Little Mastermind

by smthwallflower

In which Parker deals with a bully because Nate and Sophie can't, in good conscience, take down children in the third grade. Two years after "Finding a Home"; Parker's 8. AU. Vague references to past child abuse/neglect; deals with bullying.

It's recess, and the playground's filled with stupid kids.

Except, Parker's not supposed to call them stupid anymore, because Nate heard her saying it once, and he didn't like it. He'd frowned, and she'd been worried for a second; usually he just shook his head and told her to stop, but sometimes… sometimes she can't help but worry. So she tries not to call them stupid.

Some of the normal girls are playing hopscotch next to the basketball hoop, and Parker wants to see if she can mimic the game on top of the monkey bars.

The supervisor eyes her as she crosses the playground, and Parker disappears behind a group of kids until she looks away. When the supervisor's back is turned, she crawls up to the top of the monkey bar, pulling a foot up so she was balancing on one leg.

It scares her, but in a good way, and she's about to take the first hop when she hears people arguing behind her.

"Push harder."

"Higher, go higher."

"You're going to get in trouble."

"Just push higher."

Parker puts her foot down and frowns, turning to see what they're doing.

A girl from her class, Millie, is trying to lift herself on top of the monkey bars, and there're kids at her feet helping, by pushing her up.

After Rob fell off the slide two months ago, they all had to go to an assembly about playing safely. And now they sent a note home to your parents if they thought you were being 'dangerous'. But Parker knows how to sign Nate's name on the slips, so he's never seen one of them. Sometimes she worries about what'll happen if he realizes she's been hiding them from him, but she's careful. Most of the supervisors don't bother giving them to her anymore – they know she won't fall.

Millie's on top of the bars now, and she's staring at Parker with determination, and something that looks like fear. Parker crosses over to the middle because while she won't fall, she knows Millie will. "You're gonna hurt yourself," she tells Millie, but Millie just frowns, starting to stand, shakily, bending over so her hands hover near the bars.

"See Jay," she calls, and Parker glances down at the mean-looking boy who's grinning up from the platform. Millie takes an awkward step forward and Parker takes a step closer to her – Millie's stupid, but no one's taught her how to fall properly, and she could hurt herself.

"Go back down," Parker tells her, and Millie tries to straighten and take another step – but her feet aren't steady enough, and she predictably pitches forward. Parker jumps over the empty space between the bars and catches Millie by the arm, yanking to her back from falling, steadying the both of them.

Parker's about to ask if Millie's okay and let go, but Millie glares at her. There's something dark and angry in Millie's eyes, something awful and terrifying like Parker vaguely remembers. It's a look that means she's about to get hurt, and she wants to let go, protect herself, but for some reason she can't just let Millie fall.

Millie doesn't think the same thing though, and she pushes Parker so hard that Parker's still stepping back when the bars come to an end.

For a moment it feels like she doesn't weigh anything, and then there's a loud crack as her back hits the ground. Her head slams down a split second after that; then nothing – when she opens her eyes, she can't breathe.

The panic sets in but she reminds herself to calm down; she just needs to wait for the pain, the pressure, to stop. Wait until the muscles calmed, and wait until the sharp stabbing in her chest disappeared so she can breathe again.

Her arm starts to throb a second after that, and she tries to take a breathe – it's painful, and it makes her head ache, but she can do it if she keeps it shallow. The pain starts radiating from everywhere, and Parker closes her eyes, hearing the kids starting to gathering around her.

"Parker," someone says, and they sound older, like one of the supervisors, and when she opens her eyes again, Mrs. Dorothy is kneeling next to her, horrified. "Parker!" she says twice as loudly.

"I'm okay," Parker manages, but there's something wrong with the world, and when she tries to sit up, she can't because it's too dizzy in her head. The pain in her arm spikes, and she thinks it might be broken.

Distantly, she thinks that Nate's going to be really upset with her when he finds out what happened.

"Oh my God, blood," Mrs. Dorothy says, making Parker lay down again, and there's blood on her fingers the next time Parker sees them. Parker thinks that must be her blood. When Mrs. Dorothy says, "Call an ambulance," Parker thinks she might throw up.

Nate hates ambulances, and Nate hates hospitals, and Parker hates ambulances too. "I'm okay," she says again, biting down on her lip as she sits up – the dizzy comes again but she ignores it. There's blood in her mouth now too; somehow she manages to stand.

Her arm hurts so much she has to cradle it against her chest. Everything's white hot, her head's fuzzy, and she can't see straight. The only thing she can think about is getting away from everyone before the ambulance comes to take her away. "Parker!" Mrs. Dorothy shouts, and Parker steps away from her, knowing she won't understand.

"I'm okay," Parker insists, stumbling, and the kids move aside as she limps past them, her vision fading and her face wet.

o

Parker comes around in a hospital bed, and she can feel one of those awful scratchy hospital dresses rubbing against her skin. When she opens her eyes she can see Nate sitting in the corner in a chair, pale and still, staring at the door.

Someone's holding her hand, and by the rings that are pressing into her fingers, Parker thinks it must be Sophie.

For some reason her other hand won't move at all, and all she can think to say is, "I'm sorry."

Sophie jumps, and Parker doesn't think this counts as scaring Sophie, because Sophie knows exactly where she is. Sophie's looking down at her with a sad smile on her face, and Parker's head starts to hurt. "Seems someone had a bit of a fall," Sophie says, reaching out for Parker's forehead, touching it gently.

"Millie's fault," Parker says, and Nate's standing on her other side. That's when she realizes that there's a cast on her arm, and that her arm is numb, and that's why it won't move. The cast is bright green; the last one she had, before Nate, was pink, and the one before that was orange. Parker likes this one the best.

"You broke it when you fell," Nate says, seeing her look at it, and he pulls a seat under him as he sits, leaning against the edge of the bed, watching her carefully, his chin on his knuckles.

Everything seems to be going slowly, and Parker reaches for Nate's arm to make sure he's real. Her arm hurts, and that's real, and Nate catches it before it goes too far, setting it down gently. He hooks his fingers around hers and she grips them tightly – Nate's real.

"I don't fall," she tells him, and he looks over at Sophie, who has the exact same raised eyebrows.

"Love, you were playing on the monkey bars and you fell; you don't remember?"

Parker shakes her head, but that hurts, a lot, and Nate touches her shoulder cautiously, "Don't – you hit your head, when you landed; you have a concussion."

"Millie pushed me," Parker insists, and Nate takes in a sharp breath as Sophie's mouth opens.

"Someone… pushed you?" Sophie asks, finally understanding, and Parker almost nods before she remembers that Nate doesn't want her to do that,

"Yeah. Millie. She was going to fall off, so I caught her, but then she pushed me off."

"Why would she…?" Sophie trails off, looking up at Nate, who shakes his head,

"Don't worry about it right now. Just get some rest so you can feel better."

"I didn't fall," she says again, frustrated, and Nate smiles at her, warmly, sadly. He leans over and kisses her forehead,

"We believe you."

o

A couple hours later, and Sophie's helping her fit her cast through the armhole of her shirt – the doctor said that she could go home, and she can hear Nate talking to him by the door.

"It was a clean break, typical in children this age. It was the impact to the back of the head we were really worried about… do call immediately if her condition gets worse. And I'd recommend against school for a day or two, if that's possible."

"But someone could have pushed her."

"Well Mr. Ford, with children…"

A sharp pain snakes up her arm and into her shoulder, and Parker pulls away from Sophie in panic, squeaking: "Ow!"

"Sorry love," Sophie mutters, stopping, and waiting until Parker comes back to her. "Those pills the doctors gave you should start helping soon."

"It hurts," Parker mutters, and this time she doesn't help at all when Sophie picks up her arm to guide it through the hole again.

"I know sweetheart," Sophie murmurs, and her voice is soft, patient and gentle, "When we get home you can lie down on the couch with some nice, hot tea and a blanket. There it is, see?" Sophie says helpfully, and Parker closes her eyes as the shirt finally goes over her head.

When she opens her eyes, she looks over to Nate, who's just saying bye to the doctor. "My arm hurts," she tells him, and he comes over to the bed,

"We'll fill your prescription on the way home – do you want to get anything from the store? Candy? Popcorn? Ice cream? Chocolate? Chips? Chocolate chip cookies?" They all sound good, but Parker doesn't want them right now. She just wants to know that Nate's not mad at her.

Parker stands up on the bed and wraps her good arm around Nate's neck, leaning against him. It takes a second for Nate to pick her up, and she puts her chin on his shoulder after he does. "We'll get you whatever you want," he promises quietly into her ear, his hand warm against her back. He isn't mad, and that makes her feel better.

"I wanna go home," she mutters, pressing her face into his shoulder. Her arm is throbbing between them, her eyes are sore, her head hurts like there's a bad bruise on it, and she just wants to go to bed, hug Bunny, and feel safe falling asleep between Nate and Sophie.

And she wants to stop thinking about how Millie glared at her, just before she fell.

Sophie takes the car keys from Nate, kissing Parker's forehead as she passes them, "We'll be home in no time," she says, and they leave the little hospital room together. Nate holds her a little tighter as they go through the hallways; Parker doesn't mind, and she lets her head fall sideways, looking but not really looking at the walls.

There're lines on them, painted, and she decides that they're following the green one. Green is for home, she thinks. Green is for outside, for grass, for her cast. Green is for money – that makes her smile.

The green line ends, and they're in the lobby, and the people there are all sitting in chairs.

It's warm outside, and Parker blinks against the sunlight – it's too bright though, and she closes her eyes to make them stop stinging.

Parker doesn't want to let go when they get to the car, but Nate reaches up to pull her arm off of him and makes a gentle noise. "Store, and then home," he promises, and she reluctantly lets go. He kisses her forehead and does up her seatbelt before he gets into the front seat.

"Can we have pizza today?" she asks when they leave the hospital parking lot, and she sees Sophie and Nate looking at each other. Usually pizza's only for weekends, but the last time she was hurt, when she jumped out of the car and bled through her jeans, they let her have pizza and ice cream and a hamburger with fries. And it'd only been a Monday.

"'Course we can," Nate says, and Sophie almost frowns a little bit, but Parker doesn't care. She leans her head against the window, but the vibrations make her head hurt, so she curls up sideways instead.

When they get to the store, she realizes that her arm's stopped hurting – when she pokes at the bit of skin that comes out of the cast, there's pain, but other than that, it feels… there, but okay. Her head's stopped hurting too. It's weird, but it feels okay.

She holds onto Sophie's hand at the store, not really paying attention to where they're going. It's not that she doesn't want to; it's just that… it doesn't really seem that important. They leave with pills, candy, and chocolate milk, and Parker almost falls asleep on the way home.

o

Sophie gives her some pills, and Nate tucks her into bed. They crouch down and say that they'll come back later to check on her, make sure that she's sleeping okay. Parker says good night, but when they leave, she realizes that she doesn't want to be alone yet.

When she comes downstairs, they're talking by Nate's desk, quietly and not quietly at the same time.

"Nate," Sophie's saying, and she sounds like she doesn't believe what she's hearing. "You can't possibly be thinking of going after an eight year old child! That's lunacy!"

Nate's face is covered in shadow; the light is on in the kitchen, but they haven't turned anything else on.

"She pushed Parker."

Sophie sighs and comes around the desk, putting her hand on Nate's shoulder, "I'm not forgiving what she did, but-"

"And I'm not suggesting we steal all her money and ruin her reputation!" Nate snaps back, and he sounds like it's not the first time he's tried explaining it. "We can't just let her get away with it."

"She's a little girl," Sophie says softly, and Parker barely hears it, and she tucks her knees against her chest, her chin resting on top of them.

Millie had looked so angry.

Nate makes a sound almost like a laugh, and he turns to Sophie; he looks angry too. "What, and you think none of the people we take down were bullies in school? This is how it starts Sophie. It starts on the buses, it starts in the classrooms, in the gym classes – it happens on the playgrounds. And it keeps happening because no one does anything about it." He looks at the stairs and Parker freezes – she should be hidden, but sometimes Nate still knows.

But he doesn't see her, and his body stills, and he says, "Parker's arm is broken because of it. We have to do something."

He looks away, and turns, and Parker realizes that Sophie's turned him around. "Then we talk to the principle. Nate, love, I know that we aren't quite champions of the system, but we have to at least try. Children… it's never what it seems to be. We need to be delicate."

Nate's shoulders finally fall, and Parker lets out a breath she didn't know she was holding. "They hurt her. And I let it happen." He sounds guilty, devastated, and for some reason it makes Parker feel warm.

"There's nothing you could've done."

Another sigh, and Nate's head drops onto Sophie's shoulder. Parker watches, unable to look away. It feels like she shouldn't be looking, but she wants to remember this. Nate and Sophie, together, caring for her, caring for each other. Was this what other kids' parents did?

Finally, Nate sighs and says, "We'll go in when we drop Parker off."

They pull away from each other, though Sophie's still holding Nate's hand. Parker swallows, thinking about Millie's face, the anger in her eyes when she pushed. Nate wanted to treat this like a case, but he couldn't. She could though.

Silently, she goes back upstairs to her room. There's a mostly empty notebook in her backpack, and she takes it, along with a pencil and a flashlight, and pulls the bed covers over her head.

