Unfair- A Diaper Dimension Novel

Chapter 1
Chapter 100: A Much Needed Screaming Match

Chapter Description: Clark and Beouf finally speak plainly and openly about their feelings and frustrations to one another.

Chapter 100: A Much Needed Screaming Match

“FUCK YOU, MELONY! YOU’RE A FUCKING MONSTER! YOU CAN GO FUCK YOURSELF YOU GODDAMN PSYCHO BITCH I HATE YOU! FUCK YOU! I HATE YOOOOOOOOU!” 

The snot was already beginning to bubble. The tears were boiling but felt cold on my face because of just how red my cheeks were. With every condemnation and swear that I threw in, I stomped my foot until it looked like I was marching in place.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!” I balled my fists and leaned forward, doing my best to roar like a lion but succeeding only in screaming like a toddler having a grocery store meltdown.

“Oooooooooooooooo,” Billy sneered. “Gibson. Is. Pissed.”

I could barely see anything because of how watery my eyes were and I refused to blink or wipe away the droplets.  I could barely hear anything save for the furious thud-thud, thud-thud. Rationality didn’t keep me from throwing my body straight to the floor, but rage did. Hitting the floor would have broken eye contact with Beouf.  My body would have wanted to tuck my face in the crook of my elbow or roll over on my back so that I could better kick and scream and fuss until all of the pain and frustration.

Rage wouldn’t let me do that, however. Children do such things when they have no viable target for their anger. They throw themselves down and weep and scream and thrash at nothing when they are overwhelmed and the entire world seems against them.  The entire world was against me, but I’d found a single drop of salt-water in that entire ocean of inequity to focus fury upon.  I could not beat an ocean, but I could at least disperse this single bead; dry it out or drink it and withhold it from the ocean until I pissed it back out.

“FUUUUUUUCK YOOOOOOU!”

I couldn’t pinpoint where all of this was coming from. I didn’t know why I chose then and there to throw my total and utter hissy fit. The emails I’d just read? The slip-up from Skinner? Recent memories of what I’d heard over the baby monitor? Guilt? Shame? Resentment? The feeling of love suddenly being lost and there being a hole in my heart where so much of who I was and how I knew myself was located?  Several holes? At least three? Each one shaped like a person who had either vanished from my life entirely or reoriented themselves in such a way that I barely recognized them?

Anything that I could say then or now would be a complete rationalization on my part. The only true thing is that it hadn’t been planned in advance, and it came so suddenly and naturally as to feel wholly involuntary on my part.  More than involuntary, it felt right. It felt like coming up for air after swimming in the deep end.

The other kids didn’t laugh. Nor did they shirk, mostly.  Statistically speaking, every one of them had done something like this at some point since being enrolled into Beouf’s care. I was no longer ‘new’ in terms of socialization and acceptance, but I was still the ‘freshest’ in terms of treatment and gaslighting.  They’d all had this moment at some point or another.  Some had had it more than once. Even Ivy, I’d believed had at some time or another where compliance, malicious or otherwise, had given away to a maddening anger at the outright unjustness of the situation.

Oftentimes, that had been what would get them sent to my room where I’d give them a stupid hackneyed pep talk about degrees of suffering and how a certain crazy but kind Amazon was better than a cruel one. Better to be a baby that was still you on some level. Better to go full native or pretend to buy into the hype than to be a programmed husk with a heartbeat; a doll.  

How fucking naive I’d been. Dolls didn’t suffer, and if they did, they at least didn’t have hope to constantly freshen up the pain. After a certain layer, a burn is a burn.  Heal it and let it cool, and suddenly that red hot poker feels just as intense the hundredth time as it did the first.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAH!”

Neither did my classmates cheer me, (except for Billy). Some stared. Some turned their gaze in the opposite direction out of politeness. A few swore exclamations of moderate surprise under their breath, I’m sure.  None were particularly offended this time. We weren’t actually babies that were upset by loud noises or expressions of negative emotion because we couldn’t understand ourselves or others;  just prisoners conscripted into becoming the ultimate method actors.

They’d all had this breaking point at some time or another.  They’d gone through this, too. They’d raged and bargained and despaired and denied and back again until a warm acceptance washed over them, and they’d become happy enough until they weren’t.  That was kind of the point of Beouf’s class: To numb and reduce outbursts, and to find outlets and replacement behaviors; to condition and desensitize until a Little could be trusted to go to a full time daycare without causing any more fuss than the average Amazonian two year old.

