Normality

Summary: "You've already figured out that life is transitory." Brennan and foster care.
Rating: K
Spoilers: Very vague first season/early second
Disclaimer: It would be cool if I owned Bones, but all I own are this story and the ideas contained within.
Author's Note: Well…apparently I was kinda mean to Cam in my last fic totally by accident, but let's see if this one's better, as she is not in it.

You go into your new school hoping you'll escape notice. At your old school you were Russ Brennan's little sister, quiet and weird but not somebody you messed with. Now he's gone and all you want to do is fade to the background, become invisible.

But you find out immediately that you can't. The kids don't know your parents disappeared, but they know you're new, know you're a foster kid. You imagine they can smell the garbage bags on your clothes because you can, and it's a constant reminder that this is not where you are supposed to be. Everywhere you go, they look at you, wondering why you're a foster kid, and you want to scream at them to leave you alone.

But you don't, because you've already figured out that life is transitory, that these kids don't matter. In days, weeks, months, you'll be moving onto a new school, a new foster family. It already happened once to you; you refused to talk to the first family they put you with because the other foster kids you met warned you immediately: nothing lasts. You're fifteen. No one really wants to keep you, even if they pretend they do. They'll find some reason to get you transferred and then it's a new house, a new school. Another name written on the bottom of your shoe. You think about writing "BRENNAN" at the very top of the list, but your hand drops the marker before you can even start.

The next family asks you if you'd like to talk to a psychologist, and you say no without a second thought. You know a psychologist would make you talk, make you feel things, and you know enough by now to know that feeling hurts more than helps. The family after that doesn't ask, they simply take you, and you stare the psychologist down. To his credit, he stares back at you, and asks you one question: did you cry? You can't remember, but later you convince yourself you did. It makes you that much more normal and normal, you realize, is the only coping mechanism you've got.

This is normal, you tell yourself. You go from school to school, family to family, always the new kid, the foster kid, the unwanted kid. You make this your normality, spending your life in transition.