Chapter Three October Ninth
Pine Ridge, New York
Do you know what computer nerds do when they get a break from their computer nerd jobs? Play computer games. Play video games. We live and die by the screen; our friendships are all online.
Assuming, of course, that you didn’t grow up in a bunch of group homes where the skinny weaklings never got a turn with the consoles.
Or in strict foster homes that believed all video games were violent and that talking to people online meant you were going to run away with some dude selling candy in an unmarked van.
Now that I’m on my own—I have a sweet gaming setup. Community college scholarships for foster kids got me my first IT job. Money from that got me online courses. Being a shy, nerdy person gave me a work ethic borne out of boredom and a desperate desire to please people so I wouldn’t be sent away.
So when I have free time, I might play for a little bit, but I usually do more work.
The AI is everywhere, and it eats coders like me for breakfast. In the last month, I’ve done more troubleshooting for horrific advice and dangerous mistakes made by AI than I’ve done actual coding—and yet people are still calling for it to replace us humans.
I think maybe AI is working on it. Yesterday, the AI assistant at MenuGenius updated all of Parmi-Johnny Reggie-ani’s Casual Italian online menus to state that their entire menu was dairy-free.
Yes, even the four-cheese pizza, the ricotta-stuffed manicotti, and the creamy vegetarian Tuscan bean soup.
It was an allergic reaction of epic proportions waiting to happen, and guess who had to undo it while the AI was trying to fight every correction? Me.
“I can’t do this anymore. I’m clocking out,” I groan and log off. Fourteen hours at a desk in a dark spare bedroom. When I walk into the hall, I actually scream at the bright fall sunlight that sears my retinas.
I could sleep.
I definitely need to eat.
But maybe... Maybe I’ll go outside. Mr. Minegold stopped by a couple of nights ago and gave me an entire folder full of things to do in town. October has Halloween things up the wazoo, some pumpkin festival, a Night Market that runs all year, all these little shops...
I sigh. I moved here because there’s literally no way to live in a city on what I make.
Next year... Next year, I can get a raise.
I have benefits now. I’m still eating what Mr. Wickstaff gave me.
Expensive little boutiques aren’t going to work.
I’m still on the “looking at budget recipes daily” setting of my life.
Hey, Doofus. You’re in the mountains of New York. You know, the place where rich people from the city come to hike and stare at trees? Go outside. Get some Vitamin D before you get scurvy or mess up your malaria.
Wait, not malaria.
What’s the thing where you can’t sleep because of being on a screen all the time? Melanoma?
No, melatonin! I am probably messing up my melatonin between working weird shifts in different time zones and being on screens so much that my eyes are blurring.
So. Out I go. Phone in pocket. Water. A muffin and an apple from the basket. A map of trails that take you through the foothills and lead all the way out to Ridgeview Peak, which is still technically part of the town, even though it looks like it’s really far away.
Oh, and a jacket. I put everything into my shoulder satchel and figure I’ll just start small and see if I like it.
I smile at the reflection in the hall mirror.
Sometimes I do this, where I just stare for a minute and talk to my reflection.
After all, I’m the only relative I’ve ever known.
This face—aging, filling out, slimming down, growing stubble, sporting glasses—it’s the only face I’ve ever seen on a continual daily basis.
“Look, Arthur. We have our own place. No one can kick us out. We have our own wheels.” I jingle the keys I pick up from the hook next to the mirror.
The car they belong to is a total junker, but it runs.
“We live in the ‘burbs. We’re going to go hiking. See leaves and shit. Maybe deer! Ooh, raccoons.” I know it’s dumb, but I still give the reflection in the mirror a thumbs up.
“We’re gonna make it. I’m gonna take care of you.
I’m even exercising so you don’t turn into a lard ass.
” I wink and have to chuckle. I’m the skinny drip, no matter what I do, and probably always will be, but it’s fun to pretend I’m doing this for my health instead of because I’m too broke to do something else.
“OH. OH, MY GOD. I THOUGHT thin people were in good shape.” I collapse after an hour of hiking, sweating and blistered.
Well, maybe not blistered, but definitely sore.
My worn sneakers are great for grocery store runs and the occasional coffee run, but they are not hiking shoes.
In fact, I think I’m supposed to have boots for this sort of thing.
I look up at the foothills and then at the distant point of Ridgeview Peak, still green and covered in pines.
