✅1️⃣ Trusting the Babysitter

Chapter 24 - Take and Give

"Mine!"

Adam yelped and dropped the block he had been picking up. His fingers were caught between that block and the one Claudia was wielding, but he was more surprised than hurt. He'd never imagined that she could get so upset. And even if she was made, she seemed the type more likely to take the high road than respond with violence. He was sure she could settle most conflicts with her wit, making anyone who picked on her look like an asshole or an idiot. He'd never imagined her actually striking someone, especially not over something so trivial as a child's toy.

He gritted his teeth and picked up the block again, ignoring another clumsy swing with the block. And then when he had claimed his prize, he reached out again with both hands and grasped the one she'd been using as a weapon. She fought back, but she didn't have such a good grip and it was relatively easy to twist one of her fingers away from the surface. Then he had two of the big blocks, and he could put those together to make a wall. Something to defend all the other pieces of wood and plastic as he hurriedly scooped them over to his side of the playpen. But Claudia wasn't going to give up so easily. She reached past his hands and started taking the pieces back one by one. She was watching Adam as she did it, maybe trying to avoid him noticing, but there was no way he could miss something so blatant.

He reached over again and took another block from her stash. Then he was sure that he had most of them. He could start building something like he had been told, and collect all the others later. So he put a couple of pieces on top of each other, and nudged them until they seemed to be balanced. Then a longer brick leaned against the side, and another one on top. He knew that he had to choose the right balance of pieces, because if he put all the heavy ones on top it might fall down. But he couldn't let himself think like that. He had been told to play like a baby, which he assumed meant he wasn't allowed to think too far ahead. He had to take the blocks and put them on top of each other, and if they fell down he would just put them on again. It wasn't as efficient, but that was what he was supposed to be doing.

The little stack of blocks was coming along well, and then suddenly it was falling down. While he was distracted, Claudia had found time to kick over his little construction. She grabbed a couple of pieces from the wreckage, dropping half of them again because her hands weren't big enough to hold them all at once. But she was taking away toys that Adam had already claimed, and that just wasn't fair. He needed those so that he could do what Lorelei had said. He quickly realised that desperate times call for desperate measures, and grabbed one of the plastic blocks that was still on his side. He hesitated for just a moment, but he couldn't see any other solution.

The block hit Claudia on the knee, and she looked up at him as she screamed. She was really upset now, and Adam set about thinking again. Was there any other way to follow his instructions? He didn't like hurting anyone, and he was sure that even a light plastic brick might make a strange S-shaped bruise if he'd hit her hard enough. He really didn't want to do that, but he didn't have any choice.

"Bad girl!" she screeched again, and this time Adam realised that she was calling him a girl. Was that what her little sister had told her to say? It didn't make any sense to him, and he couldn't imagine why she would have done that, so he just brushed it aside as something to worry about later. But he needed to find some way to overpower Claudia that wouldn't result in his eardrums being burst by her high-pitch, high-volume reprisal. "No! Don't touch mine!"

"Mine," Adam snapped back, and put his hands in front of his own blocks to make it clear which of them were on which side of the playpen. Then he started frantically building again, trying to work out how best to build something giant with the toys he could still reach. It was easier than he thought, now he didn't have to worry about using all of them. He wished Claudia could have thought of that sooner, so they could stop fighting. But then she pushed his little tower down again, and took a wooden block right from the foundations. There was no way that was fair, but what could he do about it? The only revenge he could think of was hitting her again, which would mean throwing away more of the blocks. And as he realised that, he knew that his instructions had changed.

Claudia had told him not to touch her blocks. That was the difference. Lorelei had told them to fight like greedy babies, but he couldn't do that once he was forbidden to take any of hers. It wasn't fair that she could still take from him, but he could fix that without even touching her.

"Then you don't –" he started.

"Shut up!" Lorelei cut in before he could finish the command, and he didn't know how long he would need to be quiet for until she continued: "No talking! Babies can't talk. Only baby talk."

Claudia opened her mouth to protest, but then said nothing. She must have understood the order to mean both of them, and that meant she wasn't allowed to say anything else. She would rather say nothing than babble like a baby, in her current mood. And Adam could easily understand the feeling. He wished he had been just a little quicker to speak; because now they weren't allowed to say anything, he couldn't order Claudia to stop taking his blocks. He would just have to do his best with the ones she didn't want. And he couldn't keep her from attacking him either, though he hoped that she would no longer think it was necessary.

They were stuck, at least until their tormentor permitted them to speak again. Adam just returned to making a tower of blocks. He'd given up on the different shaped ones now, and was just using the ones with letters on. That meant that he could just use a different one if Claudia took away the ones he wanted. After a minute or so, in which he could feel Lorelei's stare judging him for how interesting he might prove to be, he looked down at his work and grunted.

"Baaaba?" he asked, trying his best to get her attention within the bounds of his orders. When Claudia glanced at him he tried again: "Gaaa? Buh ahbaaaba!"

She smiled back, but still didn't seem inclined to speak. She knew that anything she said wouldn't be comprehensible, and perhaps she felt it would be useless to try. It was certainly less embarrassing. But then she looked where he was pointing, and a smile flashed across ger face for a second before she nodded. Between the two of them,, students of above average intelligence, they could surely outwit a small child; no matter what drugs they had been subjected to.