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It’d been slow going to find a suitable place to create the nest for their colony. The softs had been too busy with their own petty war to mind what the three persons and one Drone were doing.

Presently, Yellow-Spot watched the new Electric-Touch with interest. It also brought new pangs of guilt and sadness. The strong ghost comforted her. Now it was but one of many. So this was what it was like to be Queen, to consult with imaginary advisors.

Yellow-Spot wanted to get up and move, perhaps to relieve her boredom. But with her leg, that was difficult.

“Can we get this started?” She made exaggerated motions so Sweet-Berries would understand the imperative.

Sweet-Berries grabbed the wax basket in which the Royal Paste was in and began feeding it to Yellow-Spot. “You’ll feel drowsy very shortly, and sleep most of the time for several moons. Even when I wake you to feed you, you probably won’t remember. Then, when you’re fully grown, you’ll wake all the way, and be our new Queen. You’ll probably also heal, especially the leg and arm. Not sure about the eye and antenna though. Anyway, that’s how it’s supposed to work. I haven’t …”

Sweet-Berries’ voice faded as Yellow-Spot fell asleep. She dreamed of a world without the softs.

I hate my dad

THERE’S DAD, ASSHOLE EXTRAORDINAIRE, evangelizing to the pigeons. The day is damp, the sky looks like mud, and he’s got a plastic grocery bag on his head, handles knotted under his stubbly cleft chin. His thigh-length coat is spattered with bird shit. He looks homeless. He is. And so I have to be too.

He’s wandering among the pigeons, who coo threateningly and barely amble out of his way. They know who owns this plaza, in a part of the city that most people have given up on. Other living-rough folks are here, though, too; and it’s really these that Dad is speaking to, in his madman’s croak, peppering his words with crazy phrases. It sounds like goon babble-until you listen, or you just can’t help but hearing, for a few minutes. Then he starts to make his own special kind of sense. If you try, you can catch the camouflaged meanings, the strings of sane words among the gobbledygook.

Some arelistening, gathered on the rusting benches, sitting out in the drizzly open, as Dad roams the cracked pavers of the plaza. What a douchebag.

I’m on lookout. I’ve been doing this since I was nine, all the small squirrely stuff, because I could go unnoticed. But I’m getting too big for it. People look at me a lot more now; and I’m aware of the attention in new ways.

Dad goes on with his mutterings. Some people listen, some doze on the benches. This can’t last forever.

* * *

I push hanks of wet blond hair off my forehead as I burrow down into my sleeping bag. Eight months without a haircut. Dad used to keep it short and more or less even, but he had his scissors-little orange-handled ones, like I remember cutting construction paper with in kindergarten-taken away at a Handoutlet, where nobody can have anything like a weapon. I don’t miss school. And I like my hair longer. I look a little bit dangerous these days.

We’re out of the rain, though we’re not in a great spot, which is why nobody’s near us. And since no one is around Dad can tell me, “C’mon, Cedric. Go ahead and say ’em. It’s okay. No one’ll hear.”

Like I’m getting a treat. I don’t sigh so loud that he can easily hear over the rain sizzling on the concrete on either side of the slim overhang we’re under. It really started coming down after nightfall. But when I do my “Now I lay me…", I exaggerate the singsong, just a little. Just enough. I see the disappointment in his eyes even as he tries to hide it. It scares me for a second. I want, briefly, to be good. The good son. Good Cedric.

Well, screw Dad. And screw Cedric too.

He goes to his bag, and I hear him whispering for an hour, the same stuff he’s been saying all day in the plaza. Only now it’s crystal clear; and I’m the only one in earshot. I don’t drop into sleep until he finishes.

* * *

When my sister, who was older than me, was still with us, she’d say again and again, “Let’s get out of the city. There are places in the country where no one’s going to bother us. Wide-open spaces.”

That stuck in my mind: wide-open spaces. I remember shopping trips and stuff to the suburbs when I was just a kid, back when we still had our home and Mom. But Adalia was talking about something else, someplace grander, I always thought. Wide-open spaces probably meant there wasn’t any danger of somebody overhearing what Dad said. No threat of arrest. I’ve had to be afraid of the police all my life. Thanks to Dad. Dad and his dipshit beliefs, which I went along with for a long, long time, and now am so sick of I can’t stand it.

My sister left. Cut and ran. She even told Dad she was going, but he didn’t-couldn’t- stop her. Adalia is just a jumble of images to me now. Mostly I remember that she was the practical one. Like Mom was, I think. Only, Adalia didn’t waste away in a hospital bed, with Dad weeping and praying over her until an orderly heard and told him she’d call the cops if he kept it up.

That was a while ago. Things are different. Dad wouldn’t get a warning now.

* * *

I’m not with him every minute of the day. Today, for instance, I have to go get his eyedrops. I’ve got a pharmacard that identifies me as Bright Estabrook, a name I like a lot better than my own. I look like the picture on the card, which Dad got from somewhere. Dad’s eyes give him headaches, but I got to give him this-he doesn’t bitch about it. He’s had this trouble with his eyes since he was a boy, he says.

Stains wipe off my coat; it’s some slick synthefabric. I look presentable when I go into the pharmacy. But, like I said, I’m not a kid anymore, and on the way out with Dad’s drops some adults standing on the corner notice me. They wave, call me over, with friendly smiles.

I know I should keep on walking, but I don’t. A little of that is the thought of an extra few moments of discomfort for Dad; but the rest of it is curiosity, a tingle of strange excitement.

“Hey, man, how’s it goin’?”

“You on your own?”

“What’s your name, little bro?”

There are four of them, and the one who hasn’t asked me anything is a woman half a head taller than me, with hair a darker blond than mine is and a face that makes me think about beautiful sunrises and the first taste of hot food after a long time without it.

Nobody makes a grab for me. No one asks what’s in the bag. These are rough-looking types, maybe not living on the streets but close to it. Their friendliness seems real, though.