Cognitive delay.

It was official. I hated special education meetings. I had spent two hours in one, only to leave deflated. Not only had they put me in a room filled with experts who told me one by one that my baby sister was abnormal, only using terms like “cognitive delay” instead of abnormal and stupid, but they did it in the most condescending manner ever. I knew cognitive delay was awful at the time, but had no idea how completely awful until I got to work and googled the shit out of it.

I’d spent hours at the coffee house trying to sneak into the back room under the guise of stocking the coffee cups or beans just to get a moment to look for answers. Three websites in, and I knew all of the teachers, or “team”, as they called themselves, were wrong about Samantha. She wasn’t cognitively delayed. Not even close.

It wasn’t as if I wore rose-colored glasses and thought Samantha was going to be accepted to Harvard by age nine. I knew she struggled in school, far more than I ever had. But she was smart. So incredibly smart, and nothing on those websites sounded like the diagnosis they tried to get me to sign off on.

Sure, she couldn’t read, but when I told her a story, she remembered more details than I did. When she pulled out her building set, the one I picked up at a yard sale as a bucket of random pieces with no instructions or pictures, she’d create the most amazing vehicles and structures. When I cooked, she could tell me what I could do next to make it even better. No, intelligence was not her issue.

Reading was. And it crushed me.

Reading was like Chinese to her, and it sucked. I wanted to give her a magic pill that made it make sense to her. I thought when the school had offered to test her and get her help, that they would actually do that—help her. Instead, they gave her a test that they claimed indicated her IQ was almost seventy. Not seventy, but almost. I called bullshit, but then they went through page after page of “proof” that she was lacking the intelligence she so very much had.

No amount of arguing had gotten them to agree to try a new test or reassess her using other means. They had set their mind to their conclusions, which included putting Sam into a special education school for the seriously disabled. Not that I signed off on any of it. I still had no clue what I was going to do next, but sending her to that school was not it.

I sat in my car outside our apartment, dreading the moment Samantha saw me. She was going to know things hadn’t gone well at the school. Her teacher was quick to tell her we were meeting today, forgetting that she was a child and shouldn’t be worried about those kinds of things. She needed to worry about how high the swing would go or what to bring to show-and-tell, not people having a meeting about her.

Her life had been hard enough, an orphan living with her undereducated, poorly employed brother, without knowing the people who were supposed to believe in her the most had already written her off as unteachable, although they’d never admit to those words. Only through her placement.

Just as I was about to bolster the courage to grab her from Mrs. Jones, our neighbor, my phone rang.

“Hello,” I answered without looking, confident it was Mrs. Jones wondering why I was late or wanting me to grab her a loaf of bread.

“Mr. Martin, this is Amelia St. John.”

I racked my brain for who she was, but came up blank, and assumed her to be a sales person giving me a free cruise or some other scam. I might not have a pot to piss in, but I somehow managed to make sure every bill was paid, even if it meant I didn’t eat anything other than what I could snag from my shifts at the coffee house or bar, so I knew it wasn’t a bill collector.

“Who are you with?” I asked, wishing I had looked at my phone before answering it.

“I’m Samantha’s art teacher and I heard about today’s meeting. I wish I had been invited.”

I climbed out of the car, suddenly feeling claustrophobic.

“I’m sure you are well meaninged and all, but I just can’t listen to another person dress up with fancy words that they think my sister is less than capable. I just can’t handle this right now.”

Or ever.

What I wanted to do was hang up, but the gentleness in her voice made me willing to at least listen. I started to walk away from my building, not wanting Samantha to see me before I was off the phone. She looked forward to Wednesdays because it was the one school night I didn’t work at the bar and could eat dinner with her and watch a movie. If I had my way, all days would end that way, but rent, food, and utilities all came with bills, so second job it was.

“That’s just it.” Amelia paused long enough that I almost interrupted before she let out, “I think they are wrong.”

I stopped dead in my tracks. Amelia, my new favorite person, agreed with me. I wasn’t sure how that was going to change things, but at least I knew I wasn’t alone. Someone else was on my side, our side.

“I know they are. She is so smart, smarter than me in most ways. Reading just doesn’t click for her.” At freaking all.

“If I were a gambler, Mr. Martin, I’d put money on her IQ being in the genius level.”

“Why are you calling?” I knew there had to be more than telling me the school was wrong. In isolation that would accomplish nothing whatsoever other than to make it worse.

“Like I said, I think they’re wrong. They mean well, but they look at things only one way and only use one set of assessments.”

I started to walk again, the doorman across the street at the “nice” apartments giving me the eye as if I were about to mug someone or something equally as dastardly. Rumor had it they planned to redo the entire neighborhood, gentrifying the crap out of it and raising the neighborhood out of most of the current residents’ price ranges. Not that they took into account the rent control that was currently in place in both my building and the one adjacent to it. Which was good, because I could in no way afford a price increase.

