Picture Perfect

Chapter Twelve - Elliot

Happy Wednesday my loves! Tomorrow is my 28th birthday - can you believe the original version of Picture Perfect was written ELEVEN years ago??

Love, Cam

♡

Chapter Twelve

Elliot

Saskie sat with a mulish expression and her arms crossed, her eyes rimmed with red and her nose stuffy. I sat with her, waiting patiently for Tyler to arrive. Saskie sniffed, and my heart ached a bit for her, but I didn't budge. This had to be dealt with.

The door opened and a concerned Tyler entered. "Sask? Everything - oh, Jesus Christ."

I nodded a little wearily and said, "We had an incident."

I was plastered in glitter. It was in my hair. It was in my clothes. It was, somehow, in the hair in my underarms. I knew that when I took my clothes off tonight, I'd likely shower my bathroom in glitter. The cats would be glittery for days.

"I can see that," Tyler said, looking aghast. Clearly the man was familiar with the utter hell that was cleaning up a kilo of glitter. "What happened?"

I took a deep breath and said, "Saskie, can you tell your dad what happened?"

Saskie kept her mouth shut.

I closed my eyes to gather some patience and said, "Okay, Saskie. I'll tell him what I know, but I don't know the whole story, so you're going to have to fill us in eventually." Opening my eyes, I exchanged a glance with Tyler and said, "Saskie threw a packet of glitter - a glitterbomb, I believe it's called, at a student she was arguing with. Unfortunately, the bag split upon impact, and went... well, everywhere. I had been coming over to deal with the argument, so I at least performed well as a human shield for other students. About five people got blasted by it. We've had very cross parents in. We're lucky it didn't get in anyone's eyes. But as you can see, this part of the classroom is very much glittered."

Tyler winced and said, "We'll help you clean it up. Won't we, Saskie?"

Saskie didn't speak, but she nodded firmly. She was upset, and didn't want to talk about it, but she was clearly sorry she'd caused me trouble.

Tyler took the chair next to Saskie, which was quite amusing considering he was a grown man and the chair was built for five-year-olds. He reached out and took her hand.

"Turtlebug," he began, and I tried not to smile at the nickname. "It's not like you to throw something at someone. We've always tried to talk about things first, so I know that you must have tried to talk about things before you threw the glitter. It must have been something really upsetting to make you want to do that. Can you tell me what it was?"

Saskie's eyes were watery and she quietly said, "We did family trees."

"For class?" Tyler asked, and she nodded. "Okay," he said, and then took a deep breath. "Did someone say something nasty? Like we talked about before?"

Saskie nodded, and squeezed his hand.

"Can you tell me what they said?" Tyler asked.

Saskie sniffed and her voice dropped so much in volume that I had to strain to hear. "Ellie said that you're not supposed to have two daddies and where was my mummy and why doesn't she want me-"

She cut herself off, and swallowed hard. It wasn't often that I felt truly angry with parents of a child, but I felt it now towards Ellie's parents. Five-year-olds were not cruel individuals. They learned it at home.