Thanks to everyone who read and to Ghostwriter, Callisto's Moon, and MelsieR for reviewing.
Jamie looked up at a light knock on his door. He'd heard the garage open and shut a little while ago, but he hadn't been sure that he wanted to run into Alex just yet.
Well, actually he was pretty sure that he didn't. Things had been slow at the station last night, and it hadn't taken much to get Tyler, who had a car, and Hank and Val, who frequently borrowed their parents' cars, talking about car insurance. And then Caitie had agreed in detention today too; adding kids to insurance policies was expensive, and boys were worse than girls. Apparently you had to be a real adult—like twenty-five or something, so pretty much forever from now—or get married before it started to be reasonable.
And he was pretty sure that expensive meant expensive, too, which didn't help. If it had just been Caitie that would have been one thing since he knew that her family didn't have a lot of money to spare, but when the super squad agreed...well, Hank's dad was a doctor, and if Jamie he didn't understand what it was that Tyler's dad actually did, he know that the man had bought his son a car. Jamie could barely manage gas money.
Heck, sometimes he couldn't even do that, as recent events had proven.
"Jamie?" Alex asked. "Are you awake? May I come in?"
"Yeah, the door's open," he said, shifting to sit up. He'd been in the shower when Alex had gotten home last night, and then Alex had had to go to the hospital early this morning so they'd missed each other then too, but maybe whatever Alex's insurance company was wouldn't let him add some random kid to his insurance policy. Not that Jamie would be happy to lose the use of his bike until summer when he could find more work since there was zero chance that Alex would change his mind about Jamie having to get insurance before he could ride again if that was what the rules said, but he wasn't exactly coming up with any better ideas.
"Hey," Alex greeted, opening the door. "Catch."
Jamie grabbed his key out of the air automatically.
"What do you think about pizza and a movie tonight? Or do you have plans now that you can get around without the buses again?"
"I'm not—you shouldn't—" Jamie cut himself off with a shake of his head and tried to hand the key back.
"What's wrong?" Alex asked, making no move to take it.
"It's expensive," Jamie muttered.
"Pizza?"
"Car insurance. I asked Tyler and Hank."
Alex sighed and then stepped back and gestured for Jamie to follow. "Come on. I think we'd better get this settled because I noticed that your emergency money has once again appeared on my desk too."
Because Alex shouldn't have given him that either, and Jamie scowled.
"Jaim. Put your key away and come on."
He wasn't exactly giving Jamie a choice, and Jamie echoed his sigh and got up, stuck his key in his pocket, and followed him to the kitchen table.
"Have a seat, I'll be back in a minute."
When he returned from his room it was with a notebook and calculator, and he pulled a chair around next to Jamie like it was homework rather than taking his usual seat a the other end. Jamie was still trying to figure out what that meant when Alex started speaking again.
"Most of the second part of the foster care class last night was geared towards babies and toddlers, or people who might end up with babies and toddlers, anyway, so I was able to spend some time talking to your social worker privately."
Jamie had no idea if that was a good or a bad thing, and the fact that Alex wrote a few numbers on the pad before looking at him again didn't give him any clues.
"First of all, let me make this very clear. You are sixteen years old. You are not responsible for basic necessities like food and shelter and clothing. I don't...I know that might not have been the case before, and there's nothing I can do about that, but I'm not going to keep arguing about it with you. It is not your responsibility. Understood?"
Jamie shrugged. And then nodded, more because it was pretty obvious that Alex wouldn't let him get away without at least that than because he had any particular belief in the statement. Well, okay, maybe it was true enough where Alex was concerned, but it still wasn't his experience.
"Thank you. Now, having said that, at the very least you and I don't exactly share the same fashion sense."
That was enough to make Jamie jerk his head up in horror, previous thoughts banished in an instant. Alex wore suits. Jamie might wear a suit jacket—or he might if he owned one, anyway—as a joke, but that was it. And ties and dress pants and all of that...it was fine for Alex, sure, he was a grown up and kind of a dork anyway, but no way was Jamie going there.
