Chapter 542: The Kids Are Back In Town

How much of my plans for Ellen’s punishment can I tell my parents?

“She will get grounded for two weeks as a start,” I began telling my parents. “No electronics except her cell phone, which locked down to texting and calling only us during that time. Only emails from the school and her teachers are permitted. Her computer usage is limited to schoolwork. Anything else she wants to do on the computer will be done in front of us and put up on one of the large TVs in our offices. Unless she finds some way to redeem herself, she is missing out on the back-to-school parties and dance at the school.”

Mom snickered before saying, “No need to worry about the school dance. The school called. They have a list of girls and boys who are not permitted to attend school dances or social functions until further notice. That list gets posted on multiple bulletin boards around the school. The crap the girls pulled was the last straw for the school administrators. They will use peer pressure to dissuade the unacceptable behaviors, even when committed outside the school during a school break. That is one of the biggest school functions for incoming sixth graders, even if the girls and boys stay on separate sides of the gym and no one dances.”

Harsh but inventive at the same time.

I did tell mom that I had Ellen do a Chrissy clean out of her room before she left for happy camp. Dad asked what that meant, and mom told him he didn’t want to know. I suggested that she do that for Rosie and Ariba, preferably with mom standing there with April to ensure the girls complied. Mom liked that idea.

We know that Ariba and Rosie don’t have any sex toys in their rooms yet. They don’t want them found in their rooms because it would embarrass the hell out of them.

Mom went a step further and removed all electronics from the girl’s rooms. That included replacing their clock radios with old-fashioned clock-hands alarm clocks with buzzers to wake them up. She also removed their razors so they couldn’t shave off any happy camp-dyed pubic hairs. The girls and boys all had to shower after gym class this year and had gym at least three times a week. The schools didn’t typically permit kids to have dyed hair, but happy camp hair was allowed. It was a deterrent and threat the parents had in their armory to use against their kids. Having this big group of sixth-graders sent from this neighborhood will show that this isn’t just some made-up threat about some fictional camp.

I know I didn’t entirely believe the camp existed.

Molly was cuddly when she came over to sleep in bed with me tonight. She enjoyed the looks the various people gave her when she went around with her baby bump showing. A few men commented that she was pregnant and it wasn’t a place for a pregnant woman, though they didn’t think it was a place for a woman at all.

The girls, Tee, Dee, and their friends, got off the happy camp bus in front of my house. All had their hair dyed from head to tip with the happy camp dye. While happy to be home, they didn’t look all that happy knowing they had to get up for school early in the morning. They did try to see if the saltwater pool would help bleach out their rainbow-colored hair and get the dye off their bodies. The boys were mainly spared from having rainbow pubic hair because only Dee and two others had enough to matter. All the others were bald. The girls, however, all had plenty of dyed hair. Some had grown in enough over their time at camp to have different colored patches. Ariba’s pubic hair, oddly, allowed the area inside the heart to take the rainbow colors, but the red hairs on the outside that framed the heart were unaffected. The same went for the red hairs intermixed with the white on her head. There it was harder to see.

“You will get your phone before you go anywhere, but you can only call or text your grandparents and me. Only emails from the school will come through, and you can only send them to the school and your teachers. No other toys or your knives either,” I told her. “You are grounded for the next two weeks. If you break the rules, you will have another two weeks added.”

Ellen did apologize for getting in trouble, not just getting caught, and hugged me before going to bed.

All three girls were surprisingly chipper, especially Rosie. That didn’t last after Rosie got on the school bus to see the kids, to which she did whatever got her in trouble. Tee and Dee looked unsure of themselves as they got on the bus.

Ellen, Ariba, and Crimilda were happy and singing when we left the house, but the closer we got, the more they seemed to dread getting to school. I joked that I would find a guitar somewhere and make them sing if they didn’t cheer up.

“Daddy,” Ellen said. “I’m scared. It is the first day of middle school. We look like clowns, and many kids are still mad at us for what we did. Middle school kids are so mean.”

I hugged her and said, “I’m channeling my mother when I say that you look exactly how you behaved. No one will ever get the true story from both sides of the matter. You three, Rosie, Tee, and Dee, are smart enough not to be the ones that started things or escalate them until you got to the point that you chose to retaliate. Don’t play into their hands again. I remember kids in middle school. They will gloat about getting you sent to happy camp, and it won’t take long for them to start bragging about what they did. These kids will take the win quietly if they are smart, but you three aren’t dummies and still fell for it. They’ll get bold and try to pull something as a way to bait you into getting in trouble again. If what you did in retaliation hadn’t been so over the top, you probably would have gotten away with it or only gotten grounded. For the record, Rosie isn’t a good person to ask about ways to get even. She is mean about it.”

