Jessie & Elizabeth (abandoned)

7. Queer Questions

DISCLAIMER: In this chapter, different LGBTQ+ labels are discussed. Please keep in mind the definition of labels sometimes slightly differ from country to country, culture to culture, person to person. I'm not saying THIS is what the word means and everyone else is wrong. Also, it needs to be explained at kid-level, and this is the first time they're being introduced to the proper terms. Going into detail about every single label out there would be... overwhelming, to say the least. So kindly refrain from arguing in the comments :D.

It was surprisingly easy to feel at home in the vast mansion, especially now that Manon had assumed a carefully kind attitude towards me. Every day was like a party: we'd inflate a pool with an attached water slide in the backyard, or go to the park and pretend to be knights on the hunt for an escaped bandit, or write a play about cookie robots and act it out before an amused miss Schneider. Sure, the kids had their bad moments, throwing tantrums or making each other cry, but that was only natural. They were pretty spoiled and could be judgemental, though I could hardly blame them for that, considering what their mother was like.

Like I'd expected, I saw very little of Elizabeth. She seemed to either be working all the time or having to go to dinners and lunches with people who no doubt deemed themselves very important. What her exact job was, I still didn't know, though I'd gathered she was part of some kind of economic department at city hall. She rarely showed her face on weekdays, and on Saturdays and Sundays, she was usually so tired she could barely manage to talk to her daughters.

Today though, she was working from home in her downstairs office. The girls were generally much harder to handle when she was around, probably trying to get her attention. One time, she'd taken them out on the water — apparently, she had a boat — and they came back so excited I couldn't get them to sleep for hours. This morning was no exception. Hoping to get them quiet for half an hour or so, I'd made pancakes for lunch. Ari had asked for animal faces, but when I'd dropped my attempt of a bear on her plate, she'd said: "You're lousy at this. This bear looks like it was eaten by a monster." I'd told her to watch her attitude, or she was the one who would be eaten by a monster — the Jessie-monster, to be precise.

Rain pounded on the windows as I sat down too, a pile of pancakes before me. Camille was concentrating on her own pancake like it was the best thing she'd ever eaten, maple syrup smeared across her cheeks, and the other two were teasing each other, like usual.

"You like him, you like him, you like him," Ari was saying, invading her sister's personal space by basically pressing her nose onto hers. "Manon is in love!" She dragged out the last word with her hands on her cheeks, rolling her eyes back and forth.

"I am not!" Manon said, though she looked flustered. "Dev is my friend. I think you have a crush on him."

"Do not."

"Yes, you do."

"Not not not!"

Swallowing a piece of pancake, I interrupted them: "Okay, so you're both not in love with Dev. Case closed."

Manon huffed, and Ari scowled, though both turned their attention back towards their plates. After a few seconds or so, a glint appeared in Ari's eyes, and grinning at me, she said: "Maybe Jessie is in love."

And, just as fast as they could start arguing, Manon now formed a united front with her sister. She grinned too, then said: "Yes. She was talking to Jake for hours yesterday."

I laughed. Jake was the teenage boy who mowed the lawn every week or so. He was only seventeen, but I assumed that to the two of them, he could just as well be their mother's age. "I really doubt it."