The Fall of the Aftons

144: Elizabeth Afton

"Daddy, why won't you let me go play with her?" Elizabeth whined, pulling on Daddy's arm. "You let the other children go play with her! Why can't I?"

"Elizabeth, I'm busy right now," Daddy scolded, shaking her hands off of his arm. "Why don't you go to Ballora's stage? You said before that you like her dancing."

"But Ballora is boring!" she exclaimed quietly, frowning. "I want to see Circus Baby!"

"Elizabeth, please leave me alone. I have work to do. Go watch Ballora or play some arcade games—you can grab tokens from behind the prize counter. But I need to work, and you need to leave me alone."

Elizabeth made a pouting face and stormed off. Why was everyone acting so weird? She didn't understand it. Michael was crying like a baby at the hospital, and now Daddy was all cranky. What was going on with everyone? It was so weird.

"Hey, Elizabeth!" a high-pitched girl's voice shouted from the other end of the room. She turned around to see Evan's friend from school, Susanna Richards. Susie waved her arms, grinning when she realized Elizabeth saw her. "Over here!"

Elizabeth grinned and speed-walked over to her. "Hi!" she said happily. "What're you doing here? You're usually with the rest of Evan's friends."

"Oh, they're right over there," she said, motioning behind her where the others stood.

Elizabeth peered behind Susie, looking at the rest of the group. All of them were there: Evan's best friend, Cassidy, as well as his other friends Fritz Carpenter, Gabriel Campbell, and Jeremy Sarkar. Fritz and Jeremy were bickering with each other as Gabriel and Cassidy tried to stop them.

"Stop fighting!" Gabriel shouted, wedging himself between Fritz and Jeremy when they started threatening to hurt each other. Gabriel was the second-oldest of the five kids, just a year younger than Evan and Cassidy. Despite being younger, he was a grade above the two, meaning he was in middle school while they and Evan were still in elementary. His favorite Fazbear Entertainment character was Freddy Fazbear, which wasn't surprising since he was kind of like the leader of the gang.

Jeremy sniffled softly, clearly upset. "He said Bonnie is stupid because he doesn't have a Funtime version!" he exclaimed. Jeremy was the next youngest of the five, in fourth grade behind Evan and Cassidy. His favorite character was Bonnie the Bunny, and he tended to get very defensive if someone insulted Bonnie, which was probably why his fight with Fritz started.

"No, I didn't!" Fritz said, frowning. "I didn't say he was stupid, I said it was stupid, like, the fact." Fritz was even younger than the others, following behind Jeremy in third grade. His favorite was Foxy the Pirate since he was missing part of his arm, just as Foxy was missing his hand. "Did your hearing aid break again?" he asked, tilting his head to look at the hearing aid in Jeremy's left ear since he was hard of hearing in that ear.

"Chica doesn't have one either. It's dumb," Susie said, crossing her arms as she made a pouty face. She was the youngest of the group, and she was in the same kindergarten class as Elizabeth. Her favorite was Chica the Chicken since Chica was the only girl out of the four at Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria.

"Chica used to have a Funtime version," Elizabeth said. "She was one of the characters at Circus Ennard's before it burnt down and this place was built instead. My dad and Henry were planning to bring her back, but they didn't have enough time to repair her before this place opened, so they decided not to bring her back. She's just sitting in one of the employee rooms. Mikey showed me."

"I always forget that your dad owns these places," Fritz said, giggling.

Elizabeth just grinned in response. She took pride in knowing more about Fazbear Entertainment's installments than other people. She loved sharing facts about the animatronics and arcade games.

"Well, now that you two are done fighting," Cassidy said, motioning to Fritz and Jeremy, "can we go to Funtime Freddy's stage? We've seen everyone but him, even though he's the funniest!"

The other four all agreed, laughing and making unimportant comments.

"What about you, Beth? Wanna join us?" Cassidy asked, smiling slightly.

"Are you sure?" she asked, surprised by their offer. While they never seemed to mind having her around, they still clearly preferred to be with their friends than with their friends and her.

"Yeah, I'm sure," they assured her, smiling sadly. They looked like they felt bad for her... But why did they feel bad for her? Nothing was wrong.