Annie G


As curfew approached, we started heading back to our rooms. Problem was, they were separated from each other by a fair margin.

I wanted to walk Kerri back to her place, then we’d run to ours. Kerri wanted to walk us back to our place and find her own way home.

Pet, of course, wanted to do both. She didn’t want to abandon Kerri but she kinda wanted to get me home quickly, too.

“Okay,” I said. This was cool, I don’t often get to be the peacemaker. “We go to our room, all three of us. We call Nolan’s room from our room and he comes to get Kerri.”

“I can-“ the little artist started to insist.

“We know you CAN,” I said. “No one’s doubting you CAN. But you’ve been on your knuckles all DAY. It’s time for your giant to come get you and pamper you and make himself useful.”

“Plus,” Pet said, “he’s probably pacing your room looking for something to do ANYWAY, so he’ll leap at the call and he’ll agree to come get you and when he hangs up he’ll pump a fist and say ‘yes!’ because you need him and he’ll run come get you so fast you think he was waiting outside the door!”

So we figured out which was the shortest path to our (My, Pet, Denise and Ray’s) room, and started walking.

As we walked I dabbed at my lip with a hankette.

“Is it still bleeding?” Pet asked.

“No, I’m fine,” I said.

As it happened, the path home went through the food court. We still had time for a quick, restorative snack. Kerri let us pick, because she’d tried them all. I suggested the place with cubes of candy floss. Pet was in favor so we headed there.

As we came out, we bumped into Cher and Delli!

“Holy crap!” Cher said when he saw us. “Can you believe this place?”

“Yeah, we can,” Kerri said. “But… How many times have you been here?”

“First time out without a keeper!” he bragged. He had a stick with some sort of meat sliver on it. There were other, empty sticks in his pocket. I had to wonder if he was keeping souvenirs.

Delli, on the other hand, stepped right over to me and put an arm around my waist. “Sugar, what the hell happened to you?”

“Dickens,” I said. “What the dickens, it’s more Southern.”

“Screw the accent, you’ve been in a fight!”

“No, I haven’t,” I said. Delli looked to Pet and Kerri.

Kerri shrugged, an interesting action when she’s in mid-step. “Fight assumes that the other guy had a chance,” she said.

“It was horrible!” Pet cried. Damn, and she’d been so brave at the time.

Cher stepped over and put one of his enormous arms around Pet’s shoulders. That should have made her feel almost as safe as a hug from Denise. Cher’s big enough to be two sylphs. “I’m sure it was, sweetie. But then Annie got between you and the horrible, is that what happened?”

“Yeah! This guy, a naked guy, he came up to us and he said I had the best legs he’d ever seen,” she explained. “And I said thank you, and I said he had nice legs, too, because he did, and he said that sylphs were supposed to be naked and offered to help me take my shorts off.”

“Sylphs CAN be clothing-free, obviously,” Delli said. “But it should be a choice, not a come-on.”

“And I said I was fine with my clothes on, and he said ‘I really must insist’ and I said no, and Kerri said go away, but nicely and he shook his head, and Annie said go away and nothing worse than a turn-down will happen to you.”

“And he didn’t go away,” Cher nodded understandingly.

“No! He turned to Annie and he flexed his muscles and he had quite a few, I mean, not as many as you do, but, you know, a lot, and he said ‘what are you going to do about it, shorty’ and she went all drugged up monkey on his dumb ass.”

Delli was looking at my puffy lips. “And he got at least one good shot in.”

“Ha!” I laughed, regretting it as my jaw hurt. “He wishes. I kicked the side of his knee and he went down like a frightened sack of potatoes.” I rubbed my lip gently. “His flailing arms got me by accident.”

“Not exactly Marquis of Queensbury,” Delli said.

“He outweighed me by quite a bit,” I said.

“Most of it rocks where his brains should be,” Cher said.

“Exactly. If I said ‘ready set go’ he’d have wiped the floor with me. And Ray always taught me three things. Hit first. Hit until you’re not mad anymore. And the knee is the last part of the body to duck.”

“Holy crap!” Kerri shouted. “That makes me invincible!”

“Yes, dear,” Delli, Pet and I said together. It’s good that the artist has an active imagination.

“So, anyway,” I said, “we were headed home so Glorious Master can lecture me about fighting in the halls and probably get grounded but tomorrow we’re eating at Portion Control, so it’s livable.”

“In fact,” Pet said, looking at a watch stuck on the wall. “I think we’re maybe going to be a little late for curfew.”

“You have a curfew?” Cher asked.

“Just so they know where we are when they get ready for bed,” I said. “Well, for SLEEPING in bed. You don’t?”

“No,” Delli said, but with a little sob. Kind of a happy sob, if that makes any sense. I have no idea what that was about.

“We have an anti-curfew,” Cher explained. “We can’t go back to the room for another two hours.”

So we invited everyone back to our place. Ray won’t get TOO strict in front of friends. Of course, if he realized I brought friends home in a calculated effort to avoid punishment, he’d punish the shit out of me later. I could only hope he was having too much fun at the Center to be vindictive.



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Index

119. Kerri G

121. Annie H