When Nate works on a case, the first thing he always does is get information. Hardison usually did most of it, but Parker doesn't think she can ask him this time.

When she goes back to school, she'll have to find out everything she can about Millie – but for now, she'll just write down all the stuff she already knows.

o

The chairs in the principles office are always too big, and Parker feels like nothing in them. Nate's leaning back in his, looking comfortable, and Sophie sits on the edge of hers, all pretty and nice, her legs crossed at the knees.

"How are you feeling, Parker?" Mr. Jensen asks, his voice too loud. She's been in this office a few times, and usually it's because she's in trouble for something stupid. Like climbing on trees.

Parker shrugs, because she doesn't really like Mr. Jensen, and she doesn't like answering questions. One time he called Nate because she told the truth, and that hadn't been fun at all.

"It's been tiring," Sophie answers for her, and Parker doesn't like how her voice sounds, but Mr. Jensen takes his eyes off her and smiles at Sophie. "But I think a day off is what everyone needed."

Mr. Jensen nods, and Nate jumps in, and his voice is completely different than Sophie's – it's rough and unhappy, and Parker realizes that they're conning Mr. Jensen. "Parker says that a girl pushed her off the monkey bars – Millie Bridget, I think was her name?" He looks at Parker, who stares at the corner of the desk, wondering why she needs to be here.

"I'm sure it wasn't malicious," Sophie says, smiling, "But you can see why we might be concerned."

"Yes, yes." Mr. Jensen clears his throat – he's got a big chest, and a big belly, and he touches his tie. He sounds uncomfortable. "If that is the case, it would be most concerning. However- "

And he sounds like he doesn't believe her; Parker sits up for the first time and says, "But she pushed me!"

"Parker," Nate says with a frown, and maybe she yelled a little, but she didn't fall.

"As you know," Mr. Jensen continues, looking down at Parker with a tired look, "Parker has a hard time following the rules of the playground. I can't honestly say that we didn't expect something like this to happen."

There's a pause, and Parker remembers all the notes that she didn't give to Nate to sign.

"I don't understand," Sophie says, with a polite smile that's not a smile, and Mr. Jensen looks between Nate and Sophie,

"A situation like this is exactly what we were hoping to avoid by imposing certain rules during the recess and lunch breaks." Nate and Sophie aren't saying anything, and Parker knows that Mr. Jensen is getting suspicious. "You… have been getting the notes that were sent home with Parker, yes?" He looks at Parker, and she stares at the floor – she was going to be in big trouble now. "There've been at least two dozen. And they've all come back with your signature, Mr. Ford."

"Uh, oh, yes, those," Nate nods, but Parker can see him glance at her in her peripheral, and she knows that he knows that she's been faking them. And he doesn't look happy at all. She falls back into her seat, trying to be smaller.

"Mr. Ford, you understand that it is our policy to take claims of harassment of and by students very seriously."

"She pushed me!" Parker insists quietly, and Nate puts a hand on her shoulder,

"So you'll be looking into the matter?"

"Of course."

"Because if Millie did push Parker off the monkey bars, where granted, neither of them should have been, I would still expect that the situation would be dealt with appropriately. Especially if there was malicious intent involved."

Mr. Jensen's face gets harder, and Nate stiffens – Sophie makes a sound, standing up, and motions for Parker to stand up as well. "Mr. Jensen, thank you very much for your time. We'll certainly be waiting to hear from you over the next few days, about your progress in the matter."

"Of course," Mr. Jensen agrees, standing as well, and Nate stands with him, still stiff and scary.

They all shake hands, Nate and Mr. Jensen lingering, and then Sophie comes between them, taking Nate's hand and leading him out of the room. Parker follows them before Mr. Jensen can say anything else.

"That bastard," Nate growls when they're outside the school doors, and Parker leans tight against the wall – she doesn't like it when Nate's angry.

"Nate," Sophie chides, and she glances at Parker, who braves a look between them. Sophie catches it and her lips press together. "Parker, how many notes have you been hiding from us?"

Parker shrugs, but Nate's looking at her now, and he still looks angry. "Maybe a couple," she answers quickly, softly, not wanting to make Nate angrier.

"You've been forging my signature?" Nate asks, his eyes narrowing, and Parker swallows hard before nodding.

It wasn't on purpose; she just… didn't want Nate to know. And the rules were stupid, and she would've never fallen if Millie hadn't pushed her. This was all Millie's fault.

The bell that says the older kids need to change classes rings, and Nate shakes his head. "We'll deal with that later. Parker, go on and get to class – and if you get any more notes for Sophie or I, we want to see them. Clear?"

"Yeah," Parker mutters, staring at the pavement, feeling awful. But it wasn't a big deal. And now Nate's mad at her, and that wasn't the point at all.

"Be careful love," Sophie says, reaching forward and when she pulls Parker in for a hug, Parker knows that Sophie's not really mad at her. Parker hugs her back, and lingers as Nate crouches down.

Nate doesn't look angry anymore, but she knows she's still in trouble. "How's your arm?" he asks, softly, and Parker shrugs,

"S'okay."

"Sophie put a pill in your lunch – if your arm starts hurting, have it with your pizza. Make sure you drink some water with it too. And stay off the monkey bars for now?" he says, and Parker nods,

"Okay."

He reaches out for her, and she goes to him nervously. But he only pulls her into a hug, and he holds her tightly, but he doesn't make it hurt. "Have a good day," he tells her, letting go and standing up. They leave and Parker wants to go back home with them, stay on the couch and watch movies, but she knows that she can't.

Instead, she goes to class – she still needs to get more information on Millie.

o

Hardison's watching Parker for a few hours while Nate and Sophie are gone, and he's downstairs on the computer doing something complicated. Bunny's sitting on Parker's bed, watching her carefully, and she takes a deep breath.

"Okay, so, Millie Bridget is in grade three, with me," she tells Bunny, trying to do it the way that Nate does. No one else needs the information, but she doesn't know what to do with what she has yet, and the second thing that Nate always does is have the meeting. But Parker doesn't have anyone to meet with, so she's meeting with Bunny.

Parker pulls out her notebook, flips open to a drawing, and shows it to Bunny, "This is a picture I drew of her. Her face looks a little different, but otherwise it's okay. She's a little taller than me, and she likes to eat peanut butter with her fingers." Parker did too, but that wasn't important.

"She's friends with Kapila, Zoe, and Sara. Sometimes they play with Lauren too, but usually not." Parker digs a gum wrapper out of her backpack, "She likes Watermelon Bubblegum, but she only has half of it in the morning, and the other half she saves for later. Her laugh is really annoying, and she likes answering questions in Socials. But she's not very good at reading, and she doesn't like math."

There was also a small plastic brush in the backpack, and Parker pulls it out, setting it on the bed in front of Bunny. "And this belongs to her favourite doll. Sometimes she brings it to school, so she can play with it during recess."

Folding her arms on the bed, she looks up at Bunny, sighing. "And she gave her chips to Jay today, during lunch. And when Connor dropped his pencil, she picked it up for him. Oh, and her Dad drives a yellow car. A sporty one, like if Nate's car looked a little more like Eliot's. With the stripes. And she sits in the backseat. And she has a bigger brother, I think he's on the football team."

Getting information was a lot harder than she thought it would be… and she still had to figure out what to do with it all. "But it doesn't explain why she would push me," she tells Bunny, climbing up on the bed and laying down beside him, with her legs up against the wall over her head. "What does Nate do when he has all the information?"

Bunny tells her to remember the last meeting, and she thinks back: Hardison had run it. The person they were helping had their savings stolen, and they'd come to Nate for help. But that bad guy had just wanted money – Millie wouldn't get paid for pushing her, so why would Millie want to push her?

What else could Millie get from pushing her?

o

"Sophie," Parker says that night, as Sophie tucks the covers tight around her.

Sophie sits on the edge of the bed, leaning over Parker, and bracing against the mattress. "Yeah love?"

Choosing the words carefully, Parker asks, "If you wanted to find out why someone did something, how could you do it?" Nate was always finding out how people did things. And when he wanted to know why, he would just look through bank records, or get Hardison to look at emails and stuff. And then he would just know.

But Millie didn't know how to use the Internet during computer time, and Parker doesn't think she has a credit card.

"Is this about Millie?" Sophie asks softly, and Parker wants to lie for a second, but she knows that Sophie'll see right through it. Parker's not a good liar, not like Sophie is.

Instead Parker turns onto her side, curling towards Sophie, the green cast pressing lightly against Sophie's thigh. They'd given her another pill tonight, even though it hadn't really been hurting. "Maybe."

Sophie looks at her for a few moments before touching her hair, pushing her fingers through it gently. "Well, you could always ask her, couldn't you?"

Parker shakes her head, curling in closer so that she can put her head in Sophie's lap. "Millie's stupid."

"That's not very nice," Sophie says, gently disapproving; but her hands don't stop, and they're not touching the tender spot on the back of her head, so Parker knows that Sophie's not actually mad.

Parker doesn't feel bad at all either: "She pushed me off the monkey bars."

"That wasn't very nice either," Sophie says, and she sounds like she agrees. To what, Parker doesn't really know. "Well, if you don't want to talk to her, you could always talk to one of her friends maybe. Do you know who her friends are?"

"She likes playing with Kapila, Zoe and Sara."

"Maybe one of them would talk to you. The one who's friendliest to you, perhaps?"

Parker hadn't thought about that, about talking to them. Mostly, they were stupid, like Millie… but whenever they were in gym, Sara would always pass to Parker, or pick her first. Maybe Sara would talk to her?

"What if they don't want to talk to me?" she asks, because Nate always has a plan B, and C, and D, and she wants to have those too.

Sophie thinks for a second, and then asks, "How do you listen to things that you're not supposed to listen to?"

Parker wants to say that she doesn't, but that wouldn't be true. Still, Sophie doesn't sound upset or angry, just like she wants Parker to find the answer herself. "I hide," Parker tells her, "And then I listen."

"There you go," Sophie smiles. "Just make sure you don't do anything that's going to get you into trouble."

Don't get caught, Parker thinks to herself, and she nods.

"And Parker," Sophie says, and this time she sounds a little more hesitant. Unsure. "Sometimes, children just do things. There isn't a reason for it… at least, not one that they understand. They know right from wrong, but sometimes they still do things they know are wrong. Do you understand that?"

Parker nods, even though she doesn't really. It's okay though – tomorrow, she's going to find a way to listen to Millie and her friends, and then she'll know why.

o

There's a talent show during the last two hours of the day that Millie's performing in – she's doing some kind of dance thing with her friends. Kids didn't have to go if they wanted to stay in the library instead – Parker was going to use the time to draw, but the acts got ready in the changing rooms, and that means that she could hide in a shower stall and listen when Millie's act was getting ready.

The nice thing about school was that no one really paid any attention to Parker, unless she was doing something 'unsafe'. So her teacher, Mrs. Jane, thought she was in the library, and the librarian, Mrs. Fry, thought she was at the talent show. Which she was, just, not in the audience.

Sneaking into the change room was easy, and she made a sign on some lined paper that said, 'BROKEN', and taped it to the door of the stall so that no one would come in. Then she got a chair to sit on, closed the door, and waited.

Millie and her friends were the fourth to last act, according to the list she'd seen at the edge of the stage, so Parker occupies herself by trying to climb up the shower stall walls with a broken arm. The change room are empty for the most part, just a few people coming and going.

Parker hears the sound of girls giggling before she hears the door open, and she drops down onto the chair quietly. The door opens, and then closes, and she can hear Zoe and Millie talking:

"Oh that song was so cute. Do you think he likes me?" That was Zoe.

"Ew, Kevin? No! He doesn't like anyone, remember?" And that was Millie.

"He kept looking at me. Like he was singing to me. It looked like he was looking at me."

"Maybe he was. But last week he told Lauren that girls were stupid. So we don't like him."

"Oh. Really? Okay then."

"Wear it like this…" There's scuffling, but they weren't talking about anything important. What good was listening, when there wasn't anything useful to hear?

"Is it straight?"

"It looks straight."

"Are you sure? It feels like it's not straight."

"How about now?"

"That feels a little straighter."

"It looks a little floppy."

"But it feels straighter."

There's a pause.

"How about that?"

"That feels okay, I guess. Less floppy than straight."

"Good. It looks good. Now help me with mine."

There's some more silence, and then the sound of something being put on – Parker folds her legs up and rests her head on top of them, annoyed. This wasn't going anywhere.

"You look so pretty." Zoe again – Millie must have finished dressing.

"Thanks. So do you Zoe. You remember all the steps?"

"Yeah. I've been practising at home. Mom got a new mirror in the living room, it's one of those big ones, that covers the whole wall…" Zoe's voice starts walking away, and when the door closes, Parker can't hear anything else.

They didn't talk about anything she wanted to know, and she had spent an hour in the changing room. How did she get them to talk about something she wanted them to talk about, when she was around to listen to?

When Parker comes out of the dressing room, a teacher sees her and walks her back to her class. Parker frowns, sitting down at the end of the line, frustrated – now she was stuck watching the rest of the stupid show, and she hadn't learnt anything new.

Lauren's beside her, but instead of watching two older kids do magic, she's looking at Parker's cast. "What?" Parker asks after a minute.