I wasn’t a revolutionary, or a saboteur, or a class clown or a bully.  I was just a Little with lots of Big Feelings.  I was just someone currently unable to either deny or accept just how fucked he was in the grand scheme of his personal fable.  No different than any of them. To the culture of the classroom, this outburst was no different than someone getting sick and vomiting or getting a case of the runs. It happened. It was slightly disturbing. But it was normal enough.

Save for the intensity, I’d done this sort of thing enough times already. Save for being verbal and visibly angry instead of panicked into paralysis or sad to the point of being insensate, I’d done much of this my very first week back in diapers.

This was nothing new. For anyone. Just a remix. The only surprising element might have (might have) been the timing.

Amidst all of it, In the back of my head a thought: I wonder if Tracy can hear me from here.  And would she be surprised?  Proud maybe?  Probably not.  Maybe sympathetic, not that it mattered.

“I’M NOT DEAD!” I screamed. “I’M NOT DEAD! I’M NOT DEAD! I’M NOT DEAD! FUCK YOU SIDEWAYS AND THE HIGH HORSE YOU RODE IN ON! I’M NOT DEAD! I’M! NOT! DEAD!”

Beouf gave me nothing in return. No negative energy to feed off of. No questions, or demands, or anything that could be shouted down.  She did not make a point to ignore me and continue her propaganda distribution in storybook form. An emotional rope-a-dope.

My feet were lead and all the adrenaline I was pumping into my body had magically frozen me in place. If I hadn’t been, I may have marched up to her and smacked the glasses right off her face.  For all my bravado and aggression, there wasn’t much a Little could do against a fully grown Amazon. We aren’t even strong enough to take off our diapers by ourselves. A slap in the face, a poke in the eye, or a punch in the nose still hurts no matter who you are.

And Beouf wouldn’t have written me up for it, either. Not for slapping her. Getting slapped at by tantruming Littles was pretty much in the job description.  That and what Amazon would want to admit on paper that they’d been hit by a Little and cared?

“YOU WANT ME TO BE! BUT I’M NOT DEAD!” I didn’t even fully understand what I was saying, but I felt there was a truth to it.  The biggest truths often come not from what we’re supposed to say, but what we actually think and feel. ‘Out of the mouth of babes’ is just another way of saying that children haven’t been conditioned enough to lie to themselves or factor in basic societal expectations and assumptions to their responses. In my case, it was a momentary lapse in giving a fuck.  “STOP MOURNING ME! I’M RIGHT HERE! COME AT ME BITCH! STOP! MOURNING! MEEEEEEE!”

Beouf closed the story book and leaned it against the bit of wall beneath the whiteboard. She stood up.

I didn’t move. I didn’t know if I could.

“Mrs. Zoge,” she said curtly. “Take over.”

Zoge was already hurrying to take Beouf’s place next to the storybook. No reply required. 

“Miss Winters? Miss Sosa? Can you do me the favor, and take as many of the children out for therapy as you reasonably can?” Her voice had all the command and precision of a surgeon calling for a scalpel.

The Physical and Occupational Therapists had yet to leave the classroom. They stood mortified and horrified at what I’d said.  They thought they’d done right by either me or Beouf in peeling back the curtain and telling me how much she’d been trying to help me ‘adjust’.  No good deed goes unpunished they say. “Uh, yeah. Sure. We can do that.”  They came deeper into the room and started herding Littles out like cats.

“But I don’t wanna go,” Billy whined, “I wanna see!”

“Billy.” Beouf said. “Go. Now.”

Billy gulped. “Yes, ma’am.”

I let out another roiling wordless scream.

Nearly half the class was out the door within thirty seconds. Beouf stood firm. So did I.  

Give us a pair of six-shooters already.

Three steps and she was on me. She snatched me up and tucked me under her arm like I was a basketball. I could have thrashed and kicked but chose to go limp and just let out yet another ear piercing scream. 

“We’ll be back,” she announced. I didn’t look up but heard the door open again. Saw her feet take titanic, angry strides over concrete. Then up a metal ramp. Then pivot left. Then through mulch.

When the world went upright for me again, I was being sat down on the bench she and Zoge favored in the corner of the Littles’ Playground. Beouf stood over me, frowning, breathing hard and crossing her arms.  She had removed me from the classroom, but was keeping me in an environment that I couldn’t escape or disrupt.

Nothing I could mess up besides wood chips. She had proximity to stop me from hurting myself. I could scream and curse as loud as I wanted and my voice would be eaten up by the open air and go unnoticed by the second graders playing kickball at the far end of the P.E. field. 

Basic school culture etiquette would cause most students trusted enough to travel campus unaccompanied by an adult to look the other way and go about their business. Any other member of faculty or staff would more than likely do the same or briefly greet Beouf as a subtle form of asking if she needed help.  Parents would see a Little in need of a spanking shouting at a woman with the patience of a saint.  Brollish, if she were on the prowl, might choose to intervene.

