. “HYAH!” the table went straight up and over, sending plastic pots and cubs clattering. I jumped back out of reflex, afraid to get clocked in the head.

“WHOOOOOOAH!” my peers exclaimed, perhaps for the first time understanding Ivy’s freakish strength.

Not liking being one-upped, I dug the ball of my foot into the floor and dragged it like a bull pawing at the dirt. Puzzlement came over me when my brain finally registered that the carpet had been replaced too with something much more cushiony. Oh this could be good!

“DROP KICK!” I yelled.

I was still out of shape. I’d just had a full breakfast of heavy oatmeal. The floor was spongey. So was my diaper. Running start or not, I didn’t get nearly the height I’d hoped for. I’d been trying to do a running kick and knock the plastic block tower into the wooden one which hopefully would cascade far enough to unsettle the house of cards. I’d hit it far too low which somehow resulted into the entire column falling back on me milliseconds after I landed flat on my back.

I still cackled like a mad scientist and pretended as if I’d meant to do it. “TIIIIIIIIIMBER!”

“I wanna do that!” Chaz proclaimed.

“Me too!” Billy agreed. “Let’s wreck this place!”

Beouf pivoted and placed herself between others and the space I’d barely begun to wreck. “Hold on. Hold on. I need you to see everything this place can do. Then we need to talk. Clark,” she said. “We’re going to go back out in the classroom, and I want you to shout as loud as you can and say as many naughty words as you want.”

Billy looked like I’d just pissed in his cheerios. “Seriously?!” That elicited giggles from everyone else.

“You’ll get your turn if you want it,” Beouf promised.

She shooed the rest of them out of the room, leaving Ivy and myself alone.

“FUCKITY FUCK FUCK FUCK GODDAMN MOTHERFUCKER COCK SUCKER APPLETINI ASS CUNT MUFFIN TWAT WAFFLE SHIT SANDWHICH KEBAB FUCK SHIT DAMN PUSSY!”

There was a pause. Beouf leaned in through the doorway. “You done?”

“One more.”

“Alright.”

I closed my eyes and screamed so my throat rattled. “TYPICAL AMAZON!”

A moment later Beouf’s back appeared in the doorway. “Did anybody hear that?” Only muffled mumblings reached my ears. “Yeah,” Beouf said. “You can hear the gist of it but it’s really hard. isn’t it? Gotta concentrate unless you’re right up in the doorway. I bet if we played some nice music you wouldn’t hear it at all.” She rotated and addressed Ivy. “Your turn, Ivy.”

This time, Ivy didn’t hesitate. She let out a string of syllables that could have been nonsense for all I knew but were recognizable as curse words from the pure rage and vitriol behind them.

Beouf called back into the classroom. “Hana?”
Mrs. Zoge shimmied into the doorway so that Ivy could hear. “I did not hear all of that, but I have no idea where she heard what I did hear.” I hadn’t seen Zoge so quietly mortified since she’d literally bowed to me. Check that: This was worse.

Ivy rattled off a near blubbering apology in Yamatoan. Zoge quietly replied, and it seemed to calm her down; likely reassuring her that she wouldn’t be in trouble and that she was only following instructions.

Something clicked in the remnants of my teacher-brain. This was basic classroom management and psychology. If Ivy was the teacher’s pet and I was the problem child then she was implicitly signaling that anyone could do this and it was neither praise nor punishment. This was something from the highest to most lowly in terms of conduct.

Behind the open door in an unused corner.of the room, I spied something: A plain black disk, wide and thick like a stool with its legs sawed off. It was sleek and polished, something brand new and out of the box. It seemed to hover less than an inch off the floor. I caught a pinkish-red light blink and then go dark.

“What’s that?” I wondered.

Beouf motioned for me and Ivy to join the rest of the class and exit. “Come out and I’ll show you.” We toddled out and Beouf closed the door with a heavy thud behind us. “Shhhh,” she said. “Listen.”

Behind the muted walls, we could just barely hear the sound of sucking, the clanking of metal and the buzzing of electricity. It was like an entire garage had unpacked itself behind that door and was going to town chopping up a stolen car to bits. Amazon tech, I realized. Possibly the same sort of stuff in Sosa’s puzzle cubes and Winters’ obstacle courses.

