Just like six years ago, insurance agents in gray suits swarmed through the front door and fanned out across the house.  They descended on toothbrushes and tennis shoes, to see how much had changed since their last inspection.  Behind them entered a balding man in a rumpled suit.  He shook hands and exchanged a few words with Aunt Delilah.  Then he stepped into the den.

            “Hello, Melisma,” he said.  “We met once before, but I don’t know if you remember.  My name is Elmer.  Do you have a moment to answer a few questions?”

            As her eyes rose to stare at the agent framed in the doorway, Melisma’s chest tightened with a wrench of fear.  She was thirteen now, practically a grown-up, but the sight of Elmer’s kindly face made her feel like a tiny little girl all over again.  

            “Doria, Lyddie,” Aunt Delilah called from the hallway.  “Why don’t you leave Melisma to talk in private?”

            Melisma hunched herself deeper into the couch as her sisters left and Elmer approached.   He sat in a chair and placed a small digital voice recorder on the armrest.  He was different than Melisma remembered.  His gray hair had faded and fallen out, leaving a thin white patch on the top of his head and a frizzy ring around his ears.  He wore a pair of gold spectacles, the kind with a line across the middle of each lens so he could read without taking them off.  The wire frame was a little bent, so they sat crooked on his nose.

            Elmer pressed a small button on his recording device.  “Melisma Sullivan, age 13, interview number two,” he said.  “If you could be any color of pencil from a box of twenty-four, which one would you be?”

            The abrupt way he launched into his list of questions shocked Melisma out of her anxious stupor.  “Wait, stop,” she said.  “What’s going on?”

            Elmer smiled soothingly.  “Don’t worry,” he said.  “This is just a standard assessment of your personality’s asset value.  We conducted the same test six years ago.  Today’s exercise will help us to calculate any depreciation.  Now: if you could be any color of pencil –”

            “What does that mean?” Melisma demanded.  “I don’t care about depreciation.  I want to know why you’re in my house again.  Who even are you?”

            Elmer's eyebrows rose as he studied her face.  “You really don’t know about any of this, do you?”

            Melisma frowned, annoyed at his expression of patronizing concern.  “No clue.  I only know that you came a long time ago, and it made my parents mad.”

“I’m sorry.”  He sighed.  “I thought your aunt would have explained this to you.  It’s your policy, after all.”

Melisma glared.  Elmer shifted in his chair, steepling his fingers against his forehead.  “Where to begin?” he muttered.

            “Look,” he said at last.  “You and your siblings have sizable policies in place to cover your personalities.  You know what an insurance policy is, right?”

            Melisma did, sort of.  “It’s what you buy for your car, or your house,” I said.  “It means if there’s an accident, the insurance company pays for you to fix it.”

             “That’s right.” Elmer said.  “And there are other things, as well.  In the United States, people have health insurance, which covers your medical bills if you have an emergency.”

            Melisma pictured her father lying in a hospital bed.  Like breaking your leg, she thought.

            “So, broadly speaking,” Elmer continued, “insurance tries to fix things that break.  If something is too broken to fix, we replace it entirely.  We call that a ‘total loss.’”

            Melisma huffed.  “What does this have to do with me?”

            Elmer sighed again.  “As I said, you and your siblings have policies on file with my company.  If your personalities get damaged or broken, it’s our job to fix them.  That’s why we’re here tonight.  That’s what these questions I’m asking you are about.  Does that make sense?”

            “No.”  Melisma’s lips hardened.  She still didn’t understand, but the more she heard, the less she liked it.  “You’re saying you’re here to fix my damaged personality?”

            “Not necessarily.  First, we have to complete our assessment.  We don’t know if there is any damage.  If there is, we need to determine the extent, and whether it’s caused by routine wear and tear or deliberate self-sabotage.”

            “But I like who I am!” Melisma protested, jumping from her seat.  “I don’t want you to fix me!  Why should you get to decide who’s damaged, anyway?”

            “Please sit down,” Elmer said.  “I know this is a lot to take in, and I fully appreciate your concerns.”

            Melisma remained standing, arms crossed.  Elmer made a mental calculation as his eyes moved between her steely expression, the door behind her, and his recording device.  Finally, he came to a decision.  He switched off his recording device.