The teacher in me recognized it as a good move. Were our positions somehow miraculously reversed and I had the power, it is the move I would have made.  Isolate me. Let me wear myself out. Then bring it up on Wednesday’s conference because fuck you, kiddo, the house always wins.

I was so terribly, viscerally upset that I didn’t actively notice the constant buzzing in the back of my brainstem despite being on the playground.

  “Okay, Clark,” she said. “Let’s ta-”  I dashed to my right to jump off the bench. Beouf sidestepped and shot her arm out to block me.  “Nope.” I backpedaled and started twisting to leap off the other end.  Her other arm penned me in. “No, sir.”  I stopped my turn and tried to climb the.back of the bench. Hypothetically, I could jump from the back, and leap the chain link fence and hit the steel incline ramp on the other side without breaking any bones if I rolled with it.

I was plucked back up and sat down on the mulch. 

“No. Unacceptable.”

My feet were already kicking, propelling me backwards to the old oak tree, giving me distance that she could cover in a handful of steps. I was fighting the stupidest, most misleading grin, from sprouting on my face.  It didn’t match how I felt on the outside at all, but just like my swearing it felt automatic.  This was no fun, but I was taking a sick enjoyment

The dash to the playground exit was no dash at all. Beouf was blocking it before I was halfway there. Not that I could have opened the gate by myself. “Clark. Stop. Please.”

“NO!” My body changed course and I crawled into the cement play tunnel. I was at exactly the halfway point when I saw her legs at the other end.  I wasn’t going to get away like this. I wasn’t going to get away at all.  People just do stupid stuff when they hurt enough.

I hope no one reading this ever hurts that much.  Ever.  I wouldn’t wish how I felt in that moment on Beouf, herself.

I stopped and rolled and twisted to get comfortable. The space was meant for someone my size. I could technically stand up and walk upright if I was willing to hunch over. I parked myself on my pillowed keister, crossing my arms and leaning back in a sort of fetal position.

Beouf’s knees bent and touched the ground, and she looked inside.  She could just barely crawl in after me if she’d wanted to but the woman wasn’t fool enough to try without help.  I didn’t expect her to either. She might get stuck and I might get away.  “You okay in there?” she asked.  Her voice was even more grating to me when reverberating off of molded concrete.

“Fuck off.”

“I’ll take that as a ‘yes’.”  She stood back up, leaving her legs blocking one end of the tube.  It’s sometimes hard for me to imagine the world from an Amazon’s point of view, to have everything so small and effortless, to have the ground so far away, but I figured she had to be blocking one end while watching for me to exit the other.

All was silent. For about five minutes.

She sidestepped and leaned over. “You still okay, buddy?”

“Have you fucked off yet?”

“Alrighty then.”

The silence lasted another minutes. I knew because I immediately started counting to myself.

“Clark? Are you ready to talk?” Only three minutes? She was getting impatient.  “Clark?”

“I can wait you out, Mel,” I taunted. “I don’t have to go to the bathroom.”

“That’s fine.”

One….two…

…one-hundred-seventeen, one-hundred-eighteen…

“How about I come in there?” Beouf offered. “I just want to talk.”

“Bullshit,” I yelled back. “You don’t know how to talk to me.” More to myself I said, “Just at me.”

Beouf dropped down to her rump, her knees drawn all the way up to her chest, and her head cocked so that she could still see inside the cylinder. “What is that supposed to mean?”

I looked away. “Did I stutter? Do you need me to say it in baby talk so that you can pretend to understand it?  Will you believe me then, Mel?”

“Mel?” she didn’t sound offended the way Sosa did when I invoked her given name. She was more perplexed than anything. I barely called her by her first name when we were co-workers. “Why are you calling me that? Is Mrs. Beouf getting too hard to say? You can just say Mrs. B if that’s easier.”

“I need to call you Melony.” I spat. “Or can’t you take one of your Little babies calling you by your first name?”

“Clark…”

“MISTER! GIBSON!” And just like that I was close to crying again. I clutched at my chest in a pointless gesture to try to control my breathing from the outside. “I’M! MISTER! GIBSON!

“No.” My old mentor said with an air of finality. “You’re not. Not anymore.”

“At least I used to be a teacher,” I said. “A real one.”

Her eye twitched and her composure faltered for a moment. “I am a teacher, hon. I’m your teacher.”

“You’re a goddamn animal trainer.” I felt the light echoes gave my words a sense of gravitas. “The only thing you teach is that it’s pointless to resist and that if you’re a good forever puppy you get treats. And that Amazons and Littles can never be friends.”