“I don’t want her going to that school.” Which was the crux of my largest, most immediate concern. Once you went to a school designed for people someone had already decided would grow up to live in a group home, at best, you weren’t getting out of there easily.

“Nor do I.” She spoke more confidently than she had only a minute earlier. “My son, he was like your Samantha when he was in elementary school. Quick as a whip, but failing miserably at reading, to the point he hated school. They kept referring to him as ADHD, which was wrong. I knew it, his doctor knew it, and one day a mom on social media posted something about her son, and if I didn’t know better, I’d have sworn it was about my son. It turned out her child had severe dyslexia and went to Mapleville Academy. Within three months, he was doing better, and by the time he graduated, he had earned a full scholarship to three Ivy League schools.”

I listened to her story as I slowly walked around the block, absorbing it all. Mapleville was only a ten-minute drive. I’d not heard of the school, but that didn’t mean anything because private schools were not things I had looked into. Even with a scholarship, they would be far more than I could afford. Shit, ramen was far more than I could afford.

“Why are you telling me this? I can’t afford Mapleville. I can barely afford rent.” It was the harsh reality that was my life.

“Because she deserves it.”

Talk about a hit to the gut. Sam deserved everything. A family with more than her brother as a de facto parent, not having reduced school lunch being the best meal of her day, a new dress on her birthday, and the best education possible. Deserving didn’t equate with getting, unfortunately.

“Mapleville will do all the testing and everything for her, testing that meets her needs, not their comfort level like her school now. And they have so many endowments, I’m sure she would qualify for a scholarship. Especially with her parents being gone.”

So she knew about that. Of course she did, but unlike the other teachers who mentioned my status as single omega brother guardian as something vile, Amelia said it with sympathy. Why couldn’t she have been the classroom teacher instead of teaching an hour a week special?

“Thank you. I needed your call.” And the hope it brought. I rounded the last corner, our front door in sight. I was finally ready to face Samantha. To hold her, tell her how amazing she was and feed her her favorite boxed macaroni before tucking her into bed and researching the crap outta this school.

“It was my duty. If you could maybe not mention it at school, though, that would be nice.” Duty, but not her place, was the indication. What the frick was wrong with our school system?

“There was a reason you weren’t invited,” I conjectured.

“I might be the school troublemaker,” she scoffed. She was so getting my coffee gift basket “bonus” from work this year.

“My lips are sealed,” I vowed, wondering briefly how many rules she had broken by coming to me and being as candid as she was, completely undermining everything they had tried to do that morning. “I can’t begin to thank you enough. I will look into it as soon as I get Samantha in bed.”

“Please stall on giving permission for her to go to the new placement. It’s a great school for those who need it, but for someone like your sister, it will crush her spirit,” she plead. We said our goodbyes and I walked up the four flights of stairs to get Samantha, the fucking elevator broken—again.

“You’re late. She’s been—” Mrs. Jones was all but knocked out of the way by the little fireball, also known as my sister.

“Siah! There you are.” She jumped into my arms, holding on tight. She was getting close to too big for such an enthusiastic greeting, something that saddened me. She was growing up before my eyes. “I’ve been waiting for eighty-three minutes for you.”

I didn’t bother to ask her how she arrived at that number. If she said eighty-three minutes, it had been exactly that long.

“Sorry, Sam.” I hugged her tightly before putting her down. “I got a phone call.” Which was true, but not the entire reason. Not that I’d share the true reason with her. The sweet girl had enough on her plate without adding the knowledge that she was surrounded by crappy adults at school to it. “How was school?”

“A-mazing.” Her face beamed. “Mrs. St. John, she wouldn’t let me have my project back.”

“And this is amazing?” And odd that she hadn’t mentioned it, given I’d just had a lengthy conversation with her.

“Ask me why?”

“Why didn’t she give you back your project?”

Mrs. Jones stood behind Sam, her face brimming with pride.

“She said it was going to be put up at the public library as part of their new exhibit.”

“I told her we should all go when it is up and take a picture so I can have it when she’s famous.” Mrs. Jones patted Sam on the head. I knew Sam hated that, but she always put up with it for Mrs. Jones, her babysitter slash honorary grandmother.

“Mrs. Jones, I already told you I don’t want to be famous.” She huffed. “I want to be smart.”

And there it was, the heartbreaking reality that was her struggle with reading. It sucked that one subject had the ability to destroy a child’s complete sense of self-worth. Her art skills, science skills, and music skills all fell by the wayside because of one skill. One.

