Thanks to everyone who read and to MelsieR for reviewing.

"Hey," Catie greeted, dropping her backpack down on the table next to Jamie.

"Hey," he returned with a grin. "Welcome back. How was your trip?"

"Noisy. Like my little cousin used some of his gelt—or more to the point my aunt let him use it, despite knowing that we were going to be driving for six hours—to buy a kazoo noisy, and then on the way back we all had to hear a recap of everything he'd done over the past week and never mind that we were all there too. I swear, the next time someone insists 'Sure, we can all fit in one car' I'm going to pull a Home Alone. That or tie him to the roof rack."

Jamie snickered.

"Watch it, or I'll tell him you want to hear a concert the next time you come over." She shrugged out of her jacket, piling it up on her lap. "So what about you? Anything interesting happen while I was gone?"

He grimaced. "Well, I'm grounded."

"Again? What did you do this time?"

"Stayed all night at Cory and Isaac's without leaving a message. And there was this whole smoking thing." He waved a hand. "It was only one puff, but he got mad anyway."

Caitie's lips thinned. "Smoking is a disgusting habit, and you shouldn't be doing it at all. And you know it."

Given how straightedge she was, he probably shouldn't have expected her support on that particular point. "Yeah, yeah, I've got it." He had to write a whole report about it before he was done being grounded, and Alex's response to the one he'd tried to give him yesterday had been a pointed look and a suggestion that Jamie actually try doing some reading first. Jamie's teachers knew better than to expect that sort of thing, but Alex was a whole lot pickier than any of them, and in retrospect he should have known that. Not that he was planning on admitting it, but he should also probably count himself lucky that Alex had only ended up assigning him one chapter, because if Alex had decided to make him read the whole entire giant book he'd pulled out Jamie would probably still be working on it come next Christmas break.

"Anyway, if I pulled a stunt like staying out all night without saying where I was, my mom would probably ground me for life," Caitie continued.

He shrugged. Someone giving a damn where he was was still a beyond-weird experience. And he couldn't believe that he'd freaked out at Alex like that. It was Alex for goodness sake. He'd never even slapped Jamie for smart-mouthing—hell, not even for swearing at him back before Thanksgiving—so obviously he wasn't just going to up and start beating him.

Jamie was pretty sure that Alex hadn't even known what he was upset about at first, at least not until Jamie had finally said the words. And once he had, Alex had been very clear that nothing like that was going to happen. Which should have been obvious too given what he'd made Jamie promise before the holidays about telling if anyone ever hurt him on purpose, but Jamie had been so tired and out of it by then he hadn't really been thinking.

He didn't quite get why Alex said he'd been scared by Jamie's panic attack, but whatever the reason had been Alex hadn't tried to make Jamie talk after all of it, which had been a relief. And when he'd come to check on Jamie—which was totally what he'd been doing, no matter what he said—and found Jamie unable to sleep, he'd made him hot chocolate and let him lie down on the couch for a while. Jamie finally had fallen asleep there for a couple hours, mostly because Alex remained kind of a dork and had been watching a documentary on TV about the speed different kinds of grass grew or something equally fascinating while he worked.

"Other than that, how have things been?" Caitie asked, interrupting his thoughts. "Cory and Isaac up to anything interesting?"

"Not really. Isaac's got full time hours, now, though, so he's thinking he might be able to get a place of his own soon. That'd be kind of cool." And absolutely not the kind of thing he was ever telling Alex, who already didn't like the fact that their parents weren't around in their shared apartment.

"No kidding. What about Kenny, have you seen him at all? Or more to the point, has he gotten out of whatever this whole jerk phase he's been stuck in is?"

"That's..." Jamie still hadn't talked to anyone about what he'd seen, the damn needles and all of that, and even if Caitie was on the list of people he thought should know, the rapidly-filling school cafeteria wasn't even close to the place to get into it. "It's complicated. I'll talk to you after school, all right?"

She frowned and started to ask, only to stop abruptly, her eyes locking on something past Jamie. He turned to find Sonja approaching.

"Hey, good, I'm glad I caught you before classes," she greeted.

His stomach twisted. Alex had said he wouldn't hit him, but he'd never said that he wouldn't get rid of him. And it was...it had been over a month now. Even if Jamie hadn't screwed up he'd probably been getting sick of him; that had just been the final straw.

