✅ Over Protected

41. Alice Learns a Lesson

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"...and I wonder if anybody can remember his name?" Mr Woodward asked with a bright smile, slightly glassy like he wasn't expecting any of us to remember what he'd taught us two weeks before. I probably wouldn't have known, except that I thought it was the last time I had been in school. Even when I was turning into a complete baby, I wanted to be in school sometimes, just so I didn't stop learning. And Mummy was happy with that too, because she still had her work to do. And as long as she was choosing my diapers, she could know whether a little accident was going to send me home again. I couldn't help wetting my diapers; it happened every day now, and I'd given up trying to change that. But Mummy might decide to let me keep my big-girl thoughts sometimes, so I could keep on listening to a lesson.

Like today. I knew the answer. I raised my hand, breathless with excitement. I knew that wasn't normal; I shouldn't be so proud of remembering one little thing, but it was the best I'd been able to do for some time now. I saw some of my friends turning to look at me as I raised my hand, literally bouncing up and down in my seat hoping that the teacher would pick me.

"I think Alice is going to explode if I don't ask her to answer," he said, and everybody laughed. "Do you know the answer, Alice?"

"Erasmus Darwin!" I said, and then suddenly felt really nervous. Was I actually right? It was so easy to get confused now. Well, I'd tried anyway, and that was more than I had been able to do in quite a while. I just froze, hoping that my memory was right.

"Correct!" he said. "I wonder if you should get a gold star for being so enthusiastic?" I squeaked in excitement, before I realised he was just joking. But it wasn't a mean joke, and I was still really happy that I'd remembered one of the things that I'd learned. I was still kind of smart sometimes, even if most of the time I was taking a break from being too smart. I could be proud of that, somehow, and I enjoyed feeling how much life changed, even if it was a bit hard to think about it too much.

Mr Woodward was going into more detail now, telling us all the things we needed to know about Darwin. Some of it I remembered from a few weeks before, and some of it I knew I was going to forget as soon as the class ended. But I could remember that I got a question right, and all my friends were giggling about how happy I was. I didn't know how many of them were still really my friends; they didn't talk to me so much now. But that wasn't important, because I knew that my real friends liked it when I was happy.

It wasn't long before the class ended anyway. I'd made it through a whole day of school today, and I thought I'd understood at least half of the lessons. I didn't mind the teachers making little jokes about me, because I didn't understand most of them; I only knew that people were enjoying themselves.

As everybody got up to go home, Penny came over to me and asked if I wanted to hold her hand to make sure I didn't get lost. I blushed; I wasn't that little. At least, I wasn't that little right now. But it felt so safe to have somebody looking after me. So I took her hand like a little kid, and she checked that I had my bag and everything that I was supposed to have. I let her remind me to put my coat on as well, because it made me feel so small when I couldn't do those things by myself.

"We should wait a little bit," Penny told me. "Mummy won't be here yet. And we can play some until she comes. Okay?" I nodded, and we sat down at the edge of the yard, while Penny taught me a silly little dance where you have to stick one hand up in the air, and then the other, and then wave your fingers around each other. It was really fun, and I knew that it was so simple I should have been able to master it instantly, but I was having too much fun to care. I almost managed it, before Penny stood up again, noticing that Mummy's car had arrived outside the gates.