“Thanks, Dad,” Ellen said after kissing my cheek. “You don’t need a guitar or force us to sing to cheer me up.”

If it takes away the sense of dread, then I’m all for it.

Being close enough to the new home construction on the far corner of my block of land, I headed that way. I helped carry various loads of lumber, sheetrock, and appliances. Many of the subcontractors building the homes had no idea who I was. One inquired if I was on his payroll and, if not, if I wanted to be.

“Thanks, but that would screw up my taxes,” I joked. “I’m David Jones, and you are a subcontractor for my company to build these houses. Those kids that are apprenticing are from my foster care complex.”

He laughed and asked, “Can you make them go back there? They are about to kill my foremen and me. Those kids don’t stop going when they get here until we have to make them leave for safety reasons. They are the best workers I’ve ever had, and I can’t even pay them. I do feed them when they are here. Your kids eat like packs of starved wolves, and I know they have all they can eat at home. I can’t exactly complain if the boss wants to go around being a pack mule. Nice to meet you, David.”

I kept going around helping out for much of the morning and then went to see how the new school buildings were coming along. The person who took over for Nelly was on her way to tell me this was a construction site, and I couldn’t be there, but someone intercepted her on the way. She came over all smiles after that.

“I spoke with Nelly at length, and some structural engineers reviewed our building plans. Tests confirmed that the fiber-reinforced concrete we are extruding is stronger and reaches a higher compression strength than that typically used in multi-story building walls. We reviewed the plans and decided we could add another floor to all the school buildings within a week and get the roof on while the machines print the gymnasium. I know that it makes the school larger than you intended, but it will increase the number of classrooms and lab areas,” she explained. “With some additional excavation and slight modifications to the grading, the gyms will have two stories below the main gym floor instead of only one. We still have one floor with changing areas split between male and female students, but the second floor has all unisex changing and shower rooms. The new design allows one hundred fifty students to change and shower simultaneously,” Nat told me.

I thought it over and asked, “Isn’t that a bit much? Do you think we will simultaneously have that many kids in the gym classes in either middle or high school gyms?”

“Not presently, nor do we plan to see that many anytime in the future, but that wasn’t the point,” Nat explained. “You grew up here, so you know that there are kids that don’t shower frequently enough, be that is due to inability to do so at home or being homeless, not bad hygiene. The school will not let them go to class if they stink. We configured part of the unisex floor for that purpose. It has separate entrances from the changing rooms for the gym to permit them to come and go without having direct interactions with other students going to the gym classes. Another section we designated for adults. It requires a keycard and code to enter. Cameras will ensure that only staff is using this area. We have the showers and changing areas off the clinics to control access for children in elementary and primary schools. Young kids have accidents. We don’t want to make it traumatic. I was told that you will have registered nurses and pediatric nurse practitioners on staff at each school. A pool of pediatricians will ensure there is always one here when the school is open, including athletic events.”

Nat continued to review the plans’ changes and how the school would use the extra floor.

One building section got re-purposed to have a portable X-ray, MRI, and CT Scanner. It was central to all the buildings. It is where the pediatrician had their office. The school could quickly diagnose various injuries and treat them on the spot instead of having the kids in pain as they rode in the ambulance to the ER. We weren’t trying to cut the hospitals and doctor’s offices out of the picture, just ensuring the kids got medical help as quickly as possible. I knew some children didn’t have any medical insurance, and a trip to the ER would put their families into serious debt for a long time. Often, their injuries that needed to go to an ER or doctor’s office went unchecked.

Other changes included an expanded vocational building for high school kids that weren’t college material. They would teach a wide range of non-college degree careers to those interested. A big driver for the expansion is helping more kids graduate high school. One of the sections of that vocation building will be a daycare.

Using my implant, I scanned the new plans and the buildings. The supercomputer in my basement analyzed the data. It determined that the foundation and walls in all the buildings could support another five stories if we wanted to go that far. It was way over-engineered. That worked for me.

