Disclaimer: I do not own the characters from Higher Ground. I just made up the plot and Janey. And thank you all for your reviews. They mean so much to me!

Scott sat impatiently in Peter's office. He rocked slightly back and forth, feeling the hard wood backing of the chair behind him. It was kind of reassuring to be leaning against something so solid.

The door opened, and Peter entered, his hand on Janey's back, making sure that she kept moving. Despite the short pep talk that he'd just given her, she looked as though she was dreading this meeting with all her heart. Scott kept his face taunt and straight, giving no sign that he so much as recognized his stepsister.

Peter pulled a chair out to face Scott's, leaving about two feet between the two chairs. Janey sat rigidly, and Peter sat on the edge of his desk.

"All right," he said. "I'm gonna get you started, then I expect you can find something—anything—to talk about for ten minutes. Okay?" He got two short nods. "Now, something happened yesterday in group. Janey, you told the Cliffhangers that you two are siblings. You said that you felt guilty about something that you did not do. You wanna start with that?"

Janey had composed herself in preparation ahead of time; she would not let herself cry. She glanced at Scott, who seemed to be looking directly through her, and then at Peter.

"Talk to him," Peter said gently, gesturing at Scott.

"Scott, I'm sorry about yesterday," she said quietly. "If you didn't want people to know."

"Too late now, isn't it?" Scott retorted sharply.

Peter gave him a warning look, but Janey jumped in. "I know it is, and I'm sorry. It's not like I can reverse it." She hesitated. "Scott, I really do feel bad. For not doing anything about my mom. She shouldn't have done that to you."

She'd hit a nerve. Scott's eyes narrowed. "You don't understand," he bit out. "She ruined my life! You didn't tell! You didn't do anything! You're just as bad!"

"Stop it!" Janey cried. Peter sat poised to jump in. "I didn't know what to do, and the drugs didn't exactly help my reasoning skills!"

"If it weren't for your skanky mom, I wouldn't have been on the drugs," Scott said, his voice trembling with anger. "I wouldn't have been thrown off the football team!"

"That's not my fault!" Janey yelled. She stopped herself. "Scotty, I didn't…"

"Screw this!" Scott said furiously. He stood up. Even looking at Janey's face made him sick. He could see Elaine every time he looked at Janey's eyes. "And screw you!"

Instantly, Peter jumped up, barring Scott's exit. "Check that attitude real fast, Scott!" he said, his voice loud and dangerous. Startled, Scott dropped back into his chair. "You keep your temper in line, where it belongs."

Scott nodded quickly. When Peter got mad, that was the best thing to do. He turned back to his sister.

"I…I talked to Shelby," Janey said in a half-whisper. Scott met her eyes slowly, cautiously. She was looking back, unabashed, and gave a slight head-tilt in Peter's direction. Scott understood instantly: this was not for Peter's ears. He swallowed his doubts, pride, and anger. If she had talked to Shelby, it might be worth talking to her.

"I'll do it," Scott said, looking at Peter. "I'll talk to her, but can you give us some privacy?"

Peter looked at both of them warily. Janey didn't seem to be scared anymore, and Scott seemed suddenly calmer. He nodded. "I'll be right outside, watching through the window. If this gets ugly, I'm coming in." The threat was obvious in his voice. Scott nodded, and Peter left, shutting the door firmly behind himself.

"I'm sorry," Scott said awkwardly. "I just kinda lost it there."

"I hit a nerve," Janey agreed.

"How's the beast?" Scott asked, referring to Elaine.

"Alive." Janey sighed. "Bleached her hair. Thinks it makes her look glamorous."

Scott snorted. "Didn't she marry that…"

"Lawyer," Janey finished. "Her lawyer for your dad and her divorce proceedings. One Jean-Pierre Higgins."

"Terrific," Scott muttered. He looked down. "Why'd she send you here? She hates it here. Here is where they force 'lies' out of you about how your parents abuse you." He said it bitterly and with a sarcastic flavor.

