The Storage Space was aghast. This was hardly the person it wanted to see again after all that…unpleasantness. Yet here she was, that young girl, and now she was… Well, really, her condition was quite obvious and…
“Finally! I, like, really need my things!”
And she hadn’t even looked up at poor Karen who’d opened the door to the street and found her there. Instead she kept her eyes on that idiotic “smartphone,” just like she had no matter what Le Grand Rat had done to her the first time she tried getting her things back with no money.
Her fingers flew over the smartphone’s screen. Then, eyes still on her phone, she touched a nasty scar on her cheek. The Storage Space would have shuddered if only a building… No, the Storage Space reminded itself that to be human was no honor, especially since it remembered all too well how that nasty scar came into being.
Briefly, as she touched that nasty scar, raw agony twisted her otherwise silly young face, making her seem real as her fingers froze and her eyes, though still on the phone, were obviously no longer seeing it. “I know what you’re going to do to me, but it’s better than what my parents are doing to me over the things they think I lost but was only hiding from them.” Then her eyes snapped into focus, and her fingers resumed their flurry of activity as her face became young and silly again. “Just, like, actually give me my stuff back this time!”
Karen wobbled a bit. How could the Storage Space have all but forgotten her when she had been about to break its poor, long-suffering heart…and, yes, a building could have a heart…by leaving? Karen was the one person in all this long, weary, helpless, heartbreaking time who could actually hear the poor, long-suffering Storage Space. But now she grabbed the carvings surrounding its door, the carvings she’d so lovingly caressed so long ago, as she started to faint again.
Even the young girl…at long last…looked up from her phone. “Like, where’s Irwin and who are you? Suh? You look horrible! This is totally cray cray!” With an odd glint of a smile, she started taking pictures of Karen, then looked back at her phone as her fingers again flew over its screen.
Karen, catching her breath, studied the young girl for a long time, her eyes lingering on each scar and bruise, amateurishly concealed by makeup, then lingering on her body long enough to observe her condition. “When are you due?”
