(Emmalee's P.O.V.)

It’s been four months since my ex-girlfriend ran away without breaking up with me and my childhood best friend was deployed to probably go die somewhere. This shit sucks. Like I’m specifically 38 years old and verging on a mid-life crisis at 16.

That’s why I’m extra surprised when Niko’s father approaches me tonight.

A slender, black-haired man interrupts my Calculus homework. He looks apologetic in such a familiar way that I mistake him for a worn version of Niko; they make the same hurt puppy expression if they upset or surprise you. And the last I knew, I wasn’t supposed to talk to Niko at all, let alone his family.

“Hi. Sorry,” Commander Yosuke Blackwood whispers.

“Hi?”

We’re in the middle of the Department of Health’s community library, which only makes this more confusing. He looks around before leaning in with a lowered voice. “Your parents told me last year at the Christmas party that you babysit after school. Is that still the case?”

“Oh.” I turn to my textbook in disbelief. But yes, this is happening. I still have a shitload of homework, Commander Blackwood just admitted our parents talk, and he’s talking to me. “Yeah, I still babysit. Or nanny. The last family came back from deployment recently, so I’m looking for another long-term job.”

He sighs in relief, muttering something to himself in Japanese. “I’m all out of willing babysitters. Niko is overseas, but you know how people are about him. They refuse to come near the house whether he’s there or not.” He scrubs his forehead. “Anyway, Clara and I won’t be home until 8 p.m. on weekdays anymore, and I promised to find the next babysitter by tomorrow. I know your parents might disapprove, so you’ll have to ask their permission and let me know what they say. I’ll have to convince Clara too... But do you think you’d have time to watch Hana after school—”

“Of course!” I jump out of my seat, irritating the entire library with my obnoxious voice. I try again in a whisper. “I’d love to!”

After we agree on a time for me to arrive every day, Commander Blackwood disappears within seconds, leaving me in a daze over my half-finished Calculus homework. There’s no way I can focus on it now, so I pack up my books and go home.

My heart and lungs threaten to kill me for speed-walking home, but I can’t help it. I have to know what my parents will say—if they’ll allow me to hang out with Niko’s little sister as early as tomorrow. I love kids, and I’ve always wanted to meet Hana.

I might’ve brought too much enthusiasm to the table, both Mom and Dad wide-eyed as I toss my backpack down and struggle to catch my breath.

“Sweetheart, are you having an asthma attack?” Mom’s palms press flat against the table, ready to burst into action.

“Nope! I just— Got a little— Ahead of myself.”

“Okay, well, sit down and breathe.”

I do, plopping myself into the worn, blue gingham-patterned cushions at the kitchen table.

Then my nerves kick in. Both parents stare, expecting me to say something. I was so excited that I didn’t think about the potential of this totally flopping, but I’m definitely thinking about it now.

Taking a deep breath to harness my confidence, I begin. “I got an offer for babysitting tonight.”

Dad rolls his eyes in recognition of my bargaining voice. He sighs, squishing his cheek into his palm. “We’re listening…”

Mom gives him a gentle push.

“What? I’m listening.”

I blink a few times in simmering annoyance, then put on my best straight face. “Do you remember Hana, the baby Clara and Yosuke had a few years ago?”

Without turning his head, Dad knowingly eyes Mom.

Mom sighs. “Emma…”

“Before we get into it, I didn’t agree to the job yet. I wanted to come home and ask you first.” I chew on the inside of my cheek, silently thanking Commander Blackwood for helping me remember I should ask for permission in the first place.

“Okay, good.” Dad straightens in his chair. “Because the answer is no.”

My jaw tenses. “You won’t even let me finish? This is Niko’s baby sister. He won’t even be there—”

“Emmalee, I said no.”

Mom puts a hand on Dad’s forearm, giving him a look I can’t see with her head turned away from me. Dad twists his mouth to the side, sitting back and crossing his arms.

Mom pivots to me. “He’s on tour, isn’t he? How long will he be gone?”

I bite back every nagging impulse in me to say thanks to them, I’m incapable of getting that information or any meaningful information about my best friend. Instead, I say, “I don’t know. Hopefully he’ll come back at all. He could die any day now.”

