Thanks to everyone who read and to Ghostwriter and Callisto's Moon for reviewing.

Alex kept his sigh to himself, but it was a close thing. Jamie was a good kid, but he was also amazingly stubborn when he wanted to be. They were two minutes away from the end of their third session with Dr. Laura, and once again absolutely nothing useful had been accomplished. Alex knew perfectly well that this was going to take time, but he'd hoped to see a little progress by now. And by 'progress' he only meant that any answer to anything didn't have to be pried out of Jamie with a crowbar.

They weren't there yet.

He still wasn't sure that him going in with Jamie was the best thing, either. Jamie had been clear that that was his preference, which on one level made Alex feel good since obviously he wanted Jamie to feel safe around him, but if something about his presence was keeping Jamie from talking, it would be better if he removed himself. He'd asked the Croms this past weekend, but all they'd said was to follow the therapist's lead, and thus far Dr. Laura hadn't shown any indication that she'd prefer that he left. So here they stood. Sat.

"Well, it looks like our time is up," Dr. Laura said. "Before next week I'd like you to look through something, though, and start filling it out. Say, two pages?" She pushed herself to her feet and went over to her desk, pulling a notebook out of one of the drawers.

Jamie had stood when she did, but when she turned back with it he crossed his arms over his chest and made no move to take it.

"It helps if you look at it."

One shoulder twitched. "Finals start tomorrow."

Her smile didn't fade. "Then look at what you can. We'll can officially call two pages due the week after that since you should be out of school by that point, I think."

Jamie scowled but didn't disagree. Which was smart, because while Alex tried not to speak up unless something was directed specifically at him, he would absolutely call Jamie on a lie. Jamie's last day of school was next week so he should have plenty of time after that.

"Jamie?" she asked.

"Fine," he muttered with a quick glance at Alex, taking it from her and stuffing it into his jacket.

"Thank you. Alex, you're welcome to help him if he'd like, but this needs to be primarily Jamie's work," she said.

"Of course," he agreed.

"Then I'll see you two next week."

"Thank you," Alex said, and then aimed what Jamie had termed a 'look' at his foster son until he mumbled an echo of Alex's words. Jamie might not be happy to be here, but he would be polite.

"It's not fair to have homework over the summer," Jamie said as soon as they were out of the office.

"You haven't even looked at it yet. Why don't you do that before you start complaining?" A pause. "Or you could try talking to her."

"There's nothing to talk about."

No surprise in that reaction, and since it wasn't something that Alex could or would force he let it go. "Well, you've still got one more book report that you owe me before you'll get your keys back, so you aren't getting off with no homework anyway. Last time I asked I think you said that you were about half done?"

Jamie grumbled something in response—fortunately for both of them he'd behaved well enough to get himself ungrounded on time, but Alex wasn't backing off about his motorcycle keys—but Jamie already knew better than to expect Alex to give him any leeway there and stopped before they even got to the car.

"What do you think about Chinese for dinner?" Alex asked. "We can pick it up on the way home."

Jamie perked up immediately. "Can we get extra egg rolls?"

"We can do that." If they didn't, all of the egg rolls would be gone before they got home anyway. "You have your English final tomorrow, right? English and music? How much studying do you have to do?"

"Music theory is done with," Jamie said. "Mrs. Oran decided that she wanted to have some extra time for grading so she gave it in class on Friday. English..." He made a face. "I guess I should read my notes if I can find any of them, but if I don't know the stuff by now it's probably too late anyway."

Not something Alex could really disagree with, although if Jamie couldn't even find his notes they needed to talk a little bit about organization before next year. "What about your other finals? You work tomorrow night, remember? And Thursday night, too, I think." It was poor scheduling on his part, in retrospect; he'd try to remember to make finals week a light week for the high school squad next year.

"Yeah, but just the backup shift on Thursday," Jamie said with a shrug. "And they're sort of scattered around. English is tomorrow, and then science is on Wednesday—that's a long one since there's a lab that goes with it—math and French are both Thursday, and history is on Friday."

"Nothing next week?" Jamie's other classes were homeroom and a study hall, so it made sense that they wouldn't have finals, but the school year wouldn't actually end until Wednesday if Alex remembered the schedule right.

"Nah, we never have anything the last couple days. We'll probably all get dragged into the gym for speeches and special awards and whatever for at least half of Monday, and then Tuesday will just be turning in books and helping the teachers clean up their classrooms and whatever. Wednesday too, except that's only a half day and everyone except the seniors can leave after report cards get handed out. They have to stay for graduation practice."

Alex nodded. "All right. I want you to look through whatever notes you do find tonight, though, okay? And maybe start reviewing for science too? If you want help, you can come find me."

Jamie muttered something incomprehensible.

"Or you could start on your homework for Dr. Laura."

