✅ Over Protected

29. Alice Sees her Future

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I got to look at my diaper on the way home. It was one with princesses on, but I couldn't remember what kind that was. It was cute though, and that was enough for me to smile about. I didn't think much more as we got back to the house, and it was probably quite a few minutes before I even realised that I'd gone to school and come back again without going into a class.

As my thoughts started to come back, I tried to remember as much as I could about the meeting with the important people. One of them had been the principal; the other two I assumed were school board members. I'd barely been able to pay attention, and had spent most of the meeting smiling, nodding, and fidgeting. They'd explained that they were worried about me, because teachers had noticed that I often had difficulty focusing in class, especially early in the morning.

Mummy had given them some explanation, which they seemed to buy. She'd told them that I had an appointment to see a doctor, and that my recent issues could be a result of some obscure illness. Sometimes it would flare up and I would be unable to think for an hour or two. If I thought about it for more than a couple of minutes, I could remember that those words weren't true. I hadn't seen a doctor at all; and Mummy knew what was going on. But maybe some mystery disease would make more sense to the school board. After a little conversation, and watching how oblivious I was to the conversation around me, they had tried suggesting possible solutions so that me thinking like a baby wouldn't interrupt everybody else's learning.

Mum had said that the doctor said it would probably get worse before it got better. Well, that made sense. And the principal had come up with the suggestion that Mum had been hoping for. He said that if I was like that in the morning, I didn't need to come in to school. And they would give the nurse instructions that if I started getting confused in class, they could just call Mum and send me home.

I was curious about that. Was Mum working shorter hours, or would her job let her work from home now? If that was the case, it might mean I could be a baby pretty regularly. And now that all my grown-up thoughts were starting to return, it made even more sense. If she had to go into work, I could be at school. If she knew she was going to be home, she could just use a different type of wipes and I would quickly get all suggestible and confused. As long as Mum was controlling everything, I'd never have trouble when there wasn't somebody around to look after me. It was something like what she'd planned to do with Sarah, but this time with my agreement.

Getting me out of school had to be a good thing. It meant that I could be a baby at home, and nobody would know. And maybe I could still learn on the days when Mum had other things to do. But then I thought about Lyra, and Sarah's comments about homeschooling. Maybe that just meant that Mum could teach her sometimes; or keep her home to be babied. But our teachers had told us that Lyra was going to a different school. There were so many options in my mind, and my curiosity was enough to make me think through as many of them as I could.

Was there a school that would take kids and treat them like they were younger? Would me and Lyra end up in the same class, with teachers talking down to us and make us feel even more babyish? And if so, did the school know how old Lyra really was? Did they think she was a real baby, or a kid with some kind of brain injury? Were there specialist schools and nurseries that were complicit in this plan to turn kids into babies again? Or were her parents teaching her at home now, making her babyish almost full time? Would Mum be able to do that for me, and did she want to?

There were so many questions, and I wasn't even sure where to start asking them. But just as I was thinking about that, Mum came back into the room. I decided that I would try to get at least some answers. And if she didn't want to tell me... Well, a surprise could be kind of fun. I was sure that she could make my curiosity go away again, so that I would enjoy things without having to think so hard or so deep.