TW for brief mentions of abuse, bullying
Much to Skye's surprise, both Fitz and Trip were waiting at the melted picnic table when she and Jemma arrived for school the morning after the soccer game smackdown. They made an odd pair – Fitz looking sullen and Trip looking like he was bursting with news. As soon as she and Jemma were in earshot, everyone started asking questions, overlapping one another and creating a cacophony of inquiry.
"Did you guys hear what happened to Ward's brother last night?"
"Is Bobbi okay?"
"Is Hunter okay?"
"Is Hunter still mad?"
They all paused, realizing that they weren't going to get anywhere carrying on like that. Trip grinned.
"I guess we've all got a lot to talk about."
"What are you doing over here?" Skye wanted to know. She cast her gaze around to see if Ward was watching them. "You were supposed to go dark until it was time to put phase two of the plan in motion."
"It's all good," Trip smiled. "Technically I'm here on Ward's orders. He was really mad this morning, and he told us about how Fitz's cousin wrecked their football jerseys and then went ballistic. Apparently Ward's brother and Fitz's cousin and bunch of other people got in this huge fight and now they're all going to see their principal today."
"We know," Skye nodded. "We were there. And that's not exactly what happened."
"You were there?"
Skye nodded again and explained the more accurate version of events that Ward had oh-so-helpfully altered in his telling. Trip let out a low whistle.
"Wow, that's intense. I'm glad you all are okay. Rough about your foster sister and your cousin, Fitz."
"It wasn't a great night for anyone," Fitz grumbled.
"So what exactly are these orders that Ward sent you here with?" Skye asked.
"Well, Ward's brother is fuming, so of course he's got it in Ward's head that he has to carry on the torch if he gets suspended or something. Which means that Ward's going on the warpath here. He wants me to tell you all to watch your step."
"What an original threat," muttered Fitz sarcastically.
"Nobody said Ward was a creative genius," Trip scoffed. "Most of his big ideas revolve around beating people up until they do what he wants. He learned from the best."
"That's awful," Jemma said quietly. Skye gave her a sympathetic smile and slipped her hand into Jemma's for a quick squeeze.
"Maybe so, but if that's what's coming for us, we need to be ready," she said stoutly.
"Yeah," agreed Trip. "He's looking for any excuse to go off on you guys, so if you want my advice, I'd stay as far away from him as possible until things cool down."
"Unless we use this as our chance to get him to snap in front of the teachers," Skye pointed out.
"Maybe." Trip looked thoughtful, but the crinkle in between his eyebrows betrayed more concern than he was letting on. "He seems pretty… unstable right now. I'm not sure now is the best time to poke the bear, honestly."
"We can't wait around forever," Skye countered. "If we do that, then we don't do anything to fix the problem in the first place, and we keep living our lives afraid of what he's going to do next. I don't want to live like that."
"And I'm not asking you to," Trip assured her. "Come on, girl, you know me better than that. I'm not saying we don't settle things with him once and for all, I'm just saying maybe wait until he's not actively out for blood. The plan was for a controlled setting, remember?"
"Controlled environment, fewer variables," Jemma nodded.
"All right, fine," conceded Skye, throwing her hands up in surrender. "Just stop talking science-y at me, okay?" She flashed a grin that even gloomy Fitz couldn't help but return.
"I should probably go," Trip said eventually, swiveling his head around to check for Ward. "His message wasn't all that long, so I don't want to seem suspicious talking with you guys. I'll check in soon, okay? We'll figure out the right timeframe for phase two, I promise."
"Counting on it," Skye smiled. She watched as Trip jogged away and eased back into a group of boys horsing around on the basketball court as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. He really was an excellent double agent, she thought.
"I'm sorry we had to leave so soon last night," Fitz mumbled, once it was just the three of them. "I hope Bobbi is all right."
"She's okay," Skye said. "A lot of stuff happened last night that was kind of hard for her, but May and Phil helped. And she didn't get hurt or anything."
"What about Hunter?" Jemma asked. "Is he hurt?"
