"I'm on my way now" Elizabeth answered. "Do you think it got him too?"
"I don't know" Robbie answered, tears flowing down her face for the first time since he was a child. "But we'll make it through somehow."
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Little Timmy was crying. "I don't wanna be a girl, I don't wanna be a girl, I don't know how to be a girl."
Suddenly, like it was the most natural thing in the world, Ms. Aaronson found herself with her arms around the crying student. "There, there" she soothed him "It's going to be OK, everything's going to be OK." The frightened little girl huddled closer to the soft, comforting embrace of her teacher. She stopped crying.
+++++++++++++++++++++
The classroom was thinning out as parents arrived to pick up their children. Ms. Aaronsohn marveled at how children recognized their changed fathers and parents their changed sons. Soon as the last handful left she would be able to shut the classroom down and go back to her apartment. But not alone. Ms. Quesada lived in a distant suburb, Ms. Aaronsohn in the same neighborhood as the school. Given the traffic, Ms. Aaronsohn had offered to put Ms. Quesada up for the night. Perfectly innocent, so why was her heart pounding like this?
+++++++++++++++
"Billy?" "Mommy!"