Janey frowned. "She didn't. It was between here and juvie. The courts decided."

"What!?" Scott sat bolt upright. "Juvie!? What'd you do?"

Now it was her turn to look away. "Shoplifting. It was only once. I needed money for drugs."

Scott nodded, his face somber. Janey looked at him and was stricken by how sad he looked. He appeared almost ashamed. He was, she supposed. After all, it had been his fault, starting this whole drug thing.

"I know it was wrong," she continued after a pause. "I apologized, and the store manager eased off some. Gave the court the chance to suggest Horizon. Actually, not suggest. Demand."

"Beats juvie, I guess," Scott said.

"So I'm told," Janey replied.

"It's not so bad here," Scott admitted. "Peter and Sophie are great, and the other guys are too, once you give 'em a chance. It's kinda a break from the real world." She said nothing to that. "What'd Shelby say to you?"

"That she wasn't a skank."

Janey wasn't going to give him an inch, Scott realized. Not unless he fought for it. "Glad we got that straight," he said aloud.

Shrugging, Janey looked at her jeans, playing with a small tear. It got bigger. Scott's level of curiosity was elevated by her hesitance to give details. He tried again. "Shelby's cool, once you talk to her, huh?"

"I guess," Janey replied. Janey herself couldn't decide whether Shelby was someone to trust. The older girl had been nice last night, but Elaine had periods of niceness too. The thing about Scott being Shelby's best friend had thrown Janey off. Would Shelby misuse her self-proclaimed best friend, hurting him? Or was that whole best friend thing a lie? Janey didn't want Scott to be hurt anymore. Especially not when she could stop it.

"Why do you like her?" Janey blurted out suddenly.

"Who? Shelby?"

"Yeah."

"Because…" Scott thought. "She's nice. She sees who I am, where I've been, everything, and she likes me for it. She understands, she listens…she's there for me when I need her. And I do the same for her."

"Have you slept together?" Janey asked bluntly.

Scott wasn't surprised. He'd picked up on Janey's lead. He knew that she was scared of someone hurting him in the same way Elaine had. "No, we haven't. Janey, she isn't like Elaine."

"But, how do you know?" Janey asked, worriedly.

"Her stepfather…did that stuff to her."

And Janey's face relaxed somewhat. Scott could see the fear in her eyes that had been there since he had forced drugs on her the first time. It was still there. Janey simply did not know how to trust.

Rising, Scott moved over to her, bending down, hugging her. She rested her head against his shoulder, looking far past him at nothing at all. Peter watched through the window, nodding to himself. If they got along now, maybe Janey would learn to open up to the others at Horizon.

Sophie had just started the day's class discussion on The Scarlet Letter when Scott and Janey entered. The rest of the kids watched in silence as they sat down next to each other at the end of the row of desks. Sophie cleared her throat.

"Today, we're talking about David's favorite character—"

"Pearl the demon child!" David interrupted at an enthusiastic yell.

Ignoring him, Sophie continued. "Pearl is the child of Reverend Dimmesdale and Hester. She is often said to be a demon child, as we've discussed before. Why's this?"

"Because she often acts a little bit strange," Juliette said.

"She doesn't conform to the Puritan standards," Daisy added. She loved interpretive thinking.

"Very good insights," Sophie praised. "You're right, Pearl doesn't seem like a typical child. She acts strange, unlike the others in the Puritan times. How?"

"She acts on impulse," Janey spoke up. Everyone turned to her, surprised. In truth, she had spent part of the previous day catching up on the reading. "She doesn't care what the other kids think, and if they're mean to her, she stands up for herself and her mother, yelling, throwing mud. And her mother, Hester, lets her get away with it. Hester doesn't care how rude Pearl is."

"Which comes back to bite her." Auggie jumped in, the first to recover from Janey's input. "'Cause whenever Hester wants real bad for Pearl to do something, Pearl does the opposite."

