AN: Your responses have been overwhelming and I thank you for that. This is another short entry. We're still working on getting things rolling. It takes a bit.

I wanted to say, in case anyone should feel this way, that none of our characters should be judged too harshly. Each one of them, as we're going to see unfolding more and more, is dealing with their own demons and does so in their own way, but I consider none of the main three a villain.

I hope you enjoy. I'll try to get some more out soon and get a little deeper into things.

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The social worker had passed to Carol, as she was leaving, a folder of information. Carol hadn't sorted through it yet, not wanting to be someone that flipped through Sophia's life, metaphorically, right before her eyes. Carol knew what it felt like to have everything you'd done and everything that society considered as pertinent information about you confined to someone's manila folder. The visual contemplation of it was horrifying and Carol didn't want to take part in reducing another human, at least not in their presence, to a stack of recyclable facts.

On the ride back to the house, Sophia sat in her seat staring out the window, giving off the overall air of someone who is being driven to their execution. Carol could feel her looking at her from time to time, up and down, even without glancing at her out of the corner of her eye.

"So how old are you, anyway?" Sophia asked. "You know the Seattle Supersonics don't even exist anymore, right?"

Carol was caught off guard by the girl's voice in such a proximity. She couldn't comprehend for a moment what the girl was asking, at least not all of it. Her mind was too wrapped up in cursing her for what she was doing and wondering what the hell had come over her to think that in a billion years this might be even a remotely decent idea. In theory she'd once wanted to be a parent…but that was a different world and certainly a different image of how the whole thing would happen…and in practice, well, she'd killed more plants than she cared to admit and she'd never had a goldfish that lived beyond a year or so.

"What? I'm sorry?" Carol asked.

"How – old – are – you?" Sophia drew out. If rolling eyes had a sound, it filled the car at the moment.

"Thirty three," Carol responded. "How old are you?" Carol realized that she knew that obviously Sophia was not the tiny ward she thought she might end up with, but she still had no real clue about how old the figured in her passenger seat was.

"Almost sixteen," Sophia responded. "Why the hell are you still holding onto a Supersonics sweatshirt?"

"What?" Carol asked.

"Oh my God! Are you deaf?" Sophia exclaimed.

Carol tried to steady her nerves. She closed her eyes for a moment. What kind of nightmare had she ended up in?

"I'm not deaf," she said, trying to sound as pleasant as she could without letting it sneak out in her voice that she was already fatigued with the girl. "What are you talking about, though? And don't say hell."

Sophia growled and Carol was instantly sorry for everything she'd done to her parents during her teenage years. Were they still with her, she'd probably phone her parents upon her arrival home and tell them that she regretted they eyerolling, the huffing, and every time she thought that she was being raised by the only humans on the planet a step above cavemen.

"Your – sweatshirt…" Sophia drawled out. "Why – are – you – still – wearing – that?"

Carol glanced down for a second, taking in the shirt that she'd pulled on. She hadn't really ever paid the thing any attention. She didn't know where it had come from. Probably a yard sale or a thrift store. That was the only place she really ever acquired garments and her only stipulation for them was normally that they not have a half million holes and that they be somewhere within the range of the fifteen or so different sizes that she considered suitable to her body.

"I don't know," Carol said. "It's not really even mine. I got it at a thrift store. I don't care about sports. Why? Are sports important to you?"

Could this be an in? Carol hated sports, actually. She despised them. Ed had loved everything from Nascar to golf and spent most of his time at the house in front of the television crushing beer cans he drained and watching some sports fiasco after another that she hadn't paid attention to. She'd hated it because he seemed to take the games personally and he always rooted for someone…for something. A loss on television could make for a worse day than usual for her. So she had always hated the sound of the commentators' voices drifting through the speakers.

"No," Sophia responded. "On of the men that fostered me one time was really into that shit, though. Talked about it all the damn time. Couldn't help but pick some of it up."

"Language," Carol said. She might not be fit, really, to have any kind of guardianship over the girl beside her, but she knew it wasn't fitting of an almost sixteen year old girl to be fine tuning her sailor's mouth.

Sophia huffed and got quiet, audibly slamming herself back against the car seat. She crossed her arms and resumed staring out the window. She remained that way until they'd almost reached the house.

"So ya married?" Sophia asked finally.

"No," Carol said, shaking her head and not daring to take her eyes off the road for a moment. She hadn't expected to have to answer about her marital status to the child she was going to pick up. She was supposed to be bringing home some little thing that looked at her without judgement, and so far she was bringing home a snarly teen who had done nothing but judge her since the moment their eyes had fallen on one another.

"Dyke?" Sophia asked.

"What?" Carol asked.

"Are – you – gay?" Sophia asked. "Jesus! You know it's going to be a long fucking couple of weeks if I have to draw you pictures for every damn thing."

Carol shook her head and closed her eyes for a second.

"No, I'm not gay…and you don't have to draw me pictures. A little warning as to where your conversation is headed, though, might be appreciated…and watch your language," Carol said.

