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One of the sour-sisters makes a grunting sound at my back — maybe because she’s got the manners of a wild warthog — so I step into Elizabeth’s space and make her move. This office is big, with a large desk in the center and a tall leather chair behind it, so I shuffle the girl back and around the wooden desk. We’re nearer the toddler now, but he’s still quiet, stacking his blocks and bopping to whatever music is in his head.
I would give Elizabeth the comfortable chair and sit on the desk myself, but that would mean having my back to the bitches, and call me crazy, but I don’t trust them. So I drop into the leather chair and nod to the desk so Elizabeth can sit.
She looks to the sisters, who watch on in silence, stunned at the fact that someone came along and didn’t bend a knee when they demanded, then her eyes come back to mine. She’s about as comfortable giving them her back as I am.
“I’ll watch out for you, I swear.” I snatch up a metal letter opener from the desk and spin it in my hand as she climbs her chubby butt up and makes herself comfortable. “You’re not friends with them, are you?”
Elizabeth looks into her lap, giving herself an extra chin, and snorts. “Does it look like we’re friends? I don’t waste my time hanging out with snobs.”
“No, it looks like you’re working off an old shiner to me.” I point the letter opener toward an old bruise on her face. “Bitches jump you before?”
She nods and peeks over her shoulder. “I can fight back.” Her eyes come back to mine. “I’m not weak. But two against one is hard, and their legs are longer than mine.”
I snicker and let my eyes wander down her legs. “You seem to be missing a little of what God intended us to have. Are you a dwarf?”
“No! I’m just a little slower to grow. Geez, you don’t have to be rude.”
“If you were taller, you wouldn’t be chubby.” She growls when I smile. “Stretch it out, and you’d be in proportion.”
“You’re no better than them.” She pushes forward to jump off the desk, giving me yet another flash of white panties.
“Stop, I’m sorry.” I push her shoulder back and swallow when our eyes meet. “I didn’t mean that in a bad way. I mean, I guess I was teasing a little, but I didn’t mean it to be horrible. I joke when I’m not feeling comfortable.” I cast a glance to the bitches, who try to sneak closer to us.
They stop with an almost skid, back up on a squeak, and make themselves busy across the room as they drop to the floor beside a Barbie Dream Castle, and act like the children they really are. They can’t be more than seven or eight, but arrogance makes them act bigger than they are.
Spoiled brats with a daddy that gives in to their every whim; I’ve met a billion of them at school.
I come back to meet Elizabeth’s eyes. “I’m sorry for teasing. People tease me all the time for being tall and too skinny.”
She purses her lips. “You are tall. And you’re too skinny, too.” Her lips twitch. “People tease me for being fat.”
I smile. “I don’t think you’re fat. I think you’re thick, maybe. Like you have a little extra padding, I suppose. But you’re gonna hit that growth spurt soon, and you won’t be able to keep up with the food.”
“Yeah?” She looks me up and down. “That happened to you?”
“Uh-huh. I get sore knees and the kind of hunger that nothing can fix every couple months. I go to bed, sleep for twelve hours, and wake up another couple inches taller.” I flash a wide grin, because I kinda like it. I want to be the tallest, the biggest, the strongest. “My mom gets mad, because she can’t keep up with the clothes.”
She scoffs. “My daddy gets mad too, but because he doesn’t wanna buy ‘fat girl’ clothes anymore.” She bobs her head with extra exaggeration. “‘Why can’t you be thin like the Hayes girls, huh? Why can’t you look like them’?”
I scoff. “He sounds like a total asshole.”
She nibbles on her lip and hides her grin. The sour-sisters continue to sneak glances our way, but each time they move to approach, our eyes meet, mine fiery hot and still pissed about the comment about my mom, so they sit their asses down and turn away again.
“I don’t call him an asshole, though,” Elizabeth whispers. “No way José. He’d beat my butt so I couldn’t sit for a week.”
I spin the letter opener between my fingers. “Does your dad beat you often? He likes to hurt girls?”
Shrugging, she reaches for a metal ruler near the front of the desk. “He doesn’t, like,beatme or anything. Not with his fists. He spanks me if I’m bad, or sends me to my room if I back talk. But it’s not so bad. He has a stressful job, so…” She looks up. Shrugs.
“My mom has a stressful job too,” I counter. “She’s always working, always tired.” I peek around Elizabeth for a moment, then I lean in closer and whisper, “We’re always broke.” The sour-sisters might be right about me, they might even be right about my dirty clothes and poor life, but my mom’s not a whore, and our finances are none of their damn business. “My mom never beats me, though.”
“That’s probably because you’re a boy,” she argues. “You’ll be bigger than her one day. She’s making smart choices today, so you don’t turn and flatten her when you’re older. That’s not something my daddy ever has to worry about.”
“No.” I shake my head and study the letter opener. “I would never hurt her when I’m bigger. She’s my mom. There’s nothing she could do that would make methatmad.”
“Well, aren’t you lucky?” With a roll of her eyes for my very own kind of elitism, Elizabeth peeks over her shoulder and growls, “God, I hate them. They think they’resoooospecial, but it’s all a lie. They’re the help too. If they think they’re special because of their last name, then they have no clue how much life is gonna kick their asses. Around here, unless you belong to Uncle, and even sometimes then, you’re the help.”
I narrow my eyes and sit back to study the girl in front of me and her constant need to flash her panties. She doesn’t even know she does it, which proves that she’s used to wearing shorts. I study her cute hair; mousy brown and tied in that half-up, half-down way girls do. A shiny pin holds it together at the back, and she wears cute unicorn earrings in her ears, though a part of me wonders if those are stickers.
