After May left, Skye spent time fiddling with the chips on a half-melted motherboard, using her new pliers to try and pry the usable pieces from the warped plastic. She had been dying to test out her new tools, and she also needed something to occupy her until she was sure May and Phil had gone to bed so that she could sneak over to Jemma's room to sleep. She wasn't sure exactly how much time had passed, but eventually the stifling silence from the night before settled over the house, and Skye figured the coast was probably clear. She peaked into the hall first, making sure that no light was spilling from under May and Phil's door, then made her way towards Jemma. The younger girl was sitting up for her, and within minutes they had nestled under the covers together and drifted off into sleep.
As she had the day before, Skye woke before the sun and slipped back into her own bed before anyone could become the wiser. This time she did manage to go back to sleep for a little while longer, and so it was the placid voice of Phil that stirred her a few hours later.
"Skye? It's time to get up, kiddo. Time to get ready for school." Skye lifted her head blearily and squinted through the sunlight that now filled the room to see Phil standing in the doorway, dressed in a jacket and tie like he had worn the day she met him. She climbed out of bed, and wasted little time in getting ready. Picking out her clothes wasn't hard, as she only had a few options to choose from, and really only one good shirt that fit correctly and had no holes or loose threads. She pulled the shirt on over a camisole, plus her jeans (with one holey knee, but that was okay, since holes were considered cool in jeans) and her sneakers. She tried to brush out her hair as best she could, but admitted to herself that she would probably never truly get all of the tangles out.
Downstairs, Phil and May were both at the table. Phil had the newspaper propped open against a carton of orange juice, and May was nursing a mug of tea, dressed in workout clothes like she had been yesterday. The cereal bowl in front of her was empty, and Skye figured she must have already eaten.
"Good morning," May said as she came in. "Sleep all right?" Skye nodded, and took a seat at the table. Phil passed her a bowl and spoon, and gestured to the collection of cereal boxes set out on the table.
"We have cornflakes, raisin bran, and applejacks," he told her. "We weren't sure what kinds you and Jemma liked, so we stuck with some basics for now." Skye settled on the applejacks, and filled her bowl, careful not to slosh milk onto the table.
"You're eye is looking better," May commented. "Does it feel okay?" Skye "mm-hmm'd" around a spoonful of cereal, which made May and Phil both smile.
"Glad to hear it," said Phil. "And your hand, too?" Skye's second nod was cut short, as her ears latched onto the faint sound of finger tapping against leg. Jemma shuffled her way into the kitchen, tapping away on her hip. Her eyes were cast down, but Skye could still see that her face was even paler than usual and her mouth was set in a tight, grim line. Both May and Phil greeted her as she approached the table, but Jemma didn't respond. When Phil encouraged her to eat, she robotically poured a miniscule amount of cornflakes into the bowl he provided. She picked at the cereal with her spoon before adding milk to the bowl, and if Skye had to guess, she would have said Jemma was counting the individual flakes in her bowl. That wasn't usually a part of Jemma's morning routine, but Skye figured that she was extra stressed about starting school and that counting cornflakes was am attempt at grasping for control, so she acted as if this behavior was normal. May and Phil took their cues from Skye, and chose not to question the cereal counting, which Skye thought was a nice gesture on their part.
After a few minutes, Jemma appeared to finish her counting and tipped some milk into her bowl. She didn't start eating right away, and Skye knew it was because she was waiting for the flakes to get soggy. While most people didn't like for their cereal to be anything but crunchy, Jemma couldn't stand the opposite. She once told Skye that eating non-soggy cereal was too loud and tasted too sharp in her mouth. Skye didn't really understand what Jemma meant, but, as with many of Jemma's more peculiar habits, didn't find herself too hung up about it. If eating soggy cereal helped make Jemma just a little bit happier, then it was fine with Skye, just so long as she didn't have to eat it.
Obviously no one had thought to fill May and Phil in on Jemma's preferred cereal texture, though, because they both looked concerned as Jemma sat there, not eating.
"Are you not hungry, Jemma?" May asked. "Would you like something else instead?"
"You should try to eat something, its important to have breakfast before a long day at school," Phil added. "I'm sure you know all the science behind the benefits of a good breakfast…"
After a long pause, punctuated only by finger tapping, Jemma finally opened her mouth.
"Waiting." The effort of getting the one word out looked like it had physically hurt to get out, so when Phil and May looked even more confused, Skye took it upon herself to fill them in on Jemma's behalf.
