XJ9 walked around her room, nervously circling from her bed to the door and back. A few minutes ago, her mom had told her to go to her room, and while she would have preferred to keep playing with the freezer, the tone in the woman's voice left no room to argue. As she paced around and around, her mind was running in an endless loop of questions. What had she done wrong? Was she in trouble for whatever it was she did? Was her mom mad at her now? The last question hurt her bit, and she could feel her tear ducts start to fill up to cry.

She walked around for what felt like too long before flopping on her bed. It made a horrible creaking sound at the sudden impact of her weight, and she hoped she hadn't messed it up too. She rolled around on her bed a little and listened to the boards of it creak. She rolled around a little more before a strange high pitched sound nearby. She sat up and looked over at the old monitor in the back, expecting it to be on. It wasn't, and if she had a heart, it would've stopped. No, no, she was just hearing things.

She could recall getting so distressed about the monitor that one night and didn't want to get worked up again. So she rolled around some more to hear a high pitch sound coming from somewhere nearby again. She froze for a moment and shifted a little to which the high squeak responded. Wait, she bounced a little on her bed and listened to the creaking of the boards and the squeal that followed it.

Okay, no problem. XJ9 knew where it was coming from. It was coming from under her bed. She felt a sense of pride well up in her chest at the thought that she had figured out the mystery, but it was quickly drowned out by dread. Something was under her bed. Her brain promptly started to bring up searches for things under the bed. Some people had shelves, boxes, monsters, g-monsters. Monsters lived under people's beds; it seemed, and sure enough, the images that her search started to pull up for them unsettled her a little. Monsters weren't though, yeah, totally not real the internet people said so. Well, some did say so, but that wasn't the point.

Something was under her bed, and whatever it was she was going to have to deal with it. She took a deep breath that she didn't need and peeked over the edge of her bed. She carefully grabbed the side of the blanket and quickly yanked it up. She couldn't see anything from where she was, and it was then that she noticed how dark it seemed under her bed. She nervously smiled; after all, it wasn't a big deal, no, not one at all. She slowly and grudgingly moved closer to the edge of the bed and lowered her head down to look into the darkness.

She had to make herself open her eyes, and she looked under it. Suddenly, all the fear was gone, and she was happily surprised. The loud shrieking sound of under the bed was just her poor little duckie being squished. She quickly reached for it, but by being on the edge of the bed and making a sudden movement, she tumbled over the edge. She landed flat on the back and laid still for a second before shaking off the shock. She rolled over onto her gut and got her duckie out from under her bed. She happily hugged the duck to her chest and enjoyed the moment. Then the door to her room was thrown open.

"XJ9, Are you alright?"

Her mom stood in the doorway, clearly panicking a little while her eyes scanned all over the place for the kid. XJ9 sat up from the floor and, with wide eyes, looked at her mom before looking all over the room as fast as possible for whatever her mom was looking for. The woman let out a breath of relief before walking over towards her bed.

"What were you doing?"

With no other way to answer, XJ9 raised up the duck, squeaked it, and smiled.

"If you're going to play with your duck, please be a bit more careful, the freezers already needs to be fixed, and I rather not have to fix the floor too from you falling through it."

The woman said it all in an exasperated tone to which XJ9 tilted her head down. Had she done something wrong again? What did she do that was bad? Was everything she was doing wrong? A few tears ran down her cheeks, and she rubbed them away with her hand. Another warm hand took hers away from her face and started wiping away her tears with a tissue.

"I'm sorry I shouldn't be upset with you about this. You probably have no idea about what you did."

She shook her head yes but stopped to let her mom rub her head.

"It's alright, now. I should be trying to be more patient with you, even if you cost me a bit on some food."

Wakeman stopped rubbing her head, stood up, and gestured for her to follow her.

"Come along, XJ9. I'm going to teach you about hot, cold, and what happens when different things like that meet."

The robot stood up and followed her mom out the door with her duckie in hand.

Author's Note- Thanks for reading and sorry that this update was posted late at night. I'm currently very busy with my job and haven't had time to work on things. I hope you all had a great 4th of July and I'll see you all next Sunday. Please leave a review they really help.