"That's true, both of you," Sophie said, smiling at Janey, who turned her head away in silence and without expression. "Which brings up a new topic. Nature versus nurture. What do you believe in? Does anyone want to define those terms?"

"I will," Ezra offered. "Nature is inborn qualities, saying that you are the way you are because of what was inside of you before you were born. Nurture is how the outside world affects you, like how your parents raised you."

"Exactly," Sophie said. "Now, what do you guys believe? Nature or nurture?"

"Nature," Auggie said immediately. "If I'd grown up somewhere other than the streets, I think I'd be very different."

"Or," Daisy said. "Was it that you were inevitably headed for the streets? And it was an inborn characteristic in you that led you to act the way you did."

"Parents play a big role," Shelby disagreed. "If you have nice parents, you end up one way. If your parents aren't nice, or if they abandon you or mistreat you, you can end up completely different."

Sophie watched Shelby's face, realizing that the girl had come a long way. She was understanding more and more about herself every day.

But Daisy was shaking her head vehemently. "It's all about how you respond to everything. No matter how life treats you, the way that you respond to that treatment is what matters in the end."

"No," Scott disagreed. "You look around at all the people here at Horizon. Most of 'em are here 'cause of parents, older siblings, other people having a bad influence on 'em." He glanced at Janey, who was still looking in the other direction. "It's nurture. If it wasn't for that bad influence, almost everyone here wouldn't be here."

"But," Ezra said, picking up on Daisy's train of thought. "Even the people here who have similar problems react differently. Their reactions are what make them who they are. Not what other people did to them."

"David?" Sophie asked. "You want to connect this to The Scarlet Letter?"

"They're both tedious." He grinned. "Listening to this conversation and reading the book."

"That's completely unrelated," Sophie said. She knew that his having ADD was making it hard for him to pay attention, but she had to make sure that he understood the reading assignment. "Tell me about Pearl and whether her personality is affected by the nature or nurture phenomena."

"What are those?"

Drawing in a long breath to help her keep her patience, Sophie got Ezra to explain the two again. David was frowning.

"Nurture," he said. "Because Hester is a crappy mother."

"Language, David," Sophie rebuked. "Why do you think she's a bad mother?"

"She lets Pearl get away with being demon offspring," he said.

Sophie knew that he was just trying to see how many times he could get away with saying some variation of 'demon child,' but she let it go. Juliette hadn't said anything in a while, so Sophie called on her.

"Jules, you want to finish what David started?"

"I think he was trying to say…" she pursed her lips, thinking. "…that it was nurture because Hester wasn't firm or consistent with Pearl. Instead, she kind of let Pearl raise herself."

"Daisy, you want to add your 'nature-perspective'?" Sophie asked, knowing that she would.

"I think that Pearl was born with these qualities. The author says that she was a strange child from the start."

"She was born in a jail cell," Auggie interrupted. "Do you think that that's a normal place for a kid to be born?"

"He's got a point there," Juliette said. "A child born in a jail cell probably would turn out slightly dysfunctional."

"She's not gonna know the difference between a jail cell and a nice, clean hospital room," Ezra protested.

"They didn't exactly have 'nice, clean hospital rooms' back then, Freakin'," Shelby said.

"Freedkin!" Ezra said. "And it was just an example."

Seeing several of the kids begin to bristle, Sophie came back into the conversation.

"Okay, that's enough, gang," she said quickly. "Finish the book for tomorrow." Auggie waved a walkman at her. "Or the book on tape," she corrected herself. Auggie's dyslexia made it hard for him to read the book, so he was permitted to listen to it.

As the kids began to disperse, Sophie caught Daisy by the arm.

"What?" Daisy asked. "Didn't we do enough Daisy-torture yesterday?"

"Peter and I want to talk to you for a minute," Sophie explained. "Then you're free."

"I see," Daisy replied. Her tone of voice obviously said, why are you doing this to me?