I stand and walk over to where she’s sitting. Plop my ass on the ground and cross my legs to mimic her posture. “What’s wrong with school, Jazzy?”
“It’s just… I don’t have friends. Kids don’t like me, and they’re mean,” she says, still not looking at me.
They’re mean?I’m not in the business of maiming or killing kids, but that could change. “Give me some names and I’ll sort 'em out,” I tell her.
She shakes her head again. “Please don’t make me go back.”
“Hey, I would never make you do something you don’t want to do,” I promise her. “But I do wanna know what happened at school. Where did you used to go?”
I don’t know why I didn’t think of that before. I can get access to the school’s files and find her mother’s name.
“Henry Walker Elementary, but I don’t have to go back, right? I can just stay here with you?” Jazzy says, finally peeking up at me. Hopeful.
“You don’t have to go back. What happened?” I repeat.
“They’re mean. There’s this one boy… he pushes me, and then this one time, he cut my hair,” she says. “He calls me TT.”
“What does TT mean?”
“Trailer trash, because Mama and me lived in a trailer.”
She lived in a fucking trailer?My blood is boiling. I had a daughter out there living in fucking squalor when I had the means to give her the fucking world.
“I’m gonna kill him,” I grunt.
“You can’t! He’s a kid like me,” Jazzy pleads. “And then you’d go to jail and I’d have no parent. Mama said if a kid has no parent, they go and live with other people who look after them.”
“Well, lucky for you, I’m not going anywhere. But we do need to do something about school. I can’t teach you. You wouldn’t learn much from me anyway. But maybe we can go look at a new school?” I offer. I could hire someone to homeschool her. That would be the better option. She wouldn’t be subjected to little shits bullying her if she were here.
“Are kids mean at all schools?” Jazzy asks.
“I think people can be mean no matter where you go. You just have to learn to deal with them properly so they know not to fuck with you,” I explain.
“Like how?”
I smirk. “Now, thatissomething I can teach you, princess. How to fight back so no one can ever hurt you.”
“Like a ninja?” She smiles excitedly.
“Exactly.”
“Can we start now?” she asks me.
“Maybe tomorrow. Tonight, I have to go out. Lailani is coming to sit with you. You like her, right?”
“I like her,” Jazzy says. “Are you coming back?”
As much as she tries to put on a happy façade, this kid has some real abandonment issues. She’s terrified I’m going to leave her like her mother did. She doesn’t say it, but it’s clear as day. For two weeks, I’ve slept on the floor of her bedroom. Because every time she asks me to stay, I don’t have it in me to leave her.
“I promise I’m always going to come back. Here. I have something for you.” I stand, walk over to my desk, and pick up the cell phone I bought for Jazzy. I wave it in her direction. “You know how to work one of these?”
“Uh-huh.” She nods her head.
“I put my number in it. You can call me whenever you want and I’ll answer, okay?” I tell her.
“Anytime?” she says.
“Anytime,” I repeat.
