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Sometimes, when she’s awake late at night with Millie Frock slumbering beside her, she thinks back to where it all began.
If Tina hadn’t decided to go out that night to use the new telescope that she got for her birthday, this would never have happened. Maybe Regular Sized Rudy or Logan Bush or someone who I don’t know exists would have become my boyfriend. Millie would either have lost interest in me or been served with a restraining order and my family would still be making burgers in their restaurant. Maybe Gene would have fulfilled his desire to be the next musical sensation or maybe not, but now he’s in witness protection with the rest of my family they probably confiscated his keyboard and banned him from making music again. Tina went to the police and they caught the killer, but a couple of months later someone did a drive by shooting on the restaurant. It was a miracle that the bullets missed everyone inside and not only that, they crashed their car and ended up getting arrested. It turned out that they were from one of the drug cartels, and the next time they sent someone it wouldn’t be a drive by but at point blank range. The choices were to stay where we were and certainly get murdered, move and keep moving, unable to stay in the same place very long or make a living, or become one of the 5% of protected witnesses who were not former criminals and get new identities and a new burger restaurant in another state far from Seymour Bay and New Jersey.
I didn’t want to lose all my friends, my bunny ears, my whole identity, so I sneaked out with two Kuchi Kupis, Dad’s biscuit stash that he thought he had hidden from me, a pillow or two, a packed lunch and a knife from the restaurant, and a backpack and book. That and fifty dollars from the cash register was all I could take with me. I got away and hid in the alleys until they gave up looking for me, but I soon realized that the homeless life sucks. I thought of going to Big Bob, but WITSEC would have gone to his house to look for me first. Zeke or Regular Sized Rudy might have let me go to their house for a night or two or three but not longer than that. And then I realized that there was one person who would take me in and hide and shelter me and never tire of having me around, and if I didn’t want to either turn myself in at the police station and reunite with my family, or live an unhappy, dangerous homeless life shoplifting and getting free food at churches, hunted by both WITSEC and the cartel, I would have to ask her for help.
Millie Frock.
When I told her about what had happened she took me in, hid me in a loft room, hugged me, kissed me on the cheek and told me she would be my bodyguard and would always make me happy. She surrounded me with Kuchi Kupis that she had in her own room, brought me food, water, and there was a toilet in the loft. And all her free time she spent with me. At my request she brought me a IPad and she also brought Regular Sized Rudy to see me a few times and he told me I had been dropped from the school roster. My formal education ended at the age of seven. Millie and I created imaginary worlds together, sneaked out to the amusement park on the pier or along the beach , often at night, and she did her best to keep me amused. At Thanksgiving and Christmas she “invited me in” to spend it with her family. Afterwards she would “ walk me home” and then sneak me back to the loft room.
As we aged together she started wanting more than the occasional kiss on the cheek. First it was forehead kisses like my mother used to give me, then kisses on the lips like Tina did with Jimmy Junior, then it was holding me close and running her hands over my clothed body and when we both reached eighteen it was full love making. She didn’t force me, she didn’t openly threaten me in any way but I knew if I didn’t give in she might put me out on the street. With no high school diploma let alone a degree, no family, no restaurant to run, I would be spending my life in homeless shelters without Millie, and she knew it. She told me that she plans to marry me and spend the rest of her life with me. I am sheltered, protected, loved and adored and treated like a princess, but I am not into girls in that way but have to pretend that I am. Millie will get a job in time, probably a very good one, and I will be her trophy wife for the rest of my days.And all because I wanted to stay as Louise Belcher.