"Does it hurt?" Lauren asks in a whisper, and Parker looks down at the cast for a minute before shrugging,

"Sort of. Sometimes. But I have pills this time, when it gets really bad."

"This time?" Lauren asks, and her eyes are wide, and she doesn't know about all the other casts Parker's had, and Parker ignores the question, and tries to ignore her. Sometimes, in school, when you ignored someone, they would leave you alone.

Lauren just keeps staring though, and after the act is done and everyone's clapped, Millie and Zoe take the stage, and some kind of boy band song starts up. "Millie didn't want to hurt you," Lauren whispers.

Parker looks at her – she spent an hour in the changing rooms, and Lauren's just going to tell her? "What?"

"She didn't want to push you," Lauren says, and her voice quiets even more, and Parker leans in so she can hear. "Jay made her do it."

"Jay?" Parker asks; the only Jay she knows is the one in the grade above them. "Why?"

Lauren shrugs, and looks up at the stage, where Millie and Zoe are twirling. "He said she had to. Or else…"

Parker waits, but there isn't more. "Or else, what?" she asks, impatient, and a teacher hisses at them to be quiet, and Lauren waits until everyone is clapping again.

"Or else he'd be mean to her. Jay's mean to everyone, but he really doesn't like Millie. I think Millie's scared of him – but don't tell her I told you that!" Lauren looks panicked, and Parker nods,

"I won't. But why is Jay mean to everyone?"

"He just is," Lauren answers, but there's older boys are on the stage now, singing, and she doesn't look at Parker again.

o

Parker tries to watch Jay over the next two days, but he's not at school – or he's not anywhere the Parker can find him.

She's waiting for Nate and Sophie to come pick her up after school one day, up on top of the bike shelter. It has easy handholds, and a roof, and it's not that hard to get up onto, even with one hand.

The school is in a residential area, and there's an alley that runs along the school grounds – some of the parents along the fence stare at her, but soon their kids come, they're gone.

Sometimes Nate and Sophie are a little late, so Parker's not worried – they didn't tell her to walk home today, and she's supposed to wait if that happens.

Eventually, it feels like almost everyone is gone. The grounds are quiet, the noises of the cars have stopped, and Parker lies on her back and stares at the clouds.

She's well past bored at imagining cloud-things when she hears someone shouting. It's sounds like a boy, and when she rolls over and peers over the edge of the roof, she sees that it's Jay shouting. Jay, who Lauren said made Millie push her off the monkey bars.

There's another kid too, who's in the other third grade class.

"Hey, dumbo!" Jay shouts, and Parker lies flat on the roof as they come closer so they won't see her – the kid is trying to get away, but there's no way he's going to out run Jay.

The kid squeaks when he realizes it, and starts to run faster. "Hey, dumbo! Don't run away from me!"

Jay starts running too, and Parker freezes on the roof; within seconds, Jay's tackled the kid to the ground a few feet away from Parker's hiding spot. "Didn't you hear me calling dumbo?" Jay asks, but he doesn't sound nice, and he's sitting on the kid's chest, and Parker doesn't know what to do.

Jay's bigger than she is, and he's stronger, and he's angry, and his voice sounds mean and annoyed. Parker wants to help, but she can't move.

"Something in your ears, dumbo?" she hears Jay ask, and the kid shakes his head, but Jay shoves his face to one side, pressing it against the ground. "Maybe some dirt'll clean it out," he says, and he starts shoving dirt into the kids ears, and Parker wants to jump down and kick Jay in the side like Eliot taught her – but her legs and arms are frozen.

The kid starts shouting, yelling for help, but Jay just laughs, and he presses a handful of dirt into the kids mouth. "Shut up dumbo, no one cares about you. Wimp. You're so little and wimpy. I bet you still sleep in your Daddy's bed. Such a baby. Baby-Dumbo," Jay says, and his voice sounds like gasoline, slimy and oily.

After a few seconds of rubbing dirt into the kids face, Jay stands up, laughing. "And now the baby's crying," he sneers, and the kid is crying, curling onto his side and spitting out dirt, choking. Parker feels like she's going to throw up. "If you tell anyone," Jay says, and he kicks the kid in the side – the kid cries out, and Parker flinches, so hard she almost falls off the roof, "I won't ever stop kicking you."

Jay kicks some gravel in the kid's face, and then he walks away.

When Jay turns the corner, Parker realizes that her whole body is shaking. The kid is on his knees now, still crying- sobbing, and Parker can feel her own face wet with tears.

Why didn't she move? Why didn't she help? Why did she just lie there and watch? And why wasn't she doing anything right now?

She was just crying, and that's all she could ever do. And she wants to go help the kid, but she's terrified, and her body won't let her move.

All she wants is Nate. Nate to come and protect her, to say that she's going to be okay, to let her sleep in a nice bed, with warm soft blankets. Nate who never hits her when he gets mad, and who's sad when she's hurt. Nate who cares about her and keeps her safe.

The kid is starting to stand up, and Parker wants tell him it's okay, but she still doesn't move. He looks around, rubbing the dirt out of his eyes. There isn't anyone around the he can see, and he sniffs before heading into the alley, limping slightly, his shoulders shaking.

When Parker can't see him anymore, she feels even worse.

o

"What's bringing you down darlin'?" Eliot asks, and Parker jerks in her seat, startled – she'd been thinking about Jay, about the way he kicked at the kid's ribs. For a moment she was somewhere else, and when she pushes the feelings away, she notices that Eliot's staring at her, concerned. "Parker?" he asks, and he's quiet and serious, and worried.

She was doing her homework at Hardison's kitchen table – Hardison was gone somewhere, but Nate was going to pick her up in an hour or two. For now, Eliot was cooking, and she was working, and she didn't know how he knew something was wrong.

"Something happen at school today?" he asks, and Parker stares at the paper – she can't tell Eliot what she saw. She can't tell Eliot what she watched, and that she didn't do anything about it. She can't tell Eliot, who never lets that happen to anyone. Parker hates herself a little bit, for not even trying.

"Nothing," Parker says, quietly; if she looks up, he'll know she's lying.

"Parker," Eliot says again. He knows she's not telling him something. He knows it. But instead of pressing, he says, "Is your arm hurting again?"

Parker nods, because it's a good excuse. Better then: Jay tackled a kid, and she didn't do anything to stop it. Jay had hurt him, been mean and awful… and the kid had just cowered and yelled. But he hadn't fought back, hadn't done anything to stop it – it reminded her of the bad times, of how things used to be.

"Why don't you finish this off, and then we'll go watch some TV or something. We'll sit down and have some cookies?"

"Okay," Parker says, and she tries to do math, but she can't stop thinking about the sound the kid made when he was choking on the dirt, the horrible sound that came from his throat. She can still hear it.

When she finishes, there are numbers on the page, but they're not right, and Eliot doesn't say anything about it. "Com'on," he says instead, lifting her up out of the chair – Eliot still picks her up like she doesn't weigh anything, even though Nate says she's too big for it sometimes. Parker holds onto Eliot has hard as she can; she doesn't want him to know what she did. What she didn't do. What Eliot would've done, but she couldn't.

Eliot grabs a blanket and sits down, letting Parker stay on his lap and drape the blanket around her. "You have another bad dream darlin'?" he asks, and Parker stops breathing.

Was it just a bad dream?

But she has to shake her head, and she can feel the tears starting up again. It feels like a bad dream. It feels like the dreams she used to have, after Nate found her. It had felt like she'd been watching, not able to do anything to stop it. "My arm hurts," she says instead, because Eliot seems to believe it already.

"Nate'll be here soon," he says, rocking her gently. Parker starts crying, curling her head into Eliot's chest, and wishing she had Bunny.

She should have done something.

o

Nate and Sophie are sleeping, and Parker stands in the doorway. She can't stop thinking about how she just watched that little kid get beat up. She'd seen people get beat up all the time, at the homes she'd had been in, and on the streets. Been beat up herself, lots. And no one ever helped. But this time had been different, because she wasn't little anymore. She wasn't helpless anymore, and she could have done something, but she didn't.

The thoughts are making her shake again, and she goes to the bed, crawling over Nate, not caring if she wakes him up. Nate does wake up, just as she's pushing her feet under the covers, wiggling between his arm and Sophie's shoulder.

"Parker?" he asks, and she keeps going, terrified that he's going to send her away. "Hey, hey, Parker," he says softly, still sleepy, and she presses back against Sophie,

"Don't make me go," she pleads, desperate; if Nate makes her leave, she'll never be able to sleep again.

"You don't have to go," Nate says softly, and he turns to face her – Sophie's waking up too, and she feels Sophie's arm reach out and pull her closer,

"'lo love," Sophie mutters, and she shifts so that she's leaning against Parker, covering her with an arm, cocooning her. Parker feels horrible for not saying anything, but she likes this, she likes it a lot – no one's going to be kicking her, or pushing dirt into her face when Sophie's holding her like this.

Nate's not as sleepy as Sophie, and Parker can see the shine off his eyes, "What happened Parker?"

"I couldn't sleep," she says, and that's true, but usually she can't sleep because she's had a nightmare, or she's having scary feelings. This is like a scary feeling, and a nightmare all in one, and her arm feels hot and big, and she just doesn't want to be alone.

"Does your arm hurt?" he asks, shifting a little closer – it feels a little easier to breathe, with Sophie behind her, and Nate in front of her. Nate reaches out to hold her hand, and she closes her eyes – she can still see Jay kicking, still hear the kid crying, but it's not as bad.

"A little," she mutters, trying to hold the picture in her mind, like Eliot had taught her to do with the nightmares. But there was nothing wrong with the picture, nothing that marked it as her imagination – it was a memory, not a dream.

She wants to start crying again, but Nate pulls the covers up her over her shoulder, kisses her on the cheek, and tells her to close her eyes. "You know, I broke my arm once," he says, and Parker listens to the story until she falls asleep.

o

In the morning, she doesn't want to wake up, but Sophie won't let her miss any more school, so she eats breakfast as she thinks. Nate's on the phone with Hardison, and he's talking about everything they know, and everything that's happened since they started the case.

Parker makes a list in her head about what she knows:

Millie had pushed her off the monkey bars, and she had that angry look in her eyes.

Parker hadn't heard Millie talk about pushing Parker at all.

Lauren said that Jay made Millie push Parker off the monkey bars.

Jay had beat up a kid, while Parker watched and didn't do anything.

Maybe Millie wasn't the person Parker was supposed to be worrying about? Maybe Millie hadn't been angry with her – she might have been angry with Jay. And Jay had beaten up that kid. Maybe Jay was the one she needed to learn more about.

But did she want to go near Jay?

"Just get it done – Hardison, stop giving me excuses. Just do it."

Parker looks up at Nate and swallows. Is that what he would tell her, if she asked him? To just do it? She thinks about Jay calling the kid a baby, and she wants to hurt him. Make Jay take it all back and say he's sorry. Even make sure he can't do it again. That's what Nate would say – make sure he doesn't do it again. Help his victims, and make sure he wouldn't be able to hurt anyone else, ever.

Parker can do that. She thinks she can do that.

o

The recess bell rings and Parker follows the stream of children out the door – Mrs. Jane tries to catch her eye, but she hides behind Ben and Jim, slipping out before Mrs. Jane can say anything about how none of her math answers were right.

Jay's class is across the hall, and Parker waits by the wall until Jay comes out – he comes out last, his shoulders hunched over and his eyes on the ground. He doesn't look very scary this close up, but Parker keeps her distance anyway. She needs to find things out about Jay, but she doesn't want him to know that's what she's doing.

Jay hangs by the kids bouncing a basketball, but he ignores them, keeping an eye on the adult supervisor instead. Parker's done it enough times to know how it looks, and the moment the lady turns her head, Jay slips out of the opening in the chain-link fence. Parker follows the next time the lady turns her head, and she heads after Jay, trying to stay as close to the fence as possible.

There's a small nook in the alley, like the ones Parker used to like sleeping in, and she watches from behind a garage as Jay lights a cigarette in it. He can't be older than ten – she heard someone say that he missed a grade. But he doesn't cough when he inhales, and she wonders where he got the cigarettes from. For a few minutes, Parker watches him smoke – he closes his eyes as he does, and his shoulders come down a little.

After he finishes, he drops the yellow part on the ground, stepping on it.

Jay looks around for a second, and then pulls off his coat – Parker frowns when she sees the black and purple bruises on his arm. No one at school would fight him back… so who gave him the bruises?

With a frown he pokes at one and sighs. Then he lifts his shirt and Parker winces at the bruises on his chest. Someone had stomped on him, and it looked like they'd been wearing boots.

Parker's arm starts hurting, and she leans a little harder against the garage.

Someone was beating up Jay, just like he'd beaten up that kid.

Jay lowers the shirt carefully, and pulls his coat back on. The buzzer rings and Parker jerks to hide behind the garage. There's a little potted plant next to the big doors, and she crouches behind it – Jay passes her without noticing, and she follows him back to school.

Mrs. Jane keeps her back during lunch because she was late getting back, and Parker blames her broken arm for the math mistakes and tardiness.

o

The next thing she needs to do is find out who's hurting Jay, and why. Parker's supposed to walk home from school, and Nate and Sophie will be home an hour after that. That gives Parker about an hour to follow Jay, and hope that she can learn something useful before anyone notices she's missing.

