Chapter Thirty-Five
“Is there anything I can get for you, Simon? Some juice? Water?” TraceyAnn was practically batting her eyelashes at him, as she hovered around the Faire owner in her low-cut dress, her ample chest pushed upwards by a red corset.
“No, thank you.” Simon wasn’t sure if she meant the offer of the drink, or the cleavage which seemed to have a life of its own.
“Well, let me know if you change your mind,” TraceyAnn warbled, clearly disappointed that he wasn’t accepting anything that she was putting in front of him. She wafted away, with a sharp look at Katie.
Simon was already uncomfortable. The Center was swarming with shrieking preschoolers. And at this time of the year, with school out, the Center was crowded earlier in the day with older kids too. Simon tended to avoid children in general, with their unpredictability and erratic behavior. He had never really spent time with other kids, Miller homeschooling him and then hiring tutors and private teachers, when Simon started exhibiting signs of being a prodigy. When Simon was already building his own computers at the age of twelve, it was clear that his peers weren’t going to be found at the local playground or middle school.
But, this was where Katie was, and he was determined to let her know that he would help her if she needed it.
So far, all she did was thank him for ok’ing the request she had made with Rika. He was too tongue-tied to push further with it. She had to deal with something across the room, and had left him sitting in one of the stools near the pen of infants who were still crawling or just starting their first steps.
“Are you friends with Col?” A little girl-child was standing in front of him. He had to be hallucinating. She could not have saidCol.
“Umm, what?”
Oh, good one.Apparently he was awkward around girls who hadn’t yet learned to read, too.
She was joined by a boy-child, about the same height, who stared at him accusingly. Simon was regretting having taken a seat. They were at eye-level. He broke out in a sweat. He started to mentally catalogue all the Chucky films in his head….Child’s Play, Seed of Chucky, Bride of Chucky….and oh yeah, going through horror films just made him think of the twins fromThe Shining.
He tried to look over the kids’ heads for Katie, but that seemed to encourage them to take a step further in towards him.
“Col.” The girl repeated, although in her high pitched voice it sounded like “call”. The boy picked up on it.
“Col, col, col!”
The two of them turned it into a song, but the upside was that it seemed to call Katie over. She had an apologetic look on her face as she came to his rescue.
“Sorry about that. Clover and Brady met Col last night when we all had dinner together.”
Well, that explained it. Simon tried not to look too relieved when Katie gently pulled them away from him. She seemed to intuit that they were making Simon uncomfortable. Or maybe his verge-on-a-panic-attack look was way more obvious than he thought it was.
“Brady and Clover, this is Simon.” She smiled at Simon, and he grinned back awkwardly. OK, now it wasn’t so bad. He could deal with them.
“Is he friends with Col?” Geez, it seemed really important to the little girl for some reason. Katie smiled.
“Yes, in fact he is.”
Brady shoved something into Simon’s lap. “This is a present for him.”
Katie’s brow furrowed. “What is that?”
Simon picked it up, and pushed his glasses so he could peer at it. It was a small bar of soap, still in its paper wrapping. The one that readDay n’ Knight Motel.Katie’s face drained.
“I’ll make sure it gets to him.” Simon said, looking at Katie. Their mission accomplished, the kids ran off.
“Sorry about that.” Katie said, her voice quiet.
“Is that where the kids are staying?” Simon was genuinely concerned. He knew the place, he was familiar with most of the motels and inns in the immediate area. He also knew that the Day n’ Knight Motel wasn’t a place that families stayed in.
If they had a choice.
“Um.” Katie’s face had made up for its previous sudden pallor. It was now flushed. Simon was also familiar with that feeling, all too well.
“Have a seat, Katie.” He patted the stool next to his. “Tell me what’s going on.”
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