Saturday morning

I met Aylin through sheer coincidence because I know her brother, Felix. I took over his job of babysitting on Saturdays when he had to move out of state for his job. Since then, we kept in contact through video games although that ended when I stopped playing. We’ve been talking again now that I started again.

I owe a lot of Felix. He’s good at sorting my thoughts whenever I can’t think clearly.

I wish he could visit sometime so I can get everything off my chest. It’s been three years since he left and three years seems to be a common occurrence. After all, the world was supposed to change back then. Our lives were supposed to change. Things were supposed to get better.

Now I can’t help to think we’re back to square one.

Today, The nine-year-old Helen doesn’t stop begging me to take her to the zoo. I have no justifiable reason not to now that I own a car. Over the week, she’s gotten obsessed with hippos and won’t shut up about them. Her energetic smile doesn’t waver as she tells me everything about them on the drive there. She tells me some things that I didn’t know, like how hippos don’t actually swim and sort of skip underwater. Or how despite looking fat, they’re actually quite dense in muscle. Helen is like a little zoo guide but exclusively for her favorite animal.

She almost bolts straight to the exhibit but I stop her from running too far.

“Don’t you want to go see everything else first?”

Helen shakes her head and I have to bring her down from leaning over the railing of a bird exhibit. “But I want to be there when they’re fed!”

I flip one of the zoo’s guide pamphlets to the hippo section. “They tell you when they’re going to be fed. We have another hour.”

“That’s so long.”

“Well good thing we have a whole zoo to explore,” I laugh, taking hold of Helen’s hand and begin walking the trails.

Helen doesn’t bother reading each exhibit’s plaques and signs about the animals, but I do. I’ve never actually been to a zoo before. All the exotic animals didn’t feel real until now. It’s fascinating, honestly. There’s so many species and every animal is so diverse. It’s beautiful. It’s amazing how all of this is possible.

Nature is beautiful.

Life is.

There’s so much more than my little world and problems. I’m tiny compared to it all. I might not even matter in the grand scheme of things. I’m just another human that fills this world. And humans poison this earth. There’s no avoiding it. We all do it one way or another.

I think it’s pointless to try and minimize the damage I do. The damage is done.

But coming to the zoo makes me believe that it’s not all so bad. There’s so much beauty here. It still exists.

Maybe it still exists within me.

“You okay?” Helen nudges on my hand.

“Huh?” I shake my head to pull out of the trance. My hand wipes away a single tear on my cheek and I rub it between my fingers. Why did it fall?

“Are the red pandas that cute?” Helen asks, probably asking because I’ve been staring at this exhibit far longer than any other.

“Hippos aren’t the only cute animals.”

“Yeah, but no one else is cute and cool.”

“Snow leopards are cute and cool.”

“What makes them cooler than regular leopards?”

“I don’t know. We could always see them and find out. Want to go there next? We can see your hippos right after.”

Helen nods and runs off without giving me a warning. This time, I keep my distance but never far away enough to break line of sight of her. She ignores all the exhibits we pass by until we get close to the cat’s enclosure.

Helen stops, noticing another girl walking into the exhibit. She grabs the girl's attention and enters the cat’s exhibit together. Helen is already chattering up by the time I catch up. The two girls don’t care or notice that I stand behind them while they press their faces against the glass.

“Look at that one. It’s a kitty!” Helen gasps. “It’s so cute!”

“I wonder if I can convince my mom to get me one,” The other girl says after.

“I told you they were cute,” I make my presence known.

Helen turns towards me along with the other girl. “Gracie, this is Adanismee. We go to class together. Isn’t it cool that she’s here too?”

“I know it was a good idea to come today,” Adanismee says, looking at me like she’s been expecting me. No, that isn’t it. I just find it weird because she isn’t breaking away from staring.

“This is Grace. She babysits me.”

I take a quick look around and don’t see anyone that might be the girl’s parents. There was no one around her when Helen ran up to her. “Are you here alone?” I ask the slightly shorter girl.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

Adanismee nods. “You don’t have to worry about me. My mom always knows where I am.”

“Isn’t that careless of her?”

“A bit,” Adanismee giggles. “It’s okay. She doesn’t like to be out in public.”

“Yeah, I have never seen her. The kids at school think she doesn’t exist,” Helen adds.

Helen is the only kid in Darkwood that doesn’t go to school there. She attends a private school in Seattle. While Aylin makes enough as a single mother, It’s all thanks to Felix that she’s able to send her daughter to a privileged school. It’s better this way. Helen won’t grow up in a system designed to ruin her.

But even a well off parent wouldn’t leave their child without supervision.

“Is she picking you up?”

Adanismee nods again then turns her attention to the exhibit. “Did you see your hippos, Helen?”

“Not yet! You should come with. They’re gonna feed them watermelons soon.”

Adanismee’s face is sour. There hasn’t been much expression from her before but it’s like she’s disappointed now. “So it was your idea to come to the zoo today?”

“Yup!”

“Huh.”

“Is something the matter?” I ask her.

Adanismee’s pupils move to the corner of her eyes to look at me without moving her head. “I thought you came because you woke up.”

“I did wake up, silly,” Helen laughs.