            “Listen,” he whispered, leaning forward so his voice wouldn’t carry, “I shouldn’t be saying this, but you raise some very important questions.  The answers aren’t as clear-cut as you might like.”

            “Wait, what?”  His frankness threw Melisma off her guard.   She slowly moved back to the couch.

            “Personality insurance is a tricky business,” Elmer said as she sat back down.  “Believe me, I should know.  I’ve been with Suleiman Kruld for more than ten years.  I’ve worked as a sales agent, an underwriter, and now as manager of a whole division.  It takes hard work to get these policies right.  I mean, if you saw the actuarial models –”

            “What’s an actuarial model?” Melisma interrupted.

            "Good question."  Elmer crossed and uncrossed his legs.  “See, we have a whole office of people whose job is to assess risk.  They’re like gardeners, planting trees.  Except the trees they plant have branches that represent every possible outcome for the items we insure.  The gardeners place a seed, then analyze the odds that a given branch will grow in real life.  It’s a little like guessing the future, but they have to see every future, so they can figure out which ones are most likely.”

            “How do you even do that?” Melisma asked, with genuine interest in her voice.

            “Exactly!” Elmer exclaimed.  “You can’t!  It’s one thing to file a policy on a sixty-seven-year-old grandfather who wants to make sure his personality doesn’t slip as he ages.  The baseline is already established.  There’s a narrower range of outcomes, making for a slimmer tree.  But how do you predict every possible outcome for a seven-year-old girl, like you were, Melisma?  Or for a seven-month baby?”  His voice grew louder as he warmed to his topic.  “I mean, everything is a possibility for a baby!  That’s a tree that’s impossible to prune!”

            “But what does this all mean?” Melisma asked.  “I mean for me, and for Cade and Lyddie and Doria?”

            Elmer sighed.  “It means we probably never should have insured you.  For your aunt, it means massive premiums and very limited coverage, because it’s so hard to prove that personality damage has actually taken place.”  He crossed his legs again.  “For you, I suppose it means that we don’t actually know anything about who you are now, or who you should be.  From an insurance standpoint, only you can assess your true value.  It means you’re really only as damaged as you say you are.  Tell me, Melisma, do you feel broken?”

***

While Elmer and Melisma talked in the den, Doria and Lyddie sat in the kitchen for a more routine interview in the kitchen with another agent in the kitchen.  Lyddie sat cross-legged on the floor, as he read his list of questions.  Doria stood by the cabinets, throwing herself into and out of headstands.  Aunt Delilah occasionally peeked her head through the doorway.

            “Would you like to wear a suit of armor?” the agent asked.

            “Nope.  Too sweaty,” Doria said.

            “I’d love to!” Lyddie exclaimed.  “But it has to be invincible, ‘infinity-plus-one’ armor, ‘kay?”

            The agent wrote that down.

            “Should people wear shoes?” he asked.

            “Not if they don’t have feet,” Doria said.  She stuck her own foot behind her ear.

            “Should shoes wear people?” the agent asked.

            Lyddie started giggling and couldn’t stop.

            “It depends,” Doria said, totally serious.  “Do the people match the rest of the shoes’ outfits?”

            “A king, a baker, a teacher, and a homeless man are all trapped on a sinking ship.  There is room on the lifeboat for just one more person.  What do you do?”

            “Shoes wearing PEOPLE!” Lyddie hooted, still stuck on the last question.

            The agent moved down his script.  “Would you like to own a pirate ship?  How many cannons would it have?”

            “Wait a minute,” Doria protested.  “If we have a pirate ship, why don’t we just put the king and those other guys on that?”

***

Back in the den, Melisma told Elmer about her friends and school classes.  “So then, Lakshmi ate the whole thing, napkin and all, just to prove him wrong!” she exclaimed.

            Elmer chuckled.  “You’re right,” he said.  “Your friends seem pretty great.  I’m glad to hear that school is treating you well.”

            “Yeah,” Melisma said.  “It’s been a good year.  I just wish that Cade had more friends.  I think he’d be happier.”

            Elmer grabbed his pad and jotted a quick note.  Melisma’s cheeks went suddenly red.  She shouldn’t have mentioned Cade.

