Note to readers. Don't read if you don't like poor grammar, this is rough.
This is a work of adult fiction. No resemblance to reality should be inferred or expected.
Copyright… are you kidding?

Edited by Portia Bennet

 

 

I woke up as I was thrown into the pain. It was everywhere. I could breathe, and that was the only thing I could. There were voices and other sounds instantly.

“Alive …?”

I even couldn’t cry out while there was something in my throat. I was about to pull that something from my throat but I couldn’t move my hands.

“Miracle …?”

Someone was holding my shoulders.

“Oh dear …!”

Someone had lightly slapped my face a couple of times. I cracked my eyes open and the only thing I could sense was a very bright light so I shut my eyes immediately.

“DOCTOR!”

 

 

“Oh!” someone said when I woke up the next time.

“Blink if you hear me,” the voice said, and I blinked but couldn’t keep my eyes open because of that very bright light. I could see that light even through the lids of my closed eyes. I tried to turn my head away, but someone or something was keeping it straight with my face turned up.

“Don’t move,” the voice ordered, “there is a tube in your throat to help your breathing.”

What tube? Nonsense! I had a DNR order in my breast pocket and necklace tag with the same DNR request. I had non-operable C so what effing resuscitation? I had necrosing spots all over my back so any doctor would see there was nothing to do.

“The doctor is already coming, and he’ll take a tube out from your throat,” the voice said.

There was a new voice shortly here: “How is our little patient?”

Who is little here, dork? I was six-four and dropped to two hundred last year. Surely, not ‘little’ anyway!

I felt restraint was taken from my forehead and at least my head was free now. The new voice’s owner helped me up into a half-sitting position. “On count three cough as hard as you can sweetie.”

‘What’s this fucking swee …?’

“One – two – THREE….” I coughed with all force I had left as if to cough all my guts out. That raw something was at last torn away. I tried to breathe and I started coughing uncontrollably.

“Easy… Easy…” the first voice soothed me.

“Take this,” the voice put the straw into my mouth, “in small sips… it will help ….”

It tasted… heavenly… like lukewarm water and it was sooo soothing.

Now that I was almost living and there was no super bright light shining into my face anymore, I carefully cracked my eyes open. It was a hospital room. An extremely strange hospital room with flowers and butterflies painted on the walls. I was about to ask about it: “Is…?” But I couldn’t while there was a feeling like a handful of sand in my throat. My voice sounded strange and there was a pain.

“Take this,” the first voice said and popped an enormous pill into my mouth, “and suck it slowly. It will help.”

It helped. Now that my head was free, I turned to face the first voice. It was a nurse, young and not bad looking one. There was something strange or even something wrong in everything I saw but I couldn’t still put my finger on it.

“Welcome back to the world of living beings, sweetie,” the second voice said. I turned to look at them and the owner was a female doctor, older than a nurse, but still very good looking. I tried to comfort myself and looked at my hands... And it dawned on me what was wrong with the nurse and doctor and hospital room – I was a kid. My brain couldn’t take this, and I fainted.

 

 

I smelled ammonia and tried to turn my face away. Someone held my head and was sticking smelly cotton under my nose insistently. What a disrespect to treat me as languid damsel?

“Ewww,” I managed to say.

“Back in our world again?” I guess it was the doctor’s voice.

There was a pause and nothing happened.

“Ewww…” I said again.

“You may open your eyes sweetie,” the nurse’s voice said.

“Where …,” I stuttered, “Where am I?”

“It’s the hospital.”

“Duh…” I wasn’t so stupid. What else could it be? “What …?”

“It’s Millinocket, sweetie,” the nurse said. Millinocket…, Millinocket…?

“Isn’t that in Maine?”

“Yes.”

“Huh …?” I wasn’t actually sure, but Maine sounded like I was here before THIS happened to me. But Millinocket? I knew that name, but I’d never had been there before. How did I get here? Maybe I really was that kid and didn’t remember who I was, but did remember my previous life. Anyway, that OTHER life was my previous life if now I was stuck in this kid’s body and….

“You need a rest sweetie,” Doc interrupted the trail of my thoughts. “After all that happened to you in the last ten days, you really need a good sleep.”

