"Can you pass me a green crayon, please?"
Laura reaches across the table and plucks the crayon from the bin, passing it to the little girl, "Here you go."
The girl smiles wide, two large gaps in place of her front teeth, "Thanks."
She smiles back, eyes hovering briefly across the room. They fall unsurprisingly on the same two people she's been passively aggressively watching for the past forty-five minutes. In the corner of the room, huddled close together and playing in the indoor sandbox, are Carmilla and a little boy from the day care.
When they first arrived to the room Carmilla was quick to detach herself from Laura's side - much to her disappointment. She had tried talking to her ever since they got Mr. Beckett's email but the other girl was avoiding her at all costs.
It would be one thing for Carmilla to avoid her today and go sulk in the corner with a book on Socrates or Plato or Descartes.
(So maybe Laura did some investigating on the books Carmilla brought in during health class - she is an aspiring journalist.)
But it's a whole other thing for her to waltz into this classroom and actually be pleasant and caring towards the children. It wasn't even upon someone else's prompting; as the rest of the children gravitated into groups to start playing, Carmilla wandered towards the little boy who was sitting alone in the back. After a few minutes of observation - she was not spying - she saw that Carmilla coaxed the boy to the sandbox and started helping him build a sandcastle.
(Caring? Smiling? Being Nice?
What was she trying to pull?)
So in a twist of events, Laura is the one sitting and brooding at a craft table. She sighs as she turns to the little girl beside her, "Madison, can I ask you a question?"
"Mhm," the girl nods along, tongue darting out as she focuses on colouring in the shapes on the page.
"Have you ever said something mean to a friend and they got mad at you?"
"Oh, yeah," she nods more eagerly now, "Tons of times."
"Hmm," Laura grabs a purple crayon and starts drawing swirls around the little blue box on her piece of paper, "So what did you do?"
The little girl looks up at her and scrunches her nose, "I said 'sorry', duh."
Laura smiles sadly, her glance lingering again over Madison's shoulder and falling on Carmilla high-fiving the little boy she's playing with.
She feels a soft tap on her hand and she looks back towards Madison, "Yeah?"
"I said did you say sorry to your friend?"
Laura drops the crayon and brings her hand up to rest her chin on. She slumps against it, sighing out a long breath, "Yeah. She didn't really listen to me."
"Oh," she shrugs and goes back to drawing, "That sucks big time."
Laura scowls and tightens her lips together, "Uh, yeah. Thanks."
Madison is silent for a few minutes before reaching for another crayon, "You could always go hit her until she listens to you. That works with my brother sometimes."
Laura makes a face, "That's... not the best advice for this situation, I think."
"Why don't you just ask your mom? That's what I do when I have big problems. She's really great at helping me fix stuff."
The words hit her square in the chest, hard and fast, catching her off-guard. It doesn't always feel like this: the rush of air leaving her lungs from being squeezed out by the tight cord wrapped around her chest; the large weight resting right on her heart that spreads throughout her body, making her feel both heavy and hollow at the same time; the loud pounding in her ears from the blood rushing relentlessly to her head.
