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Cleo gripped the steering wheel a little tighter, carefully moving to the right lane, preparing for the turn to get her to the park. She still wasn’t entirely confident in her driving abilities, but nobody else was going to drive her brothers to the park and goodness knew they had too much energy to just sit around and play Super Smash Bros all day (hyperactive children + a fighting game never ended well).
For now, the two were quiet, contently sipping on their Capri Suns and eating Goldfish. And the times they were loud, were often because Etho (who was sitting in the passenger front seat) would tease them or tell them some horrible joke, and they couldn’t help but groan out in annoyance. (She wasn’t sure if she was more annoyed at him or grateful that he’d come along. Etho could either save her sanity or make it far, far worse than it would have been before.)
Before she could worry further about chaos going down, she pulled into an empty parking space at the playground. As she stepped out to inspect her abilities of parking, she found her attempts to be very crooked at best, but she couldn’t be bothered to care. Driving was stressful enough as was, with two little kids in the back — she couldn’t be bothered to go to the effort to fix it.
“Out. Out.” Cleo motioned for Bdubs and Scar to run wild now. But Scar, of course, could not unbuckle himself if he were to continue holding onto his snack, so Cleo had to help him out. “It’ll be with me for you to eat later. Go play.” She shook her head in fond annoyance. At least they played well together. Breaking fights up shouldn’t be too big of an issue today — she’d monitored their screen time heavily, even if her parents wouldn’t. Given she was in charge, she would wield her power in favor of the least likely of grumpiness.
In the time Cleo finally had the snacks packed up in her bag and all the doors closed and locked, Etho had somehow ended up at the swing set. She was pretty sure he didn’t run all the way there, and she was pretty sure teleportation didn’t exist. Oh well, Cleo didn’t have energy to question these things.
As she made her way to the swing set, she found Skizz, Impulse, and Tango there too. Skizz was standing on the base of the swing, going back and forth rather high. Surprisingly, he wasn’t up to anything more dangerous — not that Cleo didn’t trust him. They’d had gymnastics together last year and this was far from the most complicated thing she’d seen him do.
“Hey Cleevers!” Skizz jumped off the swings as it was at its highest point, hardly caring of the danger he was getting himself into.
“Getting yourself killed again, I see,” she commented, stealing the swing from him. He gave a mock look of frustration and she stuck her tongue out in response. “Thanks for warming the seat.”
“Anytime,” he answered, trying to sound fake annoyed — but everyone knew he couldn’t really be bothered. “You on babysitting duty again?”
Cleo looked over at her brothers, who were struggling greatly to build a sandcastle before it was knocked over by a couple of boys — one that looked younger than even Scar. “Yep.”
“They’ve finally stopped calling her mom,” Etho said, watching the chaos go down as well.
“Wait— what were they doing?” Tango looked up at her in confirmation. Before that, he’d just been leaning against the swing’s posts, staring off into space. Of course, if a story was ever involved, he’d suddenly become incredibly interested in the outside world.
“Three weeks ago, Bdubs thought it’d be fun to play “family”, since I was left “in charge”. And so they started calling me mom and him dad,” she pointed over at Etho.
Tango nearly fell over in laughter. “Really?”
“Completely serious.”
“It was a rough two weeks,” Etho said solemnly.
“Rough is putting it lightly.” Cleo shook her head, ready to put that in the past. And leave it in the past before the two of them started on about it again. “So, what have you three been up to?”
“Well, we’ve been watching to see what those two are up to,” Skizz pointed over at the duo of chaos creators. “They’ve been here since we got here.”
“It’s been an hour. They still haven’t calmed down,” Impulse added from the other set of swings — specifically the beloved tire swing.
“At least they’re no longer throwing sand in our eyes,” Tango said with high annoyance.
“And if they do it again, we all know you’ll give them a stern talking to,” Skizz told Cleo. He wasn’t wrong. She would do it. She would make them fear all above them.
Children should know better than to throw sand at a bunch of high schoolers — granted, that was before Cleo showed up, and everyone knew to be scared of her.
She watched the two continue running, taking note of the older, who’s hair had a streak of bright red in it. Very edgy for someone who appeared to be fourth grade at most — couldn’t possibly be older than Bdubs. The younger one looked to be about first grade, probably brother to the older one, and far more innocent of the two. He’d tug on the older’s arm and look back at him every time he got up to something (like filling the bottom of the slide with sand or stomping on someone’s project — wait — that was Scar’s project).
Just as she saw it go down, Scar too took note of it, as he was just coming back with some grass and rocks to decorate his castle. His reaction to things like this vastly differed depending on his mood, and it just so happened that today it started with being stunned as Bdubs walked up to the blond boy.
“How dare you,” Bdubs said, looking down at the one younger than him.
Cleo stood up from the swings, looking back at the crew. “I’ll be right back.”
“We’re the bad boys and we do what we like,” the little one said, putting his hands on his hips.
“Well, I’m much older than you, and I say you
can’t
do what you like,” Bdubs said, pushing him to the ground.
Cleo, seeing all this escalate quickly, stood between the two. “Stop it Bdubs. Just because someone does something mean, it doesn’t give you the right to shove them to the ground. Go bring your brother over to Etho and them,” she pointed to the swing sets. “Scar’s still got his goldfish and juice left. Tell him he can have it, but he has to get some hand sanitizer first.”
