In Zombie Hunting And In Real Life, You Need Someone In Your Corner

CONTENT WARNING: Child Neglect

I was at one of those indoor kids’ arcades with my daughter. We had paid for a card that would allow us to play any games for the next two hours, and we were currently at one where you shoot zombies with a gun. Another girl just a bit younger than my daughter — just under seven years old — ran up and watched us eagerly for a while. I decided to take pity on her. 

I offered to let her play, too, and swiped my card for the second player. Both girls happily massacred zombies for a while as I kept busy trying to swipe my card for both fast enough to ensure they always had extra lives queued up when they died.

Eventually, [Daughter] got tired of this game, but before she could run off to the next game she invited [Girl] to come with us, and she eagerly accepted.

From that moment on, the girls were inseparable, always playing together. For those who don’t know, the cards that allow playing for a time period are designed to have a brief delay after they’re swiped before they can be used again, precisely to keep a parent from easily paying for two kids’ games using just one card. This sort of delay didn’t matter when I was queuing up lives for zombie killing, but it was more obvious with some of the other games. I pointed this out to the kids, but [Daughter] was adamant that she wanted her new friend to stay with us and insisted on taking turns so both could play games. She has always been a very caring young girl. For her part, [Girl] always said thank you and never complained that [Daughter] got first dibs on any new game.

At some point, I asked [Girl]:

Me: “Where’s your game card?”

Girl: “It stopped working.”

That usually meant that time had run out on the card.

Me: “You could ask your parents if they’re willing to renew the card.”

Girl: “My mother never pays for more games when we come here.”

None of this seemed too unusual at first, but as time went on, I started to increasingly wonder why her parents were staying at the arcade for so long after their cards had run out and why her mother hadn’t come to check on her. The girl had told me that her mom was with her brother. At the time, I thought she meant that her mother had a younger brother somewhere in the arcade but was currently out of sight.

Two hours later, our own card ran out, and it would have been time to go — that is if we hadn’t still had our tagalong playmate with us. I insisted that we should take [Girl] back to her mom before we left, at which point [Girl] informed us that her mom wasn’t back yet.

After some more questions, I learned that [Girl]’s mother would regularly bring her to the arcade and abandon her there so she could take the brother somewhere. Her mother would pay for just enough points on a card that the girl could play three or four games, and after that, [Girl] simply wandered around and tried to find kids to play with.

It seemed that [Girl] was used to staying at the arcade for “a long time” — given her age, it was anyone’s guess how long that meant — but [Girl] admitted that it seemed like her mom had been missing for longer than usual since she was starting to get really hungry.

There was no way we were going home and leaving this girl now that we knew that. I tried to figure out how to call [Girl]’s mother, but she didn’t know her phone number, so instead, we went to the manager to explain the problem. The manager was shocked.

Manager: “I’m sorry. Our staff is supposed to keep an eye out for unsupervised minors like this, but it’s hard to tell who is supervised and who isn’t in as hectic an environment as this.”

Ultimately, the police were called. I tried to buy us all a pizza while we waited, but the manager insisted that it was free, and she also set us up with two cards so we could play any games we wanted while we waited.

Eventually, the police were able to hunt down [Girl]’s mother to find out that something had happened to prevent her from returning on time. They wouldn’t tell me what that something was other than that no one was hurt.

With the arcade about to close and the police unable to get the mother back there in time, we were told that child services would take [Girl] somewhere safe for the night. She was clearly afraid now and begged for [Daughter] and me to come with her, and it was heartbreaking to not be able to do so. I did write down our phone number and other contact information and give it to [Girl], telling her she could get her mom or another adult to contact us later.

We got a video call from [Girl] early the next morning. She told us her mother hadn’t shown up, but a “nice family” was watching her and had helped her call us. That was the start of quite a few video chats and playdates between the two girls.

I had trouble getting the full story, as [Girl] was too young to explain it all, but what I do know is that [Girl] returned to her mother after her night with the foster family for a little while, but she eventually ended up in the foster system again. I got the impression that once investigated, they had discovered more types of neglect from [Girl]’s mother, but [Girl] insisted that her mother was perfect and nothing was wrong.

Two years later, [Girl] is still in foster care. They tried to return her to her mother once, at which point we lost contact with [Girl] for a while since her mother couldn’t be bothered to help [Girl] call us, but after a few months, she was back with the same foster parents and able to call us again.

[Girl] is sweet, polite, and always happy no matter what happens to her. She’s a great kid, and it’s still shocking to me that any mother would neglect such an angelic girl. I’m only thankful that [Girl] seems to have managed to survive the neglect relatively unscarred and is happy with her foster family. She and [Daughter] have been inseparable ever since that day they first decided to slaughter zombies together.