Their tense stares anticipate an emotional response.

I don’t deliver one. “So, I haven’t been able to find any other jobs yet, and I’ve always wanted to meet Hana. You were okay with me dating Lilith, right?”

Dad mutters, “Yeah, which was a major exception for me, by the way. And the rule was that she came here and you never went there. But then she broke your heart. Their family isn’t exactly the shining example of— Well, anything.”

I bite my lip hard enough to taste iron. This always gets Dad and me to fight, and that’s definitely not what I want.

“If you’re even thinking about arguing with me right now, Emma, the answer is no,” he says.

“I wasn’t,” I say.

“But now you are.”

We glare at each other. Mom kneads her forehead with the base of her palms. “Can we please have one normal conversation about this?”

Dad frowns. “What do you mean?”

“Emmalee hasn’t asked you to see Niko. She asked for our permission about a job. He’s not going to be there, and Emmalee already knows our stance on Niko. Don’t you, Emma?”

I sigh. “I do. Even if I don’t understand it.”

“See?” Dad grumbles. “She’s fishing.”

My resting bitch face intensifies. “The interesting thing is, I also don’t understand why it’s bad to ask questions or to say I don’t understand something.”

By the look on Dad’s face, I’m in for it now. But I can’t help it.

“This could be resolved with a simple explanation, but no. You just have to assume I’m doing this to torture you every time, or that I don’t care what you think, or something else ridiculous, but that’s not true! I do care, Dad, and that’s why you’ve made this so hard on me! I care about you both, and I care about him! You don’t understand how this feels for me.”

He grips his forehead, biting back anger. “Why are you so fixated on the Blackwoods, anyway? I mean, two siblings, Emmalee?”

My face grows hot. “It’s not like there are a lot of options!”

Mom sighs. “Emma, of course there are.”

I huff. “Alright, then, which is your amazing plan: would you rather I set my sights one of the guys who joke about how women are dogs to train, or one of the girls who will look the other way when those guys inevitably rape me?”

With Dad’s jaw clenched, his mouth forms a thin line. “You can do the babysitting job, but you are never seeing Nikolai Blackwood again. Especially not with that attitude.”

I stand from my chair. Dad said yes to the babysitting job. The rest of this conversation is a losing battle, so I better leave before I say anything I regret.

“Okay,” I say. Dad raises his eyebrows, so I tack on a quick “thanks” and stride upstairs to my bedroom.

I rip open my art drawer, fumbling through a mess of paint tubes for a square artboard scrap. As for the paint, I grab a few colors I’m drawn to: deep burgundy, electric blue, and viridian green. Pulling out my palette tray, I begin to mix.

“Never” is such an impossible word. How the hell will Dad “protect” me from ever running into Niko for my whole life? What if we run into each other by mistake? Or if Niko needs my help and has no one else to go to, and I choose not to be a heartless bitch? Or if I ditch this place as soon as I turn 18 and do whatever the hell I want? “Never” doesn’t exist.

I cling to the good news: I can tell Commander Blackwood I’m available to babysit tomorrow. I text the temporary number he wrote on my homework and get an immediate response, confirming my new job tomorrow at 1 p.m.—after my online classes end and I eat lunch.

But that’s not enough comfort. I still have two more years before I turn 18. Even then, I’ll be disabled for the rest of my life, relying on my parents. Regular working hours would kill me, a fact I’ve desperately avoided. But it’s true; I’m not a person who’ll grow up to be an independent adult. My parents know and accept this because they love me, yet they don’t understand what they’re doing to me otherwise.

A soft knock shocks me into swiping away my tears. I pause in my paint mixing, mumbling, “Come in.”

Mom gives my irritated scowl a soft smile. “Can I sit with you?”

I scoot over so she can climb onto my bed beside my tiny desk. Mom leans her side against the headboard, crossing her legs and facing me like we’re having a sleepover.

She smiles, shaking her head. “You two are so alike. That’s why you clash.”

I sigh. “I know I’m stubborn, but I’m not that stubborn.”