The muttering ceased abruptly, and Alex smiled as he merged onto the main road.

"Hey, kiddo," Alex greeted as a yawning teenager made a beeline for the coffee pot. "How was the show?" He still wasn't quite sure how it had come about, but either Caitie's mother or aunt had gotten tickets to a show a passing theater troop was putting on, and Caitie had invited Jamie to go along with her family. Alex had been asleep before Jamie had gotten back, but since Jamie had been with responsible adults in the form of both Caitie's mother and aunt he hadn't been too worried.

"Pretty good. The fire effects were really cool."

"There's an advertisement. What time did you get home?"

"A little after midnight. The parking lot was a mess, and Caitie's aunt didn't want to try shoving through the crowd so we waited until a bunch of the cars cleared out." He yawned again and took the milk from Alex with a quick thanks. "Are you making breakfast? Or is there any leftover pizza?"

"I was waiting for you to wake up before I started on pancakes, but I figured that I'd wait and we could have pizza for dinner tonight if you're going to be around."

Jamie nodded quickly. "Yes, please. And I was going to head over to Kenny's for a little bit this afternoon, but I'll be back by dinnertime for sure."

Alex already had most of the ingredients for pancakes out on the counter and started adding them to the bowl at Jamie's agreement, but the mention of Kenny was a good reminder of something he'd been thinking about last night. He already knew from a couple of Jamie's groundings that Jamie needed far more social interaction than he ever had, and while Jamie was obviously accustomed to dealing with that himself, Alex wasn't willing to leave him entirely to his own devices. Jamie might have survived his previous foster parents' neglect, but last summer had also been when he'd gotten himself into enough trouble to end up on the squad. That did not need to be repeated. "Come stir this for me, would you?" he requested.

Jamie nodded and took another gulp of his coffee before heading for Alex's other side as Alex started heating up the pan.

"Do you and Kenny have anything in particular planned for this afternoon?"

"Nah, we'll probably just hang out, but he wasn't in school yesterday so I figured I'd go see what's up."

"He missed finals?" Alex was already unimpressed with Kenny given what had happened before, and he couldn't say that that improved his opinion at all. Sonja and the Croms had warned him against forbidding Jamie to see any of his old friends except as an absolute last resort, and he wasn't going to disregard their advice, but in light of summer coming up it was...tempting. Inadvisable confrontations aside Caitie seemed like a nice girl, a few of the other kids that Jamie had mentioned in passing sounded pleasant enough as well—Micah, Brianne, that Tom that he'd gone to the racetrack with—and Alex couldn't help but wish that he heard more about Jamie spending time with them.

"Probably not. I mean, all I had was history yesterday, and he took government instead of history this year." A shrug. "Finals week schedules are always weird."

"Mm." Alex would stand by 'not impressed' regardless when it came to skipping school. "Well, how did your test go?"

"Okay, I think. I recognized what all of the questions were asking about, at least." He shot Alex a look. "History is still boring."

"And yet it's an important thing to know about. Batter, please."

Jamie helpfully inhaled the first two pancakes that came out of the pan before they even made it to the serving platter, but after that he relaxed against the counter and let Alex start stacking them up for their actual breakfast.

"Are you still planning to talk to your friend's uncle about working in his shop this summer?" Alex asked as he poured three more circles of batter. Jamie had mentioned it a couple times, usually in conjunction with spending a few hours there after school, and it was a perfectly reasonable and productive way for him to spend some of his time as far as Alex was concerned, but so far Alex didn't think he'd actually done it.

"Well, I wanted to talk to Mr. Valda first. I mean, I might keep doing a few things for Micah's uncle too when he needs the hands, but Micah has first dibs so it's always kind of random when he has anything for me. Mr. Valda is the one I worked for most of last summer, and he might have more jobs." A pause. "Except I need my bike to get there."

"Then you'd better finish up your book report this weekend."

"Alex."

"Jamie." Jamie scowled, and Alex smiled. "I'll tell you what. If you finish those two pages that Dr. Laura asked you for this weekend, you can knock two pages off of your report. If I remember right, that should mean that you're pretty close to done."

Jamie huffed but didn't actually argue which Alex took as assent.

"Looks like I've got about two more rounds to make, so why don't you grab the syrup and start setting the table?"

Jamie nodded, circling back to open the fridge and grab the bottle before frowning and shaking it lightly. "I think there's enough for breakfast, but just barely. Are you going to the grocery store today?"

"That's the plan. Can I convince you to come along before you head over to Kenny's?" It was late enough that the store was bound to be crowded by the time he got there, and having a second set of hands was always helpful.

"Yeah, course."

"Thanks. And if you want, I can drop you off at his house on the way home. That'll save you a bus ride."

Jamie hesitated, but before Alex could asked he shrugged and nodded again. "Yeah, sure. Thanks."