Beouf was taken aback. “Clark,” she said. “I’m your teacher. Of course I’m your-”

“YOU WERE NEVER MY FRIEND!”  I propped my elbows up on my knees and buried my face in the palms of my hands. “Not really.”

“Honey.” Beouf’s heart was slowly breaking right in front of me.  “That’s just not true.”

“It is.” I snapped back.

Against my hopes, she didn’t try to contradict me.  “Why do you feel that way?”

“Fuck you, that’s why.”  I wasn’t going to get drawn into an argument where nothing I said really mattered.

“Come on out,” she repeated. “Let’s talk about this.  Just you and me.”

“No.”

“Okay.” 

One…two…

…eighty-eight…eighty-nine…ninety…ninety-one…

“How about now?” Beouf asked.  “Ready to talk to me like a big boy? Use your words instead of just saying mean things to try to hurt my feelings?” The operative word there had been ‘try’. She wasn’t going to admit that anything I said was having an effect on her.

“Your classroom management is pretty good,” I said. “That’s about it, though. Everything else is snake oil.” Calling the legitimacy of her profession into question had struck a nerve. So I struck again. “Why do you think you have an indefinite timeline for student graduation? Why does Ivy get to stay forever? It’s because you don’t actually have a curriculum. You don’t actually teach anything.”

She didn’t have anything to say to that. Not right away.

I raised my head up out of my hands and re-established eye contact. “You’re not even a glorified babysitter like people joke about real teachers. Because you’re not even taking care of actual babies.”

Beouf’s reply was immediate. “All those diapers of yours that I’ve changed would beg to differ.”

Silence from me. I held my breath until eight….nine…ten seconds.  “I’m ready to come out now,” I said.

“We’re not going back inside until after we talk,” Beouf said. “Actually talk.”

“Okay,” I sighed. “Deal.” I shifted my weight and crawled out towards her. My cheeks dry again and the crinkling coming from my pants were the only sounds I made. Gently smiling, Beouf offered me her hand; an unnecessary but kindly gesture.

So I bit her. I bit her as hard as I could, right on the most tender part of the hand on the fleshy part between her thumb and forefinger, and hoped to break the skin.

“OOOOOOOOW” Beouf howled. “MOTHER FUUUUUUU….UUUUDGE!” Even with me trying to make her bleed, she didn’t dare drop an f-bomb around me. I’d brought Ivy to tears like this, but Beouf was a trained teacher with nearly twenty years of dealing with folks like me. Ignoring the normal and natural reflex to try and yank her hand away, she fed into the bite, grabbing the back of my head with her free hand and shoving her palm deeper into my jaw like a wedge until it hurt so bad that I had to loosen up and release her.

The Amazon examined her hand, looking at the tiny tooth sized indentations I’d left on her flesh.  Astonishingly, I’d failed to draw blood.  More astonishingly, she didn’t press her physical advantage. Beouf stayed seated there on the mulch by the tunnel. I was permitted to stand up. She kept her unmarred hand on my chest but attempted no grip to restrain me. “WHAT THE HELL, CLARK!” She shouted. “WHAT IS YOUR PROBLEM?!”

I brought my foot down on the mulch like it was a hammer. “YOU’RE MY PROBLEM, MELONY! YOU ARE! JUST YOU!”

“WHY DO YOU KEEP CALLING ME THAT?” She shouted back.  My ears throbbed like I was right up next to the speaker at a heavy metal concert. She was a better screamer than me. Bigger lungs. More practice. Less tired.

But I didn’t back down. “BECAUSE I’M AN ADULT! ADULTS CALL EACH OTHER BY THEIR FIRST NAMES ALL THE TIME IN PRIVATE!”  It was getting harder and harder to yell. My throat was already raw. My normal speaking voice was becoming raspier and raspier with each shouted syllable.  Still worth it.

My shouting was not reciprocated. Beouf pouted out her lip in thought. “You didn’t before your Maturosis flared up.”

My own lip threatened with a quiver. “Because before I didn’t need to,” I replied. “Back then you at least pretended like you thought I was an adult.”

“You are an adult,” Beouf answered. “Physically. For your size. But on the inside, you’re a-”

“Don’t say it, Mel.” I threatened. “Don’t. Stop it with that Maturosis bullshit. It’s not real.” I was allowed to take a step back. “It’s a fantasy you tell yourself so you can feel better about what you do. That’s it.”

“Science suggests otherwise.” She dryly adjusted her glasses.

I did not retreat. What I wanted more than anything was to wipe that smug look off her face. “Goddamn it, I hate you so much.” My growl was practically a hiss.