"For the cereal to get to the right texture," she explained. The adults looked only slightly less confused at the explanation, but accepted it with thoughtful nods. May finished the last of her tea and stood up from the table.
"I need to go and get ready for work, but I just wanted to tell you both to have a great first day," she said with injected enthusiasm. "I'm sure it's a little scary, but I know you'll both do great." Skye flashed her a grateful smile that didn't quite reach all the way up to her eyes, and May gave her, Jemma, and Phil all a squeeze on the shoulder as she passed them each on her way to put her dishes in the sink.
Over the next few minutes, Skye finished her own breakfast while Jemma picked at hers. Phil flitted around the kitchen, rinsing out dishes in the sink, collecting folders and papers into a leather satchel, and otherwise occupying himself. Once Skye and Jemma had finished eating, he ushered them upstairs to brush their teeth and grab their backpacks while he whisked their dishes into the sink.
In the bathroom, Skye watched as Jemma struggled to put toothpaste on her toothbrush, her hands were shaking so much. She could tell that Jemma wanted to tap, badly, but she had a feeling that even tapping wouldn't be enough to calm her nerves. Hoping to avoid a shutdown, Skye took Jemma's hand in her own and gave it a squeeze, not hard enough to hurt Jemma but firm enough to try and snap her out of whatever spiral she was veering towards.
"Hey, it's going to be okay," Skye whispered, taking a deep breath in through her nose as she squeezed. She released the breath and slackened her grip on Jemma's hand, and for the first time that morning, Jemma looked up at her face. She still wouldn't meet Skye's eyes, but Skye didn't care. She continued to breathe and squeeze in sync, and soon Jemma joined in her rhythm, and her hands stopped trembling quite so badly.
"We'll have a bunch of classes together, and that Fitz kid will be thrilled that we're in science together," Skye reminded her. The smallest of smiles cracked the corner of Jemma's mouth at the mention of the irascible boy. "Just look for me if you get overwhelmed today, okay?" Jemma nodded, and that was all Skye needed. She gave Jemma's hand a final squeeze, then popped in her bedroom to grab her newly stocked backpack, and headed down the stairs.
The car ride to school was tense, with no one saying much. Phil had tried to make conversation in the first few minutes, but gave up after receiving nothing but blank, anxious stares from his two passengers in the back seat. When they pulled up outside of the middle school, Skye was struck by how different it looked with hundreds of students milling about, racing each other around the blacktop, lounging on the front steps, scurrying inside the front door. They looked like a bustling ant colony to her, and Skye felt the knot in her stomach clench with a wave of trepidation. She grit her teeth. It was just school, like the zillion other ones she had been to. She could do it.
"Do you two want me to walk you in?" Phil asked. "I'm happy to, but I won't if that's going to mess up your rep." In the rearview mirror, Skye caught a glimpse of his expression, with the familiar twinkle in his eye, and she knew he was teasing them a little.
Skye shook her head. "We can go in by ourselves." She knew better than to get walked into middle school by a grownup. Phil nodded. He understood.
"Okay, no problem. After school, I want you two to wait here for me to pick you up. The school library stays open after school, so you can hang out there, or anywhere you like, as long as there's a teacher at least sort of close by. I'll try to leave the high school as soon as I can, okay? If you have any problems, you can talk to one of your teachers or Mrs. Baumbach, and they'll know how to get ahold of me or Melinda. Sound good?" Skye flashed him a thumbs' up, which he returned, then grabbed Jemma's hand and pulled her out of the car. She waved at Phil, and he told them both to have a great day just as Skye closed the door.
Not wanting to deal with the gawking eyes and predetermined cliques that she was sure dominated the outside, Skye opted instead to just head straight into the building, Jemma in tow. Inside, the wide halls seemed much narrower now that they were teeming with kids. Skye paused by a water fountain and fished her schedule that Mrs. Baumbach had printed off for them yesterday out of her jeans pocket.
"It says my homeroom is number 224. Is that yours too?" she asked. Jemma nodded, her eyes drinking in the controlled chaos that swarmed around them and her hand tapping rapidly against her thigh. Skye knew better than to ask if Jemma was sure. She would have bet a hundred dollars that Jemma had memorized her entire schedule the minute she got it. "Okay, great. Let's go find it then."