            “I’ll be speaking with your brother next,” Elmer said.  “Is there anything I should keep in mind during that interview?”

            Melisma's insides squirmed.  Cade would be furious if he knew she’d told a complete stranger that he had no friends.  She pressed her lips shut and shook her head.

            Elmer nodded and stood from his chair.  “I understand,” he said.  “Thank you for this lovely chat, Melisma.  And, for what it’s worth, I think you have a wonderful personality.”

            Melisma blushed as he shook her hand.  The whole situation was still weird – Aunt Delilah had paid a company to take care of her siblings’ personalities, and now the company’s agents were here to check for damage – but Elmer himself seemed like a really nice guy.

            She imagined him sitting down in a few minutes for a one-on-one interview with her brother.  The prospect made her queasy.  Would Elmer manage to crack through Cade’s defensive shell, to put him at ease like he had with her, or would Cade spend the whole meeting sitting stone-faced and sarcastic?

            “Mr. Elmer?” she called as she followed him from the room.

            “Please, Melisma, it’s just Elmer.  What’s on your mind?” he asked.

            “It’s just… please cut Cade some slack.”

***

Cade wouldn’t come out of his room to talk, so Elmer went in instead.  He stayed there for a very long time.  Doria and Lyddie finished watching their movie in the den, but Melisma was too anxious to join them.  Instead, she sat on the floor of her own bedroom, pricking her ears for any sound from Cade’s room next door.

            Aunt Delilah hovered around the upstairs landing just a few feet from Cade’s doorway, acting casual and pretending she had a good, non-Cade reason to be there.

            The other insurance agents finished their tasks of analyzing the children’s bedroom wallpaper and rifling through their old book reports.  One by one, they trooped out of the house and into the night.

            The movie ended.  Doria and Lyddie clambered up the stairs.   Aunt Delilah waved them quietly into their room, still watching Cade’s door closely.  There was no movement.  Melisma pressed her ear against her wall, but the plaster was too thick to hear through.

            At last, Cade’s door opened.  Melisma peeked out and caught Elmer’s eye as he stepped out.  His lips tightened and he shook his head slightly.

            Aunt Delilah met him at the top of the stairs.  “So?  What do you think?”

            Elmer passed her three thin packets.  “Here are reports for Melisma, Doria, and Mixolydia Sullivan.  As you can see, all three girls’ personalities are in excellent condition, aside from some routine wear and tear.  Those blue slips at the bottom are voucher coupons, to be redeemed by the girls only, as compensation for any minor cosmetic damage their personalities may have sustained.  You can bring those to our claims center tomorrow morning after 10 a.m.”

            “Minor cosmetic damage,” her Aunt repeated.  “Like, just small scratches on their personalities’ surface?  Oh.”  She sounded almost disappointed that there wasn’t more wrong with the children.  “But what about their brother?  What did you find for Cadence Sullivan?”

            Elmer scratched his nose.  “Well, that’s a bit more complicated.” 

            As he spoke, Melisma slipped through her door and into Cade’s room.  She needed to make sure her brother was okay.  The room was exactly how she remembered it from the few times she’d stepped inside in recent years: dim and claustrophobic.  Cade had unscrewed all the lightbulbs but one, and he’d draped dark sheets across two of his walls.  Underwear and clothing lay strewn across his floor and bed, and his desk was buried under a pile of books, magazines, empty DVD cases, and half-scrawled papers.  Cade’s dinner plate and utensils from the previous night gathered dust beneath his dresser, and an array of empty glasses, spoons, and half-eaten packets of crackers dotted the floor like landmines.

            But Cade himself was gone.  He wasn’t in his bed, or at his desk, or hunched over something on the floor, the way he had been every other time she’d knocked.  There was no way he could have escaped: the only door was the one she’d come in through, and Cade’s window was closed and locked.  Melisma peeked in his closet.  There was nothing there but old towels and socks.  Her brother had simply disappeared.  The room didn’t even smell like Cade anymore.

            “Ms Tucker,” Elmer said solemnly from the hall, “I’m sorry to inform you that Cadence Sullivan’s personality was declared a ‘total loss.’  You can stop by our claims center tomorrow to make arrangements for compensation.”