"Pretty banged up," Fitz nodded. "He's mad, too. Wouldn't talk the rest of the night. My aunt was going mental at the sight of him, but he wouldn't tell her what happened. They got in a big row over it. He… he did stuff like this back when they lived in England. It was one of the reasons why they decided to leave. Get him a fresh start."
"He's not still mad at Bobbi, is he?" Skye demanded. "Because that's not fair. She didn't mean to keep stuff from him for so long, and even if she did, it's just because telling people you're in foster care is hard, especially when..." Skye trailed off. She wasn't sure if she was supposed to say what Bobbi's dad had done to her. That felt like something that wasn't hers to tell. Even Raina hadn't said that part last night.
"I don't really know," Fitz said. "Maybe. He doesn't like it when people lie to him, but he also doesn't like losing fights. So who knows what's really upsetting him."
"Phil said they were all going to have to see the principal this morning," said Jemma. "Everyone who was involved in the fight. I think Bobbi was a little worried about that."
"Do they kick people out of school for getting in fights here?" Skye asked nervously. One of the schools she had gone to when she stayed with a foster family in Plymouth had been like that. When she got caught fighting with a girl who had been making fun of her, the school expelled her. It didn't matter that the girl had been antagonizing Skye for weeks, making fun of her clothes and her eyes and doing infuriating things like leaving hundreds of Chinese takeout menus in her locker. All that mattered to the school was that Skye had hit the girl, and that was that. Once she got kicked out, the foster family sent her back, too. That part wasn't so bad, since the foster family hadn't been a good one, and she was eager to get away from a place where she got smacked around all the time. She didn't think Phil and May would be the type of people to send Bobbi away if she got expelled from school, but that didn't stop her stomach from twisting anxiously at the idea.
"I don't think so," Fitz said comfortingly. "Suspensions, maybe, but I've never heard of anybody getting expelled."
"Suspensions?" squeaked Jemma.
"They're not so bad," Skye shrugged. Having experienced a few herself, she didn't think there was quite as much to worry about with a suspension. The worst thing was the way the teachers all treated you when you came back, as far as she was concerned. Well that, or whatever punishment your foster family cooked up for you for getting suspended, but that didn't seem like a reasonable fear with May and Phil. Plus, she was pretty sure May and Phil wouldn't send someone back over a suspension. They wouldn't be happy, for sure, but they wouldn't kick anyone out for that.
"They might not get suspended," Fitz soothed, turning gentle eyes on Jemma. "It's not like they did it at school or anybody got seriously hurt. Maybe they'll just all get detentions."
"Wouldn't that be a fun crowd to get stuck in detention with?" Skye smirked. "Somehow I don't see that ending with them all becoming friends and joining a club for eating breakfast together."
Fitz scrunched his eyebrows together in confusion. "Huh?"
"It's some movie," Skye shrugged with a laugh. "I've never actually seen it, but I think they make a club for pancakes and eggs and stuff in detention. Definitely not like any detention I've ever had."
Skye and the others avoided Ward the rest of the day, per Trip's suggestion, and the day passed without incident. Even tutoring was uneventful, despite it not being quite how it usually was. Phil had warned Skye in the car that Natasha wouldn't be there this week, since she was doing afterschool detention (no mention of breakfast foods, Skye noticed). She had worried that she'd get stuck with Raina again, but thankfully Raina was nowhere to be seen, and instead Skye worked with a boy named Tomas who was nice enough, but kind of dry and boring. All he wanted to do was drill her math worksheet, and while he helped her figure out the right answers, Skye wasn't sure she could replicate the process if she had been asked to.
The real surprise of the day came when they all walked through the front door after coming home and were met with the smiling face of May peering out from the kitchen.
"You're just in time," she said warmly, beckoning for them to drop their shoes and backpacks by the door and join her. Skye looked up at Phil, cocking her head to one side in curiosity, but Phil just smiled and waved her through.
"Better go see what she's up to," he grinned. "I'm certainly not going to spoil the surprise."
Skye wrestled her shoes off her feet and padded behind Bobbi and Jemma, desperately intrigued about what was going on. The kitchen counters were full of things – bottles and boxes and bowls – and May was pulling a few more out of the fridge.
