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APRIL
April wandered back to her room at the end of her working hours, feeling tired but hopeful.
Bo had painted miles of purple grass with enormous green and blue airships floating above.
When she really did run out of paint, the two of them hung the best of the artwork on the big bulletin board in Bo’s room. That had also meant taking down or covering some of her old pieces, which turned out to be a challenge.
But by the time Mr. Rivvor came to retrieve Bo for dinner, she was calm and ready to let April hang up the last few pieces.
“You can have dinner with us,” Mr. Rivvor offered April.
“I’ve actually got some calls to make,” she told him. “But thank you.”
They needed their family time, and honestly, she really did have to reach out to a few people, and one in particular. She had been sent on this job last minute and she didn’t want to leave any stones unturned.
“Okay,” he said, looking a little disappointed.
She watched them go, and then tidied up the paints and paintings as best she could.
It would have been easy to fully clean and organize Bo’s room herself, but that wouldn’t help the girl learn to take care of her own things. And she certainly had enough of them. Organizing her treasures was going to be an important skill for Bo.
Once April was finished with the paintings, she headed into her room and pulled up her comms.
Unsurprisingly, she hadn’t missed anything.
Which was good. There really wasn’t anyone she was hoping to hear from, especially from her last job.
When she took her previous work contract, she had thought it was to dance with a professional company. After all, her training was in ancient and lyrical dance. There was no way she could have guessed they would send her to a gentlemen’s club.
When she arrived, and learned what the contract owners actually wanted from her, she had been paralyzed with fear and shame.
But when she called her parents for help, they hadn’t been willing to pick up the tab for her return fare, or an attorney to fight the contract.
Who could blame them? She was the youngest of nine children. There could hardly be any money left.
She refused to dance, and could easily have been put in a debtor’s work camp if one of the co-owners hadn’t taken pity on her.
April was permitted to “renegotiate” her contract to the tune of half-pay and double hours, working as a waitress at the club. Which really wasn’t so bad. The uniform was skimpy, but she was allowed to keep it on, and the tips were good.
The women at the club had taken her under their wing, though they did tease her a little with the nickname “Sister April” for her unwillingness to improve her lot by dancing. Overall, things had been going okay.
Except that when she told her mother about the compromise she had made to stay out of the work camps, her mother ended the comms and blocked her.
Just working in that club made her a pariah in her mother’s eyes, and it didn’t matter that the family hadn’t lifted a finger to help.
She curled her feet up under her and breathed in deeply through her nose and let it out through her mouth, just like her friend Jazz had taught her.
The older dancer practiced yoga and meditation. And she had a big family, too. She understood that her parents and siblings had meant everything to April.
“Hey, when you’re poor and there’s a lot of you, each other is all you have,” Jazz had said wisely. She was right, of course.
But with Mom not speaking to April, of course no one else would either.
That had only made her more dependent on her new work family at the club for moral support. The dancers mothered her, and the co-owner who ran the place had been like a kindly grandfather.
The trouble really only started when his silent partner decided to pay a visit.
“I’m not thinking about it,” April told herself out loud, putting a stop to her spiraling thoughts. “Things happen for a reason.”