Jay doesn't leave school right away; it feels like forever, but when Parker checks her watch, it's only been twenty minutes. Jay just stands there, leaning against the wall, watching as all the other children disappear.

Parker's a little worried that the kid who Jay beat up yesterday is going to show up, and she tells herself that this time, she won't just watch. This time she's going to do something, and she's going to help the kid, and she won't let Jay hurt him anymore.

She doesn't see the kid though, and so neither does Jay, and when he finally pushes himself off the wall and starts to walk away, Parker only has half an hour left. He heads down the street, the way Parker walks to get home.

Parker keeps her distance, worried that if she follows too close, and he turns around, she won't have anywhere to hide. But Jay walks slowly, and whenever he turns a corner, or crosses the street, she can always catch up to him.

They pass the street that Parker has to turn on to get home, and she keeps following Jay. It feels like he walks forever, and when she remembers to check her watch, she realizes that she doesn't have much time left.

Finally Jay turns down a street, and Parker watches as he looks up at a building she's never seen before. It looks old and neglected, the paint all peeling and the windows dirty and cracked. Parker watches him smoke another cigarette before he goes inside.

Parker memorizes the building number, and the street that she's on.

She runs almost the whole way home – Sophie and Nate come home almost ten minutes after she does, and Sophie's looking at her strangely.

But then Nate has a drink, and then another, and another with dinner, and by the time Parker's taken the painkillers for her arm because the running made it hurt, Sophie isn't paying attention to her anymore.

o

"Hardison?" Parker asks, jumping up onto the back of the couch – it's early in the morning, he's playing around on the computer, using the television screens. Nate and Sophie are talking upstairs, and Parker isn't going to interrupt them.

Hardison looks up at her, and smiles when he notices she's hanging off the couch. "S'up mama?" he asks, and she flips over the back, landing beside him.

"If I wanted to find stuff out about a building, and I knew where it was, what would I do?"

Hardison stops typing, looking over at her, interested. "Where is it that you need to know about?"

Parker shrugs – she doesn't want anyone to know what she's doing. They won't like it, and she doesn't want to get in trouble. "Just stuff about a building," she says, and Hardison looks like he wants to ask more, but he doesn't.

"Do you know the address?" he asks.

Parker knows the address of this apartment, and Hardison's address, and Eliot's, and Sophie's (even though Sophie didn't really live there anymore), and of the safe place she could go to if there was trouble. And she knows this address too, but she doesn't know if she wants to give it to Hardison – he might get suspicious.

"I dunno how to help you if you don't tell me," he says after a second, and Parker wants to do it by herself, but she knows that she doesn't know how, even if she is pretty good with the Internet.

Hardison raises an eyebrow when she gives him the address, but he puts it into one of his programs, and after a few seconds, there's a description of it, the list of tenants, and blueprints that look old. "Carson Place," he reads, "One of the cheaper places in town. Police are there nearly every night, lot of violence and the like, see, this window has a record of the cases at the address… Parker, how do you know about this place?" he asks, and he's looking worried, and concerned, and she doesn't want him to know, so she lies,

"I heard someone talking about it at school."

He doesn't look convinced. "Yeah, and what exactly were they talking about?"

"They were talking about how they had something stolen there."

"They were wandering around that place alone?" he asks, and Parker realizes that doesn't makes sense, because most kids didn't do anything without their parents,

"I mean, their parents did. While they were walking. Around outside, there."

Parker waits to see if Hardison believes her – he looks at her hard, and she tries not to look away; she can't remember if Sophie said looking away was lying, or if staring was lying, but she doesn't want to get in trouble.

Something softens, and Hardison sighs, "Okay bug. Just don't do anything stupid, 'right?"

"I won't," she promises, and then Sophie storms down the stairs, furious, and when she tells Parker to get ready to leave for school, Parker doesn't make her ask twice.

o

Jay had gone to Carson's Place, which was in a 'bad neighbourhood', and Parker needed to find a way to have more time to either go there again, or find out why Jay went there. He probably lived there, sometimes people had more than one home, like Sophie.

But the question was how she could manage to find more time to follow and watch him, without Nate, or Sophie, or Hardison, or Eliot knowing.

"Parker?" Mrs. Jane asks, and Parker looks up – she hasn't been paying attention, but there're two math problems on the board (27+38=_ and 41-12=_), and Mrs. Jane has her asking face on, so Parker says,

"65 and 29," without thinking. They're learning about adding and subtracting two digit numbers, and Parker doesn't know why, because they learnt adding and subtracting years ago, and it's like the same thing.

Mrs. Jane looks happy and unhappy, and Parker ignores the way the other kids stare at her. Usually she tries to keep from answering, or to at least pretend to think about it, but she's right, and it's too late to take it back.

Mrs. Jane starts lining up the numbers and explaining to the class how to do it the long way, and Parker thinks that maybe she can go at night or something, when Nate and Sophie are sleeping.

o

Going at night doesn't work, because Nate's still up when she goes downstairs to sneak outside.

"Hi Parker," he says softly, and Parker looks around for a glass, but there isn't one.

He holds his arms out to her, and smiles, and she crosses over to him, letting him pull her onto his lap, and hold her close.

There isn't a glass around, but she can smell the drink on him – he must have gone downstairs then, to the bar. "How's your arm?" he asks, warm and gentle, and she shrugs,

"It's okay. Sometimes it hurts, but then it usually goes away pretty fast."

Parker leans back into Nate's chest, and Nate's head is against hers, pressing down, but not too hard. "I should've kept you safe," he whispers, and Parker frowns,

"But you do." Nate's fingers touch her cast, and he squeezes her a little harder, and she shakes her head, "That wasn't you," she tells him softly.

"I should've been more careful," he tells her, and his words are heavy, and he sounds guilty, and sad, and Parker shakes her head.

She turns in his lap, throwing her leg across it and twisting until she's facing him. "But it was Millie's fault, not yours."

Nate doesn't listen though, just pulls her close, hugging her tight. If Parker didn't know that Nate didn't cry, she would think he is now. "I'm so sorry," he mutters, and his voice is shaky, and Parker's had people hurt her before, people who were supposed to take care of her and watch her, and this wasn't like that at all.

"No," she says stubbornly, pushing away from Nate, not letting him fall against her again. "Other people broke stuff before," she tells him, because he needs to understand, "But you don't. You never have. You keep me safe. You're Nate."

For a second he watches her, just watches – just looks at her, thinking something, feeling something, she doesn't know. But then he almost smiles, and he pulls her in again, this time gently, softly, and he says, "I never will."

Parker's dozing by the time Nate stands up, taking her with him. Parker sleeps with Nate and Sophie that night, and the sound of their breaths chase away any bad nightmares.

o

For three nights, Parker comes down, and either Nate's still awake, or Hardison's on the couch, and the windows have alarms on them she can't disarm quietly. Millie has detention for a week for pushing and hurting her, and Nate and Sophie seem okay with it. Mr. Jensen had called them, explained everything while Nate scowled. Nate wanted more, but Sophie kept saying that Millie was just a child.

So Parker's still trying to figure out how to get more time away from everyone, when she notices that there are signs on the library that say it's open until 6pm. 6pm would give her a lot of time to get to Caron's Place, where Jay lives, and back.

All she needs to do is figure out why she would want to stay in the library until 6pm.

After spending lunch time in the library, listening to people talking softly, and watching them pick at books, she learns that sometimes after school the book club meets. They meet Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and they talk about books and… stuff. Parker's not really sure, but it's all the cover she needs.

On Thursday night, she mentions it to Sophie, who's talking to Nate again, and Sophie mentions it to Nate, who looks suspicious, but is on the phone with Eliot about their current job, and doesn't ask anything more than what time they need to pick her up.

So on Friday after school, Parker waits right outside the door, hidden by the post of the overhang, waiting for Jay to push off the wall and move.

She hasn't seen Jay pick on anyone since he'd shoved dirt in that one kids' mouth, and she's kind of glad. As much as she wants to stop it from happening again, there's a sick feeling in her stomach that says she might not do anything differently. It's the scared, little girl part of her, and she hates it.

Finally, Jay shoves off the wall, and he heads down to the street, following the same path as before.

Only this time, when he starts smoking outside the building, someone much taller, and much bigger comes up to him.

Parker creeps a little closer so that she can hear, and she flinches as the guy grabs Jay's hair, pulling him down, "Whatcha doin' you little bitch?" the guy asks, pulling the cigarette from Jay's hand, "Smokin' ain't for little pussy's like you."

Jay reaches up to steady himself on the guy's arm, and Parker feels the sickness in her stomach as the guy punches Jay in the stomach, "Such a fuckin' bitch – Joe should make you sleep outside, just like the little runt you are."

"Joe likes me," Jay growls, and he tries to kick at the guy's leg, but the guy just sidesteps, pushing Jay down onto the ground.

"Joe hates you," the guy says, and Parker can see his face, and see the back of Jay's head as he looks up at the guy.

It's happening again, just like before, except this time, Jay's the one who's being beat up – and she's still the one who's watching.

"The only reason Joe wants you around is for the money he gets taking care of your sorry ass."

Parker closes her eyes – she's heard that before. Or something like that. It sounds so familiar, and it makes her so angry, and she wants to cry, but she knows that she can't. It's happening all over again, and she's standing there and doing nothing…

"Let's see how much Joe likes you if you wander in with a broken nose," the guy sneers, and when Parker opens her eyes to see him towering over Jay, she can't wait there anymore.

Without a word she darts out from the corner where she's been hiding, throwing herself at the guy on top of Jay. He hits the cement first, and she rolls off of him when she feels the impact – he seems surprised, and he doesn't get up as she scrambles onto her feet.

"The fuck?" he asks dazed, and Parker kicks him in the face before he can realize what's happening – he howls, his hands covering his face in an instant, and she runs to Jay and starts tugging on his hand.

Jay stares at her, uncomprehending, and she shakes his arm – he's heavy, and she can't get him up herself. "Move!" she hisses, and then they're running, and the guy is chasing after them, and he's yelling, and swearing, but Parker knows how to disappear in the alley ways, and they get far enough away to hide behind a garbage bin as the guy goes running past.

Jay's out of breathe and staring at her, and she's trying to figure out why she just saved the guy who made Millie break her arm.

The cast is a little itchy, and she tries to wiggle it a little to make it better, but that just makes it hurt.

Jay's still staring at her a minute after that, and Parker backs away from him, checking that the older guy isn't coming back through.

"Why'd you do that?" she hears Jay ask, and she turns around, in the middle of the alley, and shrugs.

It doesn't make any sense, why she did it. She just did, and she feels like she shouldn't have, now. Jay's mean, and he's a bully – why was she helping him?

"You're Parker," he says, and she says,

"Yeah," because who else would she be? Kids from school were so stupid.

Jay takes a step closer, and Parker takes a step back – she was slowing down so that he could keep up, so she knows that she can get away from him if she has to. "But why?" he asks again, and he looks confused, and he doesn't look like the mean kid on the playground anymore.

"You hurt that kid," she tells him, "In the other class. Why?" The kid from after school, the kid she'd watched him torment.

Jay shrugs after a second, "I dunno. 'cause."

"Why?" she asks again – there has to be an answer. It would just be so… pointless, if he did it just because.

"I don't know!" he says again, angry, and she takes another step back, and they look at each other for a long time after that.

Parker watches his feet, watches for any sign that he's about to lunge at her. He's stronger than her, but she can get away from him, if she notices it before he catches her. Finally, Jay speaks again: "He just, makes me angry. I don't know why. He just does. And I just – I just, just… I don't know," he repeats, and he looks honest, and confused, and Parker's feeling confusing things right now, so she knows how that feels.

"Don't do it again," she says, and she means it, and Jay thinks for a second before nodding,

"Okay."

Parker narrows her eyes, "Promise."

"I promise," Jay says, and she's never heard him speak so softly.

Things feel a little less tense, and Parker stops watching him so closely. He seems to relax a little, and he looks down the alleyway nervously.

"Who was that?" Parker asks, and he turns back to her,

"My brother," he says, and then he shakes his head, correcting himself, "My foster brother. He's not very nice – he just joined a gang. He… he likes everyone to know. He's just an asshole though."

Jay looks relaxed, and he's talking differently, and he's acting differently, and he seems like a completely different person than the one who was mean to that kid. "You're not very nice," she says, and Jay looks hurt by it, his face falling, his lips pressing down a little, his face sad,

"I know."

A door opens behind her and Parker jumps, but it's just some girl with a trash bag. She looks at them for a second before blowing a big bubble with her gum – it pops, and she chews on it loudly as she tosses the trash in the larger bin.

"Come on," she tells Jay, because as much as she likes alley's better than the street, they're still not the best places to talk. And since Jay's talking to her, she thinks that maybe he'll just tell her who's hurting him.

It takes a second, but Jay does follow her; she climbs over the chain-link fence, and he pushes past a hole near the bottom of it. They pass another few buildings, and Parker opens the gate to a park. There're a couple of trees, and she picks one, climbing it quickly and waiting in the branches.