"What are you doing home so early?" Skye asked, leaning to better see what exactly was piling up on the counters. "And in the kitchen?"
"I worked through lunch so I could be home in time to meet you all after school," May said, setting a carton of eggs and a package of some kind of ground-up meat down next to the stove. "We're making jiaozi."
Skye had no idea what that meant, and she wasn't entirely sure that answered her question, either. She glanced over at Bobbi and Jemma, who looked just as confused as Skye felt.
"My mother always said that the best cure for a bad day was a good meal," May explained as she rolled up her sleeves. She gestured for the girls to wash their hands at the sink as she continued. "And her go-to for a good meal is always jiaozi. I think we've all had a little bit of a rough time these past few days, so I thought it was time for us to have some."
"And you want us to help you?" Bobbi asked hesitantly.
May nodded. "If you want to, of course. My mother taught me, and her mother taught her, and I thought…" She trailed off, and Skye could have sworn she looked a little sheepish. "Well, I just thought you all might like to learn. Plus, they taste better when you've helped to make them, if you ask me."
Skye felt a grin break across her face. She liked helping in the kitchen, and cooking with May sounded way more fun than doing homework, which is usually what she did after coming home. "What do we do first?"
May guided them over to a big bowl, where she had flour already measured out. "We're going to make the wrappers first," she said, handing Bobbi a slightly steaming cup of water and passing Jemma a dish of salt. "Jemma, add a little salt to our flour, and then Bobbi, you can add the water."
"How much?" Jemma wanted to know. Her fingers hung in midair over the salt, waiting.
"Just some," May told her. "There's not really an amount. Just enough to season it and help with the mixing."
"But mixtures need measurements," Jemma said slowly. "Otherwise the composition won't be right."
"I know how you feel," smiled May. "I used to get so mad when my mother wouldn't let me measure anything for jiaozi. She still refuses to write down the recipe, no matter how many times I beg her. She says this is more of a feeling recipe than a thinking one, which drives me crazy. But I've come to accept it for the most part. Cooking like this is a lesson in letting go, for me. In trusting my instincts."
Jemma didn't look entirely convinced, but she managed to pinch up a decent amount of salt and sprinkle it into the bowl.
"Very nice," May nodded. "Now you, Bobbi." Bobbi added the water, and May began to mix the ingredients together. Once they had combined, she inclined her head towards Skye. "Skye, come help me knead? Get your hands in there and start to work the dough so it gets nice and smooth."
Delighted, Skye plunged her hands into the bowl. She relished the squishy feeling of the dough between her fingers, and she was surprised at how quickly it stiffened in her hands.
"I thought it would be stickier," she said.
"I guess we added just the right amount of flour and salt," May beamed. "If we hadn't, it would be pretty sticky right about now." She watched as Skye kneaded for a minute more, then guided Skye's hands out of the bowl. "All right, good work. Now we're going to let this sit for a little bit while we mix up the inside part. We'll knead it again before too long, don't you worry," she added with a chuckle, seeing the crestfallen look on Skye's face.
Mixing up the inside turned out to be significantly more complicated than the dough, but no one seemed to mind. May coached them through adding a myriad of spices, seasonings, and sauces to the ground meat, which Skye learned was pork. Some of the ingredients they added were things Skye recognized, like salt, ginger, and soy sauce, but others were entirely new to her. They had interesting names, like oyster sauce and sesame oil, and they had interesting smells, too. Earthy and salty and spicy. Skye could have breathed in those smells for hours and never have gotten tired of them.
Jemma had a harder time adding ingredients than Skye did, mostly because she was afraid to add in the wrong amount of something. Skye took immense pleasure in the freedom of tipping the different powders and liquids into the bowl in whatever way 'felt' right to her. Bobbi, for the most part, took the cooking in stride, doing her best to follow May's instructions. Every time Skye peeked at her, Bobbi was smiling, especially when she watched Skye or Jemma add their ingredients. Skye was glad to see Bobbi looking so happy and relaxed – it was a far cry from the Bobbi she had seen last night, or even that morning.
"We've got to put in a few eggs, so the mixture sticks together," May explained, pulling two eggs out from the carton. Without hesitating, May rapped one egg against the counter and cracked it into the bowl in one swift, singlehanded motion. Skye gaped.