“You haven’t had a dry day since you were enrolled,” Beouf said matter of factly. “Not one. I bet you're wet right now.”

I blanched but admitted nothing. The state of my pants was besides the point.  “Why would I? It’s not like you’d let me go to the bathroom.”

“You haven’t asked to go since your first day,” she said.

“Where you made me poop myself and sit in my own mess!”

“Because you lost your potty training.”

All of this happened so fluidly. Clearly, my ex-mentor had been thinking about this almost as much as I had. Why wouldn’t she? It was her job to make Littles believe in her fantasy world.

“Which if you actually believe,” I countered, “you’ve made no attempt to help me back.”

“Potty training isn’t my job.” Beouf shrugged. She seemed so calm and control, sitting there on the ground. With me standing up at my full height, I was the closest to her eye level that I could remember. How ironic yet appropriate.  “If your Developmental Plateau merited it, you’d have a natural interest in trying for yourself. You haven’t.”


“Because I know you won’t listen!” I said. “You never listen! You just find a conclusion you like and then make up whatever you need to make it true!” It felt amazing to say such a thing out loud.  “I’m your co-worker one second, and then you think I’ve been stealing diapers because someone poisoned me and made me poop my pants? How does that make sense?”

Beouf rolled her eyes and shook her head at me. I was a child talking of closet monsters. “Honey, there’s no evidence that you were poisoned. That was just a major flare up with your Maturosis is all. It’s what helped you get diagnosed.” I scoffed at the word ‘helped’.

She tried to lean over and place her hand on my shoulder. I wasn’t having it.  “No,” I said.

“I don’t care that you were sneaking diapers out of my bathroom to try and stop it,” she kept going. “That was perfectly reasonable given the circumstances.”

I tugged at my hair in disbelief. “See?!” I said. “You literally just did it. You predetermined and ignored all other evidence!” I smacked the back of my right hand into my left palm for emphasis. “You figured out that Forrest slipped me one of those wonky chocolates! You told Janet about it the second week of school, remember? Did it occur to you that she somehow might have done it before? Put one in my coffee or something?”

“You know that’s impossible, honey.” Beouf said. “I brew a fresh pot every morning and all that sugary junk and syrups you liked were single use packaging that was tamper evident.” 

I was getting jittery and antsy. I wanted to keep shouting and pace the playground like some sort of courtroom drama.  Beouf remained seated on the ground in her jeans and t-shirt. Beyond a minor outburst, she’d regained and retained her calm. She seemed comfortable. Reasonable. It was unnerving.

“Okay, maybe she didn’t poison me,” I conceded. This wasn’t about Raine. Raine was beside the point. “Or maybe she did it some other way. Or maybe it wasn’t her.  Maybe it was you!”

Beouf clicked her tongue. “Do you know how silly you sound when you say that? Why would I do that?” she asked. It didn’t sound rhetorical to me. “You were a good teacher and this year just started.”

“Yeah,” I stammered. “but-”

“If I’d wanted to ‘frame’ you,” she said, “I could have just let Brollish and Ambrose get their way before Spring Break.  I could have done something any day or any time from the first time we met.”

Damnit, she had a point. Beouf had technically had my balls in a vice for years and never once squeezed. Any rationale I could devise sounded convoluted, even by Amazonian standards.

“How did you know my wife’s name, then?” I demanded to know. “Cassie! How did you know about her?” I hadn’t figured that part out yet; had barely given myself time to wonder about it. It was a good question but one that felt irrelevant somehow, like I was grasping at straws.

“Honey,” she replied as if the answer were painfully obvious. “It’s no secret you were married. You had a ring. You talked about going out with your wife plenty of times.”

“But…but… Cassie! I never told you her name.” Now I had her!

“Are you sure?”

“Yes!”

“Positive?”

Suddenly I wasn’t. “Yes.”

“You don’t think that once, not once, you maybe mentioned her name in passing? On accident? For as long as we worked together?”

I squinted at her. I was being gaslit. I could feel it.  “Did Tracy tell you or something?” It was too late to hold it against her, but it was a possibility.

“She was your emergency contact, buddy,” Beouf spoke plainly. “On your personnel file. You filled it out pre-employment.” She gave me a second to process. “When I heard you’d had your accident I checked it because I knew you were married.  Maturosis onset is an emergency.”

The fire inside me was dimming and I hated it. “Okay,” I said. “Good point. An accident. Maybe I was just sick with a stomach bug.  Remember the week before students came back when I ran to your bathroom?  People get sick. Accidents happen. It doesn’t mean that…that…their personal block tower is flipping upside down or whatever!”

