PARTICULAR WOMAN, PARTICULAR PREDICAMENT 2
By Tcheser
“Ms. Myers?” the tired looking field agent hesitantly inquired before entering my little office. It was near quitting time and many of my colleagues at the Child Welfare office were already packing up to leave and he probably thought I was going to turn him away. Unlike my colleagues however, I knew the work day didn’t end until five o’clock, and as long as I was on the clock, I was working. I had learned a long time ago that mine was a long, thankless and chaotic job. If you were to stay sane, you had to stay organized and do things by the book.
“Come in,” I told the agent and swiveled away from my computer so I could give him my full attention.
By that point the agent had fully entered the office and as was often the case, he had with him a child which with he apparently wanted me to deal. From the way he firmly held her arm it was evident to me that the girl he had brought with him had already been quite a handful. She looked like she was between 12 and 14 years old, with messy short brown hair and stood just a hair over five feet. Like many of the children I saw she appeared malnourished and wore only a pale pink t-shirt with frolicking kittens on it. It was both too tight and too short. It barely covered her private parts and as she stood there she nervously pulled at it trying in vain to make it longer.
“This girl here was found at a local hotel, completely nude. She tried to claim she was a guest, but it seems more likely that she is a runaway and was just there stealing food. I’ve tried repeatedly to get her name, but the only name she will give me is Alexis Lords, the name of the guest she was trying to impersonate, so I have no idea what her real name is. She put up a struggle at the hotel, do you want me to stay here while you interview her?”
“I don’t think that will be necessary,” I told him. I had handled some rough customers in my tenure at the office and I was quite confident that I could handle a barefoot little girl who looked like she weighed about half of what I did. The field agent, probably eager to go home as well, nodded and left.