It was tough navigating the hallways. Once they moved past what looked like a sixth grade hallway and into the halls set aside for seventh and eighth graders, a lot of the kids were bigger than either Skye or Jemma, and they had to do a fair amount of ducking and weaving to pick their way through the crowds without catching a stray elbow or locker door. Eventually, though, they managed to find their way to room 224. It was a pretty standard classroom, with tile floors, a bunch of desks in rows, and a whiteboard at the front. There were a number of bookshelves lining the walls, all stuffed with multiple copies of a bunch of books Skye had never heard of, and a few posters on the wall. One had a picture of Shakespeare wearing sunglasses, which Skye had to admit was kind of funny, and a few others had things written on them about punctuation rules and something called an "answer sandwich." This had to be the room of a language arts teacher.
A few kids were already in the room, some lounging in desks scrolling through their phones, a cluster of others in deep conversation with one another. In one corner, a scrubby haired boy with slightly too-big ears sat alone.
"Fitz!" Skye called out, breaking into a smile. The boy wheeled around, and it was indeed Fitz. He grinned back at them, and beckoned them over.
"You came back!" he said excitedly. "And we're in the same class. This is the absolute best."
"I guess we forgot to ask you what grade you were in yesterday," Skye admitted. "Glad it worked out, though."
"Yeah, well, I'm really supposed to be in seventh, but I skipped a few years ago," Fitz told them.
"Jemma too," Skye said proudly. Jemma would never brag about herself like that, but Skye liked to show off her friend from time to time. Skye didn't think it was possible, but Fitz looked even more excited than before, his eyes practically overflowing with awe.
"I knew I liked you," he said. "I hope you're in science with me. It'll be nice to have someone to back me up when Mr. DeRosa gets things wrong." He said the last part like a joke, but Jemma didn't laugh along with him. Her face was still turned towards the floor, and although her hand was slipped inside of her pocket, Skye was sure she was still tapping away. Fitz either didn't notice Jemma's unusual behavior or didn't care, because he barreled forward with the conversation without missing a beat.
"If you're in here for homeroom then you both probably have Miss Hill for language arts, which means we'll have that class together. Not as interesting as science or math, if you ask me, but Miss Hill is a good teacher. Do you like reading or math better?"
Skye's brain felt like it was lagging, but eventually she caught up with Fitz's train of thought and got her mouth to cooperate. "Uh, I don't know, neither really… School isn't exactly my favorite thing. I think it's kind of boring."
"I suppose that makes sense. I don't like how slow we have to go sometimes, I'd rather be able to learn about the things I like all the time, instead of getting bogged down with revising every few weeks. It's much more interesting when you get to work ahead."
"Sure," Skye said. She didn't think Fitz had understood what she had been trying to say. Boring for him and boring for her seemed like they'd be at opposite ends of the smart kid spectrum, but she didn't feel like correcting him. She was hoping to hold onto their new friend for at least a little while, for Jemma's sake.
Skye was saved from having to discuss academic rigor with Fitz any further by the arrival of their homeroom teacher. She was a trim white woman with brown hair pulled up in a ponytail, and she had a kind face and clever eyes. Skye guessed that was probably Miss Hill. The teacher spotted her and Jemma, and crossed crisply over to their corner.
"You must be Skye and Jemma," she said, holding out her hand. Skye shook it with less grace than she had hoped for, but managed to at least not make a total fool of herself. Jemma didn't make any move to follow suit until Skye nudged her and she reluctantly took the woman's hand as well.
"My name is Miss Hill; I teach language arts here. I got your information from the office just this morning, and I'm very excited to have you both in class." Skye wondered exactly what kind of information she had gotten from the office. It couldn't have been too detailed, otherwise she probably wouldn't have been quite so excited to have them in her class.
"You both have your schedules? And you know where to find your lockers?" The girls nodded, and Miss Hill smiled warmly. "Wonderful. If you have any questions, you can always ask me. And I see you've met Leo. He's a bit of an expert here at school, so I'm sure he'd be happy to show you around today." Fitz pumped his head up and down and puffed out his chest slightly. It was clear he liked being thought of as an expert.
Miss Hill showed Skye and Jemma to a pair of desks near the back that were unoccupied and informed them that they would be their assigned seats for homeroom. After the bell, attendance, and some crackly announcements over the loudspeaker, Miss Hill addressed the homeroom at large.
"Class, we have two new students who just transferred here this week." Skye felt an anchor of dread clunk down in her stomach. She hated the new student speech. She hated being asked to say a few words about herself especially, since she usually had no idea what to say. She wasn't about to start telling a room full of strangers about living in an orphanage for the past 13 years. "This is Jemma and Skye, so if you see them throughout the day, be sure and say hi, okay?" And just like that, it was over. Miss Hill took her seat behind her desk, and the bell rang a few seconds later. Skye couldn't believe her luck. No corny introductions, no mortifying public speech. Even though she just met her, she knew she was going to like Miss Hill.