Down lower, there are lots of reds and yellows of changing leaves.
If I’ve got to be exhausted and a complete failure as an athlete, at least this is a pretty place to do it in.
I could even eat my muffin and use my satchel as a pillow, lie back, and watch the clouds in an October sky. Rest my feet.
Relax after my fourteen-hour shift.
Geez, and I was up before that. I sit down in a grassy spot beside one of the trails that is supposed to take me all the way up to Ridgeview Peak—where I will not be going. I finish my muffin and a few sips of water before sighing and snuggling back in the cool grass under a bright blue sky.
How many hours have I been up?
I don’t know, but I fall asleep trying to figure it out, and dream of maniacal robots making lactose-intolerant people cry by promising them lasagna and then taking it away, hiding all the good food in walls of swirling code.
When I wake up, it’s dark, much colder, and the crying from my dream has carried over into the waking world.
I sit up with a gasp, panicked and confused about where I am for a few minutes, and then even more confused that the crying in my dream has morphed from angry wails of the pasta-deprived to tiny, helpless whimpers and muffled sobs.
Like a baby’s cries.
“Baby?” I call.
Like that’s going to help. I crouch, then stand. “Hello? Hey! Is someone there?”
No one answers, unless you count the crying as a reply. It’s getting louder, as if the owner is trying to respond to my voice. “Baby?” I shout again.
There’s no one else on the path. No hikers. No joggers.
“Isn’t there a bird that cries like a baby? Or is that a bobcat?”
Great time to have been raised in inner city Baltimore. The only nature I know is crabs and the sea life I got to see in my annual trip to the aquarium. I could be walking towards something that poops on my shirt, or something that eats me alive and licks its whiskers over my corpse.
“Third option. Baby. Maybe baby and mom!” I start to jog, ignoring the pain in my inadequately shod feet. I’m picturing all kinds of things. Maybe a mom who tripped and hit her head. Or broke her ankle. The poor baby, screaming for help as it’s strapped to her in a backpack.
Maybe I’ll be a hero. Maybe it’s a single mom.
I’m so disgusted with myself for imagining that. I’m lonely, and it’s always cooler to play the hero when the hero might get a shot at saving the woman of his dreams.
I don’t have time to think about that now. I’m busy pushing into the treeline, phone flashlight on, whispering and shouting in turns. My stomach is on red alert. I keep scanning the ground for bobcats and the trees for birds.
I was peering at a suspicious shadow when I tripped on her.
“Oh God!” I gasp, hands over my mouth.
My first thought is that it’s a new-new-newborn, like bloody and fresh out of the womb. My second is that it’s sunburnt or suffering from exposure.
It’s pink. Like bright, violent bubblegum pink.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” I reassure us both, hands shaking as I stretch them out.
The little pink thing moves—and it has a tail.
Oh! It’s a deformed bobcat! A hairless, deformed little animal. I recoil and play my light over the wriggling, wailing thing left in a clump of pink and white mountain laurel and realize—it’s not an animal. But it has hooves. And a tail. And itty-bitty horns.
I’d puke in panic or pure terror, but that muffin has long since been digested, and my mouth is as dry as one of those bleached cow skulls in the desert.
When the light shines on the baby’s—creature’s?—face, she raises little curled fists and rubs her eyes.
It’s a girl, judging by the wrinkly pink anatomy.
I swallow and reach for my jacket, which is tied around my waist. “Please stop crying. Please—please don’t eat me like that devil doll in the horror movie,” I whisper, bladder threatening a strike.
The crying fades the closer I get. Squinty blue eyes peer at me, and little arms beg me to lift.
“You need uppies?” I choke out, not sure what I’m seeing.
Who would leave a kid all alone, naked, in the woods? This isn’t quite a newborn, but it’s not any kind of old enough to care for itself.
Something powerful attacks me. Not the baby. A memory I think I’ve buried for a long, long time.
Two people, entering a room where I’m in my crib. Maybe I should’ve been in a bed, but I wasn’t yet. Able to stand, able to walk, not able to pull myself over without getting hurt, so I stayed still. Trapped. I raised my arms when I saw the people in suits.
The memory connects so hard that I can feel everything I felt back then like it’s happening now. I want out. I’m hungry and thirsty. I want out of these wet, dirty clothes. I want...
I want help. I want someone to save me.
