THE NAME COMPETITION IS OVER. THANK YOU TO EVERYONE WHO ENTERED

Hello : ) This is Linnéa asking for your attention for the little while, maybe the few minutes it would take for you to read through this message. And she… wait why am I talking about myself in third person? Well, let's start over again.

Hello : ) I just wanted to take the opportunity to, tell you how much each and every one of you mean to me. This is kind of random so if you think it's nothing else than nagging for attention you're probably right! Well… onto what I was actually going to say to you.

Well, if we have been chatting much the last few months then you might know that right now I am facing some major changes. And I'm not going to lie, I have been feeling… like everything I have done earlier is just going to waste and that this will never go well… but that feeling have started to fade more and more, and right now I can usually shrug and have a feeling that "it will be alright"

Last week I got a couple of really good news and well… I know that other people- not least my friends on here have helped me to get so to the point I'm going to be able to do this so to the point that I just feel that things are going to be alright in the end- no matter how! So I just wanted to say thank you.

I wanted to thank you for being my friend, or for believing in me- because even if it maybe from time to time was only a "great chapter" a bit here and there or a couple of messages every once in a while or whatever it was- it was too much for me to explain in a simple message with written words.

So if you were there for me, and believed in me then thank you. There is no way I could have been where I am today without you. So thank you yet again, you've meant so much more than I could ever say.

And if there is something I have gotten wrong and in fact you weren't my friend or didn't believe in me. Then I think that the news I have gotten the past few days will give me the right to say…

…in your face!

-Linnéa

Sophia POV

I had known what was happening to George because of hearing the others talking. I might have seemed apathetic and I so badly wanted to pull my back into reality and actually act. But even though I could hear everything and see and feel everything around me I just couldn't get myself back to reality.

And so I had finally been able to. For George's sake, realizing what had happened and what was important after all of this. And what would be important is that we all held onto what we had and kept the close ones even closer. And for that I would have to help the ones I knew in the ways I knew how. And after everything that had happened to me and George- we both, maybe especially George or especially me depending on how you saw it. Must realize what power was stronger than the other.

While I was talking I saw and heard George's sobs a few times. When I had finished, he put his head in his hands and broke down. I heard him trying to silent the sobs but even with that his whole body was trembling so there was no way he was going to hide it.

I didn't know what else to do, a lump had been raising in my throat but I angrily forced it back. I had to be there for George now without crying myself. And so I put a hand on his shoulder and looked away so if he looked at me he wouldn't see tears in my eyes too. And I didn't actually know how long we sat like that before I heard steps I recognized as Gina's getting closer and she came into the doorway.

"Oh… Good morning" Her voice sounded oddly thick and shaky as if she too had been crying. "Come on you two. You need to eat something, the others just had lunch." I looked to George, he was wiping the tears of his sleeve and slowly pushed himself up of the sofa. I stayed sitting on the table for a few seconds and then I stood up too and followed him and Gina to the kitchen.

I looked right ahead of me the whole way so I didn't see the others. But I could hear them whispering and gossiping, and I felt their looks burn in my neck as they followed every step I took. When we turned the corner into the kitchen and Gina turned the stove on to warm something I didn't yet know what and didn't really care about it felt quite good to have left the others behind.

George sat down by the edge of the table and fingered with his phone. Then he stood up again and walked out of the kitchen mumbling something about that he needed a charger. He came back into the kitchen with not only a charger for his own phone but also for mine. I jumped down from the kitchen bench and sat down on the floor by the charger.

I usually wasn't too interested in what happened on the phone, and usually no one called or sent messages to me so why would I? But as soon as I had turned it on I heard it beep with a message and I put it up to see it was the picture that Christopher's mum had shot of me, little Christopher and the drawing I had made of him when I took a part in the drawing competition being running away.

I looked down on the photo, it was small but even with it I could see the smiles on both mine and Christopher's lips, and on his lips on the drawing I made. But even though I didn't see it on the small photo, I knew that it was only my lips smiling. That it hadn't managed to reach my eyes that time either.

I sighed, I couldn't really see Christopher's eyes in the picture ever. But I didn't need to- I knew they looked almost exactly like Aaron's.

I walked back up to my room after dinner, sat down on my bed with no intention of lying down and definitely not go back to that apathetic or whatever state. But I didn't know what else to do right now- Or I did know something I could do I just didn't know how I would be able to do it or even if I was strong enough for it yet.

Or actually- I was quite sure I wasn't strong enough but I also was quite sure that I would never be strong enough and if I didn't do it now I might never. A part of me seemed to be just shouting at me that I was a coward for listening to the dark thoughts. That I should just grab the cassette and the video tape from my dresser's drawer and listen to the first and watch the other one.