"And there's things like gas and insurance and even regular spending money that you need that younger kids might not too," Alex continued. "Stuff that I probably buy for myself without even thinking about it anymore. Since I don't get the impression that I'm going to be able to change your mind about taking money from me anytime soon, and I'm getting a little annoyed about having to continually argue the point—"
"You shouldn't—"
"Jamie. Enough. I know this isn't true for everyone, but I do not need any money for you to stay here. I didn't when I offered—I didn't even know about it, remember?—and I don't now. So what we're going to do is figure out how to split up what social services will be sending out every month so you've got enough for things like gas and insurance and some spending money, and then the rest can go into a savings account for later. And you can stop returning the emergency money I've told you repeatedly to keep in your wallet, which you'll be putting right back in your wallet after we finish this conversation."
Jamie started to roll his eyes and then thought better of it at Alex's look.
"Thank you. Now, important question. Do you already have a college savings account somewhere?"
"What?" Jamie was still trying to wrap his head around the rest of it and wasn't exactly sure what kind of question he'd been expecting, but that most definitely hadn't been it. "Of course not, I'm not going to college."
"What?"
"College is..." He waved a hand vaguely. "I don't know. For smart people. Like Caitie with her writing, or Hank and Tyler and Val with everything." He liked the super squad, he really did, but sometimes they could be incredibly annoying.
"And you're not smart?" Alex frowned. "Says who?"
Jamie snorted. "Literally every teacher I've ever had? You've seen me trying to do my math homework." Not to mention almost much everyone else, at least when it came to adults. Even...well, Alex had never called Jamie stupid or anything like that, and he was pretty okay when it came to helping with homework, but when it came to the squad stuff he was not patient when Jamie got stuff wrong.
"Okay, math might not be your strong suit," Alex acknowledged, "but I've seen you succeeding at it when you try. And I suspect it would be easier for you if you'd done a little more homework before this. The point of getting past the basics is to let the concepts build on each other, you know."
Jamie made a face. Not that it wasn't barely possible that he might have a point, some of what Alex explained sometimes ended up sounding vaguely familiar after he'd said it, but Jamie would never be good at math.
"And your writing is just fine when you actually do the reading first."
Stupid book report.
"If not college, some kind of post-secondary education," Alex said after a moment. "You're going to need more than a high school diploma to support yourself as an adult."
Jamie wasn't so sure about that. He knew plenty of people who managed to keep things going with strings of odd jobs. They didn't necessarily go very smoothly, but that was just life. But this looked like one of those things that Alex was going to be picky about, and anyway if it was just in a bank account somewhere Alex couldn't make him use it—well, probably not, anyway—so he just shrugged.
"If you don't already have an account, we'll get one set up for you at my bank tomorrow, and we can talk more about what you might want to use it for later," Alex said, apparently accepting the shrug as agreement. "But for the other stuff," he tapped the pad in front of him. "I know how much insurance is now that I've been able to talk to an agent, but I have no idea how much gas is for a motorcycle for a month, so let's start there." A pause. "Are you sure you don't want me to order a pizza? I'm getting hungry so you're probably starving, and if we start working on this now it ought to be here by the time we finish."
His stomach wasn't quite grumbling out loud, but he had only grabbed a pack of crackers after school. "I guess pizza's good." Which was food, and Alex buying it again, and that brought the whole thing back around. "But it's not...it'll be better this summer. I mean, I can get more jobs then. Even if you didn't know about the foster stipend you should still keep—"
"Jamie, I do not need the money they're sending out, I do not want it, and we are not going to argue about it. That much was very clear in what the first social worker presented last night anyway: that money is supposed to go to support whatever kid is in foster care in a given home. If you and I are going to deal with it a little more directly than most, well, I imagine that social services can live with that given how old you are. And I still don't care—well, I don't care to emulate, anyway—whatever your previous foster parents did. I'm not saying that you can't get jobs this summer, you certainly can. In fact it's probably a good idea to use that for your spending money since it'll mean more going into savings for later anyway. But for nine months of the year you've got school and the squad, and you don't need to be worrying about scraping together money for gas and insurance at the same time." A frown. "And regardless of the state of your spending money, you don't ever need to worry about a warm coat."