“Ten days?”

“Don’t you remember anything?” the nurse asked.

I shook my head.

“You were found in an ice cave eight days after you had run away from your foster family.”

“Ice cave? Here in Maine?”

“Yes. There are a couple of them near Katahdin Mountain,” Doc confirmed.

“I don’t remember ANYTHING….”

“As I’ve said you need the rest. Try to sleep. We’ll leave you alone, but we’ll be nearby. If you need something, just push this button.” The nurse showed me the button I had to push in an emergency. With that said, both ladies left the room.

 

 

It was good they left. I needed to think a lot, and I needed to remember what I still could remember. I didn’t remember being that kid. I did remember my childhood though. But it was more than fifty years ago and in a very different country far-far away from Maine. Maine…? I came here to summer camp at Kezar Lake. The camp was for 9-13-year-old kids. My niece Yola worked here as a nurse. She’d invited me here some six years ago, but this year was the first time I was able to come. I taught classes here. They were about a type of Yoga. Kids, as well as the staff, liked my classes.

Back to what I did remember. I had the big C. It was a mole my whole life on my right shoulder and almost a year ago it started to expand down my back. After it was diagnosed, it was too late to do anything about. It was already in my right lung and in the liver. I knew I was dying, but with well-balanced painkillers, I was able to pretend I was OK.

Yola was my only relative here. She was my deceased wife’s niece. My brother and his kids were in another country. To make things less complicated I had sold everything I had there and transferred funds to Yola. Yola’s life was rather complicated. First, her dad died when she was still a kid. Her Mom was killed when Yola was in college. At college, she met her future husband Michael. They got married after she graduated the college. One year later they were in a terrible car crash. Michael was killed instantly. Yola had lost her unborn daughter as well as the possibility to get pregnant again. She wanted to adopt a kid and was fighting with the system because she was single. International adoption was less lengthy, but it did cost much more. Anyway, Yola was sure there was an American kid who was meant to be adopted by her.

The camp was over. Two of us, the janitor and I, stayed here waiting for the cleaning company to come. They had to clean and shut everything off and close the camp for winter, but they were very busy. I had another couple of weeks to myself.

One morning I went to a communal shower. With kids and the staff around I could shower only in the night because of cancer over my back. Now that there were only two of us, I could use the shower whenever I wanted to. The communal shower was like another cabin, just a bigger one parted in two sides. One side was for lads and another for girls. There were no lockers only some benches and few hooks on the outer wall. Shower stalls were on the center wall. They had no doors or curtain so that was the reason I couldn’t take the shower with kids around.

I luxuriated in the stream of hot water over my body. There were not many things I could still enjoy. Nor there was a time for them. After I finished washing I wrapped myself in the towel. Then I went to the far end where there was a mirror on the wall to comb my hair.

While combing my hair I noticed in the mirror another door that wasn’t there before. This new door didn’t make sense. The exit door was on another far end wall. This one was on the sidewall. I turned around to check this new door and it wasn’t here. I turned back to the mirror and there was the door in it. I turned again and there was no door.

What kind of trick it was? How could it be possible? Still facing the mirror I made short steps back to that door and not turning at it examined with my hand. It was a regular plastic door like any other in this camp. I checked the door handle and turned it and pushed the door a little following myself in the mirror. The door cracked open to the outside of the room, but I couldn’t see anything so I swung the door open. But I had to step through the doorway. The moment I made a step the world blacked out.

 

 

I was awake, but I hadn’t opened my eyes yet. I heard someone in the room, but I didn’t want to show I was awake.

“How’s the little one?” the new voice asked.

“Sound asleep, still,” the nurse’s voice said.

If this nurse was assigned to me, I would have to learn her name. They must have name tags. I just ….

“How it happened that so cute kid was rejected by her foster parents?” the first voice asked. I decided to pretend I was still asleep and maybe get some answers.

“This cute little thing managed to run away from a foster family eight times in the last four years. Their patience was rock solid, you know …. The last time it was an ice cave. This cute one was already cold when resuscitation was started here. Everything failed and Dr. Bennett announced the kid dead. We started reconnecting equipment, only a few tubes were left when there was a sigh. The body was cold for so long, seventy-one degrees, to be more exact. So there are no wonder memory lapses are present.”