“With Littles it usually does.”

“You think I was stealing diapers?!” I screeched. I took a step closer. “Why?!  Do you even count them?” I cut her off before she could say anything. “No. Don’t answer. I’m positive you don’t.” 

My feet kept moving. I was pacing. Doing laps around her while my emotions ramped up. “Did you think for even a second that your count seemed low that week for other reasons?! Maybe there was a defective one, or Zoge accidentally ripped a tape on a couple, or somebody peed in the middle of a change?” I stopped right in front of her.  “Maybe some poor janitor snagged a couple overnight for their own kids?”

She gave me no reply, verbal or otherwise. She might have been listening. She might have been going into neutral in another attempt to de-escalate.

“Did any of that cross your mind?!” I said. “Doubt it. You had the vaguest of fucking suspicions that you were down a few Monkeez and pinned it alll on me, the only mature Little you know!”

She took a deep breath through her nose and gave me the most honest response she could, all things. “It just made sense.”

“No,” I said. “It didn’t. It doesn’t.”

“I’m sure it feels that way to you.” Just like that, I’d lost her again.

“You don’t listen!” I wanted to roar. I settled for pacing laps and tugging at my hair. “You just pretend to when it’s convenient and then do what you were gonna do anyways.”

“I bought those line leashes so you wouldn’t have to hold Ivy’s hand everyday,” Beouf said, like it disproved my entire thesis. “I did that for you.”

My heels dug in when I was to her right, not that she turned her head. “No. You only do things for me when it benefits you. You only listen to the Littles in your class if it makes things easier or you can twist it in some way to make us act more babyish. You disregard literally everything else.”

“You have to understand, honey,” Beouf said like she was reciting something. “I’m an expert on Maturosis. A professional. I know more about your condition than you do and you just have to accept that.”

“I don’t have a condition!” My cracking voice protested. “Maturosis. Isn’t. Real. I do not have it because it’s not real. You can’t be an expert on something that isn’t real!” Was she just this self-deluded or was she more devious than I’d ever given her credit for?

“If you really think that’s true, what does that say about you, Clark?” Now she turned her head to look at me. Really look. “If Maturosis is made up, and I’m some terrible crackpot who forces Littles into something that’s unnatural to them, then why did you work with me for so long?” A beat. “Why were we friends? Me being who I am and teaching what I teach wasn’t a dealbreaker for you until it directly impacted you.”

My jaw dropped, but only for an instant.

“And you treating me like I was an actual person with legitimate thoughts and feelings and a soul was just a game to you,” I fired back. “It was pretense. It was a side hustle. Don’t you dare shake your head no!” I growled.  “The second I checked enough of your boxes you disregarded everything we’d been to each other and everything you knew about me.  Ten years, Melony! Ten years down the drain like that!” I snapped my fingers and pictured flames leaping up from the tips. 

My so-called teacher, my friend that never was, averted her gaze. “It’s been…challenging for me, too, kiddo.”

“Challenging?” I walked around to her front. “Challenging?! You threw me under the bus, Beouf! And in return you got allll this!”  I spread my arms out wide and turned around a full circle. “You finally got your fancy playground!”

“Wait just a second!” she seemed genuinely offended. “That’s not fair!” Oh the irony. “I’ve been lobbying for this playground for years. It’s not my fault Brollish decided to approve it when she did. That had nothing to do with me.”

I didn’t want to admit that. “Okay,” I sneered. “Was it challenging for you to be my teacher instead of shipping me off to New Beginnings like you’d wanted to? Was it challenging to include me in your lesson plans instead of screwing me over and forgetting about me?”

The Amazon flinched like I’d struck her. The gears in her head were turning and she was revisiting the fateful afternoon when my old life had ended. My personal apocalypse really had just been another Thursday to her.

“Oh,” her expression softened. “Oh you poor thing.” She was shaking her head and untensing her muscles.  She looked like she wanted to give me a hug. “Honey. No. I never would have let them send you to New Beginnings. I was just trying to stall until your Mommy got there.”

I turned my back. This revisionist history wasn’t worth the spittle coming out from between the giantess’s lips.

“If worse came to worse,” Beouf kept on, “I would have lied and let her Adopt you the next day.  If she got cold feet for some reason I would have Adopted you for real. I would not have let them take you there. I promise.”

I didn’t know how much I’d wanted to hear that until the words reached my ears . I just couldn’t bear it.

“How the hell am I supposed to believe that?” I asked. Without thinking I’d spun around to look at her again.  “You hurt me! Literally! Worst physical pain of my life!” My arms were wrapping around me, fingers digging into my shoulders and scratching as a way to relieve myself from that awful memory.