At last I, almost on automat stood up and walked out of the room. A part of me still shouted at me to at least listen to the cassette, hear Luce's voice for the first time in so long but I just didn't know if I could do that just yet and I didn't want to take the risk on everyone having to see me weak- again!

"I need to go now." George told Mike just as I came down the stairs and Mike and George came walking down the hall. "I've got about twenty five missed calls from my girlfriend, she's probably real angry at me now. I should probably stop by to buy her flowers or something before I try and explain what have happened." Mike chuckled and clapped the younger man's shoulder while George suddenly stopped.

"Mike… I just wanted to thank you for all of this. Thank you for letting me be here and thank you for coming with me to the prison and everything." Mike patted George's shoulder, I didn't hear what he answered because I walked down the stairs and out in the living room. And as I came inside all of the others suddenly silent.

I looked around, then turned around and walked outside again. I walked through the hallway towards the stairs when I heard what the next thing George told Mike was. "If there's something lately have made me realize is that I'll need to do what I want and so I wondered if psychology really is what I want to get into and I actually don't know. I'll take a few weeks off and wonder about what I really want to do and maybe I'll get back to it maybe not. Is it okay if I come here every once in a while even if I'm not a psychologist for the moment?"

"Yes of course." Mike answered. "The kids love you, you've got a good hand with them and we can for sure need an extra adult here now when it's otherwise only me and Gina." Mike sighed and scratched the back of his head. "I've got to get us another care- worker soon, so if that's what you'd like to do…" George laughed.

"I'm not so sure about that. I like just coming here and be with the children without anything that I have to do…" I didn't hear anything else because I continued up the stairs and walked around the corner and into my room again.

I took out the paper block and the pencils I had won on the drawing competition. I didn't have to think of something I would be drawing, I hadn't had to do that ever before my hand with the pencil just started playing over the paper by itself and I almost didn't even had to think about what I was drawing because of how it was going.

"Sophia" I didn't look up again until I heard Mike's voice. I hadn't even heard him come into my room but now he stood there. "I need to talk to you all. Don't worry, don't worry. It's about something great." He smiled. "Will you come downstairs to the kitchen?" I nodded and laid the drawing to the side. Only glancing over it before I left the room

I hadn't been thinking about what I was drawing, and maybe that was why I was surprised but what I saw. That the man who was hugging a girl like a father should, shared Mike's looks and indeed was Mike. And on top of it all I had written in a corner of the paper "The father" I turned away from the drawing and walked out of the room but the picture of the drawing was still stick on the inside of my eyes.

The girl on the picture clearly hadn't been me or anyone else I knew- but the man was and couldn't have been anyone else then Mike. "The father" Really? I had a father! There was nothing wrong with him, well except that he'd been gone since that day…. I couldn't let anyone else become what he had been for me! I really couldn't. It wouldn't be fair on him.

After everything he had done for us when he was alive, how he always had kept strong during the hard days and kept us safe no matter what. Well wasn't that how Mike was for everyone here too? But the difference between me and them was that so many of them hadn't and never had parents who treated them right. I had had parents, the best ones in the world- but they'd been taken away from me and I couldn't just let anyone- no matter how many he was a father figure to just replace them.

I pushed away the thoughts. Of course I would never replace neither my dad, nor my mum, Sophie, Aaron or Luce with anyone. That just wasn't possible. I had loved them more than anything else, and so was it always going to be as well. I wasn't dishonoring or anything to them with realizing that someone else was a great father figure.

"So." I jumped up on the kitchen bench, being the last one that came into the kitchen Mike began talking. "Do you all remember Elizabeth, Jody, Shawn, Stan, Joe and Sophia you haven't met her but do you others remember her?" there were nods and positive answers around the table- I had no idea who one earth he was talking about.

"To you others. Elizabeth is a woman who lives about half an hour drive from here. She have got a huge house, almost like a hotel where she's got swimming pool and sheep and horses and a bit of everything actually. We went there on a vacation a few years ago, thanks to Tee." Mike smiled proudly to Tee. "And now I've heard from here again."

"Are we going there again?" Carmen smiled. "Can Lily come with us then?"

"Now, if you all let me finish. But everything is not decided yet, but what she have told me is clear from now on it is that a group of business men were coming to stay there, and now they've called and say that they can't come there. But they have already paid everything and they have told her that if she fixes so someone that will have a great time there can be there the week they were supposed to. No one will have to pay back anything and…. Here comes the best part…."