Why didn’t she say my name? I cracked my eyes open. The nurse was staring at me and her name tag said “Tanya”.

“Morning,” I said.

“Good morning, sweetie,” Tanya replied. “You have a visitor.”

“Huh?” They couldn’t be from the kid’s foster family, they would know the story then. So who then?

“Hello, I’ll be your new foster Mom,” the new voice said, and the face appeared in front of me. Yola?! That was Yola, the same Yola. Why didn’t I recognize her voice? I remembered her sounding kind of soprano and that’s a squeaking soprano. All females sounded for me now like they were altos. And now Yola will be my Mom. Wow!

“Oh… Mom?”

“Wouldn’t it be great, Vick?” Tanya asked cheerfully.

Vick? So my name is Vick as Victor. I could live with it. Last sixty years I was Vick.

“When will you take me home?” I inquired.

“You are a bit too fast, aren’t you?” Tanya giggled. “We have still some tests to run and you have still a tube in you. Haven’t you noticed you don’t need to visit the bathroom?”

“Oh, really.” As she said it now it dawned to me that I didn’t have an urge to take a leak in the last two days.

“Don’t be so upset, sweetie,” Yola encouraged me, “I’ll visit you ‘till you are released.”

I didn’t know what worked and I was upset. I was a bit teary probably because my new body was one of a kid. I still didn’t know how old I was. I imagined myself as Johnny Dorset. If the kid managed to run away from home eight times, he had to be something.

“I’ll wait for you to come,” I sighed heavily.

“I’m so happy getting to know you at last,” Yola whispered in my ear while hugging me. Her eyes were tearing up as were mine.

Only after Yola had left did I notice that I was still connected to some monitoring devices and had an IV in my left hand. It was understandable ‘cause my body was left in cold for eight days with no water and no food. I had my memories and I could foresee still no less than a week in a hospital if everything went as expected. I didn’t really know what was expected. I could only guess.

The very first thing to start with was breakfast. I got my first solid food after fasting so long, and it was sort of oatmeal. Not like it could be for real at home thick and with butter and with some cinnamon and with a glass of milk. It was very thin really. I didn’t need a spoon actually. It was good to drink. It tasted heavenly. I asked more, but Tanya said I’ll have more for lunch. After that something in my stomach, my intestines started to work. There were growling sounds my guts were making.

Almost an hour after the breakfast Tanya rolled a trolley into the room with dressings and something else.

“It’s time to remove the catheter,” she said. “Oh, I’m sorry. It’s a tube that drains urine from your body.”

I almost said I knew but then thought better of it.

The procedure was painful. After it was over Tanya put a diaper on me.

“Adult patients wear them too,” she assured me if I was about to protest.

“What do you want to do next?” she asked before exiting the room. “You can watch some TV if you want.”

“I’m a bit groggy,” I said. “Have you some local paper?”

“Paper?” Tanya wondered. “I’ll be right back.”

She got me the Bangor Daily News. It was a local paper. When I said local I thought about The Boston Globe. I didn’t expect it to be so local.

I was still attached to monitors and I still had an IV so I couldn’t even sit in a bed only lie on my back. I discovered it wasn’t the brightest idea to ask for paper local or not. I struggled with tabloid-size paper using my right hand and managed to fold it a few times to make it readable. “BU Prof. Dr. Victor Semashka found dead at Kezar Lake camp…” That was about me. What did I expect? I didn’t know how that door in the mirror worked. Probably the moment I stepped through the doorway was the moment I’d kicked the bucket. I was rather looking for some info about new me, but there was nothing.

I dozed a little. Then Tanya returned with a doctor, but it was another doctor not that lady doctor as the day before. The Doctor’s name tag read DRLUCYBENNETTMD. It was really without spaces, not kidding. So it was the same doctor who pronounced the kid dead and then I claimed this body for myself.

“How our star patient is feeling today?” Dr. Bennett asked.

“All vitals have stabilized and in the range of normal. Only blood pressure is still too low.” Tanya replied.