Helen’s friend becomes eerily creepy with that statement. There’s something off about her. She certainly doesn’t act like a nine year old. Adanismee is a complete contrast to Helen. Helen runs around without a thought in her head, this girl is always in thought. She also looks at me like she knows me.

“You’re a creepy girl,” I tell her.

“Only because you haven’t felt it.”

“And what’s that supposed to be?”

The creepy girl moves her eyeballs back to the cats. “It doesn’t matter until you do. Or maybe it matters that you haven’t. I’ll find out.”

“You’re not beating the creepy girl allegations,” I cross my arms.

“Micheal told you to stop saying weird stuff like that, Isme.” Helen presses her face against the glass again. “Wait, why didn’t he come with you?”

“No, seriously, why are you alone?”

Adanismee takes hold of Helen’s hand and leads her away. “C’mon, I wanna see the hippos with you.”

“You read my mind,” Helen laughs.

I sigh, scratching the back of my head wondering how I ended up in this situation. I’m responsible for the safety of a kid now I don’t even know. The correct thing to do is tell someone and get someone more qualified involved. I would do just that if Helen didn’t know her. There’s no need to complicate things just yet.

The two girls ignore me as Helen repeats everything for Adanismee that she told me on the way here. Helen goes into further detail and even into the hippos’ history that it attracts other kids around her to listen in. A small crowd of kids and parents gather around her.

A mother of one of the kids taps me on the shoulder, “Must be nice to have a little sister interested in learning.”

“Oh,” I giggle, “She’s just like that. She’ll find something else to obsess over next week.”

“I can’t even get my son to pay attention to anything,” the mother smiles. “It’s always roulette when it comes to kids, am I right?”

“Yeah,” I nod and I’m left alone after that.

Adanismee tugs on my shirt while Helen because too focused on sharing what she knows to the other kids. “My mom is almost here. Can you take me to her?”

“I thought I shouldn’t worry about you.”

“It’ll make you feel better, right?”

“Where are you supposed to meet her?”

“Outside. Parking lot.”

“Look! Look Look!” Helen cuts my attention by pointing at the exhibit. The zookeepers give each of the hippos a watermelon to crunch on like it’s nothing more but a berry. “They can crush a head open just like that!”

“Thanks for the image,” I giggle.

Helen is completely fascinated. Hippos are such a random animal to obsess over but I guess it’s fine. It’s a better one to have than her phone the weeks prior.

“C’mon, we gotta go. Adanismee’s mom is here.”

“Aw, can’t you stay a little longer?”

“I saw what I was looking for,” the odd girl shakes her head then grabs hold of my hand. Helen gets to my other side and grabs onto my other. “Lead the way, Miss.”

I stay silent while I let the two friends be friends and talk as I take them outside. Adanismee doesn’t share the same enthusiasm as Helen, but I can tell she likes her company. I wish I had a friend like Helen when I was a kid, just someone who was fun to be around and didn’t care how weird I was. Hell, I wish I had a friend in the first place.

I never did get to experience what everyone else had, did I? Not even something simple like going to the zoo. Mom never could afford to pay for the field trip.

Adanismee lets go of my hand and runs off the moment she spots her mom waiting for her by the parked car. She waves back at us, yelling, “Thanks again! I’ll see you soon!” and wastes no time getting in her mom’s car. Her mom is staring at me, standing outside with the door open.

“Bye!” Helen waves back.

The girl wasn’t talking to Helen.

I continue to make my way towards the car, but the mother doesn’t bother to wait for me. She gets inside the car before I can come close to introduce myself.. She should at least thank me for watching over her kid.

This entire past hour has been weird.

The mom dressed exactly how a stereotypical kidnapper from those warning videos would. She had a baseball cap over her hair, hid her eyes with sunglasses and the rest of her face with a facemask. A trench coat covered her entire body even though it's the middle of June. The only thing that made her look any differently than a kidnapper was the coat was white and not an ugly beige or brown.

Adanismee has not beaten the creepy girl allegations.

Her mother gives me the same energy.

We decided to end the trip there and I bought her some ice cream being sold nearby.

“Just who was your friend today?” I ask Helen when we get back inside my car.

Helen makes sure she puts on her seatbelt before answering. “That’s Micheal’s sister.”

“The boy you like?”

“Yeah!”

“Is it normal for her to be alone?”

“Mhmph, they've been like that ever since their dad died.”

“So it’s just their mom?” I start the car but don’t move my eyes away from Helen with the help of the rearview mirror. “Wouldn’t you be scared if your mom or I left you alone all by yourself around a bunch of strangers?”

“Yeah, but Adanismee is so cool and can take care of herself. She’s super duper smart too.”

I lightly press on the pedal to back out of the parking spot but a jolt of electricity shocks my foot away. Another flash pops into my head and makes me wince. It’s not the night Elizabeth died this time. It’s never deviated from that memory before. This one was from the Fourth of July, three years ago. The night that was the culmination of what Elizabeth left behind.

I went home early, before everything would happen.

I relive the phone call from Sara, telling me Emily’s been shot. She told me Chris lost his mind. But she also told me that everything will be okay now.

“You okay?” Helen asks me.

“Yeah,” I pull myself together and drive out of the spot properly this time.

This entire day has been weird.