✅ Younger Than You Think?

"W: Counsellor's Office"

Lyle beckoned across the courtyard, and Kelly found her legs automatically walking, even trussed up in blankets like a little baby burrito. She wanted to go talk to Lyle, and she didn't like that she couldn't move. Thankfully, Deb was happy to lift her up and carry her past all the cheerful kids playing hopscotch or snakes and ladders under the big blue sky.

"Hey, squirt," Lyle said with a smile, and ruffled her hair. Kelly's automatic response would have been to ineffectually bat at the invasive hand with her own; she didn't like getting her hair all mussed up. But she knew that she didn't really get a choice in the matter, and while she was still all tied up she knew that she had to choose her battles. Besides which, something told her that she shouldn't be arguing with a grown-up. Something seemed a little strange about that thought, and she had to think quite hard to remember what it was. The first time she'd met Lyle, she was pretty sure that the label in her mind had been 'teenager', rather than 'adult'. But right now, when she was so small and innocent, it was hard to remember what the difference was supposed to be.

"Hiiiii!" she said instead, and then found herself laughing at how good it felt to mess around in ways that wouldn't make trouble for anyone.

"Nice to see you're in a good mood. I was worried about you when we first brought you in, you know? But I'm not just here to be your friend today. I'm taking a test today, so I can be one of the school's guidance counsellors. So I'm going to ask a lot of questions, and help to make sure you're ready to go home with your Mommy and Daddy. Does that sound like fun, Kelly? Are you going to be a good girl, and show me that you've learned all the things you need to know?"

"Yeah!" she cheered, almost overwhelmed by the thought of seeing her parents again. She knew that it had only been a week since she saw them last, or maybe two or three, but it seemed like it had been a lifetime. Over more days than she could count, she had gotten used to living in the school, and never seeing the outside except in one courtyard with the outside world painted on. She couldn't even remember what her Daddy looked like, but she knew that she would be able to recognise him when she saw him. She loved her Daddy more than anyone else in the world, and she was determined to keep on thinking about her parents so that she would never lose the connection to her past. She knew that this was just a strange interlude, and that no matter how long it took she would be able to return to her old life; even if she had to wait until she grew big enough to fight her way out.

In a way, she realised she should have been grateful to Miss Magdalene. The woman had tried to make her experience here as uncomfortable as possible, and had refused to listen even when told that some of the drugs they wanted to give her would have killed Iriña. And as terrifying as that was, sometimes she knew that fear was what had made the biggest difference to her time in the schoolrooms. They'd given her drugs that made it hard to think clearly, and had her read and listen to hypnotic stories that were carefully crafted to make some part of your brain read between the lines and learn things that you didn't even realise were in there. And as much as she had wanted to dismiss all the hypnosis stuff as superstition and pseudoscience, she had learned pretty quickly that just reading those books could give her new habits. Now she would wet her diaper whenever she felt the slightest urge, and she had to remember how she'd felt about it before to realise that it was bad. Sometimes when she closed a book, she would feel her bowels moving without any conscious thought; it was just an automatic response. And if she played with the other babies to help drive away boredom, she would get carried away and start thinking like a baby. All her memories were still there, at the other end of an unbroken thread, but as long as she was having fun she never saw the need to pull on it. It was too easy to get carried away, and to not remember that all those memories were there.

Miss Magdalene made all the difference. Because when Kelly got scared, Iriña would pop back up. She'd heard before that hypnosis couldn't make you do something you don't want; and while that seemed to be something of an overstatement, the cruel teacher's appearance seemed to break through the haze in the little girl's mind enough to let her remember that she wasn't really a baby. It gave her an opportunity to go through her memories and test herself on the things she had learned in school; on things that Kelly would never know. She found it easier to think that Kelly was a character she was playing; like she was a method actor or something. She would pretend to be this baby, and she would ask herself what Kelly would do in any situation, until it became such a habit that she would do it automatically, and not even realise. Kelly was the character whose thoughts came so naturally, or a costume she couldn't take off because it felt so real to her. Like a child getting carried away with some fantasy, she guessed... she just needed a threat, or something that had the real potential to hurt her, and the panic would remind her to think about herself again.