“You shoved me in a tube!” I choked. “You stripped me naked, stole my wedding ring, and then zapped off all of my body hair within minutes of me having an accident! You couldn’t wait to get rid of me!” IIt was hurting to breathe again, getting harder and harder to say something without my voice warbling.

“That’s not true,” Beouf said. Her composure was finally starting to mirror  “Not at all.”

“How is it not true?” I cried. “Even if everything you think about Maturosis is correct, even if I was doomed to need daycare for the rest of my life, why did you have to do that? Huh?” I would be crying again soon. I could feel it. Months away from the incident and the trauma felt as fresh as ever.

“Body hair retains odor.” She sniffled, sounding unsure of herself. “Getting rid of it makes it easier to keep you clean and happy.”

How dare she cite happiness? How dare she?

“But why then?” I pressed. “Why right away? At school!? Five feet away from where I’d…” I couldn’t finish that thought, so I jumped to the next one.  “You couldn’t have given me a day? A night?” My whole body was on fire. Phantom follicles screamed out in remembrance. “Or done something that hurt less? Some kind of cream?” 

I was so angry I was shaking. I released the grip on my shoulders and yanked down the front of my pants to show off that morning’s Monkeez.  “Would these not fit if I still had my pubes?” I yanked my pants back up. It felt good to dress myself. “And you couldn’t tell me about Janet when we were alone? You couldn’t have given me even that comfort?”

“I didn’t want you to accidentally give something away,” Melony sniffed again. “I didn’t know if Brollish had said anything or tried anything.” The confidence was leaving her and her voice was taking on a more wistful tone. “That and I wanted it to be a nice surprise. I knew Janet would be the best Mommy for you. She loves you even more than I do.”

Love is not what I wanted to talk about; least of all Janet’s.  “Admit it.” I leveled a finger at her. “You just couldn’t wait to take away my adulthood!”  There it was. Ahead of schedule. My voice had regained some strength but my face was puffy and red and tears were trailing down me again. “Admit it!”

“Some things hurt less if you just get them over with.” I could just barely hear her. “I was ripping a band-aid off.”

“For who? You?”

“Yes,” she said. “For me.”

“What?” I started wiping my nose. Wiping my face and eyes. Shaking my head. Something must have been clogged. I wasn’t hearing what I thought I was hearing.  “You’re not…” I stammered. “You’re not supposed to say that.”

“Clark, buddy.” Beouf sighed. “Honey. Baby.  Try to see it from my point of view.” She lowered her knees and made her legs flat.  “I’ve known the whole time since we became friends that something like this might happen.” The corners of her mouth, once stuck in neutral, started to ooze towards the ground. “ I was ready for it for a while, but I started to think that maybe it wouldn’t happen to you.” Another wistful sigh. “Maturosis can lie completely dormant in a Little. Skip a generation. Skip several.”

She moved from side to side. The whole world did. I felt dizzy and off balance, shaking my head and trying to make the confession not feel true coming from her.  It didn’t matter that I’d heard or thought or deduced something similar. It didn’t make anything better. She’d never said all this out loud. Not to me.

“So when it finally happened,” she explained, “I was in almost as much shock as you were.” She paused and her eyes clouded over. She was back there with me, on the other side of the tube. “To get through that day I had to let my training take over and I went on autopilot.” She gulped. “I’m sorry, honey. You’re right to be mad at Mrs. B. I didn’t mean to hurt you, but I did.” 

“And I’m sorry.” Like me, her voice was strong, but her eyes had begun gently weeping. “I’m doing my best. We’re all doing our best. This is new to all of us. But I never wanted to hurt you or make you feel bad.  I’ve never had a student who I knew before their Maturosis kicked in.” 

The wind was the only thing that answered her

“If it makes you feel any better,” she cut the silence, “I still love you as a student and I want you to be happy. You really were my best fr-”

‘I’M STILL HERE YOU IDIOT!” I screamed and stomped. “I’M STILL HERE! RIGHT NOW! RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU! I’M NOT DEAD!” I would not attend my own funeral twice. I refused.

Unlike earlier when I yelled, Beouf looked shaken.  “I know,” she replied meekly, almost a whisper.

“NO. YOU DON’T! YOU TALK ABOUT ME LIKE I’M SOMEBODY DIFFERENT THAN I USED TO BE!” I had to stop yelling to keep myself from sobbing wordlessly.

My next words came out soft yet somehow even harsher than my screams. “You talk about me like you don’t know me. I heard how you and Janet talked about me that night on the baby monitor.” I had to keep rubbing my eyes to see straight. I felt so stupid and pathetic and small.