“You already are the smartest little girl I know.” Mrs. Jones squeezed her shoulder.

“That’s because your kids are all grown. In my class, I’m the dumb one.”

“Sam, you are not even close.” I wanted to weep for her and masked it by anger—not at her, but at the people who made her feel that way. “I don’t want to hear that out of your mouth.”

I snapped at her a little too forcefully, my voice cracking with emotion. I was messing everything up.

“It’s true.” She wrapped her little arms around me, comforting me, completely reversing what should’ve been our roles. “Don’t be sad. One day I’ll be smart, just like you.”

“Say goodnight to Mrs. Jones.” The conversation needed to be over, my emotions already spiralling downward. “She probably has things to do.”

“Night, Mrs. Jones. Thank you for taking care of me.”

“Anytime, darling. Be sure to ask your teacher when that exhibit is. I want to be sure to see it.” And she would make it happen, too. She was that caring. Sure, she needed the money I gave her, but it was more than that for her. She loved Sam. We had lucked out by moving next door to such an amazing woman.

Samantha hugged Mrs. Jones before grabbing her kitten backpack and skipped across the hallway to our apartment.

“Mac and cheese?” I asked as I unlocked the door.

“Always.” And she wasn’t even exaggerating. If I made it for her every meal, she’d be a happy girl. An extremely malnourished girl, but a happy one.

“Go get your jams on and I’ll get dinner ready for you.”

I was rewarded with her world famous are you freaking kidding me glare. She was going to be so fun as a teenager. And by fun, I meant she might be the catalyst for my over-consumption of wine.

“I’m not tired.” Her little fists formed at her side, her chin pushed forward.

“If you get them on while dinner is cooking we have time to watch a very short movie. Possibly one with a bear.” I shrugged before getting a box of mac and cheese out of the cupboard.

“Winnie the Pooh?”

And I got her. She never could turn down anything Winnie the Pooh.

“If you are ready before dinner.”

That was all it took, and she was off like a flash and back in the kitchen donning her favorite pajamas before I even filled the pot.

She scarfed her food down, wanting her movie. Not that there was much to her meal. The mac and cheese was the entirety of it. I was going to get paid in two days, and then I’d be able to restock our canned veggies, but until then, meals were going to be less than ideal. At least I knew she had fruit, veggies, and milk at school. Not a good situation, but until I was able to move up to manager at the coffee shop, it was the best I could do.

“I’m going to use the bathroom and then we can watch the movie. Why don’t you get ready?” I asked after we put our bowls in the sink.

She bound over to the shelf of our small collection of DVDs from before, as I referred to it in my head. By the time I got out, she had the remote in her hand, her body nestled into the corner of the couch.

“What’s a surrogate?” she asked out of nowhere.

“Where did you hear that word?”

“It was on the TV when I turned it on. It said, ‘Surrogates talk about the money, the parents, and the stigma—next.”

Because Sam never forgot anything. Not a stinking thing. It was official, next time I was setting up the television while she got ready. Not that it was much of a television, all nineteen inches of it, but it worked.

“Please tell me you didn’t watch any of it.” Because with her memory, that question was only going to be the first of many and from the sound of it, the show was all about titillation instead of facts. Yay for reality television.

“Of course not. We’re watching Winnie the Pooh.” She patted the seat beside her for me. “What is it?”

Because letting it go would’ve been too easy.

I loved her inquisitive nature, except when I didn’t. At least she didn’t ask me about sex, like my coworker’s six-year-old did—at work while she was picking up her paycheck. Although I fully expected Samantha to do something equally as awkward many times in her life.

“Do you have to remember everything you ever hear?” I ruffled her hair before snagging the remote from her hand and pulling the throw blanket off the back of the couch, settling it across our laps. If I played the movie timing just right, she would be asleep before it was over, and I’d be able to plop her in bed and call bedtime done.

“Yes?”

“Fine.” I searched my brain for anything that could resemble a true answer without giving away too much. They say simple is better. That might not be entirely accurate, but it sure was easier than details when it was something as complicated as surrogacy. “A surrogate is when someone has a baby for a family who can’t.”

There. Facts, but not too many.

“What does that have to do with money?”

“If we talk about this now, we won’t have time for the movie,” I reasoned, very much not wanting to talk about how the omegas were paid to carry a child that wasn’t theirs. How society often looked down on them as no more than a whore and how, in the end, the omega needed to say goodbye to a baby that wasn’t theirs, even though their body had all the hormones running through them, telling them the complete opposite. How only the most desperate of omegas took such routes.

As I pressed the remote play button and watched Winnie the Pooh for the thousandth time, I had no idea that in a few short days, I was going to decide that I belonged in that group of very desperate omegas. I was going to apply to become a surrogate.