"How did you do that?"
"With a lot of practice," May laughed. "I'm not exactly the best cook, but I do like to bake, so I've cracked a lot of eggs in my time. I saw some chef on TV crack her eggs one handed once ages ago – I was probably still in high school – and after that I was determined to learn how. It took me a long time to get it right." She held out the other egg to Skye. "Do you want to try?"
Skye shook her head. "I'll mess it up."
"You don't know that," May told her. "You won't know until you try."
Gingerly, Skye took the egg and adjusted her grip on the shell to try and match the way May had been holding it. She took a steeling breath, then smashed the egg against the counter. The egg promptly exploded, leaking white and yolk all over the counter and dripping it down Skye's hand. Skye's face flushed.
"I'm sorry," she said quickly, scrambling to scoop up the bits of shell and goop that were oozing all over the place. "I'm sorry, I'll clean it up."
"It's okay," May assured her. Skye was still frantically trying to clean the mess in front of her, but May placed a restraining hand gently on Skye's wrist and Skye looked up to see that May was smiling – one of those smiles that people wear when they're trying not to laugh, but in a nice way, not a mean one. Skye's shoulders sagged with the release of a tension she didn't know she had been holding.
"That's pretty much how my first attempt went, too," May said. "I told you it took me a long time to get it right. That was a good first try."
"But I messed it up," Skye pointed out. "And I made a huge mess and wasted the egg."
"You're learning," said May kindly. "Messing up is a part of learning. And the egg wasn't wasted if it helped you to learn. Besides, we have plenty more. Do you want to try again?"
Skye thought about it for a minute while she washed her hand off. "Okay," she decided. "I'll try."
"Good girl," May smiled. "Let's do this one together, all right?" She handed Skye a new egg and arranged her fingers around the shell. In the moment before they brought the egg down against the counter together, Skye marveled at the way May's hand fit so neatly over the top of her own. It was like they were two pieces that had been made precisely for the purpose of fitting together – puzzle pieces that had found their match.
This time, when Skye struck the egg against the counter, May helped to temper the amount of force that she used, and the egg didn't shatter immediately upon impact.
"Good," May said encouragingly as she guided Skye's hand holding the cracked egg over to the bowl. "Now use your thumb to push half of the shell one way and your middle finger to push the other half the other way, that's it." Skye watched in amazement as the shell separated in her hand and the yolk slid easily out into the bowl. It wasn't a totally perfect attempt – a little piece of shell escaped into the bowl and Skye still got some of the runny white on her fingers – but it was miles better than her first one.
"It worked!" Skye said, excitement bursting like a firecracker in her chest. She turned back towards Jemma and Bobbi, beaming. "Did you see?"
"I saw," Bobbi laughed. "Nice work."
"That was almost as good as May's," Jemma nodded, impressed.
"You two will get your turn in a little bit," May promised as she picked the tiny pieces of shell out of the bowl and washed her hands. "Right now we need to stir."
They mixed the meat in the bowl until it started to stick together, then May set the bowl to the side. She pulled the dough bowl back out and indicated for Jemma to pick up the dough and start kneading it again.
"We want to work it until it's nice and smooth," she explained and Jemma huffed over the now stiff dough. Jemma wore a very serious expression as she worked the dough, like she was diffusing a bomb instead of just massaging some proto-bread, and Skye bit down on her lip to force herself to keep a straight face. She made the mistake of catching Bobbi's eye, however, and the two of them failed to suppress giggles. Jemma frowned indignantly.
"It's not funny. It's hard. You have to concentrate to get it right."
"We're not laughing at you," Bobbi assured her. She took a step closer to Jemma. "Can I help?" Jemma nodded and made room for Bobbi at the counter. Bobbi stuck her hands into the dough right alongside Jemma's and Skye watched as her expression went from light amusement to stern concentration in a matter of seconds.
"She's right, the dough's really stiff," Bobbi puffed, forcing the dough down with her fist. The muscles in her arms were taut as she stretched and pounded the dough.