She laughs. “Be nice.”

“Sorry… I just need a better explanation. What I have now makes no sense.”

“Okay.”

I stop mixing. I didn’t expect her to agree.

Mom smiles, brushing my hair behind my shoulder. “You don’t have to stop.”

“O-okay…”

The accumulation of paint looks black enough, so I make the first stroke on the square scrap board. Seeing it against the brisk white, I’m not satisfied. The last I saw his eyes, they were more of a violet-black, not a wine-black like this color. So I start mixing again, adding a bit more electric blue and a little less burgundy this time.

“Your father and I discussed it with the Blackwoods when you were children. We decided it was safest for you both to not communicate, at least not much.”

“Right… So what’s the deal with that? Are you and Clara, like, friends?”

Mom laughs. “Friends with Clara? No. But our husbands were friends.”

My eyes widen. “Oh. When?”

“When they were in school. But Yosuke fell madly in love with Clara, who’s bound to the DoTD, so Yosuke naturally became distant with your dad.”

“Oh… Do they not like each other now or something?”

Mom settles further down, sinking into my pillow. She’s silent as I rotate my palette beneath my desk lamp to get a more precise look at the color, but I can feel her contemplative energy.

“We’re okay around each other for a short time, but our Departments definitely clash,” Mom finally says.

I look over at her. “Because of your patients.”

“Yes. The patients admitted from the Department of Tactical Defense aren’t just physically injured, they’re mentally… lost. They’re so distorted that they’ll never fit in with civilian life, and for you, we wanted you to socialize however you pleased. Niko won’t be able to blend in with society. Ever.”

My furious brush strokes threaten to ruin my synthetic brush, so I set the artboard down. “But what does that have to do with me?”

“What it has to do with you, sweetheart, is that you two are absolutely obsessed with each other and won’t follow our rules. The more you talk to him, the more you involve yourself with his crowd. This isn’t a crowd you want to be involved with.”

“Then why are we here at all?”

My heart pounds as Mom gazes at the ceiling, growing a little too quiet. “We work here. This is our livelihood.”

Her words edge me the wrong way. Whether it’s an empath thing or my own irritation, I huff, shaking off her excuse. “I still don’t understand.”

“I know. But this is how it has to be. Clara and Yosuke did not want him growing up without learning how to defend himself. They enrolled him in the same combat training programs they grew up with, and that was that. If he was in another Department, it’d be different. But this isn’t the Army. They’re walking weapons of war.”

My shoulders raise. “No, Mom, no. I hate when people call him stuff like that. He’s a teenage, human boy.”

“He’s a very misguided one. You can’t see it now, but one day, you’ll understand how much we’ve protected you. We aren’t doing this to spite you, either. We’ve lived through this longer than you and can see it from a wider perspective. One day, he’ll hurt you or someone you love, and it’s better to cut your relationship off before you get there. Spare yourself the pain.”

I sigh through my watery eyes, painting the board’s thin edges to finish off the violet-black swatch. “Well, I’m in pain now.”

She pets my shoulder, but I can’t even look at her. I turn away, tearing off a few pieces of my stickiest artist’s tape and rolling them into little circles to stick on the artboard’s backside. Once it’s up on the wall next to my growing grid of vibrantly different black shades, I step back to admire it. It’s still wet, reflecting a distracting shine from my desk lamp that makes it difficult to tell how it’ll look once it dries, but it’s already making the one to its left look a little less purple. This wall is the only evidence of him I can create in my life.

Mom finishes counting off the 4 x 4 inch squares beneath her breath. “Wow, 55 already! Like the end of your ID number.”

“Oh. Yeah.” I rub my back automatically, wishing I didn’t have an ugly identification tattoo down my spine.

“Why do you paint these squares again? I can’t remember what you said last time.”

She awaits my response as I continue to stare at my work. The grid of paintings is black, but sitting in my lap, my limp hands are decorated with red, green, blue, purple, teal, indigo, and everything between. I turn away from the black grid, a rainbow of subtle colors no one else can see.

“No reason, really. I just like the color black.”