“How do you feel, sweetie?” the doctor asked me. This sweetie thing was starting to annoy me, but what could I do?

“There is not much to feel. But what I feel is OK. Oh… When I try to raise my head I feel a bit dizzy.”

“As Nurse Bailey says, your blood pressure is still too low. That may cause dizziness, especially while standing up,” the doctor explained. I knew it, though I was a kid and I wasn’t supposed to know it.

The doctor and nurse left and another couple of hours passed and then there was lunchtime. For lunch, I got cooked broccoli and mashed potatoes. Later after lunch, I got a glass of banana smoothie. Then another few hours later my guts started growling non-stop. I got another glass of banana smoothie. It was everything for that day. It wasn’t everything. Diapers were changed two times. It was the time before the bed and before the second diaper change when I felt the urge and peed intentionally. It was a good sign. I knew it without a doctor or nurse saying it.

The next morning the diaper was removed. The nurse had cleaned me with a warm wash-cloth. I was left just in that ugly hospital gown. There was a bathroom adjoined to my room, and I had to call a nurse for help when I felt an urge to visit the bathroom. Well, I was disconnected from monitoring and I had no IV at last. The first time I tried to visit the bathroom was just before lunch and I failed. I peed all over myself when I was trying to steady myself while standing up. I was so embarrassed. I cried some afterward. I guess I would cry even as my old self in the same situation.

Now as IV was gone I was getting a glass of some fruit juice every hour. Shortly after my first attempt, I tried to stand up again. I did it this time intentionally when I wasn’t feeling any urge. I succeeded in steady myself. With the nurse's help, I got to the bathroom. She helped me to sit down and cleaned me after I was done with some medical wet tissue. The gown was down to my knees and I could feel almost decent but... But what decency when someone else, not me was touching my genitals?

The same day started my training. Like sit down, stand up, raise my hands, squat. Not much, five times of each exercise. And boy that was grueling.

Before bed, I got a glass of warm milk and three cookies. Like Santa, I thought and giggled.

 

 

I didn’t know what time it was but it was night. I felt an urge but I didn’t want to make a commotion at the nurse station. I got up from the bed and moved to the bathroom keeping to the wall. It wasn’t so bad after all. In the bathroom when I raised the gown and was about to sit down on the toilet I noticed... Or rather I didn’t notice what was supposed to be between my legs. The thingy was gone. They have cut it off. The question was why. And who? Tissues there were all healed up so most probably the former foster parents had done this... this... No wonder the kid had run away so many times.

What will happen to me now? Will Yola be still eager to take me after she finds out I had nothing there?

Well… I had the urge and I peed and it felt strange. Good thing I could still control when to pee and when to stop.

After I came back to my bed the tiredness claimed me and I fell asleep at the same instant I put my head on a pillow.

In the morning after I woke up, I again didn’t disturb nurses and went to the bathroom alone. I sat there on the toilet while there was no way to pee standing and did my business. Then I moved toward my bed. There was a clipboard attached at the foot of the bed with my name and all essential medical data. My name was in caps so I did notice it and it read as VICTORIA SAMANTHA GETZ.

Was I a girl? Oh… That changed everything. It was a girl who managed to run away eight times? If I were a boy I’d imagine myself as Johnny Dorset a redhead with freckles. But a girl…? There was no mirror in the room and I hadn’t noticed one in the bathroom. I went back to the bathroom again and sure there was a sink and a mirror above it. The mirror was high on the wall so I didn’t notice it before. There was a bedside plastic step stool in the room. I took it to the bathroom and after stepping on it I could see myself in the mirror. I was a kid. I couldn’t determine what age I was. And I was cute. All kids at some age still are cute. I had no freckles. My hair was blonde? Probably blonde, but I wasn’t sure about it. It wasn’t dark but it wasn’t white and I didn’t know the names of the hair color. It was tied in kind of the bunch on top of my head.

After breakfast, Yola came again. She gave me PJ to wear instead of the hospital gown. It was a tee and shorts with white sheep on a lavender background. Then I got a pair of slippers, lavender too. Tanya said I was coordinated now.

“How do I call you?” I asked Yola. She was calling me by name, honey, and sweetie.

