“Stop,” Uncle said, stern. He placed his hands on her shoulders, pushing her a bit back from the counter. Leaning over her, forehead creased into five lines, he talked to her at the louder end of normal, where people in line could hear. “You can’t get everything you want. Your interruptions are making the people behind us wait longer.”

She wanted to retort, to rebut, to raise her voice.

She wanted very much to be like her seven-year-old cousin, and be able to ask for a hug without it being childish, or to throw a tantrum until she was listened to.

There were people around her age in line. Boys and girls. Tired and frustrated. She was especially conscious of the attention they gave her, and being made out to be the one who was causing the problem made her simultaneously outraged and embarrassed.

“Why don’t you go take your cousin to a seating area?” Auntie said, putting Eleni down on the ground. “Let us handle this.”

Stiffly, she nodded. She took Eleni ‘s hand.

“I have a disability,” Uncle said, to the man at the counter, one hand at his back. “Bulging disc.”

“Paperwork?” the man at the counter asked.

“I’ll have to look. I hope I packed it…”

The seating area was packed, and a lot of it was other teenagers and kids. She led Eleni to the nearest set of two empty chairs, arranged around a post in the center of the expansive station with the insufficient lighting and high ceiling. The light that filtered down on them all was tinted yellow by the textured skylight above, but it didn’t really illuminate the corners or much of the floor.

“I’m tired,” Eleni complained.

“Then sit. Do you want to play on my phone? I charged it on the train.”

Eleni nodded.

Phone out, headphones pulled from the pocket, cleaned with a wipe, and then set into place over Eleni’s ears. Eleni was already playing, the phone pinging and making high pitched sounds, with cartoon clowns cackling and laughing. The sounds were abruptly silenced as the headphones were plugged in.

She stroked her cousin’s hair.

“What’s she playing?” someone asked.

She turned to look. A boy, a bit younger than her, with curly black hair and his first pimples.

“I have no idea.”

“It’s nice of you, giving up precious battery life. I’m not that nice to my brothers,” the boy said.

“It keeps her quiet.”

“Heh. That’s a bonus,” the boy said. “It’s great.”

Auntie and Uncle were taking more than twice as long as anyone else. She watched as people who had been called up around the same time they had finished, and another family walked up. All business, answers ready, they’d read the paperwork and pamphlets.

Two families were processed while Auntie and Uncle lingered at the counter.

“Do you know where you’re going?” the boy asked.