Disclaimer: These characters are not mine. They belong to Dick Wolf.

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Olivia began to cry silently. She had anticipated this but it still hurt that they were talking about her as if she wasn't even there.

"Liv, it's okay," whispered Alex, rubbing her back. She turned back to her mother. "Mother, Olivia is my friend."

"Alexandra, you are my daughter and it is my responsibility to keep you from bad influences. Olivia, I need to know where your mother is or else we will have to turn you over to ACS and they will find your mother," said Mrs. Cabot.

Olivia was sobbing too hard to reply so Alex's mother took her arm and guided her to the door.

"Mother!" protested Alex.

"Alexandra, you stay here. I am taking Olivia to ACS to see if they can help us sort this mess out."

* * *

That was how Olivia found herself in a bedroom with five other children that night, in a small apartment with a foster family. There were three girls and two boys and they all shared one bedroom. The apartment was dirty and cramped, a far cry from Alex's pristine mansion. Two of the children were very young – an eighteen-month-old girl and a three-year-old girl. There was a five-year-old boy, a nine-year-old boy, and a girl a year younger than Olivia.

She hated them all.

She knew they were just like her, not bad kids, but kids who'd been through a lot like she had. But she couldn't help but despise them, and the foster family, and her caseworker, and even Alex's mother. It was her fault that Olivia was here.

Olivia missed Alex. She missed Elliot and Fin and John and Chester and Brian and Casey and Melinda and Kathy, but she especially missed Alex, her best friend who'd done so much for her. She was homesick, even though Alex's house wasn't her home. It was the strangest feeling. Olivia had never felt homesick before.

She lay in the bottom bunk of the dirty bed closest to the door, tossing and turning, unable to sleep. It was Friday, so she wouldn't see her friend until Monday.

She wondered how she was going to survive until then.

* * *

Olivia spent the next two days feeling like a modern-day Cinderella. She didn't mind hard work and she'd spent many a night cleaning up after her drunken mother, but she quickly realized that her temporary foster parents were the kind of people that took in kids for the money the state paid them, not because they actually wanted to help disadvantaged children. It was clear that the foster parents weren't the grownups in this house; they spent the day watching television while the older kids were left to fend for the younger ones. Olivia and the other girl, named Julia, spent the next day cleaning up the pigsty in the apartment, changing the youngest girl's dirty diapers, and entertaining the children.

Olivia couldn't wait for Monday.

"Julia," she said. "Monday is school – right?"

Julia nodded. "Yeah, of course. You a little scholar like that one?" She gestured to the silent nine-year-old, who was named Gavin.

She shook her head. "No. Not really."

"They'll get you enrolled in your new school on Monday or Tuesday probably," said Julia.

Olivia felt panic rising in her stomach. "I don't wanna go to a new school. I wanna see my friends."

"Well, you better get used to it, 'cause you ain't gonna be seeing any of your friends again. They don't like us to have friends."

Olivia shook her head. "I don't belong here!"

"None of us do," replied Julia. "But here we are. We're the ones nobody wants. So get used to it."

* * *

On Monday, Anna and Daniel, the foster parents, took Olivia to their local high school to enroll her. They filled out the paperwork, then left her there.

Olivia went to her first class, geography. She had no idea what the teacher was talking about. She sat in the only empty seat, the worst space in the room – front row, center, next to an obese boy with brown hair and blue eyes, who was picking his nose. She could definitely see why he was sitting on his own and tried to move as far away from him as possible.

She sat alone at lunch, missing Alex, Elliot, and her other friends. She wondered if they were thinking about her right now.

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