"That's okay, it usually starts like that. That's why we knead it twice before we let it rest. You two are doing a great job."
Eventually the dough was smooth enough to suit May, and she dropped the dough ball back into the bowl to rest.
"Now's the hardest part. We have to wait an hour for the filling to marinate and for the dough to rest."
"An hour?" Skye pouted. She hated waiting under the best of circumstances, but waiting around for food to rest sounded impossibly boring.
"Don't worry," May smiled. "I have a few tricks to make the time go faster."
They started by clearing away everything that they had been using to cook with, putting the jars and bottles and boxes back where they belonged and washing out spoons and bowls that were now empty. With all four of them working, it didn't take long at all, and soon the kitchen was shiny and clean once more. Then, with a mischievous gleam in her eye, May pulled down some flour and sugar from the cabinet and set them out on the counter.
"Who thinks we should make something sweet to go with our dinner? Maybe a cake?"
Skye's eyes lit up with uncontained excitement. She couldn't remember the last time she had eaten a piece of cake, much less baked one herself. Without thinking, she started bouncing up and down on the balls of her feet in elated anticipation while beside her, Jemma and Bobbi were both wearing matching grins.
"I'll take that as a yes," chuckled May. She finished pulling out the remaining ingredients and grabbed a little box from a shelf. Skye peeked around May's shoulder to look inside the box and saw a row of index cards all lined up neatly, waiting to be thumbed through. It only took May a second to rifle past a few cards and pluck out one with soft edges and a bent corner – a well-loved and oft used card, Skye was sure.
"This is an old standard," May said, setting the recipe card down for them to see. "And Jemma, I think this might be a little bit more your speed. Precise measurements are much more important in baking than in cooking, in my experience. It's one of the reasons why I like to bake better and why my cooking never turns out quite as good as Phil's or my mother's."
May was right. Jemma was in her element, squinting at the measuring cups as they poured out units of milk and dragging a butter knife across the tops of the flour and sugar cups to get the lines just so. Skye didn't have quite the patience for it, but she enjoyed dumping in what Jemma had measured and watching as Bobbi worked the mixer around the sides of the bowl, blending everything together.
The cake took a lot of eggs, too, and just as May had promised, they all got some practice with their one-handed cracking. Bobbi came the closest to matching May's technique, only loosing a little bit of egg down her fingers as she prodded the shell apart, and Jemma had trouble rapping the egg hard enough against the counter to get a good break along the shell.
"It's okay to be aggressive with it," May encouraged, cupping Jemma's wrist and demonstrating the amount of force without actually hitting the egg on the counter. "You don't want to slam it, of course, that's how you get egg explosions—"
"Egg-splosions," Skye snickered. May rolled her eyes, but the corners of her mouth twitched.
"Don't let Phil hear you cracking egg jokes," she warned. "If he gets wind that you're making egg puns, he'll be insufferable. He can't help himself."
"I bet that's pretty egg-sasperating," Skye joked. "Even though egg jokes are an egg-shell-ant kind of joke."
"Of yolk," Bobbi amended, biting back a laugh. "Egg-shell-ant kind of yolk."
May cast a pretend-desperate glance to Jemma. "What are we going to do with these two, huh?" she asked, her eyes glinting with amusement. "They're just as bad as Phil." Jemma giggled and leaned into May's side slightly, tapping cheerily on the back of May's hand. Skye knew Jemma was clever enough to have probably come up with about a dozen more egg-themed puns, but she also knew Jemma was kind enough to not leave May all alone on the anti-pun team.
It occurred to Skye that she had never seen Jemma act quite so happy and relaxed around a grownup before, and while a tiny part of her heart twinged at the idea that there was a person other than her who could coax Jemma out of her shell so easily, that part was quickly overwhelmed by the glowing warmth of knowing that her best friend was finally in a place where she felt safe and really, truly happy. She wondered if Jemma knew it for what it was, or if it was more of a feeling than a knowing. She wondered if there would ever come a time when she fully felt the same thing. Maybe she felt it here and now, but it was so hard to be sure. She wasn't really sure what kind of a feeling she was supposed to be waiting around for, if she was being honest. She knew she liked it here. She liked living with May and Phil better than any other foster home she'd ever had, she liked having Bobbi as an older foster sister, and of course she loved sharing a life with Jemma.
