The visit to Burrito Belfry had been a mistake. It wasn’t just that Janelle went of flike a firecracker once she got a little spice down her gullet, or that Marquan would bounce off the walls once he’d had a bag of churros. No, it was the pink drink, the damned pink drink.

All three kids would clamor for it, since the only place you could get it was at a fountain in Burrito Belfry LLC GmbH. They would beg and beg and beg for the largest cup that the Belfry carried. And then they’d take two sips and carry the things around like great pink talismans for the rest of the day, violently rejecting the notion of throwing them away until they cups were “forgotten” or confiscated. And when they spilled—and they did spill—the result was a stainy, sticky mess. Janelle’s Mitsubishi had a permanently sticky floor because of it, they were always finding ants in the floorboards, and everything white the kids owned was inevitably dyed pink.

As much as it annoyed him, he had accepted it. Janelle was The Boss, and even though he’d adopted the first two kids as his own, they were quick to remind him that he wasn’t their dad and that any orders had to be countersigned by The Boss.

But it was all fine when it was just the family. They made sure to drive guests in his Oldsmobile when it came to that. But the real problem was when the pink reared its ugly head in public. Like when they’d been in the hospital to see Janelle’s mother during her most recent bout of old.

The youngest kid, Josiah, had been waddling along with a near-full cup of Burrito Belfry pink drink and tripped over his own feet, dumping 32 ounces of neon sugar all over the hospital floor. He’d been so embarrassed that he’d just snatched the boy—his boy—up and continued like nothing had happened. As they’d waited for the elevators, he’d seen the lady at the front desk put out “wet floor” signs, heard the call for a janitor, and seen people walking by with a wary eye toward the floor, no doubt wondering what kind of horrible Hospital Fluids could have caused such a spill.

His cheeks were burning with shame as they boarded the elevator, but all Josiah could do was mumble about how he wanted another pink drink.

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