Jay frowns at her when he gets to the bottom of it, but there's a branch almost next to the ground, and he manages to jump up to it, and climb up beside her.

"Stay over there," she tells him, pointing to the other side of the tree – she wants to talk to him, but she still doesn't trust him. Jay scoots over to the spot cautiously, his hands gripping the bark underneath him tightly.

"Why'd you help me?" he asks again after it's quiet for a while, and Parker wishes she knew.

"I didn't feel right watching," she settles on, "I just had to do something."

"No one's ever done that before," Jay tells her, quietly, and she can barely hear it over the noise of the park. Parker doesn't know what she's supposed to say to that, so she doesn't say anything.

There are birds, higher up in the tree, and she watches them and thinks about flying until she remembers that she wanted to ask something. "Who gave you those bruises on your chest?" she asks, and Jay freezes, totally still. "I saw them a couple days ago, when you were in the alley."

"You shouldn't have watched me," he tells her, angry. "What were you doing that for?"

"I wanted to know why you were being so mean to everyone!" she says, glaring, and he stops, and his anger fades, and he suddenly looks young.

"My brother," he says, quietly, and she thinks back to the guy they ran away from. Short buzz cut, crooked nose, tattoos on his neck, and a handkerchief in his back pocket. Ripped jeans, ripped shirt, ripped jacket.

"What's his name?" she asks, thinking that if she has a name, maybe she can look it up later, when no one's around to watch.

"Yarel Mwenkis," Jay says, looking uncomfortable.

Parker nods – Yarel Mwenkis was hurting Jay. So the next question is why? "Why?" she asks, and Jay glares at her,

"I don't know!" he shouts, and Parker feels like he shouts a lot. "He just does, okay?!"

It's not a very good answer, but at least it's something. "Has he… been hurting you for long?"

Jay shrugs, with one shoulder, and he looks ashamed. "S'long as I've been there."

It occurs to Parker then, that Jay doesn't live with his real parents, just like Parker doesn't live with hers. Nate adopted her, back when her found her, but before that, she'd been in all sorts of different foster homes. "You're a foster kid?" she asks, and he nods. "How long?"

"Couple of years…" he looking at her curiously, "You?"

She shakes her head, "Not anymore." Not since she found Nate.

"Lucky," Jay says softly, and he actually sounds nice when he says it. A little jealous and wistful, but nice.

They spend a few more minutes up in the tree, just sitting there, and then Parker looks at her watch. She's got half an hour to get back to school, and she jumps off the tree.

"Where're you going?" Jay shouts, leaning out but keeping a good grip.

Parker looks up at him – where does he think she's going? "I'm supposed to be in the library."

"Oh," he says, and he looks maybe a little disappointed.

Nate'll be waiting for her at school, but Jay has to go back to Carson's Place. "Is it safe there?" she asks, and Jay shrugs,

"It's okay. Not the worse. It's mostly just Yarel, that makes it bad."

Parker nods, because that's just the way it goes sometimes. But it doesn't sound too bad, if it's just Yarel. Things could be a lot worse. "Stop hurting people," she tells him as she leaves, and she hopes that he'll actually listen.

o

"How was book club, love?" Sophie asks, putting the car in drive. Parker's in the backseat, and she stares at Sophie for a moment, wondering what on Earth she's talking about. "The library, after school today?" Sophie says, but Sophie sounds like she's suspicious, and Parker nods – right, her cover story.

"Good. We read a book about rabbits."

Sophie asks her about the rabbit book on the whole way home – Parker's glad that they're learning how to write book reports in school this week, and the book that the teacher is using for as an example is about rabbits.

When they finally get home, Parker runs up to the apartment as fast as she can. It's unlocked, and she lets it close behind her as she runs up the stairs to her room. In the notebook that has all the stuff about Millie in it, she starts writing down all the stuff she learnt about Jay, and Yarel.

Eliot comes into her room when she's writing out what happened with Yarel, and she quickly hides it under her pillow.

"What was that?" Eliot asks, and Parker shakes her head,

"Nothing."

Eliot looks at her, evenly, and she squirms for a second, but he won't stop looking until she tells him, and she hates that he knows it. "I was just writing. About, my day, and stuff."

"Like a diary?" he asks, and she wrinkles her nose,

"Diaries are stupid." They have to do a 'history' diary for socials.

Eliot laughs though, and says, "How about a journal?"

"Okay," Parker shrugs, because it doesn't matter to her, as long as Eliot believes it.

But Eliot doesn't usually come up to her room, and she waits on the bed, watching him, her fingers touching her cast. "There's some blood on your shirt," he tells her, touching the sleeve of it gently, and she finally knows why he's there. "Something happen?"

Parker shakes her head, but he takes her hand and pulls it towards him, looking it over. "You sure?" he asks, turning her hand over, and they can both see the red and the small flecks of blood on her palm from when she rolled on the cement.

Instinct tells Parker not to pull her hand away, and she stares at him; Eliot won't hurt her, but he could, if he wanted to. And she just lied to him, and he knew it. But he wouldn't hurt her, she tells herself, he wouldn't, not ever.

He has her hand, and it wouldn't be hard for him to twist it – to pull it forward, and to throw her onto the ground, and kick her and yell. And she lied, so why wouldn't he? Why wouldn't he treat her just like anyone else would? Like people used to treat her?

"Hey," he says softly, and he lets go over her hand, and he slides off the bed so that he's kneeling on the ground, and his elbows are on the bed, and his hands are close, but they're not touching her. "You went away a bit, Parker."

The words pull her out of her thoughts, and suddenly she's looking at Eliot, and he's not towering above her anymore, he's just watching her, waiting. "There you go," he tells her, and she wonders why she would ever think that Eliot would hurt her.

"What happened?" he asks softly, and her hands might be shaking a little, and she pushes them under the pillow. "Parker," he says, insistent.

"I saw someone getting beat up," she tells him, her hands curling into fists, and the arm in the cast aches from it. "I stopped them."

"At school?" he asks, and Parker shakes her head, but he doesn't ask where. "That was a good thing to do," he tells her, reaching out and putting a gentle hand on her casted arm.

It's not the whole truth, and he wouldn't sound so nice if she told him about how she'd just watched, the first time. "Don't tell Nate?" she asks desperately, and he studies her for a second before nodding,

"I won't." Eliot presses a kiss into her hair, and she watches him go. When he's at the door, he turns around and says, "Dinner's soon. And I should show you some stuff this weekend – how to defend yourself. I'll talk it over with Nate?"

Parker nods, and waits until he's shut the door before she pulls out her notebook.

Why did lying to Eliot feel bad?

o

Parker hides in her room while Nate and Sophie fight quietly downstairs – Nate's been drinking a lot, and Sophie doesn't like it, never has, and they like to pretend that Parker doesn't know, so she lets them.

Even though the door is closed, she can hear them sometimes, when their voices rise. Usually they have dinner an hour or two after school, but they've been arguing for a while, and Parker figures they'll probably be at it until Eliot or Hardison show up.

But since they're fighting with each other, they haven't said anything about what she's trying to do – and Parker's pretty sure that Nate knows something's going on. Parker thinks that Sophie might know too, and Hardison's suspicious, and Eliot thinks it's another thing – but Nate knows that it's something, and whenever she looks over at him, he's watching her.

Jay's hasn't hurt anyone at school for a couple days, and the last time Parker followed him during recess, he had new bruises on his arm. It makes Parker's stomach flip-flop a little bit, and she wants to do something about it. She has to do something about it.

So she's been trying to remember how Nate makes plans, and she thought the whole weekend, but she'd come up with nothing. Eliot had started to teach her how to fight a little – a mix of some weird sounding thing, and boxing. But they couldn't do too much because of her cast, and Nate wanted them to be careful. So far Eliot just talked a lot, and showed her how to hold her arms, and it'd been a little boring.

The problem was, she had to get rid of Yarel somehow. Frame him for something, and then get the police to arrest him, and take him away from Jay and his foster parents.

Parker spends the rest of the night staring up at her ceiling, and the room gets dark around her. Eliot and Hardison don't come, and when Nate and Sophie are finally done fighting, Parker's fallen asleep, and Sophie has to wake her up so that she can have something to eat.

Nate's not in the apartment, and when Parker comes downstairs the next morning and he's sleeping on the couch, smelling like the bar, she starts to worry that maybe this Nate and Sophie fight isn't like the others.

o

Nate gives her a hug, and tells her to be good, and Sophie makes her toast – but it feels weird, and wrong, and they're angry at each other. They're avoiding each other, and every time Sophie tells her to do something, Parker has to remind herself that she doesn't need to make sure it's okay with Nate. That Nate'll only get angrier if she starts looking to him – they're like a family now, and she has to listen to Sophie just as much as she listens to Nate.

So when Nate tells her to get ready to go to school while she's eating the breakfast that Sophie's told her to eat… she doesn't know what to do.

"Nate," Sophie says, and she's sharp, and it cuts through Parker even though it's not meant for her.

Nate ignores Sophie, and Parker tries to be invisible. "Parker, go upstairs and get your stuff." Parker watches Sophie without looking at her, and there's only been a few times when she's seen Sophie so angry.

"Go," Sophie says, and that's all Parker needs – she slips off the seat as quickly as she can, toast left behind, and runs up the stairs.

They start arguing, and Parker gets her stuff and then waits against the wall by her door. She doesn't want to go down while they're fighting. Nothing would happen to her – she knows nothing would happen to her, but it still feels wrong.

Nate starts yelling, but Parker tries not to listen. He's yelling about something that doesn't make sense, and maybe it was a job or something, or maybe it wasn't anything. And then the door slams closed and Parker jerks, wondering if she's alone. But after a minute, Sophie calls up to her, telling her to come down.

Sophie drives her to school, and she's unhappy, and upset. And not upset and unhappy with Parker, but it feels too much like the times that Parker wants to forget, so she doesn't say anything.

They're almost at school when Sophie says, "You've got that book club today after school, don't you love? Wednesday's and Friday's?"

It takes Parker a couple seconds to remember her lie from last week, about the after-school book club. "Right," she nods, wondering what she's going to do at school until six. Three hours was fine when you had to follow someone, but when you were just hanging around by yourself?

"How about Hardison or Eliot pick you up after that, hm? You can stay with them for a little bit?"

If Sophie hadn't been so angry, and if Nate hadn't slept on the couch, Parker wouldn't have thought anything of it. "Why?" she asks, softly, a little worried that Sophie's going to get really mad at her for asking. Usually when people were angry, they didn't like being questioned.

"Just a couple things we need to get done, this and that, nothing too serious – but you haven't seen Hardison for a couple of days, yeah?"

Parker touches her cast, pulling it against her stomach. Nate and Sophie wouldn't be doing things if they were angry at each other, and they were angry at each other. It doesn't feel right, and she's got an awful feeling about it.

"Can't I see Nate?" she asks quietly, and Sophie jerks the car, just a little, and Parker curls up a bit – she asked the wrong question, and now Sophie's upset with her.

Parker's going over the way back to the apartment from school in her head; maybe if she leaves right after Sophie drops her off and runs all the way, she'll be able to get back there before Sophie does. And then she'll be able to wait for Nate there, and make sure that everything's all right.

Sophie pulls up to the school, but she doesn't unlock the door. Instead, she turns around, looking back. "I'm sorry about this morning Parker, with Nate and I, and all. But love, it was just a fight. And we shouldn't have brought you into it, but Nate and I – and you? We're okay. Nothing's going to change between us. What happened this morning's got nothing to do with you."

Except, when Nate was yelling, he was yelling something about her, and how it wasn't supposed to be like this. And Sophie sounds like she usually does – like what she's saying is true, and it just sounds so right.

"We just need some time, is all," Sophie's saying, "To talk things through. So either Hardison or Eliot are going to pick you up from school today, after your book club, and we'll come get you tonight, yeah?"

There's a small part of her that doesn't believe it – that doesn't think fights like that can just be talked through. But then again, it is Nate and Sophie… they'd fought before, and things always turned out okay.

"Okay," she says quietly, and Sophie reaches back and squeezes her leg,

"You're a good girl Parker; we would never let you go anywhere without us."

And Parker believes that, and she finally nods. Sophie tells her to get going, and they hear the school bell, and Parker says bye – she won't run back to the apartment, not yet. She just wants to believe Sophie so badly.

o

Book club is stupid. They're reading some weird book about a vampire and a stupid girl, and she only lasts a chapter or two before she gets bored and wanders away into the shelves of books.

What she needs to do is make Yarel steal something. And then call the cops when he does steal it, so they can catch him doing it. But the only thing she knows about him is that he's part of a gang. And that he doesn't like Jay.

It's not hard to leave the library without the teacher noticing, and when Parker wanders outside, Jay's sitting on top of the bicycle racks, smoking.

"That's gross," she tells him, pulling herself up with one arm – her cast doesn't hurt much anymore, but she still can't put much weight on it.

Jay exhales a cloud of smoke, and says, "Whatever."

"Does Yarel steal things?" she asks. The field is empty and almost everyone's gone home – Eliot or Hardison are going to come and get her in two hours, and it feels like such a long time.

For a while Jay doesn't answer, smoking quietly – Parker doesn't like the smell, never has, but she doesn't ask him to stop. "Ever since he joined the gang, he's been hiding stuff in his room. I think he's doing drugs, or something."

