sever us from our disguises. [caitlin + kai]

Sandra and I don’t really fit.

She’s got all the maternal instincts of a brass doorknob, which is to say, none. Toast is too much for her to make in the morning, and her idea of packed lunch is putting a can of soup in a brown paper bag with my name (and on bad days, the letter K). She tells me that I need to learn some shit in the goddamn run down school we have, or at the least better my reading and writing so I don’t wind up on the street when she kicks the bucket. Which I always say isn’t ever going to happen because someone as cranky as she is usually lives for about a thousand years.

She’s perfect, actually.

It’s why mornings are my favorite, that we get to spend some minutes not wasting time on idle chit chat like it’s going to bond us together. She knows that by some strange twist we’re related, but – only by choices neither of us made. It’s about the only thing she’s done in her whole life that’s been like a mother, taking me in and not letting me rot on the street. But she doesn’t put up a front to act as though I have to love her, or that we’re going to be best friends. She’s got work to do, and I’ve got school to finish. So we sit in silence, chewing on burnt toast and sipping at bitter coffee, not talking. It’s some of my favorite moments of the day.

The cool chill of October is just what I need to get going. I contemplated ditching and finding a park to just lie down in and buzz off for a while, except I don’t want to get taken home and have Sandra called again. There was a whole talk about how I was violating the – I guess you could call it parole – of my situation. Any more strikes and I might have found myself back in a cell, or maybe have a piece of my brain cut out of my head. They seem to like to do experiments up in that university of theirs, if that’s what they wanted to call it. A place where they take people apart and put them back together they way they want.

I wasn’t taught like the kids here. We didn’t have a school out on the road. My mother would spend hours talking about things that we’d seen, or how to identify berries and keep myself hidden. How there were prayers we could say to protect ourselves, or how to make a fire. Real world stuff, that kept the caravan from wasting energy. There were the gatherers that foraged and the hunters that hunted. Menders that darned clothes and barterers that slipped into districts and got what was needed. Scouting to make sure that the coast was clear. And story tellers, to keep all the knowledge and history that we’d had, since leaving the world behind.

Here they put you into a box, and tell you things that are supposed to make you smart, so long as you repeat them. Words and phrases that make you colorful, brilliant, astonishing – and exactly the same as all the other little polished beauties. Except I don’t like to be polished and I ain’t beautiful. It’s a sad world to have to live like that – but these kids don’t know any different. They just want to be told that they belong.

Art is about the only place I get to do anything close to what I used to. Drawing or painting, or just creating – that’s a high as good as watching a sunset at the edge of a mountain top. Most of the others aren’t too keen on it, I don’t think. It’s hard when your brain’s been molded to fit a certain hole; you wind up just stalling out when trying to create. Today’s no different, the kids just meandering and making terrible little creations. I lean back in my chair and stare off, and turn to watch a girl putting lines on paper. I see the jagged rock, and the world she creates. The birds. The old man.

I scrape my chair across the floor.

“That’s kind of what it looks like,” I whisper, leaning in closer. I smile a crooked little smile. “On a mountain in the middle of nowhere, with just the animals and you.” I’m not supposed to let on, and it’s vague enough I don’t worry. “You’re a lot better drawer than the rest of these kids. I like it.” I put my chin atop my fist. “I’m Kai, by the way. Don’t think we’ve been introduced.”