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"Stop acting all nervous, you're making me scared!" I hissed at Soda as we hurried towards the looming building. We were late for our meeting to discuss Marie's custody, and to top things off, it was freezing.

"Naomi, we're late for the one thing we've been planning for the past month!"

"Just calm down, alright?" I said soothingly, "It's okay. Star's already given her statement, and I mean, if they take her for anything -"

"-which they probably won't -"

"Hey, come on," I wrapped my cold hand around his, "They have every reason to believe that she's not a suitable parent, and we are."

"Even though you're only 17."

"Yeah... well, we'll leave that part out as long as we can. Come on, we have to be confident. Otherwise, we'll hardly look any more stable then Sandy will."

Soda frowned.

"I still don't like having to see her again."

"I know," I sighed, as I pulled the heavy door open, "I'm not that fond of her either...especially knowing that she'll always be special to you in some way." I added severely. I was pulled back by a pair of hands on my shoulders, forcing me to bend my head backwards to see Soda's face.

"She'll be special to me because, when she was younger, she was a real nice girl."

"You still love her, in in some way."

"Only as a friend, who's already been gone for a long time, without warning."

I puffed air slowly out the side of my mouth, and Soda squeezed my shoulders again.

"And not like you. I love you."

I smirked.

"You'd better."

He titled my chin farther backwards and went to kiss me, but I spun out of his grasp and tugged on his arm.

"Come on - we're late enough as it is!"

I stood frowning as I tried to comb out my hair. I'd finally grown it out long over the year, and it was now down to the middle of my back, but the thick, blonde corkscrew curls still wouldn't obey.

I was sure that I heard another comb tooth break, but ignored it as I reminisced about the proceedings that afternoon.

Star had made her statement first, swearing that Sandy was a frequent drug user - it had happened when I returned to Tulsa, by some strange stroke of misfortune. She might've turned to anything at all... and it turned out to be drugs. She confirmed that Sandy was committing adultry, and that she had planned my drugging, in the hopes that I would have a bad trip.

"Obviously," Star had said, "She was hoping that if Naomi took a good trip, then she'd want to try it again, and then there would always be room for a bad one. If her LSD plan had fallen through, however, I'm sure she would've done something else to Naomi... maybe worse."

Star had also confirmed, with her head held high and a steeled expression on her face, that she had taken part in my drugging.

Next, Ashley spoke about my condition when they'd found me that night - they wanted someone to back up Star, because they knew of her drug history. Even though her head was clear, and she seemed like a completely smarter and older person, they couldn't, in good conscience, take her word for everything.

I had to show my medical records, detailing all the complications that had occured since then, including x-rays of my arms, and pictures of the scars left on my upper arms - there were no scars left on my lower arms from my frantic scratching, which I can only assume was because I had my arms crossed to protect myself from whatever it was that was scaring me at the time - therefore, I scratched my upper arms more. I think that the faint scratch lines on my face were visable enough, although the the doctor said to give them a few months.

Finally, Ponyboy told about how Sandy had been abusive to him. We all found it mildly amusing, because we knew that she'd never really hurt him, apart from that last time, which hadn't been altogether intentional. But the fact still stood that he'd been in her custody, and she'd physically abused him. Lots of kids were belted by their parents those days, but in a case such as this, it was just another strike against Sandy.

The lawyer told us then about how, although he wasn't Marie's biological father, he was still her legal father. All the paper work said so - and so that had made them on equal footing for custody at the beginning of the divorce, which would be final in two weeks.

I finally pulled the comb through the last tangled curl, forcing it to part into a neat ringlet.

"Perfect," I said, grinning, but it wasn't just my hair.

A complete flip around from a few months ago - everything was going right.

I thought I might explain something that I might not have made clear enough - the point of Naomi's mother's story, other than giving her some closure, was that this 'Bryan' fella is Naomi's biological father (But dead now) and is therefore sort of in parallel with Naomi raising Marie.

Naomi's father raised Naomi even though she was the biological child of his nemesis, and he knew it, and now Naomi's raising Sandy's child (Who is Naomi's nemesis) so it's sorta full circle.