Drugs – drugs are good. Parker knows that the police don't like drugs. Nate doesn't like drugs either, and whenever they had a job that involved them, he got really serious.

"Call the police and tell on him," Parker says, and Jay glares at her – for a second she thinks he might want to hit her, and she grips hard around the bike rack, just in case.

But Jay doesn't hit her, just shakes his head angrily, "I don't tattle."

Parker frowns – it didn't seem like such a big deal to her, but she knew he wasn't going to change his mind. He had that look. "Okay, then… we need to make him get himself caught, some way."

Jay finishes off his cigarette with one last inhale, and tosses it to the ground. "You can't just make people get caught," he tells her, rolling his eyes and jumping off the bicycle rack, "He's not stupid."

Parker jumps off the rack too. "You can make people get caught," she argues, because she's seen Nate do it a hundred times. And usually, the police happen to show up at the right place and the right time. "Where does he get the drugs from? And where does he take them?"

"I don't know," Jay says, and he's getting frustrated, and Parker takes a few steps back, just in case.

"Find out," she tells him, and he looks at her like she's crazy. But it's what she needs, and she remembers Nate telling Hardison, and so she tells Jay, "Just do it," and walks away.

o

"Hey mama," Hardison says as Parker climbs into the back of his car. It's not really his car – it's Eliot's car, the sporty red one with the strips, but for some reason Hardison's driving it. "Eliot got caught up shopping – something about getting fresh fish – we're gonna head back to mine and wait for him there, cool?"

"Is Nate going to be there?" she asks, buckling in, and Hardison glances at her through the rear view mirror.

"Not so much – but Sophie was sayin' that they'll be coming by tonight to pick you up, so you'll see him then. Everything alright?" he asks after a second, and she nods, staring out the window, wondering if Sophie and Nate are still fighting. "How was school?" Hardison asks, and he pulls into traffic, and drives past the street that goes to Nate's.

"It was stupid," Parker tells him; if she leaves Hardison's to go back to the apartment, Nate's going to be really mad at her. And so will Hardison, and Sophie. And probably Eliot too – she frowns, thinking she probably should've just gone back to the apartment instead of staying at the book club.

There's quiet for a bit, and Hardison glances up to look at her again, "Not feelin' too talkative today, are ya?" he asks, and she shrugs. If she knows where Yarel's going with the drugs, she should be able to tell the police, and get him caught.

Hardison turns the radio up, and hums along to a few songs. When they get to his house, she does her homework on the living room floor while he does stuff on the computer, and eventually Eliot comes home and makes sushi. Parker doesn't want to eat it at first, but eventually they convince her that it'll be good, and she finds that she likes the chunks of tuna wrapped in rice.

Parker and Hardison play video games for a while, while Eliot watches, and then the doorbell rings and Sophie's there to pick her up – but there's no Nate.

Sophie doesn't say much on the way home, just asks about book club, and what they did in class, and what her homework was, and when they get home, Parker runs up the stairs to see if Nate's in the bed, but he's not.

There's a hole in her stomach, and it's starting to make her whole body feel invisible when Sophie comes up behind her, turns her around, and hugs her. "Hush love," she whispers, and Parker realizes that she's crying – Nate isn't here, and she doesn't know where he is, and she should've come home straight after school to make sure he was okay.

"I want Nate," she says, and she hates that she's crying, and she hates that she's holding on to Sophie so tightly.

"There there," Sophie mutters, and somehow Sophie manages to pick her up, and carry her downstairs, and they're sitting on the couch, and there's a blanket wrapped around her.

"I want Nate," Parker says again, and she doesn't understand why she's crying so hard, but she is.

Sophie looks sad and angry at the same time, and she wraps an arm around Parker, pulling her in. "Not to worry – he hasn't gone anywhere. He'll be back soon, you'll see. Now how about we set a movie on, and I'll make you a cuppa and some popcorn, and we'll have a nice night in, yeah? Just the two of us?"

But Sophie doesn't mention where Nate is, or what he's doing, or why he isn't here. Parker falls asleep with her head in Sophie's lap, and when Sophie wakes her up, she doesn't want to go sleep in her bed. "Please don't," she mutters, bleary eyed and terrified that Nate's left her, and now Sophie's going to leave her too.

Sophie takes her upstairs, and tucks her into Nate's side of the bed. Parker's nearly asleep again when Sophie comes back, ready to sleep, and in the morning, Nate's still not there, and he's not downstairs. Sophie takes her to school, but she can't convince Parker that everything's going to be okay.

o

The school bell rings and Parker shoves her things into her backpack – Jay had been giving her glances during lunch, and passed her a note that said he needed to see her after school, but she needs to get back to the apartment and see if Nate's there.

Eliot's supposed to be picking her up, but he was going to be a little late, and she can make it to the apartment faster than he can take her there. Mrs. Jones reminds them all not to forget about their first person homework assignment, and Parker's already out the door.

Jay sees her running past the door of his classroom, and she catches his eye, and hopes he'll still be okay tomorrow. That it isn't important, or he's just going to tell her the place that Yarel's been taking the drugs to.

She's almost the first one out of the school, and she runs past the line of cars of parents waiting for their children, and down the street. She's out of breathe halfway home, but she keeps going – Nate might be there, and if he is, she needs to see him before he leaves, so that he can take her with him.

The door to the apartment is locked, and Parker pulls out her key to open it –there's silence inside, empty silence, and she calls out for Nate, and no one answers. Panicking, she runs up to his room, checking his things. But they're all right there, right next to Sophie's dresses and shoes, and a pair of Parker's pants.

Parker pauses in the middle of the room. If Nate isn't here, then where would he be? Sometimes he's on a job, but it didn't sound like they'd found someone new to help. And if he isn't on the job, or at home, then he was probably at the bar downstairs.

It takes less than a minute to get into the bar downstairs, and she goes through the back. Usually they didn't mind if she was in the bar with Nate, eating or something, but she knew that normally she wasn't allowed in there, especially not alone, and especially not to take the bottles of alcohol and bring them up to Nate.

When she pokes her head out the window, she notices that it isn't too busy – just a couple people, sitting here and there, and a bartender behind the bar, pouring out a shot. There's three people sitting at the bar, and one of them Parker recognizes as Nate.

"Nate!" She runs out the door and across the floor, and Nate turns on his seat, looking at her, surprised.

He hasn't showered in a while, and his body is all hunched over his glass, but she tries to climb up his leg anyway, wanting him to pick her up and set her in his lap.

The bartender glances down at her, at her arm in the cast, and frowns. Nate manages to lift her up, and she sits down on his lap, hugging him tightly. Nate didn't leave her; he was just down here the whole time. She doesn't really know why Sophie let her think he'd gone somewhere.

"Hey kid," he says, and his voice sounds deeper, and more tired than it usually is. He sounds sleepy, and drunk, and sad, and she doesn't know why.

"Are you coming back soon?" she asks, and his arms wrap around her a little, holding her close, and he nods,

"Yeah. Let's go back right now."

Parker holds his arms as he puts her down, and she wanted to hug him a little more, but at least he's coming back now. Parker holds his hand as he puts a wad of cash on the table, and they're about to leave through the back when Eliot nearly knocks down the front door.

"Parker!" he barks, worried and annoyed, and Parker remembers she was supposed to wait for him, and she didn't. "What – " he sees Nate and he stops, frowning. A few quick steps and she's up in his arms, being pulled away from Nate.

"No!" she shouts, and Eliot's tucked her under his arm so she can't move her arms, and she tries to fight against him, but he stops her when he says,

"Parker, stop," in his short, scary voice.

"Com'on," he growls at Nate, grabbing the shoulder of Nate's coat and pushing him forward – Nate stumbles a little bit, and Parker hates Eliot for just a second. But then Eliot's taking them upstairs, helping Nate go up on the steps properly, opening and closing the doors for them.

Parker watches as he pushes Nate down onto the couch, and she starts squirming again, but Eliot doesn't put her down. Instead, he takes her upstairs, and sits her on her bed, in her room. "You know how worried I was?" he asks her, hot and frustrated, and she feels a little guilty, because Eliot cares about her, and she knows she shouldn't have made him worry. "Every kid's gone and out of the school, and you're no where to be seen. What were you thinking, just leaving like that?"

It probably wouldn't be a good answer to tell him that she wanted to see Nate, so she stays quiet, staring at the ground.

"All the things that could've happened…" Eliot shakes his head, puts his hands up to his face, and takes a deep breathe. "You can't do that to me, Parker," he says through his fingers, and it almost sounds like he's growling, but it's too tired be that.

But she just wanted to see Nate, because no one would tell her where he'd gone, and she doesn't know why that's such a bad thing.

"I have to go deal with Nate," he says, almost under his breathe, and Parker doesn't like the sound of it. To her, he says: "You stay here – Sophie'll be back soon, and she'll come talk to you when she is."

He stands up, and Parker feels awful, because he's so disappointed. "I'm glad you're okay," he tells her, and he sounds like he means it, and when he leaves and closes the door behind him, Parker lays back on the bed, and wishes she could just be with Nate, and that Eliot wasn't upset.

o

Sophie's more upset than Eliot is, and she tells Parker that she's grounded, which means she can't watch TV, or go on the computer at all. Or play on Hardison's iPad, Parker discovers when Sophie gets mad at her for pulling it out of the desk. And she also isn't allowed to have dessert for the next two days, and she has to go to bed early.

And it's all because she just wanted to see Nate, because no one would tell her where he was, or why she couldn't, and she's so frustrated by the time she has to go to sleep, the only thing that keeps her from wanting to kick Sophie in the shins is that Sophie lets her go up to say goodnight to Nate before she goes to bed.

Nate's on the bed, and the room is stuffy; it smells like drunk-Nate, and Parker checks that he's breathing as Sophie watches from the door. He doesn't wake up when she touches his face, but he's snoring softly, and she leans over and kisses him on the head, like he does for her when she wasn't feeling well.

"I want to stay here," she tries, hugging the side of the bed, looking over at Sophie to see what she'll say.

Sophie shakes her head though, and walks into the room. "Nate needs to sleep, and so do you – come on then, you said your goodnights, time for bed now."

"I didn't say goodnight yet," Parker mutters, turning her face away from Sophie, and grabbing Nate's hand. Nate sniffs in his sleep, but he doesn't wake up, and Sophie slides her hand between theirs.

"We had a deal Parker," Sophie says patiently, and Parker pulls her hand away from Sophie's, half on the bed.

"I didn't say goodnight yet," Parker says again, and Sophie sighs, and sits down on the edge of the bed, and says,

"Say goodnight then."

Parker pulls herself onto the bed so that she's kneeling on it, and leans down over Nate's ear. "Goodnight Nate," she says softly, hugging him one last time. She's going to pull away, but she doesn't want to, and eventually it's Sophie who touches her shoulder gently, and pulls her back.

"Bedtime Parker," she says softly, pulling Parker off the bed, and steering her out the door.

And Parker goes, but she's not happy about it, and she squirms away from Sophie's hands. "I want to stay with Nate," she says as Sophie walks her to her room, and Sophie pulls back the blankets on her bed, and Parker gets in, frowning.

"Today's been a long day for all of us," Sophie says, pulling the covers over Parker, tucking her in, "And maybe tomorrow you can spend some time with Nate. But he's not feeling well right now, and he needs to have a nice long sleep."

"I don't want to go to sleep," Parker mutters, because it's not even nine yet.

Sophie tucks Parker's bangs behind her ear as she says: "You know very well why you're going to bed early. And you pull something like that again, and it won't be just for two days."

It's not fair – Nate didn't care that she left school to come find him, so why did everyone else?

"I just wanted to see Nate," Parker mutters, and Sophie sighs,

"I understand that, Parker. I really do. But you can't disappear without telling anyone where you're going, and you can't be making us worry like that. It's too dangerous and risky."

It doesn't sound like such a big deal to Parker – she was fine following Jay on her own, and getting back, wasn't she? "But I'm fine," she tells Sophie, who just shakes her head,

"But how were we supposed to know that? You're old enough to understand consequences now, even if you don't understand yet that we're acting in your best interest. Now hush, and close your eyes," she says, leaning down and kissing Parker on the cheek. "Sleep well love."

After Sophie leaves, Parker pulls out a flashlight and her notebook, and writes down her plan to get Yarel caught.

o

Nate's still sleeping when Sophie takes Parker to school. Sophie says that she can still go to book club today, since that was a 'positive educational influence'. But instead of going to the library after school, Parker meets Jay at the bike racks, where he's smoking again.

"They won't be happy if they catch you doing that here," Parker says, pulling herself up onto the bike racks, and tucking a leg under her.

Jay shrugs, "I don't care. Where did you go yesterday?" Jay asks, and Parker's about to answer when she sees the kid that Jay beat up that one time, come out of the doors. Jay's fists clench, and Parker gets ready to stop him.

The kid sees them watching him, and he squeaks, terrified – Jay jumps off the bike racks, and Parker jumps with him. Her arm is broken, but she can still tackle people, and she'll be able to distract Jay for long enough to let the kid get away.

"St-tay away from me," the kid says, and the scratch on his cheek from when Jay was shoving dirt into his face has finally faded into almost nothing.