Carol was grateful when they pulled into the driveway of the house. In fact, she thought it might be the happiest she'd ever been to see the structure. At least it meant getting out of the car and into a larger space with Sophia. She didn't know how long the girl would be staying with her, but she was already hoping, even though she didn't want to, that the agency found another place for her…one more suiting perhaps…as soon as possible. Carol was not cut out for this and she cursed whatever voice inside her head had told her that she was.

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Carol led Sophia up to the second story of the house. Sophia walked with her suitcase hanging from her hand, probably judging the cobwebs that Carol hadn't had time to sweep away from the corners. She'd clean the house as soon as possible, but her guest, for however short her stay was, had been unexpected and it was evident.

Carol passed by the nursery that she'd thought last night the girl was going to occupy. The door was closed to the room, holding back the air of unfulfilled expectation that lingered there. She made her way, instead to the other room on the floor. It was a simple room that had been intended to be a guest room of sorts, though no guest had ever actually stayed there. The room had been empty since the furniture had been moved there. It was used, for the most part, as storage and a few boxes were neatly stacked in the corner. Ed hadn't wanted Carol to have friends while they were together, and since he'd gone on his vacation courtesy of the state of Georgia, Carol hadn't exactly formed any relationships with anyone that would want to stay in the stale little room.

"What's in that room?" Sophia asked, hanging out the doorway of the guest room that she would occupy and eying the closed door.

"Nothing," Carol said. "It's just empty."

Carol didn't consider it a complete lie. What did the girl need to know about the furniture that was there? It was useless anyway. It always had been and it always would be until the day that Carol finally pulled herself together enough to drag the stuff down the stairs and leave it on the lawn for someone who could use it to pass by and pick it up.

Sophia shrugged a little and looked around the room that she'd be occupying. Carol looked at it too and tried to imagine what it might look like to someone who had never seen it before. The room was like everything else…plain and unremarkable. If Sophia had been hoping to win any prizes with either her new guardian or her new location, Carol feared the girl was sorely disappointed.

Sophia didn't look like she cared, though. She crossed the room and dropped her suitcase on the floor. She stood in the middle of the room, looking around blankly.

"I'll change the sheets for you. They haven't been changed in a while, and you'd probably liked some fresh ones," Carol said. She didn't bother to add that the sheets had been put on the bed almost the same time that Sophia had apparently been born. She almost cringed, herself, at the realization.

Sophia shrugged a little.

"Whatever," she said.

Carol felt tired. She felt more tired than she had in a long time. The day still had a few hours yet before she could get away with calling it a night, even under the guise of being an old person who needed to go to bed early. The shock and stress of the whole situation had worn her down, though, more than she'd expected it would and she'd found that interacting with Sophia was draining. She didn't know if it was something she'd become accustomed to or not, but right now she knew that she only wanted to escape the girl's presence and relocate somewhere quiet and alone.

"I'll order pizza for dinner," Carol said.

Sophia looked at her, rolling her blue eyes toward her.

"And then what?" Sophia asked.

"And then we'll eat it…" Carol ventured. "Do you not like pizza?"

Carol was really suggesting the pizza because she was too tired to cook, and she really didn't keep much in the house because cooking for one could often be more of a hassle than it was worth. Of course because of that ideal she'd lost a few pounds, but Ed had always criticized her weight so she welcomed the shedding of inches. If her new house mate didn't like pizza, though, she supposed that she could rifle through the contents of the cabinet and come up with something.

"With some kind of lame 'family night' bull or are we just going to see this for what it is?" Sophia asked. She planted one hand on her hip, her knobby elbow sticking out to the side.

"What is it?" Carol asked.

At this point she'd welcome any kind of definition, honestly. She was only able to define this as a bad decision on her part. It was something she'd decided to do at the spur of the moment and she'd never been very good at making spur of the moment decisions.

Sophia crossed the room and sat on the bed, crossing her arms across her chest.

"I'm not your kid, you're not my mom…I'm here until they send me some place else and then we're both going to forget about each other. I've got less than three years and I'm done with all this shit," Sophia said.

"Oh," Carol said. She nodded a little. She needed time to process the whole thing. "I was really just talking about eating pizza." She decided that at the moment she didn't care to correct the girl's language. She didn't care to correct anything about the situation. All she wanted in the moment was to disappear into her room, close the door, and enjoy a book in silence instead of wondering how she'd stepped into this puddle.

"Fine," Sophia said.

"I'll order it," Carol offered. "There's a bathroom up here if you want to clean up. I'll change the sheets after I order the pizza. Make yourself at home…or whatever."

Carol turned around, leaving the girl to sulk in the room.

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Sophia waited until the woman had gone down the stairs to really walk around the room. It was dusty and decorated with too much floral shit in mauves and blues. Still, it was better than some of the places she'd been through.

The woman herself Sophia wasn't sure about.

She'd overheard some of the workers talking about what was really going on here. It was some kind of last strike. The only card remaining. Sophia had worked her way through nearly every foster home in the state of Georgia and she considered it a pretty damn big accomplishment considering she'd only been drowning in the system for going on five years.