Things were as good as she could have ever hoped for, and she was grateful for everything that May and Phil did for them, everything that they meant for them. But she couldn't shake the nagging, lingering doubt that there was something that still hadn't clicked quite into place. As jubilant and charming as the scene unfolding in front of her was, there was some part of Skye's brain, or maybe her heart, that kept whispering to her that it wasn't real. It wouldn't last. It wasn't for her. She didn't really belong in this life the way Jemma and Bobbi did. She hated that part of herself, and she wished she knew how to silence it for good, but nothing she could think of seemed to shutter it away.
They finished the cake batter a few minutes later, and Skye watched as May tipped the yellow batter into a pan, the mixture falling down like liquid ribbons out of the bowl. Into the oven it went, and by the time they had cleaned up the mess from mixing up the cake, it was time to pull out the jiaozi and finish putting them together. May showed them how to roll out the dough and pull little chunks off that could be rolled into small circles, then flattened out thin enough to use as wrappers, and while Skye, Jemma, and Bobbi set to work on that, May turned her attention to the filling. She chopped up skinny green things – chives and scallions, she told them – and mixed them with sesame oil before adding them into the pork and giving the whole thing a good stir.
"Nice work," she said, checking on their dough rolling. "Okay, now this part we need to do kind of quickly, so the dough doesn't dry out before we have a chance to shape it. Watch." She scooped up a blob of the filling and slid it into the middle of one of the thin circles of dough that they had rolled out. In one fluid motion, she folded the dough into a semi-circle up and around the filing, then pinched the edges in and upward, sealing the whole thing up like a tiny little package. It was all Skye could do not to stare slack-jawed at the ease with which May had just created the neat little dumpling.
"For someone who says she's not a very good cook, you sure look like you know what you're doing," Bobbi remarked, eyeing the dumpling with apprehension.
"I promise, I'm really not a good cook," May chuckled. "Just get Phil to tell you the crockpot story sometime. Or the thanksgiving story. That's all the proof you need. I've just had a lot of practice with jiaozi – I've been making them since I was very small, after all. If it wasn't for my mother's training, these would turn out as a disaster every time."
She handed them each a wrapper and urged them to start folding. Not surprisingly, making the dumpling was much harder than May had made it look. Skye couldn't seem to get the right amount of filling scooped out for hers – her first one had way too much and oozed out of the corners that she tried to fold, and her next attempt was basically nothing but dough – but May kept telling her that she was doing a good job. Even harder than the filling was the actual folding. It was hard to get the middle parts to stay still while Skye's clumsy fingers navigated around the edges of the dough and tried to seal them shut. None of hers looked even close to the shape that May had made, but at least after a few they seemed to stay closed.
Eventually, they started to find a rhythm, and Skye found herself looking for a way to fill the quiet that had settled over them while they worked.
"Is your mom still alive, May? Does she live close to here?"
"She is alive. I need to call her actually, I've been meaning to do that for weeks. She lives in Pennsylvania. That was the last place she traveled for her job, and once she retired she just decided to stay there."
"You didn't have to move with her?" Skye asked.
"No," May shook her head. "She got transferred here when I was in high school. That was right around when she and my dad got divorced, too, so she and I moved here and he stayed in Arizona. She didn't get transferred again until I was in college, and by that point I was tired of moving around so much, so I decided to stay here and live on my own. Plus I was dating Phil by then, and I didn't really want to move far away from him, either."
"What kind of job did she have that made you move so much?" Bobbi wanted to know.
"She was with the CIA," May said slowly.
"What?" That was basically the coolest thing Skye had ever heard in her life, and she was desperate to know more about May's mom the super-spy.
"It's not as cool as it sounds," May informed them. "I mean, it was still pretty cool, I guess, but she wasn't a secret agent or anything. She did a lot with their data management, and she helped get local servers and databases up and running around the country in all the different CIA offices. Back in those days computers were still kind of a beast to understand and operate, so there weren't a lot of people like her who could run the numbers and work the machines. She stayed busy."