“Wouldn’t Mom be OK?” she offered.

“I’ll try,” I hesitated. “Mom. Mom? Mom.”

It sounded good for me and it was obvious Yola liked it.

“I want to know more about you,” I started. “Where do you live, what do you do for a living, what do you like?”

“So much? And everything to tell you now?” she snickered.

“You know everything about me,” I stated. “It would be fair for me to know something about my Mom, wouldn’t it?”

“I’m thirty-three and there was so much in my life that probably isn’t of great importance for you to know now. Let’s do as follows – I’ll come here and we’ll talk and during those talks, you’ll get to know me better. OK?”

“Deal,” I agreed. “And Mom, I want to ask you something…”

‘What sweetie?’

“As I don’t remember anything and there’re summer reading plans in schools, I probably have to read some books before I go to school.”

“Sure. I’ll bring you something next time.”

I expected her to come in two or three days. She was from Boston, I knew it from my previous life, that’s more than three hundred miles away from Millinocket. It’s not a distance for the everyday ride.

My training took much more time now. I was not only doing various exercises but walking and running a treadmill. When I was alone I wasn’t usually in my bed. I was walking down and up the corridor or performing kind of pull-ups against the edge of my bed. I never liked TV and I didn’t want to start watching it now. I read newspapers nurses were giving me instead.

Neither Yola nor I were natural-born Americans. Yola came here thirteen years ago after her marriage. I came here a year later after Boston Uni invited me to take over a membrane transport lab. After I got struck with cancer I retired from my position there. Why I’m saying this. No one of us knew what it was to be a kid in America and what books Americans usually had to read. My knowledge of American cultural heritage was rather limited.

Three days later Yola came again and she had ‘By the shores of silver lake’ and the ‘Long winter’. Both books were in their own front dust jackets. And they had some pics inside. Like the books, I’d read when I was a child. I found both books were from the Falmouth Middle School library. What was that Falmouth? I didn’t know.  Maybe it was a neighborhood where Yola lived in Boston?

Yola brought me a notebook and a ballpoint pen to make notes about what I was about to read.

I liked those books a lot and I was enjoying the reading as a process. Before, I had only scientific papers and what notes and reports I was given by my laboratory staff. The language of the books was strange not like that everyone was using here. There were some words I didn’t know and there was no way for me to grasp their meaning. I wrote them into my notebook for future reference. Some words I translated by context or using pictures in the book. But not all. Like molasses. Nurse Tanya said it should be something edible and sweet. I savored reading those two books. I had cried a little when Jack died, but I liked them, I mean the books. It was great fun to read.

Next time Yola came here she had a present for me – a stuffed rabbit.

“It’s Roger,” she said.

“Why?”

“What why?”

“Why Roger?” I explained. “It’s strange to call a rabbit Roger.”

“Dunno. Roger was on the tag.”

“Thanks, Mom,” I said hugging Yola.

“You’re welcome, dear.”

I hugged the rabbit and he felt so soft and warm. Well, he wasn’t warm, but because he was soft and fluffy he felt warm.

“I’ve talked with your Doctor,” Yola said. “She says they have you on special diet and exercise program to help rebuild your body fast. So on Monday, they will run tests on you like weight and your strength and some special stuff. Depending on results there will be another one or two or even more weeks till you were released home.”

“What weight I have to be?”

“Well, your height is 4-7 now, what’s on the low end of your age. Your weight absolute minimum should be sixty-two pounds while you’re forty-nine now.”

After more than ten years here in America I still wasn’t familiar with the non-metric system. Every time I was converting pounds and inches into kilograms and meters and Fahrenheit into Celsius. I left the calculation for later.

“There is one more thing before they release you. They will give you some placement tests.”

“What’s this?” I wondered.

“This is to determine what school grade you are.”

“Why don’t they place where I was before?”

“Because of memory lapses, they are not sure how much of your education do you remember.”

“Can you bring me some handbooks to repeat what I’ve studied already?”

“I’ve asked your doc the same question and she says it would distort the real image.”

“I feel I’ll be sent back to the kindergarten,” I whined.

“It would be the fifth or the sixth grade so no worries here,” Yola explained. “As Doc says the first worry is your weight and strength.”