“Aaaaaaaaand,” Beouf said, waiting for the quiet to come. “We’re done!”

She flung the door back open and bade us all look inside.

“What…the…?!” Sandra Lynn did not finish her swearing this time. Completing the thought would have been more bizarre somehow. Everything had been reset to before Ivy and I had gone to work. It was as if none of our destruction had occurred.

“I called in a lot of favors,” Beouf said, “and put in a lot of work. And spent a good chunk of my own money.” Her smile was a beam of pure sunshine. “I call it the Wreck Room.”

“But…why…?” Billy asked, genuinely curious and confused.

Beouf sat down on the padded floor and crossed her legs. She patted the ground and we formed up around her, as if in Circle Time or any other group lesson. No other instructions required. “I’ve tried to teach you all how to self-soothe,” she explained. “When you get big feelings, pop a pacifier in and bite down, or find some other way to stay calm.”

We all nodded. None of this was news to us. Pretty much any time we were scared or angry or about to burst out, mouths made way for nipples and thumbs. It was part of the classroom culture as much as it was explicit procedure. Some of us did so right then.

“I got to thinking, though,” Beouf went on, “I think that’s only half the lesson that needs to be taught. I think I also want to teach that it’s okay to be sad or angry. It’s okay to feel and express those feelings. I don’t want you kids bottling them up and hiding them. It’s not healthy, and Grown-ups can’t make the hurt go away if we don’t know about it.”

“Does this have to do with Chaz and Mandy getting sick on Thursday?” Shauna asked, innocently.

Beouf nodded, but didn’t otherwise address it. “We’re gonna try this and see if it works,” she spread her arms wide and gestured to the whole room. Anytime you feel really sad or really angry, you can get up and come here. Shout. Scream. Cry. Throw things. Break things. Make a mess.”

More pacifiers found their way into mouths. We were being told to break what had been holy commandments. “Everything here is hard to break and designed to be put back together if it does. As long as you don’t hurt yourself or anybody else you won’t be in trouble. Then when you’re done, Mrs. Zoge or I will close the door and that will activate the cleaning bot in the corner over there.” She pointed to the legless stool over in the corner. “It will wake up, set everything back up, and then go back in the corner and sleep.”

Beouf finally had a robot in her classroom. It wasn’t technically a nanny-bot but that was cold comfort. I filed that bit of cognitive dissonance away for later. Something else was on my mind. I raised my hand and actually waited to be called on. “What did you mean when you said that I gave you the idea?”

My friend took her glasses off. “Remember the other day when you were really upset and asked me if you could throw a chair?”

“Yeah…” I admitted to my shame. I’d genuinely thought painting Melony’s face green as a way to process my anger was going to be the last memory I’d ever make with her.

Beouf reached out and placed her hand on my shoulder. “That stuck with me.” She reached out and touched Chaz and Mandy too. “That really stuck with me. Littles experiencing Maturosis should be allowed to feel angry and sad, too. Nobody can be quiet and well behaved all the time. Grown-ups certainly can’t.”

“But when we do it,” Chaz grumbled, “it’s called a tantrum.”
“Or they think it’s just a rash, or you’re hungry, or fussy.” Mandy muttered bitterly. It seems their own wardens had been less than empathetic to their sorrows.

“Yeah,” Beouf said. “But that’s not fair. Babies are allowed to tantrum and be fussy. I can’t say y’all have big feelings and then expect you to control them all the time.” She leaned forward and grabbed Billy, plopping him in her lap. “We should try to stop tantrums and such because we want you to feel better, not because it’s inconvenient for us.” She wrapped her arms around him and I got to watch Billy melt into a puddle right in front of everyone. “So we’re gonna try this. If you need to break something. Come in here and break something. If you need to cry and scream, cry and scream here. If you need to lie down, there’s nothing wrong with getting some quiet time in the corner outside.”

Chaz, Mandy, and I all looked at one another, feeling the weight of the unsaid. It was Mandy who had the courage to speak up, bless her. “Do they know yet, Mrs. B?” she asked. “About the letters?”