The morning began to fall into place, and Skye soon realized that this school was pretty much average. She and Jemma had social studies first, and Mrs. Henry seemed cool like Phil had said. Skye didn't feel nearly as lost in that class as she did in her pre-algebra class, which she had next and without Jemma. Jemma, along with Fitz and several other brainiac kids, had a more advanced regular algebra class at that time, and while Skye was sad to see Jemma go, she was glad to be as far away from math with letters in it as she could.
Science with Mr. DeRosa came next, and Skye had to admit it was wildly entertaining to watch Fitz spar with the weary man. Jemma seemed to have perked up at that point, maybe from being in classes that she liked, or maybe from being around Fitz. She still wasn't talking, but she wasn't staring at the ground anymore, and she wrote out copious notes during class that not only answered all of Mr. DeRosa's questions, but corrected him just like Fitz was doing verbally. Skye didn't exactly get everything that Jemma was writing down, but she knew by the frenzy with which Jemma was scribbling away that the girl was in her element.
When the bell rang signaling the end of class, Skye stood and realized it was time for lunch, but that she didn't know where the cafeteria was. She turned and saw Fitz waiting attentively at the door, Jemma a few steps behind him.
"Are you coming to lunch, Skye?" he asked. Jemma shared his expectant look, and Skye just shook her head in disbelief.
"I can't believe you two have already mind-melded me out of the loop," she chuckled. "Hopefully I'm still cool enough to sit with you at lunch."
"As long as your body's resting at a normal temperature, I think you should be fine," Fitz said as he led them down the stairs and towards the smell of square pizza. Skye honestly couldn't tell if he was joking or not, so she just let it slide.
The cafeteria was exactly the kind of madhouse Skye had come to expect from middle school lunchrooms. Long tables with attached benches filled the open room, and a line snaked around the perimeter leading up to the hot line. Clusters of kids hunched at tables, heads pressed together as they ate, laughed, and talked amongst their predetermined groups. It was apparent that the tables near the front of the room were marked territory, filled with kids who seemed to be older, prettier, more socially adept than the others. Right away Skye knew those were tables to avoid. Even if she didn't have a beat on the specific cliques here yet, it didn't take a genius to tell that this was top-of-the-food-chain seating, and the way Fitz scrunched his shoulders and darted past them was a pretty big signal as well.
Fitz scurried towards a table in the back that was still empty and quickly made himself comfortable. Jemma and Skye followed suit, plunking down at the table and pulling out the brown paper bags Phil had packed in their backpacks as they had left that morning. He had apologized for only having peanut butter and jelly, and said that they could tell him some other things they'd like for lunches later on, but Skye at least was just happy to have a lunch at all. At St. Agnes they had all been on the free lunch program at school, but she had been in more than one foster home that was much less attentive towards the idea of three square meals a day. Plus, she liked peanut butter and jelly, especially because Phil had used strawberry jelly instead of grape. She was pleased to see that there was also an apple and a Ziploc baggie with two Oreos apiece in both her and Jemma's lunch sacks. She hadn't realized Phil had put so much thought into their lunches.
"What's that on your bags?" Fitz asked, pointing to some marks on the back side of the paper bags that Skye hadn't noticed before. She twisted hers around and saw a kind of goofy-looking cartoon of a superhero she thought was supposed to be Captain America. It looked like he had a shield, at least. Next to it was written "have a SUPER day!" with a big smiley face. It was signed by both May and Phil. A quick glance confirmed that Jemma's bag had a similar message, and Skye felt her throat get unexpectedly tight. She had no idea why she felt like she was about to cry, but she swallowed hard and shook her head slightly to clear the feeling away. It was almost unbelievable how nice Phil and May were being.
"I guess Phil wrote those on there for us," Skye said, clearing her throat and offering a shrug. Hopefully if she played it nonchalantly, Fitz wouldn't notice how choked up she had just gotten over a cartoon. Lucky for her, Fitz seemed oblivious. He was examining the drawing carefully, and then his face split into a grin.
"That's so cool. And the pun is a nice touch. Wordplay is a sign of intelligence, you know," he said. Jemma nodded, a real, full smile crossing her own face for the first time that day.
"It was very nice of Phil to do that," she said, not to anyone in particular. "Clever, too." Silently, Skye thanked Phil over and over for his kind gestures and little touches. It was things like that that made her feel like maybe it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world to trust him a little. It made her happy to see how happy it made Jemma, too.