I pick her up and hold her to my chest, the way no one did for me.
I wrap my arms around her tightly, and her crying stops.
She’s not old enough to call for “mama” like I did.
Mama didn’t come. Mama left, and I was too old for someone to snatch me up and claim me as they might a cute little baby.
No, I was an almost two-year-old with a speech delay and missing milestones.
No one wanted a messed-up toddler that needed speech and physical therapy, that might have brain damage or something equally bad, something passed down from a mother who used drugs and drank.
Just like no one would want her. This little pink baby.
This little, messed-up, deformed baby with growths and some sort of prehistoric throwback tail.
Clubbed feet, maybe? Warts of some kind on her head?
I don’t know. I’m not examining her, I’m just holding her, swaying us both.
“We’re okay, we’re okay, we’re okay,” I whisper on a loop.
Someone left me behind, didn’t care whether I lived or died.
Someone tossed her away, afraid of her differences.
“Well, hey,” I pull her down, shifting from pressing her on my chest to holding her in a cradle made of my scrawny arms, which suddenly feel much stronger.
“You’re beautiful, you little pink nugget.
Pretty as a rose. Pretty as—” I look at the place where I plucked her from, hoping I see a note, some clothes, a dirty diaper—anything!
But I don’t. “Pretty as the mountain laurel. Laurel, that’s a girl’s name, isn’t it?
Perfect name for a pretty pink baby girl like you.
Although if you grow up and want to be a total badass goth chick, I won’t care.
And if you change colors, I won’t care.” I don’t know what I’m saying. I’m babbling. But something is clear.
I’m telling Laurel that I’m going to be around when she grows up. Apparently.
Laurel whimpers and sucks in air. Her belly is thin and hollowed in.
She needs help, and I’m going to help her. “Let me just get you a nice policeman, and I...” I stop, the phone moving away from my ear as fast as it went towards it.
The cops will come. And they’ll give Laurel to someone who will put her in some freak show. Make her life a hell on the internet. I can already see the clickbait. “Scroll to see the pink demon baby! Watch as we stab her tail to show that it’s really connected, not a prosthetic!”
No, no. Nothing that horrific.
That won’t happen. She’ll just... Wait for someone to take her home. A forever home.
Or she’ll never be picked. People will only see what’s “wrong” with her. Then she’ll be too old. She’ll bounce around, bullied and teased, and then age out, and—
Yeah, I’m projecting.
“That’s not gonna happen to you, Laurel. I’m gonna take you home and take good care of you.” I hesitate, not sure what’s happening in my chest. Probably fright-induced regurgitation.
Nope, everything stays down.
This burning fullness seems to be from my heart, but it’s not heartburn. “C’mon, Laurel. Daddy’s gonna take you home, and everything is going to be okay.” I put on my jacket one arm at a time, struggling to hold her and put it on at the same time. I manage it, and then zip it up over her.
Maybe Laurel is a freak. Or some monster-devil baby. I don’t care. She’s my little girl now. Someone picked her. Someone rescued her. That someone is me, and I’m going to protect her.
“Hey, Laurel. I was hoping I could save the girl of my dreams. And I have dreamed of having a family since forever. So, I think I did.”
She snuffles, but being warm and held seems to be helping her. I know she needs to eat.
I need formula. A crib. A car seat.
Things I don’t have money for, but I have a credit card that’s got some room on it.
I swallow and march on, heading back to my car. I pull my phone to my lips. “Hey. Tell me how to take care of a baby,” I ask. “Give me a step-by-step guide for total idiots.”
The little electric voice chirps back. “To care for a baby, make sure you never leave it unattended. You will need to secure the area where the baby will remain with outlet covers, remove sharp objects, use corner guards, and—”
It keeps talking. I keep walking. I have a feeling I could drive to Florida, and it would still be telling me how to take care of Laurel.
“I’m gonna mess up, kid. You want out, speak now. Cry or something.”
Yes, I’m making it easy for my “out” to arrive, but Laurel is silent against my chest. I think she’s sleeping.
Okay. Outlet covers and foam corner guards. Car seat. Crib. Blankets. Clothes. Oh, heck, diapers and wipes! Diapers immediately. I realize I have a pooping time bomb cuddled in my coat.
My online shopping order is going to be huge. My credit card is going to scream.
But Laurel is quiet, and my heart is suddenly singing.