Julia twists the handle on the bigger closet, flips the light, and begins dragging out little play buildings.  These are meant to form a fake little city block, complete with fake plastic lamp posts, trash cans, and cars.  She conveniently places these around the bus, as if we had parked on the street.  She also makes a point of positioning buildings tightly together so that we can’t get around them, and when we can there’s little wooden fencing around the perimeter Julia was kind enough to build just for us, for playtime such as this.  She’s also built a variety of little tables, chairs, desks, and other furniture to fill up the buildings.  She’s trying to make a freaking virtual world for us. 

But hey, at least she cares.  Damn it all the hell.

                We’ve learned the rules, we can’t get out of the bus until given permission, although there’s really no chance of escaping across the carpet.  There’s nowhere to go and Julia would be on us within seconds, but just as a precaution she makes it clear we can’t get out until we get the okay.  Brian started to once, but Julia flicked him back inside the bus with a stinging middle finger before he could even get down the bus steps, and he had a red mark on his chest for three days after that.  We tend to just go by his example and not try it.

                “Okay, everyone!  It’s time to enter Littleville!” calls Julia sweetly to us from outside the range of her little neighborhood.  We obediently dismount the bus and step onto the carpet.  In reality, the city itself is probably about twelve or so square feet in total, but for us it’s actually a decent amount of space to walk around, so despite the humiliating name of the town, the best thing about these little play-dates with Julia in her virtual world is that we actually have the most space to walk around than we do any other time.  And since she really only occupies herself with two or three of us at a time (mostly), the rest of us can just walk around and pretend we have a little bit of freedom of range.

                Now with all of us standing in the street, we look over a building top to see Julia, now in a kneeling position to get a good look at us without forcing us to strain our necks to see her face up there.

                “Okay, I have the hospital over here in this corner,” she says, pointing to it.  It’s pretty clear though, it’s plainly got the symbol on the front.  “Let’s see, I want to use…” she says, biting her lip as she decides which of us she wants to participate in this particular part of the game.  “Brian and Kelly.  C’mon over to the hospital.  The rest of you can play together if you want, but be ready if I want you, okay?”

                We all nod, and Brian and Kelly walk off toward the hospital between a couple rows of plastic buildings.  Gina, Anna, and I have free run of the place for a few minutes at least.  One thing’s for sure: we want out of sight of Julia, so the three of us enter a pretend little grocery store.  Going through the door’s sort of pointless since the entire back wall is missing so kids can stick dolls and furniture inside wherever they please, but it’s fun for us to have to open and close a door. 

                It almost feels normal again.

                We enter and take a seat on the plastic floor, under the glassless window of equally plastic nature, out of sight from Julia two blocks away.  We hear Julia giving orders for what’s happening in whatever made-up story she’s concocted for them.

                Really how this works once we’re in the scene is that Julia starts narrating what’s going on like the omniscient evil goddess she is, and we have to sort of follow along.  She often gets smiles and laughs out of what happens, and mostly because we are forced to do some, best case scenario, kind of humiliating things.  Worst case scenario, we come pretty close to personal injury, if not actually getting a little.  I’ve twisted both my ankles before.  Brian almost broke an arm.  Julia tends to be a little rougher with the guys; she probably is under the impression that we’re not as fragile as the girls, even at this size.  I’d like to say that’s true, for the benefit of my health, but honestly she could snap us in half just as easily as the girls, especially since I’ve lost a lot of weight recently.

                We picked to hide in the grocery, mostly because Julia will eventually come find us and probably integrate wherever we happen to be standing into whatever story she comes up with.  The grocery store seems safest.

                There’s not much for us to actually do here.  I look over at Anna, who’s looking a little sickly.

                “You okay?” I ask stupidly, knowing the correct answer already.

                “I… I think so…” she says, holding her stomach.  “It’s not the baby, it’s just… in my throat right now, it feels thick.”

                “Are you going to be sick?  Do you need help?” I say, not really sure of what I should be doing.  She waves a hand.

                “No, no, it’s fine… I’ll be okay, I just need a second to get ahold of myse-”

                “Well, THERE you three are!” comes the booming voice of Julia, cutting off the soft whisper of Anna.