"Who's Phil?" Fitz asked, his mouth full of his own sandwich.
Skye bit her lip. She had been hoping to avoid these kinds of questions for at least a little while longer. "Phil, he's… Well, he's our… We kind of live with him," she finally said. She knew it was a lame answer. "You saw him yesterday," she added, trying to deflect. "He was in the office with us getting us registered."
"He's not your dad? What is he then?" Fitz wanted to know. "Why do you live with him? Where did you move from?" Skye grimaced. She should have known that Fitz and his many questions would get to this point faster than normal. Her brain started to feel like scrambled eggs as she tried to settle on a way to answer Fitz's plethora of inquiries.
"We moved from a place near Sheboygan," she managed to get out. That was true, at least. St. Agnes was just outside of Sheboygan. That was where a few of her foster families had lived, too.
"Did you live with Phil there, too?" Fitz was persistent, and clearly confused by Skye's deliberately vague answers. Skye felt bad for not just telling Fitz the whole thing, but it had been her experience that people either used your being a foster kid as fuel to further hassle you or they got really weird when they found out you were an orphan being passed from place to place. She was almost positive Fitz wouldn't start teasing them for being foster kids, but she was a little worried that Fitz, who was already more than a little awkward at times, would get weirded out and not want to hang out with her and Jemma anymore. Skye didn't want to lose him as a potential friend herself, of course, but she especially didn't want to cause him to drop Jemma. Skye didn't think she had ever seen Jemma make a friend so fast. It had taken her almost four months to even say hello to Skye when they had first met. To be fair, Jemma had grown a lot in the six years since they'd known each other, and she had gotten better about talking to people, but not that much.
"No, we lived at an orphanage in Sheboygan." Jemma's voice, so matter of fact, snapped Skye out of her tangled thoughts. Skye's mouth fell open at Jemma's admission. So much for shielding Fitz from the truth. "Phil is our foster father, and his wife Melinda May is our foster mother. We're staying with them for right now."
"Oh." Fitz looked pensive, and Skye steeled herself for the gut punch moment where he walked away. "Okay then, that makes sense. So, you've not got any biological parents?" Skye was too dumbfounded to respond, but Jemma shook her head.
"We had them at some point, of course, but Skye's never met hers and mine…" Jemma's face puckered a little, and she seemed to not be able to get the words out.
"Sorry, you don't need to tell me," Fitz said with surprising tenderness. "I know I ask too many questions. You don't have to answer them."
"It's okay." Skye had finally managed to unstick her jaw in time to reassure him. Beside her, Jemma slipped her hand down from the table and into her lap, where she began to tap softly. Skye was relieved to see that it was more of a self-soothing kind of tap than a frantic, "I'm on the verge of losing it" kind of tap like Jemma had been using earlier in the day.
"Wait, so you two aren't sisters?" Fitz suddenly blurted out. "I mean, I guess foster sisters, right, but not biological?"
Skye furrowed her brow in disbelief. "You thought we were related? You do know Jemma's white and I'm… not, right?" She wasn't exactly sure what her ethnicity was, since she had been a nameless, paperless infant when the nuns had gotten her. Sister Margaret had called her "ethnic" before, which she really hated, and most of the other kids at St. Agnes had just assumed she was Asian, although there wasn't much specificity in that. Asia was a big continent.
"Well, yeah, I suppose, but you came in together and live together, so I just thought…" Fitz blushed. "I mean, people can be biologically related and have different racial or ethnic backgrounds. Race isn't even biologically determined, you know, there aren't actually genetic markers that denote a person's race, just certain physical characteristics that we've come to associate with different groups of people…" Off on a biology tangent, Fitz prattled away about genes and chromosomes, and Skye started to tune him out.
She mulled over the idea of being Jemma's sister in her head. Even though she had dreamed of living together with Jemma for years, she had never really considered that doing so would make them sisters. Jemma had always just been her Jemma. Her best friend, her confidant, her rock, just like how she was Jemma's best friend and her best defender. The idea of being able to call Jemma her sister, to say that Jemma was really and truly her family, not just that she felt like the only family Skye had ever known, made a warm, bubbly feeling start to swell in Skye's chest. She had no idea how long they were going to get to stay with Phil and May, but Skye decided right then that she was going to do everything in her power make Jemma her sister for as long as she could.
I apologize if I've botched any Wisconsin geography - I did my best to keep it plausible! Rough first morning for Jemma, but Skye and Fitz are helping her get through it :)