A bit of the light left Melony’s face. “They’re about to, sugar. They’re about to.”

A murmur of “Letters?” bubbled up, and then silenced itself once memories started getting jogged.

Zoge came in, holding envelopes in her hand. “We received these last week, and were unsure of how to tell you all. Mandy and Chaz and Clark have all already read theirs.”

Grim, terrible understanding dawned on everyone else’s face. Those weren’t envelopes as much as they were the maggot filled corpses of whatever hope of rescue or redemption some of us had left. They were confirmation that we were untouchable, persona non grata, or otherwise dead and damned to the people who’d raised us and grown up with us.

“This week, Mrs. B and Mrs. Zoge are going to talk a lot about family and love and acceptance,” my teacher said. “We’re going to talk about how people who we love can hurt us, but how that doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re bad people or that we’re bad people. And we’re going to talk a lot about our feelings and what we can do when those feelings feel like too much.” She took a deep breath. “But first,” her voice actually cracked, “before we do any of that, I want to give everyone the chance to read what was written to them, and give them the chance to use the Wreck Room in whatever way they see fit.”

No one turned down the opportunity to harm themselves through reading. No one refused the chance to destroy a padded room full of toys and shout their anger out as loud as they could.

When Littles weren’t in the newly named Wreck Room, we were quietly commiserating with each other, possibly in a way that we’d yet to before or since. No one shared the contents of their letters. Every single one was ripped to shreds and left on the Wreck Room floor. The bot was programmed to set the room back to its original condition, so things like dirt, snot, and confetti made of rejection, were vacuumed up and wiped away as if they’d never been there.

Zoge put on some Yamatoan nursery rhymes as background noise so we couldn’t hear one another’s grieving when it wasn’t our time. We didn’t talk about it, but every fifteen minutes or so, one of us would drape their arm over another’s shoulder and we’d pull each other into a tight hug with a fifty fifty chance of either party breaking down to crying.

The rest of the time was filled with quiet playing using Beouf’s play center toys, reading shitty children’s books, and sulking in the Quiet Corner, chasing unconsciousness to escape the melancholy. Even Ivy, who had no such letter to read, shed tears and hugged it out with everyone. Her classmates and friends were sad and that was enough for her.

Beouf and Zoge manned their activity tables, but no one was compelled to come. Checking our schedule was thrown right out the window for the day. The only group activity before lunch was the shortest stop for.a snack break. No scheduled diaper changes either. The Amazons just kept checking us and picking us off one at a time as needed. The only happy sounds came from the bathroom when a Grown-up was trying (and failing) to make a game out of changing us.

We’d all been suddenly expelled from Mrs. Beouf’s Maturosis and Developmental Plateau unit in Oakshire Elementary and were simultaneously enrolled in Mommy Melony’s Little Daycare. It was everyone’s first day and there were no mindfucked regulars to scorn or bitter lifers to assure us that we’d get used to it eventually.

I stared up at the ceiling on my nap mat that afternoon, reflecting on everything and absorbing it all as though I were outside of myself. If Beouf had taught real children, this sort of day might be considered a sort of breakthrough. She was advocating for emotional health and regulation while also acknowledging a need to express oneself while showing near infinite empathy and patience. And her relationship with me had caused that kind of personal and professional growth. She’d said as much.

On the flip side, this was going to do the worst kind of wonders for classroom morale. Learning that those who remained adults scorned us was a bitter pill to swallow, and being given so much validation was the sweetest of juices to wash it down. Why not tantrum? Why not scream and wreck shit like a toddler or an infant might? Hadn’t we earned that right? Wasn’t this a victory?

Wasn’t this just one step closer to being exactly what Amazons said we were? Children who never grew up?

This was the stuffed animal incident all over again.

Beouf had yet again upped her game and evolved as a teacher and a brainwasher of Littles. Because of me. Was it even brainwashing if so much of it was true? I didn’t know how to feel about that thought. I didn’t know how to feel about any of it. Proud? Ashamed? Frightened?

Who knew? Who cared? Just like my first Monday under Beouf’s instruction, all I could really focus on was looking for my wife after school.