Tasha peeked her head around the corner of the rough cement building, careful not to be seen.
“Okay,” she whispered to Jeanette, “Good to go.”
Jeanette nodded once, trembling, and crept in front of the woman. Her small, frail body looked like a stick figure illuminated from behind by the moon. Tasha smiled and let her pass, hearing voices shout as she was noticed by the soldiers. She jumped out in front and closed her eyes. She didn’t want to see the lead bullets racing towards me. But her mission was completed---and she no longer had a reason to live. Tasha smiled at the thought of how proud her father would be, took her last breath, and felt her body torn through by the tiny metal darts, until it fell limp.

Jeanette stared out the car door.
“Mommy?” she asked, looking up to the dark-skinned woman in the drivers seat.
“Ssh, Jeanie, I told you not to call me that. Now, I’m not your mother, understand?”
Jeanette looked down and frowned. “No.”
“Jeanie… I am not your mother, for the last time!” the woman complained, glaring at the road ahead and wishing the child would listen to her.
“…Fine, then.” Jeanette growled.
“Now did you have a question?” asked the woman smiling weakly at her victory.
“Yes… Why are the cows brown?” she asked, pointing out at the countryside, where brown cows chewed the grass, “In the cartoons Pappy showed me, they were always black and white. So why do people draw them black and white if they’re not really? That’s misrepresentation.”
“Ah, um… I’m not sure, Jeanie,” the woman smiled, “But misrepresentation is a big word! How do you know that?”
“I’m not stupid…” Jeanette mumbled, mad that a grown-up would think that just because she was six.
The woman smiled again. It was her job to drive the girl from place to place, and Jeanette’s father wouldn’t be very happy if the girl were unhappy.
“Well…” she started again, “Do you want to play a game?”
Jeanette looked up, her eyes sparkling.
“A game?” she repeated excitedly.
“Mm-hm,” the woman nodded, “The animal game , right? That’s your favorite, after all.”
The girl nodded enthusiastically, and looked out the window in thought.
“Alright…” she said, “I have an animal!”
“Ah, let’s see… Is it a mammal?”
Jeanette shook her head and grinned, “Not a mammal!”
“Is it a vertebrate?”
Nodding her head and smiled, Jeanette giggled, “You’re not gonna guess it!”
“Oh, I’m not… A hint?”
“I’m bored,” Jeanette mumbled.
“Are you sleepy?”
“No…” she shook her head, “I forgot what my animal was.”
The woman looked back at the road and frowned. She hated these little memory snaps that Jeanette had, because it put the girl back into the pessimistic mood that six year olds really shouldn’t be in.
She pulled up into the long driveway, and raced around to open Jeanette’s door. The girl had already unbuckled and gone out the other side, towards the small house in the woods that she had built a while back.
“Jeanie!” the woman called, “I’m going inside, okay? Come back in a few hours!”
Jeanette nodded and climbed in the neatly built house, after scraping some moss off the foot of a tree and putting in on a slab of wood.

[1] “The Animal Game”---this is a game that my family and I have always played. One person thinks of an animal, and the others have to ask yes or no questions about the animal until they find out what it is. It’s sort of like Twenty Questions, except you have an unlimited amount of questions. The kind of questions you ask are things like what the woman asked, or questions like, “Is it carnivorous,” or “Does it live in Africa?”
It’s a fun game commonly played by families that are bored by the normal sort of car game that doesn’t challenge their brains---in other words, it’s a car game for people with above the average level IQ.
[2] “Really shouldn’t be in”---in the world I’ve created for this story, there is a strong stereotype on others based on age and height. From one to ten years old, a person is expected to be happy, physically and emotionally weak, and not very intelligent. In the teens, a person is expected to behave irrationally, so the teens are held in schools that last until they are twenty. Above that age, everyone is expected to have a job and bring in income, with the exception of married women.
[3] “On a slab of wood”---this is a makeshift birdfeeder. In some regions of Japan and a few other countries, it is a tradition that kids who are familiar with nature will make small things to put out in the woods for the animals, usually with their parents, who generally are only helping because they think their child is cute.