After Yola left I did calculations of my height and weight and goals. I found that my under-weight couldn’t be caused by that girl’s stay in the ice-cave. The girl was missing for eight days but she couldn’t stay in the ice-cave for so long. The body temperature was in the seventies not in forties like it is near ice. Most probably she was there overnight. She was staying in the woods other days. To lose thirteen pounds in eight days is rather beyond belief. There probably were some other reasons for runaways, not only the girl’s restless temper. I’ll have a lot of time to think about it later.

 

 

I wasn’t alone anymore, I had a company. Roger was with me.

“Oh, what we have here?” wondered Tanya.

“He’s Roger. He’s with me now,” I explained. “This is Nurse Tanya,” I said to Roger, “say hello to Tanya.”

Roger said hello and nodded to Tanya.

“Why hello!” Tanya chuckled back.

The same way it was with other adults I’d met. Roger helped me to say more than I could usually say. Like, compliment them. When kids compliment adult it sounds, if not wrong then, maybe weird. But Roger was free of this prejudice, he was my adult companion. Roger managed to compliment all nurses and Dr. Bennett and Dr. Crawl who was training me to regain my strength. I calculated my age and it had to be eleven-twelve so it wasn’t suited for so old girl to carry a stuffed animal around. I was traumatized and very short and adults’ reaction to Roger was rather positive so why not?

The Children’s Ward had a nurse station and five rooms with the beds. There was another room for classes. It had two tables and an electric piano (!) Yamaha. That room was empty because those kids who were here were in beds. I was the only one walking and I had no classes. I used this room for training both my strength and piano. In my old life, I played a little for my pleasure and now I’d tried to regain my former skills.

The other benefit of having Roger was to socialize with other kids. There was a boy, Josh, sixteen or something. He said he’s from a local high school. He had both his right hand and right leg fractured. I was helping him to text his girl and his Mom.

There was a girl, Pat, who was six and had been poisoned by canned food. She had an IV day and night and she had a catheter as I had previously. I’d overheard something happened to her liver. The other two rooms were empty. As Tanya said they will get more kids in winter and there will be two or sometimes even three in one room. But now, the ward was still.

Usually, the door to the ward was closed and operated by the staff’s key-cards. It was open during visiting hours though from 4 PM to 8 PM. Sometimes there were no nurses to find, especially when a new patient was arriving or in some emergency.

One afternoon I was sitting on my bed and reading a book and kept Roger pressed to my side. The door opened and a woman of about fifty and a man in his late twenties entered. The man had a duffel bag with him. He closed the door carefully after they entered. I somehow understood that they weren’t friends.

“How did you manage to survive, you pest?” The woman asked while nearing to me.

“Get out or I’ll scream!” I shouted back. I felt hands grabbing me from behind and when I was opening my mouth I felt that specific sweet taste. Chloroform. I tried to struggle or I thought I tried when I blacked out.

 

 

I couldn’t remember so terrible hangover. My head was splitting into more than two parts. It felt like some gnomes inside my head were hammering my skull from inside.

I couldn’t remember where I was and what exactly I was drinking and with whom.

I tried to turn on my side and felt something fluffy. “Some fancy covers”, I thought. “Where could it be?”

I wasn’t ready to open my eyes cause it was the last thing at such hangover to see the light. Someone not so far away was banging on the door. Someone was shouting. Banging again. Bastards! What hole I did get myself in? The banging and shouts were nearing to the room with me. Someone banged the door and then kicked it out.

“What manners, huh?” I thought.

“HERE!” some man shouted. Couldn’t he say it without raising his voice?

“How do you feel?” he asked this time in a lower voice.

“Bad. Never drink beer with vodka young man. The hangover is terrible.”

He chuckled and raised me in his arms as if I was a kid. The world started spinning and I passed out.

 

 

I woke up with the same hangover. Not so terrible but anyway. There is a saying “Пиво без водки, деньги на ветер” (“Beer without vodka, money down the drain”) and when I was in the Uni I believed it. Most of us believed it. Oh boy, what a terrible hangover afterward. I’d vowed then never to drink this mix again. Who managed to persuade me this time?

