Child's Play
"My mom gave me a nickel, she said to buy a pickle, but I didn't buy no pickle, instead I bought bubblegum – bazooka, zooka bubblegum…" A group of little girls, bronze-skinned and brown-eyed with pigtails and butterfly barrettes and braids, sing out. One day, not so long from now, Holly may be among them, except she'll have blonde hair and blue eyes and maybe curly hair, maybe straight, and she won't be switching back and forth between English and Spanish as she hopscotches, jumps, dances, runs, like these girls are. Or maybe she will. Walt doesn't know if he'll live long enough to find out.
Holly, as of now, is toddling around and jumping on a little rocking horse, wordlessly yanking it back and forth.
Walt watches her, and so does, occasionally, the young man standing next to him, lanky and a bit awkward with his shaved head and nervous countenance. He's more focused on his own charge, little Brock, who's climbed to the top of the slide.
"Look, Jesse, look!" Brock exclaims before rushing forward and sliding down, his arms up in a flourish.
Jesse has reason to be worried, after all – Brock wasn't released from the hospital that long ago, and the poisoning scare is still tacked forefront in Jesse's mind, stapled to a resolution to never let Brock out of his sight. A promise he'll surely break by accident but… He hasn't, yet.
The little girls start singing "Skip to My Lou" and it reverberates through Walt's brain: Lost my partner, what'll I do? Lost my partner, what'll I do? Lost my partner, what'll I do?
What has he done?
Brock looks up, waves to Walt and runs to Jesse again, cuddling him as he smiles at Walt…
Why can't he see? How can he not know it was me?
The girls begin again:
Lost my partner, what'll I do? Lost my partner, what'll I do? Lost my partner, what'll I do…
If Walt loses Jesse, he doesn't know what he'll do; but now he knows what he'd do not to.