Protection
written by: Rich Watson
I straightened Aunt Gina’s wig, pulled my hoodie over my head, and climbed the rope ladder towards the Necromancers’ treehouse. Everybody was there. Perfect. Pulling myself through the entrance, I plopped onto the floor. Ouch. Think I hurt my wrist.
Yesenia glanced up from her cellphone at the sight of me and scrunched her lips. Her chestnut hair fell to her elbows. It looked like she brushed it fifty times a day in front of her mirror.
She went back to her texting.
“Nevaeh says you’re the girl from the Playful Polly commercials.”
I peeped at Nevaeh. Elise said the rumor was her mother planned to homeschool her along with her little sister because Thurber public school wasn’t fundamentalist enough. Probably believed the earth was flat. Fooling her into arranging this meeting was easy.
“Yeah. My dad works at a downtown agency. When I was five, he knew when auditions would be held. I was picked out of two hundred girls.”
“Playful Polly, childhood chum, she’s the doll for loads of fun,” Nevaeh sang. “I loved that commercial.”
Yesenia glanced sideways at her and frowned.
“You don’t look like her.” She stuck her cell in my face. She had Googled a still from the ad of the actual Playful Polly girl. Her hair was lighter.
“Uh, my hair grew darker as I got older. And I didn’t wear my glasses, obviously.”
“Obviously.”
I hunched my shoulders and looked away. Maybe a disguise wasn’t a good idea. I didn’t live in St. Catherine Heights. Elise insisted the Necros never crossed the river to Sunset, my neighborhood. God forbid they should have to mingle with the kids who take the city bus to school instead of having Daddy drive them. Thurber was a big enough city for me to go unnoticed, right?
One of the girls, tall and athletic, spilled her boba tea on the wood floor.
“Hey, watch it,” another girl said. “If my brother sees that stain, he’ll kill me!”
“He won’t even notice,” Boba Tea said. “Chill.”
Yesenia cleared her throat. They shut up. She tossed her hair back and returned to her cell.
“So why do you want our protection, Dorothy?”
“Lucy Sperling. I transferred from I.S. 37, but I still see her every weekend at Hebrew School.”
“You’re Jewish?” said Treehouse Squatter.
“Sure.” Shit. Think. “My mother converted when she got married, okay? Happens all the time.”
She rolled her eyes.
“Lucy gets on my case for everything,” I continued, “my dresses, my shoes, my hair, and because she’s such a brown nose to the teachers, she gets away with it. I can’t make her stop.” Elise couldn’t make her stop, anyway, until she turned to the Necros.
“Lucy Sperling.” Boba Tea fiddled with her straw. “Yeah, she’s on our radar. I’m in her Math class. She’s totally a suck-up.”
Another girl, fat and grumpy, reached behind her and pulled out a coffee can. She rattled it. Coins were inside, and maybe bills too.
“Can you pay?” said Yesenia.
I pulled two tens—mine and Elise’s—out of my pocket.
“That’s it? Where’s all your Playful Polly coin?”
What do you mean, that’s it? Bitch, not all of us have trust funds.
“Um, my parents have it tied up in the bank. For my college tuition, y’know?”
“I’m running a business here.” Yesenia put her cell down. “I have to think about expenses. Overhead. Future investments. I can’t run on charity.”
“No, of course not.”
She tapped on her cell again. She showed me a spreadsheet from a business website.
“Playful Polly’s made GameOn a hundred forty-three million dollars last year alone. It’s our generation’s Cabbage Patch Kid.”
“My sister sees the commercials when she watches Paw Patrol,” said Nevaeh.
That sideways look again.
“Tell your parents whatever bullshit story you need to in order to get at your savings.” Yesenia returned the bills. “Then come back here. Payments are on the first and fifteenth of every month throughout the school year.”
“And you’ll get Lucy Sperling to leave me alone?”
“As long as you keep up the premiums.”
That was all I needed to hear. I started to climb down the rope ladder, then stopped.
“One more thing. Why do you call yourselves the Necromancers?”
Yesenia shrugged.
“I liked the word.”
***
I took off Aunt Gina’s wig and rode my scooter to Bliss Park. I’d never been here before. I’d read the botanical garden had rare and exotic flowers, and the artificial pond contained eels, frogs, and lizards. Within a circle, there was a pile built from rocks painted by other kids, with googly eyes, pipe cleaners, and other things glued to them. This place made my eyes pop, but I still preferred Westside Gardens in the downtown.
The rock pile was where I met Elise.
“Did you get it?” she asked.
I pulled out my cellphone and activated my voice memo app. Yesenia’s voice came through loud and clear. So did everyone else’s.
“Awesome! You were right. Using Yesenia’s greed against her was a great idea.” She smiled.
The bruises on her arm had gone down. Thank God.
I met Elise last year at a carnival in the Procter & Gamble Field parking lot. Last week, she had told me how she got caught in the Necros’ protection racket and what happened when she couldn’t afford the payments anymore. She couldn’t keep it from her parents for much longer.
That’s when I came up with my scheme.
“When I get home, I’ll download a copy of our conversation and email it to you. I think I have enough here to convince your principal to look further into Yesenia’s ‘business.’”
“Dorothy, you rock.”
“Anything for a pal. Now, how about you show me around this park?”
- Protection - January 2, 2026
- Celluloid Heroine - July 18, 2025