Jay takes a few steps closer, and the kid freezes. Parker gets between them, standing her ground. "Don't," Parker says, and Jay's jaw is clenched, and he looks angry, and he looks like he wants to punch something, and he doesn't care what it is.

"But – " Jay starts, and Parker shakes her head,

"He didn't do anything. Don't do it, or you're just like Yarel."

The kid hasn't moved or said anything, and Jay glares at her, glares at the kid, and then throws his cigarette on the ground. "Whatever," he growls, stomping the cigarette out, and Parker turns around to the kid and gestures for him to leave.

Whatever was keeping the kid in place breaks, and he starts running, only stopping when he gets into the alley. He looks back a couple of times, and when Parker's sure he's gone, she turns back to Jay. "I won't help you if you keep doing that," she tells him, because Jay wasn't like that all the time, and she didn't want to help the part of him that was like this.

"You're not helping anyway – you know how pissed he got that you attacked him?"

"I saw," Parker says, putting together the new bruises that Jay had gotten over the weekend with what he was saying now. "But I have plan. I just need to know where he takes his stuff."

"And how is that supposed to help?" Jay asks – he's angry with her now, even though she didn't really do anything. But she can run away from him, and now that the kid's gone, she doesn't have to stick around much longer.

"If I know where he takes it, I can make sure that the police are there. And if I know when he's going to be there, I can make sure they're there when he is."

Jay doesn't believe her, and he laughs at her, "And how are you going to do that?"

"I will," she says, and she knows she can, she just needs to get some more information, and then she'll be able to have a real plan in place, just like Nate would.

"Yeah, sure," Jay says, and he sounds defeated, and Parker doesn't get why he won't just believe her – everyone believes Nate.

They wait in silence until Jay finishes his cigarette. "Fine, I'll do it," he mutters, annoyed, and Parker nods. He walks away in a huff, and Parker watches him go.

She wants to go back home now, but she's supposed to be in book club, and Sophie'll get mad at her again, if she just runs back home.

The teacher looks confused when she slips back into the library, but Parker ignores her and pulls out a notebook so that she can draw while the teacher reads.

o

Nate's sitting on the couch, with a blanket, and Parker wants to run over to him, but Sophie's holding onto her shoulders too tight. "Just an hour or two," Sophie says tightly, "And then Hardison'll come pick you up. We need you to stay there for the night."

It's not fair, and Parker doesn't want to go to Hardison's, and she squirms out from under Sophie's hands and pushes away from her, "Why? I want to stay here."

"Parker," Nate says from the couch, and Parker instantly feels bad for pushing Sophie, who looks like Jay did in the field – defeated.

Parker keeps her distance as she moves past Sophie, and heads to Nate, as quick as she can. "I don't want to leave," Parker says, holding Nate's hand, and he looks tired, and sick, and pale and sweaty.

"Listen to Sophie, okay?" Nate says, and it's not what Parker wants to hear.

Shaking her head, she crawls onto the couch, pulling Nate's blanket over her head, and presses herself against him, her arms wrapping around his waist.

"Parker," Nate sighs, but his arm comes down and he half-hugs her, and she hopes that Sophie'll just leave, so that she can stay here forever.

Nate coughs, and it sounds bad. Parker pokes her head out of the blanket, and Sophie's sitting on the armchair, watching them, and Nate leans back, so that he can hug her a little better.

"You're sick," Parker says, reaching up to touch Nate's nose, and Nate catches her hand – the cough didn't sound good, and his face looks wrong.

Nate nods, glancing at Sophie before looking down at her. "A little, yeah. Which is why you should stay with Hardison tonight."

Parker buries her face against Nate's chest. If Nate wants her to go, then he wouldn't convince Sophie that she didn't have to go. Still, she shakes her head, gripping hard at his t-shirt.

"I heard you gave Eliot a hard time yesterday," Nate says, and Parker glares at Sophie from the blanket – Nate knew that already, he was there, and he hadn't cared; why did Sophie have to make it into a bad thing?

"Nothing happened," she mutters, and Nate shakes his head,

"Doesn't matter. You don't do that, ever."

The words make her feel worse than anything Sophie could do to her, and Parker feels tears starting to burn her eyes. "I wanted to see you," she whispers, frustrated, "And no one would let me."

"Doesn't matter," Nate says again, and if he weren't hugging Parker, she'd have run up the stairs.

Sophie clears her throat, and asks, "Would you like a bite to eat, love?"

Parker doesn't want anything, but Nate says yes for her, so Sophie leaves to make something in the kitchen.

Nate tells her not to worry about it, that he's just a little sick, and he'll feel better in no time, and that he'll take her to a movie or something tomorrow. Sophie overhears and glares at him, and Parker wonders if they're trying to make Nate stop drinking again, and if that's why he's sick. But he's not angry at her, just tired, and slow, and when Hardison comes to get her, she's not happy about it, but at least Sophie won't be around and she might get to use the computer.

Until they're at the door, and Sophie's handing Hardison her backpack, and says, "Parker's grounded tonight, for disappearing on Eliot – make sure she's in bed by nine, and she doesn't touch any of your computer things."

"Computer things?" Hardison says, raising an eyebrow, "You know them things got proper names. I ain't playing around with just some normal, off-the-shelf, low-tech 'computer' things. It's like you're trying to – "

Sophie holds up her hands, and Parker can see her roll her eyes. "Alright, Hardison."

"Just sayin'," Hardison huffs, and he takes Parker's hand, and Parker yells bye to Nate, because he's upstairs, being sick in the bathroom.

o

"Hey there now," Hardison says, and he pulls his iPad out of her hands, flipping it around to see what she was doing. "Didn't you hear Sophie say no 'computer' things? I'm pretty sure this here qualifies as a computer thing." He looks down at her, expectant, and Parker shrugs,

"I finished my homework. I was bored." And she didn't get much further than turning on the maps app, and starting to type an address.

Hardison sits down on the couch beside her, and the cushions bounce a bit. "Yeah, I think that's the whole point of it. Time-honoured tradition of bein' grounded, and all. Still – you know what my Nana would do when I got in trouble?"

Parker shakes her head, and he opens his mouth to say something, but he stops before the words come out.

"Hey, you know that Sophie just loves you, s'all?"

That's what Hardison always says, when this happens, and Sophie's being mean, and usually Parker believes him, but sometimes it's just hard.

"An' Nate's not feeling too hot right now, so she's worrying about that too… could be worse, right?" Hardison says, and he's trying to make her happy, or laugh, and she realizes that Sophie could do a lot worse. Being grounded wasn't so bad, not considering the things some people did.

"You know what the best part about it is mama?" Hardison asks, and Parker shakes her head. He hands her a PlayStation controller, and she takes it tentatively. "You're with me, and sometimes, we just gotta bend the rules, right?"

"But Sophie – "

"I won't tell her," Hardison grins, and Parker almost smiles, "Will you?"

"No."

"Then we're shiny. But, we gotta play what I say, fair?"

Parker nods, and they play the samurai game until Eliot gets back at ten. It's late, but they haven't eaten, so Eliot makes them food, complaining about how Hardison was going to get them all in trouble, and how he didn't want to be their accomplice, and how playing video games for such a long time wasn't good for the posture, and fatigued the muscles in the fingers, wrists, and arms, and how you had to feed a body, with real, proper food too, not just junk food, and how Hardison was a terrible example to them all, and how Sophie was going to be on their case when she found out.

But in the end, Hardison convinces Eliot to keep their secret, and not tell Sophie, or Nate. It's almost midnight by the time Parker goes to bed, and she only thinks about going back to the apartment once.

o

Nate's feeling better when Eliot drops Parker off the next day, after he gives her a lesson in fighting. It's more of the same, talking about what she should do, instead of just doing it. Sophie's made dinner, and they talk about their last case while they eat, occasionally asking Parker about her day, or school, or something else.

Things are still a little weird between Nate and Sophie, but as Parker goes up the stairs to finish off her weekend homework, she sees Nate coming up behind Sophie, wrap his arms around her waist, and kiss her on the cheek.

It's a good sign, and it means things are starting to get back to normal.

The next day Nate takes her out to see a movie, and they see something with a guy, who does some thing, and everyone's really serious about it, but it's funny. It's all right, but Parker's more interested in the popcorn, and by the end of it, she's spilt soda on her cast. Nate just laughs and helps her clean it up – they need to go in tomorrow to get it checked anyway, so it's not too bad.

"Nate?" Parker asks on the car ride home, and he glances down at her for a second before turning his eyes back to the road,

"Yeah Parker?"

"How do you frame someone?"

Nate doesn't look like he's expecting the question, and he gives her another glance, "Why?"

Parker shrugs – she figured out what she was going to say this morning, but there was a part in the movie where they framed a guy, and so she pretends like she's thinking about that: "You and Sophie were talking about one of your cases yesterday. And the guy in the movie did it too. But how do you make sure that everything's going to work? And what's the best way to do it?"

For a little while, Nate's quiet, all thinking. He stares at the road and drives, but Parker knows the look.

"First thing," he says finally, and he sounds all serious, and Parker wonders why he thinks she's asking, "You need to make sure you have all the information you can get. You have to know who you're dealing with – what makes them tick. What makes them act the way they do, and what they want. That part's important; if you know what they want, you can use that to make them do what you need them to do.

"They're your mark – and there's a lot of ways to deal with them. Grifters, like Sophie, talk to them, and manipulate them. Grifters deceive, and pretend they're different people so that they get what they want. Hitters, like Eliot, are usually retrieval specialists. Usually get what they want through brute force – but if you're looking for something like information, or to get someone out of a situation that's unfavourable for them, you probably don't want to go in swinging.

"Hackers like Hardison use technology as their in. They hack into computers, or cars, or phones, businesses, offices, into security – anything, to get where they need to be. They can falsify information to get what they want. And thieves, in the most traditional sense, get in and out before anyone notices. So if you want to steal something physical, break into somewhere, or set up a trap, thieves are your best bet."

"And what do you do?"

"I make the plan. See, the kind of jobs you can do with a crew are a lot more involved and intricate than the ones you can do with just one or two people. There're a lot more variables, moving parts, things that you need to be able to foresee and account for. That's what I do – I figure out what the mark wants, and how to give it to him – in a way that we can take advantage of. I figure out the plan, what everyone needs to do, and what gets us the best result."

It was a lot of words, and Parker wasn't sure that she caught all of it. "So if you wanted to frame someone?" she asks, a little intimidated by how he answered last time.

"See, that'd depend on the why. And the what for. And the who."

Parker nodded – that wasn't as scary. But it didn't help as much either. "Oh."

"But the trick behind a great con or heist?" Nate glances down at her, and she knows this is the important bit. "You have to make sure you've got everything accounted for. That you know everything that could go wrong, and that you've planned for it already. You have to know what your options are if things start going wrong. And when they do go wrong, you have to make sure you keep a straight head and stay calm.

"You have to do your homework, do your research, know your mark, make a plan that'll get them put away – because if you destroy them, and you don't take into account what happens afterwards, they're going to come after you. And that never ends well."

"So you have to make sure they go to jail," Parker says, because that's what she's hearing. She has to make Yarel go to jail, so that he doesn't hurt Jay again, and so that he doesn't come after her.

Nate gives her a funny look and says: "Something like that."

o

"I followed him," Jay says, and it's lunchtime, and they're hanging out by the fence, because Mr. Richards is keeping a very close eye on them, so they can't disappear.

Parker nods, and asks, "And?" when Jay hesitates.

"Why do you think you can do this?" Jay asks instead, and Parker doesn't usually see him worried, but he is now.

But Parker's seen Nate do this a hundred times, and she knows that she can do it too. This piece of information, and she'll be able to come up with a plan that accounts for everything, and make sure that Yarel gets put away for a long time, so that he doesn't come after them. "Because Nate taught me how to."

Jay doesn't ask who Nate is, but he lookslike he doesn't quite believe her. "He's going to know I told you," Jay says, and he kicks at the rocks under his sneakers, "And he's going to kill me."

"No," Parker shakes her head, "He won't. I'll make sure he goes away and never comes back."

"And what if he doesn't?" Jay asks, and Parker hesitates. If she messes this up…

"Nate will help us."

Again, Jay doesn't ask who Nate is. Just leans back against the fence with a heavy breath and says: "Alright, I'll show you the place."

o

Yarel's in high school, and sometimes the high school kids have a day off when the elementary kids are still in school. It takes a week and a half of planning, but now it's Friday, and Yarel has a day off school, and it's time to put the plan into action.

Yesterday, Parker gave her teacher a note she'd written out in Nate's writing, with a signature on the bottom of it that matched his. It said that she was going to be away the next day, because of a couple appointments she had to go to. The teacher raised her eyebrow, but didn't say anything else.

So when Nate drops her off at school that morning, she heads towards the school, then past it – through the chain link fence, and into the nook in the alley between the garages that she'd seen Jay in earlier.

The school bell rings and all the kids leave the grounds… for a moment Parker worries that Jay won't show up, but he gets to the nook a few minutes later, frowning.

"You're late," Parker says, annoyed that her plan is already going wrong.

Jay shrugs, "Whatever. Ready?"