"What about your dad? Was he in the FBI or something?"
"Not quite," May laughed. "He was a pilot. He was in the Air Force for a while, and then when he left that he was a commercial pilot for a long time after. He's retired now, too."
"Do you get to see them often?" Jemma asked.
"From time to time. My mother will swing by every now and then, sometimes unannounced, which is always an interesting time. My dad doesn't like to travel as much, probably because he did so much of it when he was working, but Phil and I try to go out to Arizona to see him at least once a year. And we email and talk on the phone plenty, too. That's kind of how it goes when you all live so far apart from each other, but it seems to work for us."
They had finished folding the last of the jiaozi, which meant it was time to actually cook them. May explained that they were going to boil the dumplings, and she filled up a big pot with water to be heated on the stove. While they waited for the water to boil, she pulled out the cake from the oven, which smelled heavenly to Skye. Warm and sweet and homey. It looked good, too – a nice golden brown color that reminded her of honey.
"We'll put some frosting on once it's had a chance to cool off," May said, correctly interpreting Skye's longing gaze. "Anything we put on it right now would just melt right off."
Skye's disappointment at having to wait to frost the cake was quickly abated by the boiling of the water, which meant it was time to drop the dumplings in and watch as they bobbed around in the steamy pot, dancing right alongside the bubbles in the water.
"I guess I finished grading those quizzes just in time," came Phil's exuberant voice from the doorway. Skye looked over to see him glowing and grinning and looking overall very Phil-like. The sight made her chest feel like the jiaozi pot, all bubbly and jumpy inside. "Wow, it smells amazing in here."
"We made a cake," Skye told him excitedly. "And jiaozi. May taught us."
"Sounds like I'm in for a real treat tonight, then," Phil beamed. "I don't have to cook and I get to eat something delicious made by all my favorite people."
None of them could help blushing at that.
The jiaozi had turned out amazing, in Skye's opinion. The dough that had been so stiff to knead was soft and tender after cooking, and the filling was packed with more flavors than Skye had ever tasted altogether in one food. There was brightness from the scallions and juiciness from the pork, and the seasonings all spoke to one another, creating a conversation of saltiness, acidity, heat, and something rich, almost unctuous in its taste. Also amazing was the cake, which was just as sweet and fluffy as Skye had hoped it would be. She wondered if May and Phil were the type of people who would let you have a cake on your birthday, and if there was any way she might still be here when that time came around for her. If it did, the cake they had made tonight was exactly the kind of cake she wanted when the day arrived.
The only downside to spending the afternoon cooking with May was that, after the dinner and dessert had been eaten and dishes had been washed, Skye still had homework to finish. She wasn't the only one, though, so once the table was clear of dinner remnants, all five of them ended up sitting around it, each person with their own work in front of them. Phil was jotting down some notes on his lesson plans, but mostly he was keeping an eye on Skye, who had a worksheet for science to finish filling out. They had moved on from their unit on DNA to a unit about other kinds of cells, and Skye was supposed to be labeling the different parts of the cell on a poorly xeroxed diagram, but she was having trouble telling the pictures apart and the names of all the parts were complicated words that she couldn't remember how to spell.
Jemma, who had finished her cell diagram earlier in the day, plugged away instead at a math worksheet that was clogged up with x's and y's and little graphs of lines that went up and down, and Skye counted her lucky stars that at least she didn't have to worry about math with letters and lines just yet. Bobbi had her chin propped on her fist as she flicked through pages of a book for her English class, but she didn't look all that interested in whatever she was supposed to be reading, and May was sifting through a packet of papers.
"What are you working on?" Skye asked, curiosity getting the better of her and winning out over the boring and complicated science worksheet.
"I'm looking at some of these things that Mrs. Hinton sent home with us," May told her, her eyes still on the papers. "Some resources for helping you with school, some guidelines on ways that we can support you. And somewhere in here is a list of therapists that Mrs. Hinton recommends. I wanted to take a look at that and see if there were some that Phil and I could look into this weekend to see if there was someone who might be a good fit for all of us."
