Jacinta Takes a Walk
Copyright© 2025 by BarBar
Chapter 26: Group
I walked back into SHORT and waved through the glass at Max. He came to the window to talk to me.
“Hi, Jacinta. Roseanna has booked you a medical appointment for 2:30pm Tuesday afternoon. One of the team will come and drag you out of school and take you to that. And you have a visitor coming in about 25 minutes. I told her you should be back by then.”
“A visitor? Who?” That caught me by surprise.
He looked at his notes. “A Jenny Binter?”
“Oh, wow. Okay, thanks,” I said.
I stood there and blinked for a moment, trying to process the idea of having someone want to visit me.
I shook my head and continued my conversation with Max.
“I have all this paperwork to give you to go in my file. There’s my birth certificate and some medical records, vaccination records, that sort of thing. I think there’s a copy of my dad’s death certificate in there as well. There’s a copy of the court order from today, and a copy of the court proceedings. Oh, and there’s an extra copy of the court order that I’m supposed to take to school.”
He nodded. “I’ll put it with the packet for your school containing the change of address and contacts form and so on. Don’t forget to pick it up in the morning. How did it go at Family Court?”
I shrugged. “I found out some stuff about my birth mother that I didn’t know. See that report, there? The judge suggested I get you to put it in my file so I don’t lose it.”
“Sure, I’ll put that in with the rest.”
“Can I grab the stuff for school now? I’ll put it in my schoolbag so I don’t forget in the morning.”
“Good idea. It will take me five minutes to put it all together.”
“Okay, I’ll come back in five minutes.”
I went into the downstairs bathroom for the first time. I’d been told it was unisex, but when I went it, I realised that didn’t matter. It was a row of toilets in fully enclosed cubicles, opposite a row of basins plus a hand dryer at each end. There were a couple of small mirrors and one power point. It was pretty basic. Not a place to hang around in. There was one cabinet on the wall above the basins marked “Female Hygiene,” and a second cabinet marked “First Aid.” The First Aid cabinet had band-aids and antiseptic wipes and a couple of bandages and a splint and a resuscitation kit and some tape and a couple of those instant cold packs. The other cabinet had the sort of stuff you’d expect, but less of it than what was in the upstairs bathroom.
I grabbed a tampon and went into one of the cubicles to use the toilet and swap out my tampon. This cubicle had some art on the back of the door, too. This was a hand-drawn poster. It had the message, “Life is not so much about what happens to me, and more about how I react to it.” The letters had been drawn in a 3D style and coloured in with different colours. Scattered around the poster were brightly coloured drawings of little flowers and butterflies and mushrooms and rainbows. At the bottom was the name Clara. The poster had been covered with plastic and stuck to the door.
I thought about that message as I washed and dried my hands. I was trying to think about whether that was true or not. I didn’t think it was right all the time. My birth mother had run away when I was little. I doubt if I had reacted to that very much at all back when it had happened. But on the other hand, that event had been a huge factor in my life, ever since then. It was still having an effect on me today. My dad had died. I definitely reacted to that. And I’d kept on reacting to that, ever since.
Max wasn’t quite ready so I leaned against the window and looked around the common room. Quite a few of the residents were there, scattered around, doing different things. There was the hum of several conversations, but the overall scene was calm and relaxed and mostly quiet. There were a couple of board games being played and others doing school work and others just chilling on the sofas. Sami and Kala and a couple of others were still in their pyjamas. Apparently they intended to stay that way all day. I even spotted Aubrey, who was back in her long tshirt nightie. She was curled up in a bean bag and playing on her phone. She didn’t seem to be actively trying to flash anyone this time.
Max came back to the window with a collection of papers in his hand. He showed me each of the forms he had and explained what it was. He asked if I had any questions. I didn’t, so he slid them all into a big envelope and handed me the envelope. It was addressed to The Principal, and listed the address for my school.
I took the envelope and tucked Bertie under my arm and went upstairs. Back in the room I put the envelope in one of the pockets of my school bag, I had to fold it up to make it fit. Then I went to my cabinet and tucked Bertie into the back.
My cabinet and storage drawer now had nice name tags on them with my name in black print. I guessed that it was probably Roseanna who’d done that for me, while I was out.
I noticed that my dance trophy had moved. I picked it up and the top half of it seemed to be glistening in the light. I sniffed it and it smelled like twat. I laughed. Someone had been using my trophy like a dildo. No prizes for guessing who.
The trophy wasn’t exactly smooth. It had a figurine on top with arms above its head in fifth position, and a tutu that stuck out at close to 90 degrees from the body. Aubrey must have shoved it up her twat as far as the tutu would allow. It can’t have been very comfortable. Like I said, it wasn’t exactly smooth. But comfort hadn’t been the point. I guess that was her way of paying me back for the tease I’d put on. It was funny that she felt the need to do that. It was funny that she did it. She was lucky she didn’t break my trophy. After all, it was only plastic. I would not have reacted nicely if she broke my trophy. That’s an understatement. I would’ve been very, very angry.