There were all kinds too. Sophia was certain that she had seen everything that could be seen in her various "guardians". They painted pictures of themselves, though…pictures that the state liked. Most of them were going to be loving homes to Sophia, after all, they wanted to be foster parents. They were going to have game nights and shit like that. The pretty pictures of picnics and vacations and happy smiling people that filled up frames…that's what they wanted.

Most of all, though, they wanted something better.

They didn't want Sophia and she didn't half blame them. Her own parents hadn't wanted her. If they had, they wouldn't have been like they were…and she wouldn't have ended up in this ongoing train station nightmare.

What the foster parents wanted, of course, was the pink cheeked cherubs. The cooing, gurgling, diaper fillers that barely made it through the doors in the arms of a social worker before half a dozen foster families were damn near beating in the doors to fight each other to the death over the little shit factory. Everyone in the system knew that if you weren't out by five, you were going to have one hell of a time getting out until you turned eighteen or did something drastic enough to get a one way ticket to a correctional facility that would hold you until you could be released as a theoretically responsible member of the community.

Sophia had come into the system when she was almost eleven. Her dad had disappeared finally, flown coop for good she supposed. He'd threatened it her whole life. It was like his motto or his catchphrase. He was fucking outta there. He didn't need her mom and he sure as shit didn't need her. He'd gone a few times, and come back a few times, but eventually there wasn't any coming back. Her mother stuck it out, at least physically, for a little while after that, but Sophia really wasn't all that sorry when she had to call the hospital over what she thought might have been a fatal overdose and they'd finally taken her away.

As far as she knew, neither of her parents had ever bothered to find out about her again. Sometimes she heard other kids she met…who had ended up in the system other ways…talking about how they lie in bed sometimes and they dreamed that their real parents would come back for them. They'd fall down dramatically at the doorsteps and they'd beg and plead to have their precious child back. The kid would go home with the parents and live in the fairy tale life they spun for themselves in their imagination.

Sophia didn't imagine that at all. She imagined, more often than anything else, that her parents were dead. It was a much more realistic interpretation. Her mother probably died from that overdose, or another one, and her dad was probably shot somewhere for starting some fight with someone who wasn't going to back down to his mouth. They weren't ever coming back for her, and she wouldn't want them if they did. They never wanted her, and frankly the feeling had become more than mutual.

Coming into the system at eleven, though, was bad news for any kid still clinging like an idiot to the hope of a postcard perfect life. If you were in the system at eleven, you had less chance of finding a home than a dirty sock that had lost its mate. It was better, as Sophia had learned, to leave your bags packed because no matter how much the assholes that picked you up smiled for the social worker, and they were done with you the first chance they got. They were only playing nice to boost their chances of upgrading your ass for one of the next rosy faced babies that came through.

And if they did want you…at that age…then you had better watch the fuck out. That was when you found the real prizes that were hiding behind the masks they put on for the system.

Of course no one would ever believe you, especially not if you were labelled, a Sophia was, as "troubled".

That was a magical word. It was one of those words that automatically struck fear into the hearts of people. It simultaneously excused everything that Sophia could do, while also chaining her to the expectation that she would do something. Whether or not she was guilty, she was presumed guilty, and it erased her credibility.

And now she was here with this woman. This thin, mousy, plain Jane that was the last card in the deck for the Georgia state children's services. After everything that Sophia had seen, she couldn't even wait to find out what landed you at the bottom of their totem pole.

Sophia chuckled to herself. She was probably some whacko making sex tapes with dead people in her basement or some shit like that. A real piece of work.

It didn't really matter though. Sophia only had to make nice with Minnie Mouse for a little while and then she was as good as out of here. She was done with the whole thing and she wasn't going back into the system just to find out she'd circulated through every single person who was even willing to do a take an a half at a "troubled youth" like herself. The first chance she got, she was taking it and she was leaving the probably demented pixie to take the heat for it. She'd get off easy, after all, for losing a kid that no one gave a damn about. Sophia was practically invisible as it was, and no one would miss her after she'd disappeared for a bit.

Sophia walked down the hall looking for the bathroom, which she found with ease. She wasn't getting out of there tonight so she might as well make due for the time being and eat whatever the psycho downstairs wanted to feed her. The worst she could do was poison her, after all, and really Sophia wasn't sure she'd mind that all so much.

In the bathroom, Sophia flushed the toilet and washed her hands in the sink, drying them on a somewhat dusty towel hanging on the tiny towel rack next to the sink. She was glad that she didn't really care what the hell she looked like because it seemed that at some point the medicine cabinet, which had very likely had a door on it at some time, had lost both its door and the mirror attached to it. Apparently the woman she'd come to live with didn't care much for home improvement because instead of her reflection, all that stared back at Sophia right now were some mostly empty shelves holding a few forgotten q tips and some band aids.

Sophia shrugged, switched off the light, and started down the stairs to see if the delivery people had arrived yet with the gourmet dinner.