Good Boy
By Laura Schiller
Based on: Tokyo Mew Mew
Copyright: Reiko Yoshida, Mia Ikumi
Kaede:
I left the boy alone for ten minutes to get some milk at the corner store. I came back to find him kneeling on the living room carpet, staring down at the dead body of our pet canary.
Its neck is twisted, a few yellow feathers scattered on the floor. He is not crying, or frightened, or anything you'd expect an eight-year-old to be. He simply stares, as if Chi's death were a mildly interesting movie scene. Then he looks up at me, and for a moment I could swear his brown eyes are glowing blue.
I blink. They are brown again, and huge with surprise at seeing me, as if he hasn't even heard me come in.
"Kaede-san, I mean, Mother – I … " He scrambles to his feet, almost trips over the bird and reels back, his eyes filling with tears. "Chi-chan! What happened?"
"I don't know, I wasn't there!" Uneasiness makes my voice sharper than I expected. "How could you not have noticed, you were in the house all this time – "
I catch my breath. When my husband and I agreed to adopt Masaya-kun, the social workers warned us about his unusual medical history: blackouts, anywhere from two minutes to several hours long. Actions he claimed not to remember, such as filling a notebook with symbols no one could decipher, or running away to hide at the Planetarium. My husband and I decided it didn't matter; he seemed like such a bright, sweet, sensible child that we thought his disability would only make us care for him all the more.
We never expected it to be like this.
"Masaya-kun, tell me you didn't … "
Deep Blue:
The horror in that woman's eyes would be comic if it weren't so hypocritical. She and her mate own one carbon-fuelled vehicle each, live in a wasteful suburban mansion that could accommodate three times as many, and regularly add their used plastic to this city's landfill. They are contributing to the death of the entire planet – my planet! – and yet here she is, looking at me as if I am a monster for extinguishing a single lower life-form. The creature's chirping was annoying me. Besides, what else am I supposed to use for my experiments in this place?
However, the last thing I need is to be dragged through yet another
psychiatric evaluation, so I retreat and allow my host body's consciousness to take over. It's not the most dignified existence, hiding inside the mind of a human brat, but better than being detected, scanned and prodded like a scientific curiosity.
Besides, I'd forgotten how tiring a corporeal existence can be.
Masaya:
I blacked out again, didn't I? What happened to the biology homework I was working on? Why is Chi-chan lying on the floor with her head like that, not moving? And why is Kaede-san staring at me?
"Masaya-kun, tell me you didn't … "
Her face is pale, just like Komura-sensei's when he looked at the notebook they all said I wrote.
"I didn't do anything, Kaede-san, I swear! I wouldn't ever …"
I want to tell her that I love Chi-chan: her singing, the way she sleeps with her little head under her wing, the happy way she flies around when we let her out of the cage. There's no way I could have hurt her. I want to explain all this, except I'm crying, and my throat hurts too much to talk.
What if she doesn't believe me? What if they send me away again?
I know how this goes. Whenever something like this happens, first people tell me I'm lying. Sometimes they snap at me or hit me, and sometimes they pretend they're being nice, but they still don't believe me. Then they start to get scared, and when they're scared, they send me away. To another foster home or another orphanage, with new rules and new punishments that I can't remember.
I hate it when that happens, I hateit! I hate them for not believing me!
Because I'm trying, okay? I made my own bed today and finished almost all my homework, even though it's Friday and all the kids would make fun of me if they knew. I'm trying to be good. So why don't any of them want me?
Kaede-san – I can't get used to calling her Mother – takes two kleenexes from the box on the coffee table, bends down and uses them to pick up Chi-chan's body. She's a little less pale now, but she won't look at me.
"Of course you wouldn't," she finally says. "You're a good boy, Masaya-kun. We can find a box to bury Chi, all right? Let's pray for her."
Which is nice to hear, but doesn't make me feel much better.
Because if I didn't kill Chi-chan, who did?