Disclaimer: Though it may start out mild enough, if you're looking for a feel-good, cutesy tale of the warm-n-fuzzy relationship between a friend and their kid, go elsewhere. Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends (c) to Craig McCracken. Enjoy the show.

Hey, Julie.
-B

I
one.
the reflecting pool.

It was the busy season, summertime. They were always busy in summertime. After the summer heat had driven children inside their homes they became apathetic and they became bored. It was a natural thing for children to do, really. And children didn't want to waste their time thinking in their time off so…Foster's was busy. He could even hear them downstairs, running around the grounds and occasionally breaking something. When they did no one paid any mind. The innocence of youth gave them some kind of impotence. They may have gotten a finger wag when Madame Foster still ran the place, but Frankie was much more laid back. The old coot passed away peacefully in her sleep a few years ago. That was the last time he'd seen Mac. He wasn't a boy anymore. He didn't come around anymore. Not even for the busy season.

He lay quietly in bed, in his own room, alone in the afternoon sun that poured onto the sheets.

He heard a knock at the door.

"…Bloo?"

He didn't move.

"Bloo?"

Bloo rolled his eyes and his body onto his side, yanking the sheets over his head. He didn't like the new groundskeeper (Well, she'd been there for almost a year or two, so she wasn't actually THAT new). Dawn got the job done, but she was like a slab of veal: pink, young, tender and bleeding. He didn't like that.

"Bloo," she pleaded, a plastic bucket beating against the door, "please open up, I need to clean the rooms!"

He grunted and threw a paddleball broken from the paddle at the door. The sharp and unexpected noise made Dawn jump. Her tremulous heart made Bloo dislike her even more. It was a sign of weakness.

Dawn sighed and put her free hand on her hip.

"There's still some leftovers in the microwave from breakfast, you know," she said, "of course it's cold but there's some cereal...just go down and get some breakfast to I can do my job, okay? "

He poked his head out of the sheets. Food sounded good, a decent compromise. He'd get up for that. So he did. With a whisper of sheets and the creaking of the door, he was out of the room. Dawn grinned with a mouth full of metal. Her appearance made him nauseous, her coke-bottle glasses and the physique of a two by four. Bloo hated her. He tried to look away.

"There you go…" she said cheerily, her cleaning things in toe. He grunted in response and continued down the halls.

"Cheers!"

"Ugh…"

He'd only gotten lost once in the past nine years, and it was from when he got drunk at a Christmas party. In all actuality he wasn't supposed to be drinking but he found a few bottles of bourbon in the basement and it was all downhill from there. He'd never forget that Christmas because it was when Mac stopped coming. But that was all passed and beside the point. Good 'ol Bloo knew his was around Fosters. He knew everyone in it, too. He'd seen friends come and go but he still knew them all after all the years. In fact, the only original friend that was still around was Eduardo. Coco? Adopted some years ago. Wilt? One day he went out into the city and never came back, no one really knew though there were rumors. Everyone else? Miscellaneous, but mostly adopted.

He heard a snicker and looked to the side. A couple of the younger, newer, more desired friends talked in hushed voices as he walked past.

"That's the oldest one here," said one with a German tilt, feline with splendid magenta eyes and a Cheshire grin, "him and that big purple behemoth. Poor sap thought his kid would never give him up, that he'd keep coming back…a load of bull, that."

The other, so exotically colored, lank and flamingly whimsical that it was hard to tell what she was, dipped her elegant head to the Cheshire's hungry ear.

"Yes, yes," she said softly, "and look at his color so dull, eyes so pallid and old! His youthful luster is gone, and his spirit broken. Much like the Herriman friend who locked himself up in the tower after Madame Foster died. No one will want him now. Maybe before, but definitely not now…he's lost his life, his child and the spirit that makes us sought." She put a hand over her mouth to hide her smile. "But then again, all the less competition!"

They giggled at his misfortune like giddy schoolgirls.

With bags under his eyes and a stone face, old Bloo continued on. This scene had been played out dozens of times by dozens of friends since Mac had left. He had built up an immunity to their types and their whispered words.