“Drink this, sweetie, and you’ll feel better,” something familiar voice said.

I cracked my eyes open and I was in some room with butterflies painted on the walls. I glanced at the voice and there was Tanya, Nurse Tanya. She was offering me a big glass of milk.

“What happened?” I asked. I couldn’t believe I was drinking beer as a kid.

“Your foster mom kidnapped you.”

“Yola?”

“No. No. Your previous foster Mom and her son. They used some nasty stuff, chloroform, to poison you. So your head is still aching and spinning. Milk will help you. Take it.”

I did remember now. Yeah, chloroform hangover is even more terrible. I’d been poisoned once in the lab when a student dropped the bottle and it crashed. Milk was good. It was better with baking soda but who will know such nuances here?

“Where is Roger?” I asked. I couldn’t remember him with me.

“Oh, they kidnapped him too and inside he had a chip so police could trace you,” Tanya explained.

“What chip?”

“Dr. Bennett offered and your Mom agreed to put a chip like in smartphones inside Roger. They were afraid your previous foster mom will come.”

“So I was sort of bait?”

“Oh, no, no way! This was a precaution. They didn’t expect her to come.”

“So where is he?”

“Who?”

“Roger.”

“Here, on your bed.”

I turned around and there he was sitting behind me on the bed. I put the glass on the table and hugged him. Later I had him pressed against my side while in another hand I kept the glass of milk. I know there is no sense in it. But for me, Roger is more than a stuffed animal. From the very first moment, he was more than a toy rather like Wilson the volleyball.

 

 

Now when the girl’s former foster parents were under arrest Yola and I could feel more at ease. I didn’t need to testify against them because of my memory lapses. They had enough evidence without me. My kidnapping resulted in the search warrant and police were thankful for it. They had only implicit clues before.

THREE WEEKS LATER Yola took me to our new home. She moved to Falmouth in Portland neighborhood. She said it was safer than in Boston. She’s my Mom and I didn’t complain. About not Boston I mean.

I had more serious things to complain about though. Can you imagine what she’d laid for me to wear for my first day at school? It was the white tights with lavender unicorns, black jumper dress and white tee with long sleeves. Well, jumper-dress and tee were kinda uniform. But lavender unicorns!

“I’d rather go without tights than in those lavender animals,” I said angrily.

“Then I’ll put you over my lap and give you a sound spanking?” Yola threatened me.

“It’s not fear!” I complained. “I’m big already. I’m eleven, not six.”

“So behave like a big girl,” Yola didn’t give in.

What could I say back? I stomped my foot turning around and ran upstairs to my room. I slammed my room door to show I didn’t change my mind.

 

 

ANOTHER EIGHT MONTHS LATER. It was the beginning of July the next year. Mom and I, we both were coming to the camp at Kezar Lake for all the remaining eight weeks of summer break. Roger was coming too.

“Aren’t you too big to carry a stuffed animal around?” Mom inquired.

“He’s Roger not just stuffed animal,” I was appalled by her disrespect.

“Well, Roger then. Why not leave him at home?”

“I can’t. He’s the only one besides you I have. And he knows all, I mean ALL, my secrets.”

“Then don’t complain when kids will tease you.”

“They will not.”

“Remember the rule number one – no fighting and I mean it,” she pointed her finger at me as if I was already fighting. I didn’t. I never did. Well, I never was one to start the fight.

“This includes not fighting back.”

“But it’s unfair Mom,” I whined. “I’m too young to be like Mahatma.”

“No complaining, young lady.”

 

 

We came to the camp and settled in our cabin together with another nurse. The first thing on my mind was a communal shower. It was still two days before kids arriving so the camp was secluded. The communal shower was empty. I went in and to the end of the room. At the end wall, there was a mirror. I glanced at it and there was no door in it. What a silly me. I was in a girls’ shower. I ran outside and looked around to be sure nobody sees me entering the boys’ room. I was the only one here. I entered the boys’ room and quickly moved to the far end. There was a mirror as it was the year before. There was a door in it.

Let it be there. I ran outside. I’ll never come back to check it again. I was happy with Mom and Mom was happy with me. I didn’t want to try my luck and lose everything.