They leave their school things under a dirty wooden board, and make their way past the school, making sure to stay away from the windows, so no one can see them.

For a moment Parker feels guilty for letting Nate think that's she's at school when she's really not, but that passes as soon as they get in place across the street from Jay's home.

That's when they run into the first problem.

"He's still in there, right?" Parker asks, after they've been sitting on top of the garbage bin for half an hour. Jay looks over at her, looking uncertain,

"I don't know? I'm usually at school."

There's no point in hiding out if Yarel's already left, but if she asks Jay to go look, Jay's foster parents would realize that he wasn't at school – and if Yarel was still in the house, Yarel would be on to them.

There's a fire escape snaking up the side of the building and Parker asks, "Is there a window in Yarel's room?"

Jay nods, "Yeah."

"And it's by the fire escape?" is Parker's next question, and Jay has to think for a second before he nods,

"He is. The platform goes from the living room window, into his window. I think he sneaks out that way sometimes."

Which meant that if Parker climbed up the fire escape and looked through the window, she would be able to see if Yarel was still there. "Okay. Wait here," she tells Jay, and she's hopped off the bin before he says,

"Parker!"

"What?"

"We live on the seventh floor," Jay says, and Parker nods – right, that would help.

It takes her a second to figure out how to get up onto the fire escape – it's ten feet in the air, and she's not nearly that tall. But there're some rotting wooden pallets that she drags underneath it, and that gives her another few feet. It's still not high enough, so she stacks some pallets and then leans one upright on top of them.

The jump isn't easy, especially since she can barely use her left arm because of the break in it, but she finally manages to lift herself up onto the ladder, which doesn't spring to the ground like most of them do, since she's not heavy enough to make it.

It doesn't take long to climb up the stairs, and Parker counts the floors as she goes.

When she gets to the sixth one, she slows down, just in case Yarel is awake and looking out the window. Carefully, staying against the wall, she inches her way toward the window.

The window's covered with tick blinds from the inside to block out the sunlight. But the window itself is open, and Parker's glad she made sure to stay quiet.

Carefully, she reaches in and pulls two of the blinds apart, just enough so she'll be able to look through them.

It's dark in the room, and there's a small spot of light on the ground where she's looking through. It takes a couple seconds, and she holds her breath because of the gross smell coming out of the room – but finally her eyes adjust, and she can see a body in the bed, the blankets over it just barely moving up and down.

Yarel was still sleeping.

Letting the blinds fall together, she moves off the platform quietly, and then makes her way back down.

"That was cool," Jay says when she gets back, and she realizes that he must have been watching her the whole time.

Instead of answering, she says, "Yarel's still sleeping – I saw him in the room."

Jay nods. "So we just wait?" he asks after a second, and Parker shrugs,

"I guess."

o

It's almost noon by the time Yarel comes out of the building – they've been taking turns watching the front doors for him, and at one point Parker lifted a couple wallets, so they could get enough money together to get a sandwich from the café down the street.

They're in the middle of eating when Jay says through a mouthful of beef and ham: "Yarel!"

Parker looks where he's pointing, and sure enough, it's Yarel, looking like he just rolled out of bed and had been wearing the same clothes for two weeks. Parker's done it before, and she doesn't know why someone would do it, if they didn't have to.

"Hurry up," she says, because she finished her half of the sandwich five minutes ago. Hiding behind the corner, she pokes her head out, watching Yarel look both ways, and then cross the street.

She feels Jay behind her, and he sounds like he's chewing. "Follow me," she says, and she slips onto the sidewalk, watching Yarel closely as he turns around the corner. They move as quickly as they can without getting strange looks, and catch up to him on the next block.

He doesn't know that they're following him, but he does have his backpack on his shoulder, all ragged and worn.

"Just a little bit longer," Parker tells Jay, who's annoyingly loud at following people. They pass a few more streets, and then turn into the area with warehouses and big, old empty buildings.

When Yarel goes into the building on the right, Parker nods at Jay. "Go do it," she tells him, handing him a couple coins and the voice recorder she'd been keeping in her pocket. Jay takes them, looking nervous,

"Are you sure about this?" he asks. He almost looks concerned, but he's probably just scared that things aren't going to work out the way they're supposed to.

"Go. And make sure you call after twenty minutes."

Jay gives her another long look. "Okay," he says finally, taking a step back before turning and walking away.

Parker watches him go, making sure he's left her sight before creeping closer to the building.

There's an easy way in, a hole in the foundation that leads through a couple unused pipes, which Parker's small enough to crawl between. It leads into the basement of the warehouse, where there's a door locked from the outside.

It's easy to pick though, and it takes Parker a couple seconds to get it open. The deadbolt has key access on both sides, and it's only got two pins.

Then there's a hallway, and she needs to go left – left takes her to a room where there's a ventilation shaft that can hold her weight. It was dusty and old, and full of bugs, but it wasn't that bad.

Parker had made a map of it, in her notebook one day during math class after Jay had showed it to her.

o

The room with most of the drugs is a few feet down the ventilation shaft, and Parker passes, peering down to make sure that Yarel hasn't gotten there yet.

The first time Parker had seen someone in this place, she'd almost gotten caught. She'd been creeping down the hall until she heard someone, and slipped into an old bathroom that was missing a toilet. That's when she decided that the ventilation shaft was the easiest way to get around.

It was almost a straight shot to the room where she thought Yarel would be – everyone who came into the place came through the waiting area, with the couches and the burnt boards and stuff.

Parker carefully lowers herself into the closet that shares a wall with the waiting area, waving the dust away from her face and trying not to sneeze.

There was a hole in the wall she found before, and you just needed to peel away the old wallpaper to see it. It led to the waiting room, but it was hidden behind a large desk.

When she looks through it, Yarel's sitting on one of the couches, and Parker can see his bag beside him, on the floor.

All she needs to do is get to the bag. There's a tracker she'll clip onto it too, just in case he got away before the police could find him.

He's close enough, and she just needs a couple of seconds. Parker glances up at the vent, waiting – she should have timed it right…

There's a small crack, and a bit of black smoke starts coming through one of the vents.

Parker grins as Yarel stands up, concerned. He stares at the vent, and it doesn't take long for him to go investigate. When he does, Parker runs out as quietly as she can, passes the bag, and drops behind the couch just as the door opens.

"Yo, Yarel," someone says, and thier voice is deep, and they sounds like the boss. "Com'on back wi' me, my man, 'n let's see what'cha got."

"Is that normal?" Yarel asks, and Parker guesses that he's pointing up at the smoke coming from the vent – the wire she set is on a timer, and the smoke coming out should have mostly stopped.

"Nah, don'cha worry 'bout that. Com'on back," the guy says, and Parker holds her breath as Yarel picks up the bag and leaves.

The door closes, and Parker doesn't hear anything – now all she needs to do is get out and get back to Jay's apartment.

The front door is a lot easier to get out of then it is to get into, and Parker slips out the door, dodges around the camera, and runs down the street.

o

"9-1-1, state your emergency."

Jay clicks play on the recorder, holding it up to the pay phone and hopes that Parker won't get them both killed.

"I need police at 1768 Harrison Way – there's an old abandoned warehouse, and I just heard something, I will play it from the phone now…"

The voice on the recording is Parker, but it sounds a little different – like she's trying to make her voice deeper. But the operator listens to the call, and he hangs up as soon as the recording is done – then he runs as quickly as he can back home.

o

Parker's waits outside Jay's apartment – the next time she does this, she's going to need to borrow some of the comms from Hardison, because not knowing what's going on with Jay is making her impatient. She's pacing in the alleyway when Jay finally shows up, and she stops abruptly.

"Did it work?" she asks – it's almost four now, and she doesn't know what took him so long getting back from the payphone.

Jay shrugs, "I called and played it like you told me, and then I ran away. I don't know if it worked or not."

"What took so long?" is her next question, because he should've been back here, where they agreed to meet, at least a half hour earlier.

Jay looks a little embarrassed, and he glances at the house, "I wanted to make sure no one was following me."

Which makes sense to Parker, but she still doesn't know how that could so long. "The police should be here soon if it did – when do you normally come back from school?" she asks, and he shrugs,

"About now?"

"Go," Parker tells him, "And don't tell anyone."

o

"How was book club today?" Nate asks, and Parker gets into the back seat. The police had shown up at Jay's home half an hour after he'd gone in – she watched as more squad cars came, and left when they started carrying out boxes. They must've found the bag of white powder she'd taken out of Yarel's bag in the warehouse and planted in his room.

"Parker?" Nate asks again, and Parker shrugs.

She'd gotten back to the school around five, just in time to clean all the dust and stuff off her before leaving with the book club group. Nate's looking at her strangely through the rear-view, and she has the weirdest feeling that he knows. "Okay," she says eventually.

"Yeah? And how was school?"

Parker watches the stuff go by outside the window, and shrugs again, "It was boring. We're learning how to draw 3-D shapes in art class," which wasn't untrue – the teacher had said they would be, and Parker already knew how, so it wasn't like she'd missed anything, "And stuff."

"Nothing out of the ordinary happened?" Nate asks, and Parker looks out the window, pretending to think.

"Nope."

o

"You've got to be kidding me," Sophie laughed, unwilling to believe Nate's statement. Nate couldn't help but smile – he found it charming, that she didn't think Parker was capable of it. Or rather, that Sophie knew Parker was capable of it, but she didn't believe that Parker would actually do it.

Nate turned the volume down on the eleven o'clock news, "That was her," he insisted; they were showing the same clip of the 'breaking news': the gang that had been in the cocaine trade had been busted today, in an odd series of happenstances.

"You can't be serious – Nate, I know Parker's… special, but you honestly believe that she orchestrated this? When would she have had the time?"

Nate raised his eyebrow, not sure if it was a serious question. Sophie had noticed the blood on Parker's shirt one day after book club, and she couldn't have missed all the other signs that all indicated Parker hadn't been spending three hours sitting patiently still, listening to books she could never remember, being read.

"She wouldn't have," Sophie whispered, and Nate winced at her tone – apparently, Sophie hadn't caught them. Or, hadn't wanted to.

Nate put a hand on her arm as she went to stand, ready to bust into Parker's room. And probably find her up with an iPad under the covers – he'd been missing the one from his desk for a couple of days now, and he had a strong hunch about where it'd gotten to. "Don't," he said lightly, more a request than a demand, "And I'm not saying that it's okay," Nate reassured, seeing her protest, "I'm just saying that this time… it worked."

"What on Earth must've happened?"

"That kid's brother," Nate said, pausing the television on a blurry photo of one of the younger kids that was being investigated - Yarel Mwenkis. They weren't mentioning names, but Nate had it figured out. "Jay Smithson. He's in the grade above Parkers."

"And?" Sophie asked, providing the appropriate prompt.

"He lives at Carson's Place with his foster parents. Hardison was helping Parker sniff around the address." Hardison had come and asked him about it, but Nate hadn't seen anything immediately suspicious in her research.

"But why was she curious about him?"

He'd asked the same thing – and done a bit of his own research. "That girl Millie pushed Parker off the monkey bars, but she didn't do it because she wanted to."

"What did you do Nate?"

"I dug around a little bit," he said defensively, "Nothing too much. Enough to know that Millie isn't the kind of kid who would have ideas like that – I'm betting pushing Parker was Jay's idea. And I'm betting that Parker figured it out too, and that's why she followed him to Carson's Place."

"But that's all the way over… oh, she didn't."

Finally, it seemed like Sophie was coming around to the idea of Parker conning them. "Nothing happened," he reminded her – unsafe as it might've been, and as unsettling it was that Parker was already getting better at deceiving them, things had gone alright this time.

"Of course you can't think of anything but how clever she's been," Sophie glares, and he clears his throat uncomfortably. "Never mind the danger she put herself in."

"But nothing happened," he repeated, and he couldn't help the pride that came with knowing she could manage for herself. "And imagine how badly this messes with the cartel."

"Our little eight-year-old girl is messing around with the drug cartels, and you're pleased about it?"

This was quickly turning sideways on him, and the way Sophie was looking at him didn't bode well. "I'm not saying that it wasn't stupid and reckless," he backpedalled, "I'm just saying that she was smart about it."

"And what happens when they figure out it was her?" Sophie demanded.

"Have you heard the message dispatch got?" he asked, turning up the volume, and it was only a few seconds until they started playing the 9-1-1 audio over video of the warehouse raid.

The voice was Parker's but it was masked. "The recorder's been missing for a week – she modulated her voice. They have nothing to match it to her."

"And what makes you so sure it was?"

Other than the obvious? he refrained from asking. "The only reason for that kid to be involved," he said, pointing at Yarel's pixelated image, "Is because he was Parker's mark. The cartel was just a bonus."

"And why would Parker want to go after him?" Sophie asked, but her tone meant she was conceding to his explanation.

"Jay Smithson's a foster kid – so was his brother. And we both know what kind of experience Parker had in those homes…"

Sophie's face darkened as she followed his logic. "But then why go after the brother?" she asked, and Nate was expecting the question:

"It's not always the parents who're the problem." The darkness mixed with sadness, and Nate pulled her into his arms when he noticed the way her eyes were glistening. "We taught her well," he whispered, and she gave a teary laugh,

"Our little mastermind."