'Just let it go…'

Bloo finally got to the kitchen and with a sigh got a bowel of cereal and some toast. It was black and cold and cracked in protest under his teeth. It tasted awful. His features wrinkled as he spat it into the trash can, following it up with the remainder of the scorched thing. Suddenly he saw little ripples fanning out from the center of the cereal bowel, pulsing, making the little bits wiggle.

"Azul! Azul!"

The tread of heavy, frantic footsteps stopped right behind him, seemingly slamming into the back of his skull before great arms swept him up and squeezed him.

"Azul! Pienso que éste es el! Pienso que éste es el! Después de todo este vez!"

"Whoa…Ed…I need to breathe!" Bloo wheezed in his friend's grip, "And speak English! The only thing I know how to say in Spanish is 'where's the can'!"

"Oh…sorry…"

Eduardo dropped him, still smiling and squirming with glee.

"So, what's the excitement for, big guy?" he asked as he leaned up against the wall.

"Finalmente estoy consiguiendo—Oh, sorry again, mi amigo." He inhaled and exhaled deeply. "I'm finally…I'm finally…"

Bloo was getting annoyed.

"Spit it out, Ed!"

He grinned like the Cheshire in the hall, leaned closer to build tension, giggled, and said:

"…adopted!"

Bloo's heart dropped to where his feet would've been if Mac had given him feet, along with his bowel. It shattered on the tile and the milk splattered when glass hit ceramic.

There was a brief stillness between them. Eduardo's grin left him, and he uttered a quiet:

"You dropped your bowel."

"…yeah."

Bloo picked up the shards of glass and dumped them in the trash. More awkward silence followed.

"So," breathed Bloo, "what's his name?"

Eduardo smiled a little, in it a hint of pride.

"No, no….her. And her name is Isobel! She real nice…much braver than me. She about six, seven in October. "

"That's cool. So, um, when're you leaving?"

"As soon as they finish the paperwork. I want to say goodbye to some people though…"

Bloo was quiet.

"Bloo?"

Still quiet.

"Bloo?"

His eyes grew swollen with tears, and he looked up at his old friend.

"I…I have to go…"

"Bloo…"

"I said I have to GO!"

He turned around and tore off into the bowels of the house.

"BLOO, WAIT!"

He crashed through the back door and ran past the younger and "more sought" as the frolicked in their emotional virginity. He kept running, jumping over garden fences and brush, roses and weeds until Eduardo's voice was far off and distant, until it could no longer be heard at all.

Gasping for breath, he fell into the cool grass. His hungry lungs choked down air making him cough. After his breathing slowed, the tears came. Subtle at first, then in hot, steaming bursts accompanied by wails of anguish. The emotional pain made his body ache so that it was almost tangible. What people called imaginary should never have to feel so real.

First was Mac, then Wilt, then Coco, then Madame Foster and even Mr. Herriman, everyone else and now his last friend was gone. He was alone, more alone than ever. He was abandoned. Now was the final straw. He was too real, a living, breathing contradiction. He no longer served a purpose.

Bloo cradled his pounding head in his hands.

He suddenly wondered where he was and looked up. At his feet was a wide, rectangular pool framed by neat white stones, in it an abundance of colorful flowers and Koei fish, their mouths opening and closing in a hazy way as it to relearn the function that was nature's birthright.

'This, Master Bloo, is the reflecting pool,' Mr. Herriman had said one day, 'We had it even back when the Madame was a small child, before she even founded Fosters. She would so love to look at the fish. Why, these creatures grow so old, I wouldn't be surprised if they were the very same! But, yes, a reflecting pool, used to, as the name implies, reflect upon oneself…'

He suddenly felt he was not alone in this Eden.

Sure enough, there was a little girl, none older than Mac was when Bloo first came to Fosters, still 'sought', standing at the other end of the pool. She was a small girl in tattered pants and a burgundy jacket with a large hole in one elbow. Her wide eyes bore holes in him and a tuff of reddish hair stuck out from beneath her hood. She looked almost frightened. She'd thought she was alone too…

"Hello?" said Bloo curiously, standing up. She stepped back and drew her hood so it hid her face. "Whoa, whoa! It's okay, kid, I won't hurt ya…"

"Who are you!" she cried from across the water.

