The little boy is shoved forward incessantly towards a forest green Toyota. He wails and begs and attempts to throw a tantrum, but quickly ceases his pleas when the woman with him raises a hand and threatens to hit him.

“I’m sick of this,” she mutters angrily, opening the back door of the car and ushering the boy inside. “I don’t know how much more of this I can take. I really hope to God that Jake appreciates this, damn it.” She wrestles with the boy and finally succeeds in buckling the seatbelt across his waist. She shuts the door, and his hands immediately fly for the locked button near the window. She shoots him an icy glare, and his hands slowly recede back into his lap. His bright blue eyes are clouded over with tears. She honestly could care less.

The woman steps into the front seat, buckles her own seatbelt, and starts the car. It’s been a particularly warm summer, and the air conditioning immediately begins to blast from the vents scattered around the small car. The little boy is whimpering in the back.

“I don’t wanna go,” he whispers. “I don’t wanna!”

The woman sighs, then turns around to face him. She sticks a freshly manicured finger in his face. “I’m not going to deal with this, you understand me?” she tells him. “You are not going to give me a hard time, because I swear, Colin, you’ll be sorry.” Colin shuts himself up.

She is on the verge of a breakdown. She thought it would be easy, but it’s been at least two hours since she first attempted putting this idea into action. Colin has been trying to resist, and for the most part, he hasn’t been too successful.

The two of them drive, passing through an unremarkable suburbia, filled with green trash canisters, kids flying down slip and slides and throwing water balloons at each other, parents and old people trudging out to their mailboxes to get their latest installments of magazines, bills, and fake contest offers.

Hey, you could win a million dollars!

Yeah, right.

Colin sits slumped in the backseat, his arms folded across his chest. The rivers of tears that used to cascade down his cheeks are now dried lines of water streaked across his face. She peeks at him from the rearview mirror and shakes her head subtly.

---

After about fifteen minutes, she pulls into a small parking lot. She yanks the keys out of the ignition, unbuckles herself, and goes around to get Colin out of the car as well. He begins to panic again as the door opens. He’s so close to freedom, but he knows he won’t get it.

But hey, why not try?

He begins to yelp and shriek like a scared puppy. Luckily for her, there are no passerby save a teenaged kid with iPod headphones wedged into his ears. She decides that he wouldn’t have had a chance of hearing Colin; she could hear his music clearly from where she was standing.

“Colin, I swear to God…” She grabs his wrist and drags him into a small brick building. Colin’s sneakered feet skid across the cold tile floor, and then create static as the duo transfer over to a carpet. She stops at a desk momentarily, then keeps walking toward a black chair in the corner of a room.

She forces Colin into it and can feel his shoulders squirming hard under her hands. “This is for your own good,” she hisses. A tall, skinny man walks into the room and nods at her. She quickly takes her hands off of Colin and walks out of the room, exasperated. She peeks back slightly, and manages to catch a glimpse of the man pulling something made of metal out of his pocket.

Ten minutes later, Colin emerges from the room, followed by the man. She looks up from her magazine and smiles.

“Hey, sweetie,” she says, walking up to Colin and mussing his freshly cut hair. “Now that wasn’t so bad, was it?”

Colin shakes his head and sticks out his hand, which is wrapped around the stick of a cherry lollipop. “Lookit, Mommy, he gave me a lollipop!” he tells her, beaming.

“I know! Isn’t he a nice man?”

Colin nods and climbs up into the chair that she was formerly occupying. He swings his feet back and forth, tears the clear plastic wrapper off of his treat, and begins to lick.

She turns to the man, whose name is Deegan. “Thank you, so much,” she says, grinning tiredly. “You wouldn’t believe what it took for me to get him here.”

Deegan laughs a little. “Don’t worry about it. Just bring him in whenever his mane grows back, and we’ll have a stock of lollipops waiting for ‘im.”

She nods, pays the woman at the desk, and takes Colin’s hand. The two of them walk through the parking lot again, and this time, Colin isn’t screaming.

Which is just fine with her.