I took the trophy to the bathroom and rinsed it under the tap. I guess, the trophy being made out of plastic was an advantage this time. It was pretty easy to clean.
I put the dance trophy back where it belonged in my cabinet and went downstairs to hang out in the common area. I didn’t have to wait for long before Max came and found me. He showed me to the visitors’ room. It ran along the front wall of the building and had windows looking out onto the front lawn. There were a series of small groupings of seating. The only person in the room was Jenny.
Jenny was sitting in the first grouping of seating. I went up to her and said, “Hello.”
She stood up and gave me a hug, then we sat down. She passed me a plastic bag.
“Here’s your McDonalds uniform,” she said. “I washed it for you. I even saved your ‘Isabelle’ name tag. Your sports bra is in there, too. That’s what we took off you when you turned up at the house last night.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“You didn’t need to run, you know,” said Jenny. “When the police turned up you didn’t need to run away. We could have sorted it out without all the running and the struggling.”
I shrugged. “I wasn’t exactly thinking things through.”
She grinned. “I got that impression. Well, what’s done is done. So how’s your day going?”
I told her about my day and what I’d found out about my birth mother. Jenny was suitably amazed.
“Rainbow Apple? Seriously?”
I grinned. “Seriously. They think it was her but they don’t really know. I guess I’ll never know for sure. That is, unless some woman turns up one day and claims to be my mother.”
“Is that what you want to happen?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. Even if she wasn’t Rainbow Apple, she abandoned me and my dad when I was two. It would be weird to have some strange woman turn up and suddenly expect to be treated as a mother.”
“Fair enough. So are you back to school tomorrow?”
“I guess so. These people seem pretty keen for me to go, so that I can...” I held up my fingers to do air quotes, “ ... establish new routines.”
I shrugged. “They’re probably right, but everything seems to be happening so fast.”
We chatted for a while about my school and her college and so forth. She told me about how Freddy and Tabby had stayed the night with her. They’d hardly let go of her since I’d been taken away by the cops. They’d even crawled into bed with her and cuddled together while they slept. Jenny smiled and said it had been incredibly sweet, but not something she wanted to do all the time. They’d all had a nice breakfast of pancakes together, and then I’d called and that had cheered them up. They’d gotten dressed and gone home with their mum.
“So you were all still naked when you were talking to me? And your mum was there?”
“Yes, to both of those questions.” She grinned. “Mum took it way better than I expected. She never said a thing, but I think she was amused. More amused than anything else. She wanted to look at the bruise on Freddy’s face, and she asked if it was sore, but that was about it. And then you called. And then she sent them off to get dressed and she gave me a hug. We talked about Bria for a bit while the kids were grabbing their stuff, and then they left.”
She looked at me and said she was sorry I missed out on the pancakes, after all of our planning. I talked about how I could have had waffles for breakfast, but I hadn’t been hungry so I’d had toast. She thanked me again for looking after her when she got drunk. She pointed out the irony of me being a real life Goldilocks, except the real Goldilocks ran away when she got found out.
“She did?” I asked.
“That’s how the story goes.”
“Huh!” I said. “In that case, she missed out on the best part.”
We both had a laugh, and then the conversation moved on.
Eventually Jenny stood up and said, “I guess I should make a move. I’ll definitely stay in touch. Maybe we can go out for lunch together or something. Are you allowed to do that?”
“I assume so,” I said. “We’re not exactly prisoners here, though I’m still learning how that works. Lunch would be nice, I’d like that.”
I stood up and we exchanged another brief hug.
I escorted her back to the front door and we said bye to each other. I wandered back into the open area, dangling the plastic bag from one hand.
Max was out in the living room, talking to a group of residents. He saw me go past and called out for me to wait up.
I waited and Max came over to me. “I think Roseanna told you about Judy?”
My mind went to the assistant at the Family Court, whose name was Judy. I couldn’t figure out how she was relevant.
Max must have seen the puzzled expression on my face. “Judy is our psychologist on staff. She’s in this afternoon to run a group but Roseanna has asked her to have a one-on-one with you first.”
“Oh, that Judy. Okay,” I said.
Max looked at his watch. “She’s with someone right now, but she’ll see you when she’s done with him. That should be in about five or ten minutes. Head down that hallway and it’s the second door on the right. Take a seat outside until she’s ready for you.”
“Okay.” I waved the plastic bag in my hand. “I’ll drop this off upstairs in my room and then go right there.”
I turned and trotted upstairs to put the plastic bag in my cabinet. Then I trotted back down again. I was breathing heavily by the time I got back down. If nothing else, going up and down these stairs was going to help me get fitter.
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