"What!"

"WHO ARE YOU!"

He cupped his hands over his mouth to project his voice.

"MY NAME'S BLOOREGARD Q. KAZOO! I DIDN'T CHOOSE THE NAME, SO IT'S NOT MY FAULT! MOST CALL ME…"

She was suddenly standing besides him.

"…Bloo," he finished.

She laughed a little.

"Man, you look like the girl version of Kenny," he said.

She smiled warmly beneath the hood and he felt a stinging pang of annoyance. If another person smiled at him today, he'd beat them bloody.

"You're funny," she said with a childish simplicity. "Wanna sit?"

"Er, okay."

They sat.

"Why're you here?" she asked, cocking her head.

He felt a lump in his throat.

"I'd rather not talk about it," he choked out, "But…my boy left me here, he said he'd come back. He did for a few years…then he left. One by one, everyone's left." He looked solemnly to the sky, an old soul. "I'm the oldest friend here…"

"That's weird," said the little girl.

"Why'd you say that?" he asked. "I'm old, I've lost my innocence or luster or whatever the hell they call it! No one wants me."

There was a pause.

"Innocence isn't everything," she said. "Things that're pure…well, they're not really that great. Dirty things are better, more has happened to them, they have a story." She looked down at her converse that were falling apart as they spoke and tapped her feet together happily. Then, she looked at him and grinned beneath the hood. "Like me! And like you! At least that's what Mama said."

"...'said'?"

She looked to the side.

"She's still around, she just don't say much no more."

"So…you're looking for an imaginary friend?" he asked, changing the subject.

"Well, yea," she said, tapping her feet together again like she wanted to return to Kansas. "I've tried, thought. The first one…" she went rigid, like her spine went to lead. Her gaze went far away into space as if beckoned by a dark and unseen force. The air became colder just then. It froze up their nerves into tight, cold knots in their souls.

"Uh," he said uneasily, hoping for the moment to pass, "are you okay?"

She gulped then shook her head to shake off the memory.

"It…It didn't turn out so well."

Bloo became a little uncomfortable about that last part.

"…and the second…" she continued, the black ice in her conscious melting away, "well, he don't do much. I'm not very good at makin' up things, I guess. I like things that other people made up."

"You don't say…" he said, still trying to figure out what she meant by 'it didn't turn out so well' and why it made them so uneasy.

"Yeah! I 'specially music, like old bands. We can't afford CD's so I got a record player and lots of vinyl."

He smiled back at her despite her vagueness. A real smile, not the fake one he'd worn for so long.

They looked out onto the pool for a little while in blissful tranquility. An unspoken truce had been made. With a shaking hand, she pulled back her hood. It slid off smoothly and fell around her shoulders. She had one dark ring around her left eye and one of her front teeth was missing, her face was round, cheeks peppered with freckles, and her hair short and messy. She brushed one of her bangs from her eyes.

"My name's Julian, but I didn't pick the name, so it's not my fault, most call me Julie."

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B SPEAKS: Kudos for reading, much appreciated and before anyone says anything, no relation to 'Hey Arnold'. Anyone heard of Fountains of Wayne? There you go. This isn't a songfic, however, and has no relation the song whatsoever besides the name Julie. Updated once a week, any given day, probably Friday or Saturday. If you like the off-color and ass-backward, look out for my Invader Zim stuff…and just about everything else.

My Beta Reader is Brok3n Sm1le, the strange and elusive creature formerly known as The Kayla. The Kayla thrives on a diet of veggie burgers, soy pudding and can be easily enticed using shoelaces, colorful pins or pictures of Sonny Moore. The Kayla seeks refuge in cool, dark places with her dog-beast in the hostile wilds of Californian Suburbia. Check her stuff out at:

http/ www. fanfiction .net/u/717656/