"Can we find an empty classroom and chat for a few minutes?" Sonja asked. "I think we've got a few minutes until the bell rings, unless they've changed the schedule recently."

"I...sure." It wasn't like he got to say 'no.' He nodded to Caitie. "See you in class."

"I'm sorry to surprise you like this, but I was afraid I wouldn't be able to make it in at lunchtime," Sonja said as Jamie shouldered his backpack and grabbed his coat, leading them around clusters of kids and towards the nearest door. He wasn't one of the overachiever types and would probably get in trouble if he got caught wandering around random classrooms before school even started—or he'd get blamed if anybody found anything wrong, anyway, and never mind if it had been wrong long before he'd even started high school—but they were a lot less likely to care if an adult was with him.

"No problem," he made himself say as they exited the cafeteria. "When do I need to be packed up?" He had plenty of practice, after all, and at least this way he wouldn't have to finish that stupid book report. That was something.

"Well, not at all yet." She nodded in thanks as he picked a classroom at random and held the door open for her. "We've got a good group signed up for New Years', but classes don't even start until next week." She took a seat at one of the desks. "That's why I wanted to talk to you, to make sure that you and Dr. Freeman were still doing okay. Are you?"

Jamie's head jerked up. "Alex didn't call you?"

"No. Should he have?" She nodded towards one of the other seats.

Oops. He shook his head as he dropped his coat onto the desk and swung his backpack down on top of it before taking the seat. "No."

"Jamie?"

A quick shrug. "It's nothing, I just thought he might have."

"Has there been some kind of trouble?" she pressed.

He knew her well enough to know that she wasn't going to let it go, and he shrugged again. "Nothing major. I sort of stayed out with friends without telling him a couple days ago. Nights ago." He hesitated for a moment. "And smoked a cigarette." Because if she asked Alex, and she might, he would tell her, and never mind that 'smoked' only meant one puff which wasn't really smoking at all in the grand scheme of things in Jamie's opinion. This was what he got for running his mouth. "He already grounded me, anyway." She looked a little surprised at that—then again, she didn't know Alex—and he waved it off. "It's fine. Was there something else you needed?"

"No, I just wanted to check in on you. It's not a situation I would have picked for you, and now that kids are being picked back up from respite care I could push for a bed in one of the group homes if you didn't want to keep staying with him. I should have asked earlier, but..."

But there hadn't been any space earlier so it wouldn't have done any good, he knew that as well as she did. And he couldn't help flushing a little as he thought about what he she'd said, but it wasn't like she was wrong. There had been times when that panic attack...well, it wouldn't have been the total nonsense it had been this weekend. And it wouldn't have ended with a mug of hot chocolate and him falling asleep on a couch to the sound of keyboard keys clicking, either.

"But if you're sure you're okay, I won't worry about finding another placement until this class finishes," she continued.

Based on past experience, 'this class' was a pack of people who thought that signing up to take in some random kid made a good New Years' resolution, and from what he'd seen it generally went about as well as people whose resolutions involved getting healthy or learning a language or whatever, but then again it wasn't like the foster parents who signed up at other times of the year were all that great either. Not when it came to fostering teenagers, anyway. At least if she was going to wait until the class actually finished he'd be able to stay with Alex through most of February. If Alex would let him.

"So, are you sure you're okay?" she repeated.

"Yeah. I'm good. We're good." At least he thought they were, and if Alex hadn't called hopefully he was right.

"What does 'grounded' mean?" she asked after a moment.

It was grounded, what did she think it meant? But that wasn't an answer she'd accept, and he shook his head. "I'm supposed to go straight home after school and stay there unless I've got work. Plus no TV—" because Alex's news shows and boring documentaries did not count as TV as far as he was concerned—"and there's this whole book report thing plus all my normal homework. And probably some chores." It was boring, and the book report was worse, but aside from not getting hit, it also wasn't like he didn't get dinner or snacks or blankets or anything like that.

Although now that he thought about it, being grounded was going to make talking to Caitie after school today tricky since even if Alex usually took a shift at the hospital on Mondays, it wasn't usually an evening one. Damn it.

Sonja looked at him for a long moment and then nodded. "All right. I'll talk to Dr. Freeman too, but don't worry about packing just yet. And maybe try to behave from here on out?"

"Yeah, yeah."