He nodded, took Scar by the hand, and ran off.
It would be okay. Scar might have a meltdown over this, but it would be okay.
“Kid, what’s your name?” Cleo stood up tall, looking him down.
“Jimmy.”
“Okay, Jimmy. That kid over there? He’s your brother?” She pointed to the brown with red streaked haired kid.
Jimmy nodded. “Th-th-that’s Joel.”
“Jimmy, you and your brother there better knock it off before I go get somebody. And I will go and get someone. You will regret ever touching anybody’s builds or messing with anybody’s fun. I promise.”
He nodded quickly.
Cleo then brightened up. “Good. Thank you. I expect no more trouble from you. Go apologize to Scar and then leave him alone.” She said all in a falsely bright voice — something she’d learned overtime really unsettled people. The stark contrast from firm to incredibly happy always threw people off.
And just as she hoped, this Jimmy kid, tagged along by his brother Joel, went to apologize to Scar. Then they ran off to another kid, who looked to be in fifth or sixth grade. He was on a climbing wall. Cleo wondered if they were all related, given they didn’t seem to pester the boy in the way they had to Cleo’s friends.
She turned away from them. It didn’t matter what they got up to now, so long as they didn’t bother Bdubs and Scar.
“You okay, baby?” She crouched down to where Scar was hiding below the tire swing. Impulse had stopped moving along it, keeping him perfectly protected in the shade.
Scar looked up at her, showing the tears that were rolling down his cheeks. He’d always been more sensitive – either declaring war on people who hurt him or crying his eyes out – today seemed the latter. Both of these traits followed very closely to Cleo’s own ways of conflict handling, so she knew how to go about this, thankfully.
“Come ‘mere.” She outstretched her arms and Scar quickly fell into them. Cleo picked him up and brought him out from hiding and instead over to the other set of swings, where her bag was lying. On the other end, Tango was still sitting around, doing basically nothing, but he finally moved over to see what was up (again, never interested in less something was going on).
“Our little guy sad today?” he asked, almost in a teasing way. Cleo shot him a look.
“He’s tough. Scar’ll be fine,” Cleo answered confidently, bouncing him a little in her lap. “I think I have some gummies in there, if you want some.”
“Bears or worms?” Scar asked.
“Both. And sour people, made from the boiled bones of my enemies,” Cleo teased.
“Ew.”
“But there’s sugar in them too.”
“Sugar?” Scar perked up.
“Sour people, bears, or worms?” Cleo offered.
“All of them.”
She sighed, rolled her eyes, and got out the bags of candies. Her gummy candy addiction was a little too strong to allow her to leave them at home – and one must always be prepared for situations as these.
“Can I have some?” both Tango and Etho asked at the same time.
“Did your sandcastles get stomped on?”
“No,” they answered sheepishly.
“But, they did throw sand at us!” Skizz proclaimed, as if it were in his right to have Cleo’s gummy worms.
“But you’re also a big boy and can handle your emotions without the promise of gummy worms,” Cleo said, smirking back at him. “ My gummies from my monies.”
“Fine. Whatever.”
Of course, with the talk of gummies, Bdubs also came up and asked for some, but because he asked nicely from the get go… and instead of snatching them, was actually nice about it and hadn’t been treating Scar poorly all day…
Well, Cleo had soft spots, okay? And while she wouldn’t have them for these idiots, her idiots got all the sugary snacks if she was in the mood to hand them out.
“Thank you!” Bdubs exclaimed, happily eating at the sour patch kids, eating off the heads of them first, as Cleo taught him.
Scar stayed in Cleo’s lap for another five minutes as Bdubs got in the empty swing next to Impulse. He went in waves of perky happiness to still downcast about his sandcastle. By the time he finished his handful of assorted gummies, Impulse got down from his spot and offered to help build another castle with him.
Scar very happily agreed and tugged him along to the sandbox.
With Scar handled, Cleo figured she’d be safe to stay back. Of course, there was always something with those two, as could still be shown.
“ Cleo! ” Bdubs called from his swing, not even five feet away.
“Yes?”
“Push me! Please!”
She rolled her eyes. “You’re doing fine yourself.”
“But I want to go higher , Cleo!”
“Well then make yourself go higher. I’m not getting up.” She’d sat down and she was going to stay down and rest . No more of caring for mishaps at the playground.
“But—” Bdubs pouted. When that did nothing, he turned to look at Etho.
“Oh no you don’t. I’m not—”
Bdubs gave a really teenie tiny grin, the one that broke nearly everyone. Cleo would sometimes encourage it, but today she’d let Etho decline or accept said request on his own free will.
“Fine.” He sighed, getting up from where he was lazily swinging. “You’re lucky I love you guys so much,” he muttered.
“Thanks dad ,” Bdubs said, grinning wildly now, testing his luck for getting someone to push the swings.
At one glare from Cleo, he apologized, but it lost its effect from Tango’s laughter. “ Don’t encourage it.” He stopped laughing.
Of course, there would probably be another mishap or two in the next fifteen minutes, because that’s how these things went down, but for the moment it was a bit quiet, so Cleo pulled out a book from her bag and tuned out the excited noises from around her.
And it could always, always be worse.
Bdubs and Scar could be fighting over who actually won Super Smash Bros.