"Oh." Skye didn't regret agreeing to go with Bobbi to therapy, exactly. She was glad that there was something she could do to help Bobbi out after everything Bobbi had done for her over the last couple of months, but her shoulders went tight and she still got a prickly, cold feeling down the length of her spine every time she thought about having to go see one of those doctors. She felt like May and Phil wouldn't send her to someone who would make her feel small and scared and stupid, like some of the other doctors she'd had to see had made her feel, and she was pretty sure they wouldn't let some doctor tell them that she was a hopeless case. 'Beyond intervention' is what one doctor had said. She hadn't understood what that meant when she heard it, but later on Jemma had explained that the doctor didn't think there was anything she could do to fix everything that was wrong with Skye. May and Phil would do their best to find someone nice, they had promised, but still, the apprehension clouded over her brain like a nervous fog any time the subject came up.
"Come on, Skye, try and stay focused, please," Phil prompted, tapping the eraser end of his pencil against her worksheet. "Which one of these is the nucleus?"
"I don't know," Skye moped. "They all look the same. It's just a bunch of blobs inside of a bigger blob."
"That's fair," Phil admitted. "It's not a very good copy, and a lot of them look similar. But you still have to try, kiddo."
"That one," Skye said, pointing at the first blob she laid her eyes on. It was long and skinny with wriggly lines inside of it.
"Did you try, or did you just pick one to be done with it?" Phil asked pointedly. Skye blushed and looked back at the paper, studying the shapes carefully.
"Maybe that one," she corrected herself. She pointed at something round near the center of the picture. "The nucleus is the thing in the middle, right? Like the brain?"
"It's the control center of the cell," Jemma piped up. "That's where the DNA is stored, too."
"So did I get it right?"
"Yes," Phil smiled. "Good work. Go ahead and write that one in, okay?"
Scrunching up her nose, Skye worked hard to scratch out n-u-k-l-i-u-s next to the middle blob. She was pretty sure that wasn't the right spelling, but she hoped that it would be close enough to get her the points. Mr. DeRosa should be able to tell what she meant, at least.
"Oh my god," May said suddenly. Skye flicked her eyes up from her homework to see May staring at one of her papers, her eyes wide and her eyebrows creeping up her forehead in surprise. "There's no way."
"Mel? What is it, honey?"
"It's… well, it's…" May passed the paper to Phil, who skimmed it quickly. After a beat, his face slid into a nearly identical expression.
"Well, I'll be…" he murmured, chuckling slightly. "I'm a little embarrassed we didn't think of him sooner."
"What's going on?" Skye demanded. She hated being kept out of the loop when something interesting was happening right in front of her.
"One of the psychiatrists on here, he's… I used to know him. We haven't talked in ages," May said hesitantly.
"We went to high school with him," Phil added, giving May one of those looks that Skye knew meant there was more to the story than what they were saying. She narrowed her eyes suspiciously. They were hiding something from them.
"I also used to date him," May said flatly, after a long pause. "Before I dated Phil, of course. But he used to be my boyfriend."
"No way," Skye said, her mouth hanging open. "Your boyfriend?"
"Well you don't have to act quite so surprised," May said with a teasing smile. "Phil wasn't my first and only love."
"I'd be more offended at that if I didn't know that I'm your number-one guy these days," Phil teased back.
"Definitely my number one," May assured him. She leaned over and pecked him on the cheek. "You're the one I picked to marry, after all. Nobody else has anything on you." Phil smiled wide and turned his head so that instead of kissing him on the cheek, May was kissing him on the mouth. Skye wrinkled her nose and Bobbi, who had set her book down, hastily picked it back up, her cheeks scarlet.
"Don't be gross," Skye groaned, clapping a hand over her eyes. She heard Jemma giggling somewhere beside her, and she couldn't help but smile a little. She had to admit it was nice to have foster parents who actually liked each other enough to want to kiss, but still, she could do without the PDA.
"All right, all right," Phil said, laughing. "You can uncover your eyes, Bashful. We'll just save the rest of our kissing for after you all have gone to bed."
"Phil, I said don't be gross!" Skye was trying her hardest to be indignant, but they were all laughing along with Phil now, and it didn't take much before Skye had joined in too.