“You both talk about the old me and how I used to be. There is no ‘used to be’. There is no old me, Mel. There is no new me. There’s just…just…just me.” I wanted to lose myself to this sadness; this renewed grief.

My knees gently buckled and I was sitting down on the ground across from my oldest companion. “The only thing that’s changed is how you think of me. That’s it. That’s all.”

Beouf started quivering and crying for me. She took off her glasses and dabbed at her puffy pink eyes with her shirt sleeves. She allowed her own breath to lose its rhythm. And unlike every other time, she didn’t run or hide from me.

“I’m still Clark,” I half-whispered into the gyre between us. “I’m still your friend. Why can’t you see that? Why are you mourning me when I’m right here in front of you?”

“I don’t know what to do,” Melony wept. “There’s no training or documented research on this. None of this was supposed to happen.”  Did I look that sad,I wondered? That pathetic? I must’ve looked worse.  “I don’t know what to do.”

“I’ve lost my job, Mrs. Beouf. I’ve lost the love of my life. My dignity has been stolen.  I…I…” I had to wait for my throat to unclench. “I’m losing my fucking toilet training. I don’t even have my last name anymore. This is the worst thing that could happen to a Little. You have no idea.”

Not entirely true, I thought to myself. I’d seen more than enough proof to know that she had some idea of the horrors I’d gone through.

“I’ve had nightmares about this my whole life,” I squeaked. “What I didn’t have nightmares about was you. I’ve lost you. And Janet. I feel like I’m about to lose Tracy again. Fuck it, I even lost Zoge and I barely had her. And every day, I have to deal with you treating me like I’m a diagnosis.”

Something in that spoke to her. “What do you mean?”

“I’m not ‘Clark’ to you, anymore. I’m just his Maturosis.” A quiet sob followed by a river of hurt. “Everything you do or say to me or talk to other people about me is through some filter of how you think I’ll act because of it. Nothing is really my decision to you. Nothing is my fault. Nothing is me.  It’s just my Maturosis.  You don’t see me. You just see this pretend disease that you think I have.”

It was then that Beouf said the two most surprising words I’d yet heard from her. “You’re right.”

My lungs collapsed in shock. My brain wanted to shut down then and there.

“You’re absolutely right,” she said. “I am so sorry. I’ve been trying to help you without really thinking about you.” She wiped her nose and replaced her glasses. “I miss you.”

Nothing made sense. How could I feel what I was feeling? How could I be so angry with her and not hate her? How could I say I hated her to begin with? How could any of this be happening and why did it have to be now instead of never.  How could I be nodding in agreement?

“I…I…I miss coffee!” I blurted out.  “I miss just sitting with you and complaining and talking about nothing. Or not talking at all and just sitting! I miss being with you! I miss being something besides your fucking job! A project! I don’t even have coffee anymore! I WANT IT SO BAD!”

“I MISS COFFEE TOO!”  Any pretense of control left both of us and we both started full on ugly crying on the spot. She scooted closer and scooped me up into her lap. I let her and buried my face into her chest, wiping my nose on her shirt while she held me close in a hug that I didn’t want her to stop.  “I’M SORRY! I’M SO SORRY, CLARK!  I LOVE YOU!”

“I LOVE YOU, TOO!”

“YOU’RE MY BEST FRIEND! I DON’T CARE THAT YOU HAVE MATUROSIS! YOU’RE STILL MY BEST FRIEND!”

“I DON’T HAVE MATUROSIS! BUT YOU’RE MY BEST FRIEND, TOO!”

All words left us for a while. We just cried. And cried. And cried. And cried. Ten years of friendship and two months of animosity all rolled themselves into one tidal wave of emotions.  And just when one of us thought we were done, the other started things going again.

At some point, the therapists walked the others back to Beouf’s room. We heard their voices but no one called out to either of us.  We wouldn’t have responded anyways. Words were too hard. For both of us. We just kept crying.  Happy and sad tears. Relief and regret. We left nothing to chance. Nothing uncried.

Finally, after we were both all out of tears for the day, I said something. “I’m sorry I’ve been an asshole,” I apologized. “I’m sorry I made you cry.”

“I forgive you,” my mentor, my oldest friend said. “You’re not first.”

“What do we do now?”

She shifted me on her lap so she could check her phone. “Lunch.”

“Then what?”

“Nap. Recess. Dismissal. Faculty meeting for me. Babysitting for you.”

“You know what I mean,” I said, too emotionally spent to be offended.

“I don’t know, buddy,” Melony Beouf sighed. “I really don’t. That’s a tomorrow problem.  Deal?”

“Deal.”