The 3D concrete printers had us finish the building construction by Halloween and be ready for students after Christmas break. I didn’t want to cause more problems with the school board, even if they could do nothing to stop the school from opening. The plans were to finish construction and have whoever felt they needed to “inspect” things come through, and we would open next fall. Teachers were going to do their interviews and go through a bit of a gauntlet to ensure they were the right fit to teach the kids in town best. Those who were up to par would find themselves working at the school.

I found an unexpected sight when I went to get Ariba, Ellen, and Crimilda after school. There were probably thirty kids with their parents waiting for me to walk the girls home. All the kids looked like they accidentally drop-kicked their puppies and kittens into a wood chipper or path of a lawnmower.

One snotty trophy-wife bitch came over to me and said, “I can’t believe you let your daughter and sisters get away with what they did to my son. I demand you address this matter right now. I will not have my child lying about doing what he told me he did, especially not to these kids with clown hair. My son would never do such things as they made him confess to doing.”

“David, your sisters, Ellen, and all the children were happy little angels today,” the assistant principal explained. “Even the grumpiest of the bunch had a smile glued on their face the entire day. Ellen has every reason to be grumpy today. All of them showed a definite attitude adjustment compared to last year. From what the teachers reported, the students never once complained about the reasons for their colorful hair or why we are allowing it.”

“We didn’t do anything wrong today, daddy,” Ellen told me. “Everyone tried to make us tell them things, but we won’t.”

In her family language, Ariba explained that these kids did nasty things to them, plus others in the public schools. That is why Ariba and the others did what got them sent to the happy camp. What the kids did to the happy campers was worse than what they did in return.

This group of kids thought they got away with it, but their guilt made them confess.

I returned to the bitch and said, “My sister, daughter, and their friends got banished to the happy camp for the remainder of the summer. They didn’t have a choice about dying their hair. The camp did that to them, and they will have to wait until it grows out to cut it off. Whatever dye they use at the camp can’t be bleached out or dyed another color. They are stuck with it. My parents sent them to the camp, but I don’t know what other punishments my mom imposed on my sisters. Ellen is grounded and banned from all electronics except for her cell phone. It is locked down only to allow communication with the school, her teachers, grandparents, police, and me. If she behaves, no friends over, no parties, no dances, or anything else for a month. Way before they came to live here, Ariba and Crimilda had put up with things being done to them that you can’t even imagine. It is why they are living here instead of in their previous homes. Rosie doing something nastier than what someone did to her is not outside the realm of possibility. It isn’t something I would think Ariba and Crimilda would do unless pushed past the point of what they would tolerate. It appears that things came to a head over the summer. I have no idea what your child confessed to doing that escalated matters to cause the kids sent to the happy camp to react. It isn’t my place to discipline your children. I’ve already met my parental responsibilities to correct my child’s poor choices.”

I told the girls it was time to go, and we headed out.

I overheard a girl crying and telling her mother how the dye colored all girl’s hair everywhere. She explained that it was partially her fault that the kids did stuff that got them sent to the happy camp.

Damn, some of that stuff is plain mean, even by elite family standards. She didn’t even do stuff to any happy camp kids, but to kids and people around town.

What started as harmless pranks went off the rails quickly. Some of the things they did were pissing, taking a crap, or both, through open car sunroofs, rolled-down windows, or convertibles with their tops down. They smeared dog crap all over people’s door handles, doors, and windows. I didn’t want to know what things they did to people at the public pools. In most cases, they didn’t even know these people.

Even if some of the people they did things to were assholes and probably deserved it, that doesn’t make it right.

“Their parents are jerks,” Crimilda said as we walked home. “They said we forced those kids to lie and confess to things they did do, but their parents won’t believe them. We weren’t in the right to do what we did to those kids, what we did to them, but someone had to make them stop. People told some parents what the kids did, and the parents blew it off, saying their kids would never do that. I mean, come on. The Peterson’s daughter brought her newborn twins plus her one, two, and four-year-old kids to visit their grandparents. Because their car was too small, their parents bought them a new minivan. Someone forgot to close one of the doors. One of the kids saw it, and at least twenty kids took turns pissing and crapping in it throughout the night. Some of the others packed shit into all of the vents. Someone even packed the spare time area with cat crap and rotten fish. When the family went out to go to the store the next afternoon, all that had been baking in the hot sun. As bad as my bitch aunt was to me, she would beat everyone’s asses raw and bleeding for any kid in my family doing something like that to someone, even the psychos. Crazy, right? My cousin could cut the parent’s, grandparent’s, and even children’s throats and leave them in the van to rot. That would be ok, but not crapping all over someone’s new car.”