Carol wiped at her face. It was wet. She was crying and she didn’t know it. She hated that. She hated this place. It wasn’t fun like Mommy said it would be. It was a thinky place filled with grown-ups who didn’t get it.
Mommy said she’d be playing games all day, and she did, kinda, but by herself. She sat in front of this computer and punched numbers.
Once this scary guy came in. He wore bright reds, and he kinda looked like a clown. He bent down like grown-ups do, and talked to her like she was really stupid.
He said, “Carol, my dear, I’m so glad you’re going to help me with my little project. We’ll have fun.”
Only she never saw him again.
Which was good, because she didn’t like him. He was fake cheery. She hated fake cheery. If he was gonna be icky, he should just be icky instead of pretending to be all happy and stuff. But she didn’t tell him that. She didn’t tell him a lot of stuff because she didn’t like him. And she never saw him again. Just his mittens.
Mommy said every important person had mittens. Everybody who worked for him could be called a mitten, which meant Carol was one, even though she didn’t look like a mitten. She finally figured it was some kinda code word-everybody here liked code words-for workers.
She thought it was a stupid one-Mommy would say, be careful of Lord Kafir and his mittens-and Carol would have to try not to laugh. How can people be afraid of big fake-cheery guys with mittens? ’Specially when they had big red shoes and shiny red pants like those clowns at that circus Uncle Reeve took her to.
Carol had a lot of uncles. Mommy used to bring them over a lot. Then she met Lord Kafir, and the uncles didn’t come to the house any more. Lord Kafir promised Mommy a lot of money if Carol would play games at the Castle with him.
Mommy asked if this was a Neverland Ranch kinda thing and Lord Kafir’s mittens-the ones who’d come to the house-looked surprised. Those mittens didn’t wear helmets. They wore suits like real grown-ups and they had sunglasses and guns like Carol had seen on TV.
They wouldn’t let her touch the guns (she hated it when grown-ups wouldn’t let her touch stuff) but they promised she’d be playing with “weapons” all the time.
Mommy had to explain that weapons were like guns and stuff, only cooler.
So here’s what Carol thought then: she thought she’d be going to a real castle, like that one they show on the Disney Channel-maybe a blue one, maybe a pink one, with Tinkerbell flying around it, and lots of sparkly lights. She thought she get to wear a pretty dress like Cinderella, and dance with giant mice who were really nice, or meet a handsome beast like Belle did.
All the girls who go to castles get to wear pretty dresses with sparkly shoes, and they got to grow their hair really long (Mommy keeps Carol’s hair short because “it’s easier”) and got to dance what Mommy called a walls, and they lived happily ever after.
But that’s not what happened. The Castle wasn’t a castle. It’s this big building all gray and dark that’s built into a mountain. The door let you in and said stuff like checking, checking, all clear before you got to go through another door.
Then there was the mittens. The ones outside the mountain door wore suits and sunglasses. The ones inside actually had the helmets and weird-looking guns and big boots. They scared Mommy-the mittens did, not the boots-and she almost left right then. But the assistant, Ms. Hanaday, joined them and talked to Mommy and reminded her about all the money she’d get for just three months of Carol’s time (Carol didn’t like that), and Mommy grabbed Carol’s hand really tight and led her right into the castle hall mountain like it was okay.
Carol dug her feet in. She was wearing her prettiest shoes-all black and shiny (but no heels. Mommy says little girls can’t wear heels)-and they scraped on that gray floor, leaving black marks. Mommy yelled at her, and Carol hunched even harder, because the place smelled bad, like doctors or that school she went to for three days, and Mommy said the smell was just air-conditioning, but they had air-conditioning at home and it didn’t smell like this. At home, it smelled like the Jones’ dog when he got wet. Here it smelled cold and metal and-wrong.
Carol hated it, but Mommy didn’t care. She said, “Just three months,” then took Carol to this room with all the stuff where she was supposed to play with Lord Kafir, and that’s when Mommy said she’d be right outside.
So Mommy lied-and Carol hated liars.
And now all she wanted was a nap, and nobody was listening because Mommy was a liar and nobody was in that room. Carol was gonna scream and pound things if they didn’t let her nap really soon. She wanted her blankie. She wanted her bed.
She wanted to be let out of this room.
She didn’t care how many cookies they gave her for getting stuff right. She hated it here.
“Hate it,” she said, pounding on the keyboard of the computer they had in here. “Hate it, hate it, hate it.”
Each time she said “hate,” her fist hit the keyboard. It jumped and made a squoogy sound. She kinda liked that sound. It was better than the stupid baby music they played in here or the dumb TV shows that she’d never seen before.
She wanted her movies. She wanted her big screen. She wanted her blankie and her bed.
She wanted a nap.
She pounded again, and Mommy opened the door.
“Honey, you’re supposed to be looking at the pretty pictures.”
She was leaning in and her cheeks was pink. If her hands wasn’t grabbing the door, they’d be twirling her hair, and she might even be chewing on it.
“I don’t like the pictures,” Carol said.
“Honey-”
“I wanna go home.”
“Tonight, honey.”
“Now,” Carol said.
“Honey, we’re here to work for Lord Kafir.”
“Don’t like him.” Carol crossed her arms.
“You’re not supposed to like him.”
“He’s s’posed to play with me.”
“No, honey, you’re supposed to play with his toys.”
“A computer’s not a toy.” Carol was just repeating what Mommy had told her over and over.
“No, dear, but the programs are. You’re supposed to look at them and-”
“The bad guy always wins,” Carol said. She hated it here. She wanted to see Simba or Belle or her friends on the TV. Or maybe go back to that kindergarten that Mommy hated because they said Carol was average. She didn’t know what average was ’cept Mommy didn’t like it. Mommy made it sound bad.
Until that day when she was looking at the want ads like she did (Honey, don’t mess with the paper. Mommy needs to read the want ads) and then she looked up at Carol with that goofy frowny look and whispered, ‘’Average five-year-old…”
“What?” Mommy asked.
“In the games,” Carol said. “The bad guy always wins.”
Mommy slid into the room and closed the door. “The bad guy’s supposed to win, honey.”
“No, he’s not!” Carol shouted. “He gets blowed up or his parrot leaves him or the other lions eat him or he gets runned over by a big truck or his spaceship crashes. The good guys win.”
Mommy shushed her and made up-and-down quiet motions with her hands. “Lord Kafir’s a good guy.”
“I’m not talkin ’bout him!” Carol was still shouting. Shouting felt good when you couldn’t have a nap. “On the computer. The bad guys always win. It’s a stupid game. I hate that game.”
“Maybe you could do the numbers for a while, then, honey.”
“The numbers, you hit the right button and they make stupid words. Nobody thinks I know letters but I do.” Carol learned her ABCs a long time ago. “What’s D-E-A-T-H-R-A-Y?”
“Candy,” Mommy said. Her voice sounded funny.
Carol frowned. That didn’t sound right.
“What’s I-R-A-Q?”
Mommy grabbed her hair and twirled it. “Chocolate.”
“What’s W-H-I-T-E-H-O-U-S-E?” Carol asked.