Mike glanced over the group with a mischievous look in his eyes. "We will do it, including everything… for free!" The kitchen went all silent for a few seconds before the room almost exploded. Everyone who had been there before were shouting and putting their hands in the air and shouting at the top of their lungs.

"Now, now, now settle down." Mike raised his hands to calm everyone down. "We might be able to bring some of our friends there, might! And you will be giving suggestions but the decision comes down on me and Gina. And… one thing more. Because of this we will have one week less left for back to school shopping…"

Most of the people around the table were booing when Mike mentioned school. "I know, I know. But it has to get done. As you all know, when we make our back to school shopping we buy you all the clothes you need, and other school supplies like bag, lunch box, pencils, notebooks and whatever else you might need. Sophia, can I talk to you for a bit? You rest can go now!"

There were pushing chairs and the others started chattering about the place, I heard Harry and Carmen starting to tell Shawn and Jody what there was to do at Elizabeth's land. "So… for this back to school shopping…" Mike began again. "But as you might know we need to do more for you than for the others since you've only got the hand- me- down's from Lily as clothes and you need a bag and lunch box and everything else you need for school."

I nodded. "But there's nothing wrong with Lily's clothes. Really." Mike nodded agreeing. But told me that he wanted me to have more than two items of every piece, with my own clothes of my own style and I didn't try to protest anymore. "So, will I be going on my own or with someone else or with you or whatever?"

"We will be going into town first group on Monday, then keep on doing that. Either me or Gina and four of you. You split up in pairs and I come with the one pair that needs me the most and then we'll meet up about once an hour and see if I need to switch or if we should together or whatever. "And I think that the first thing we need to get for you is to find new shoes." I looked down at my ragged sneakers, it was a miracle the fabric and the soles were keeping together still.

"I have no idea what you mean."

Said and done, two days later, Monday the fifth of August I, Mike, Tee, Harry and Shawn went into town. Mike went with Harry and Shawn to find clothes for the boys and I and Tee walked across the street into a store that was selling bags of all kinds and sizes- including school bags. And spent the next while joking around with pushing each other around on the rolling bags until we were told to stop it or we would be thrown out of the store.

"How did you learn that that was a fun thing to do?" Tee asked when we stood in line at McDonald's with Mike, Harry and Shawn to have lunch. "That with the bags I mean. I mean- doing things like that doesn't really seem like you but you just said it was fun and you were a lot of better at actually keeping the balance on the bag than me so you must have done it before!"

Mike frowned towards us and I played innocent. "Well… where I come from we don't really have that much of technology that you have there, so instead of watching TV and play video games like you do here you start working out ways to entertain yourself. And after some while you start getting tired of taking care of whatever animals you might have and football. So you continue to start working out ways, and then someone had a rolling bag. And the rest you can count for yourself."

Mike looked to us suspiciously as if he heard we had done something we maybe shouldn't. "I and Tee will go and get a table." I pulled Tee with me further into the restaurant trying my best to suppress a laugh. I didn't know where it came from, but since I kind of woke up from whatever it was I had just kind of decided… not to let things go… but to be able to have a good time anyway- as good as I could.

"No Magdi…." While I and Tee were jumping up on the high sofas in the restaurant I heard a voice behind me I couldn't help to hear what he said. "We will have to buy you new shoes first. Yours are falling into pieces." I felt all the color there was drain from my face. I recognized this accent!

For others it might have sounded close to Scottish, but this wasn't Scottish. It was Gote! English with the Gote accent! I would have recognized it amongst a million other accents- and so would I have this voice. But it couldn't be him! It couldn't be him.

I turned around. It was him! But no… he couldn't be here. He was dead! He had been dead for almost a year, since a few months before Luce had to run! He was in Goot when the bomb went off, and we hadn't heard anything from him so he would have had to die. He couldn't be here!

But eyeing him up and down there wasn't a doubt. He was right in front of me, and there was also his two children. Healthy and seeming happy. Out of every town but they and I could have ended up in, out of every place we all could have been today.

"Sophia, what's wrong?" I barely heard Tee's questions as everything I saw was those three people sitting by the window, and at last the adult male looked up, and looked right into my eyes.

"Soph?"

"Ia…" I explained, the soph- game was something that someone had always done having trouble keeping me and Sophie apart.

"Sophia?"

"Magdolna?"

"Sophia?"

"Alvaro?"

"Sophia?"

"Faiz?"

Dun, dun, dun duuuuuuuuun. So- if you don't remember who they are they are in chapter 33- the strongest of them all- right after Sophia's flashback.

The competition is over, thank you to all the three who entered it. The boy's name will come out in the next chapter.