✅ Over Protected

15. Alice Asks the Internet

This extra chapter is dedicated to Eladon, with thanks again for all your support. Thank you!

I knew that I shouldn't interfere. Sarah had that book to help her, and there was the more detailed one that Mum could refer to as well. Despite knowing all the words, it had seemed like an alien language when I tried reading it, so it was unlikely that I would understand even if I could find useful information. But I had to try.

I signed on to one of the computers in the school library when we had a reading period. We were supposed to use the time to read the books that we had been assigned for English class, but nobody was going to complain if I was reading something online instead. The teaching assistants who were keeping an eye on us already knew that I had gone through all the assigned books for this year and next year as well, and that I was fast running out of books that would actually hold my interest. They didn't mind me reading online sometimes; whether that was checking out the news related to one of my classes or just reading the free novels on FictionLibrary. Today I called up a story called Dragon's Layer, which had been recommended based on my previous votes. And then I opened another window, so I could do some research. I knew that the teachers might look at my history – there had been protests lately by 'concerned parents' who said that we weren't old enough to have unsupervised internet access – but I figured that I was actually looking up science stuff related to recent news stories. Even if they knew that I was hoping to somehow help my sister, there was no way that could say that was illegal.

I searched for "STX" and "Baby Star Wipes", both separately and together. I found out that STX was a stock ticker for a company that was having some huge controversy over illegal investment or something, a sports team, and a rap fusion genre incorporating elements of throat-singing, which I totally didn't waste time looking into any further. Well, I might have looked for a few minutes, and learned one or two new things about some Asian cultures, but it was pretty pointless reading about a music genre when I couldn't listen to any of the clips.

Then I searched for "STX health effects teenager" and struck gold. There were a couple of ads for baby wipes, and for diapers which included STX. A bunch of them said they contained STX, but made no mention of what it actually was or what it did. And there were some that said it could reduce the pain of diaper rash. But then there were the ones that said it would 'keep your little angel calm and happy', or even 'bring back the baby you love'. I really didn't understand that. Sure, any parent would want a calm and happy kid, but the way the words were being used made it seem like it was a code. Just like the book, they were talking over my head, using the words to mean something else that only the intended audience would be able to decipher.

I went back to the search results. This time, the ad at the top of the page looked awfully familiar. It showed the wipes I'd seen in Mum's pocket, with a whole range of similar packs. But when I looked at the web address, I realised that I'd misread the stylised text. The company was called Babij, and they had a variety of medicated baby wipes impregnated with STX among a dozen other different substances. All of them were described as medicated to reduce diaper rash, which made me wonder why they had Star Wipes, Rainbow Wipes, Pony Wipes, and a load of others, which seemed to let parents choose from a bunch of different pain relief or disinfecting chemicals to do basically the same thing.

I was no closer to the truth. But on the second page of results, I found it. I gasped in surprise, and then looked around nervously. The librarian didn't seem to have noticed, but I went back to reading about dragons for five minutes just in case. Then I changed back to the other window, and clicked on the link to a site called Mothers' Hub. The little preview on the search page had told me in a couple of lines that other people had the same problems I did, and that somebody had responded to this particular comment with a detailed answer. Even if they weren't asking the same question I was, I hoped that it would at least give me a clue of where to look next.