A/N: Thanks for the feedback I've gotten so far! To the person who anonymously left a review - I know the fight in the episode came after Jude caught Callie with Brandon, but I think he was mostly mad because the situation with Liam (hooking up with a foster brother and then getting kicked out) was repeating itself. I can't imagine he would have been so harsh if he knew the whole story.

A/N 2: This chapter and the next contain mature subject matter dealing with self-harm. Read at your own discretion.

By the time the Foster family had discovered that she was missing, Callie was on her way out of California. She enjoyed seeing the sign that welcomed them to Arizona. "I don't think I've ever even left the San Diego area before," she told Wyatt, "Let alone gone this far."

"Really?" he asked, surprised. Callie shook her head. "So, what prompted your sudden interest in globetrotting?" he casually inquired.

She shrugged. "I don't know... Thought I'd see new places."

Wyatt smirked. "And you figured you'd start with Indiana?"

"There's a lot of states between here and there."

"True... What are you running away from?" he pressed a little more.

Callie turned her attention back to the window. "Nothing."

"Come on. If I'm taking you across the country with me, you can at least give me one real answer."

There was a long pause before she spoke again, and Wyatt wondered if he'd pushed too hard. "I always hurt everyone," Callie finally said. "I'm like poison or something."

"I don't believe that," Wyatt replied.

She scoffed. "Why not? I've hurt you, too, haven't I?" He didn't answer, which said all she needed to hear. "See? It's just what I keep doing to all the people around me. It would have only been a matter of time before Stef and Lena figured out what a big mistake adopting me would be."

"They were going to adopt you?" Wyatt was perplexed; Callie hadn't mentioned anything about that when he said goodbye to her in school.

She nodded. "They just told us yesterday morning, before the wedding."

"But now you're leaving? Isn't that what you wanted?"

"Yes," she softly confessed. "I mean, I'd thought so. But I realized that it would have just made everything more complicated."

Wyatt had a feeling he knew who in that house was complicating things for her. "The fear won out, huh?" he wondered, referring to the conversation they'd had at the hospital after Stef got shot.

"What?"

He shook his head. "Nevermind. So what about Jude? You're just leaving him behind?"

"Jude's better off without me."

"You can't really think that, can you?"

"If I'd stayed, I would have ruined the best thing he's ever had in his life. So I couldn't stay. I've spent 8 years pretending that I was capable of taking care of him, but I'm not. I'm just a kid! And he deserves better than me. At least now, I can't take that chance away from him."

Just as Stef and Lena were about to leave the house, the doorbell rang. For a moment, both women got their hopes up, and neither could fully hide looks of disappointment when they found Dana, Stewart, and Sharon on the front porch instead of their foster daughter.

Sharon frowned when she saw her daughter's expression. "Good morning to you, too," she sassily told her as they came inside.

Stef sighed. "Sorry, Mom." The newlyweds had completely forgotten that their parents were supposed to be joining them for breakfast.

"What's going on?"

Lena looked back to see that all the kids were standing in the doorway to the kitchen, having also heard the doorbell. "Um, Callie's missing," she told the grandparents.

"Missing?" Stewart wondered. "What happened?"

"She left in the middle of the night. We're not sure why or where she's gone. We were about to go out and start looking."

"We'll help," Sharon instantly volunteered.

Dana looked over at her grandchildren. "Have any of you eaten?" she asked. They all shook their heads. "All right, I'll stay here and make them breakfast."

"I'll go with you," Stewart told Lena.

"And I'll ride with you," Sharon offered to Stef.

Both women nodded. "Thank you," Stef told all three parents. "Be good for grandma," she warned the other kids before they headed out the door.

"We'll go to the school and then check the beach over there," Lena told Stef as they walked out to their cars. "If I get a new address for Liam, we'll look there, too."

"Okay. We'll go by Liam's old house, the community center, and anywhere else we can think of."

Lena nodded and she and her father got in her car and left. Stef climbed behind the wheel of the family SUV, while Sharon got in the passenger side. However, instead of starting the car, Stef just sat there for a long moment, staring straight ahead.

"Are you okay?" Sharon gently asked.

Stef shook her head. "No, I'm not. I don't... I don't understand why Callie would do this." Yesterday had been the most amazing day of their lives, and now everything had been plunged into chaos. The change had left her reeling.

"I don't understand, either, sweetheart. Maybe she was afraid?"

"Of what?" One of the most frustrating parts of foster parenting was not being able to reach a child that so badly needed help. "What did we do wrong? She seemed so happy yesterday! Maybe we shouldn't have suggested the adoption? Or maybe we should have talked to her more first?"

"Or maybe it was something completely different," Sharon suggested. "I don't know. She may not even totally understand it herself. From what you'd told me before, it sounds like Callie's got a lot of things to sort out in her head."

Stef sighed. "I know that she is a deeply wounded girl and she's been putting up a brave front for a long time. We had so many ideas for how we could make life better for her, but now..." She turned to her mother as her tears started to fall and she suddenly felt like a child herself. "What if we can't find her, Mom?"

Sharon hugged her. "You cannot focus on that, Stefanie. We're going to find her."

"How can you be so sure?"

She offered a small smile. "Because that wounded little girl has you in her corner. And she deserves the life that you've imagined for her."

Callie and Wyatt drove for a couple more hours before they stopped near Phoenix to get gas and lunch at McDonald's.

"You want to sit over there?" Wyatt asked once they'd placed their orders and gotten their drinks. He pointed to a table in the corner.

"Um, sure. I'm going to go to the bathroom first." He took her drink for her and went to sit down while she headed for the ladies room.

As Callie washed her hands after she'd finished, she regarded herself in the mirror. She'd never been alone like this before. Any other time that she and Jude had been separated, she'd known that she was going to find her way back to him. There hadn't been any other option. But this time, there was no going back, not that he'd really want her to. She could imagine Jude standing there next to her, looking at her with hatred after he caught her with Brandon. Or Lena watching her with such pity after that horrible joke of a trial. Or Stef's expression of barely concealed horror after she told the moms about Liam. She had tainted their lives with her own, and hated the reflection in the mirror. She felt like she was going to explode as the remorse and guilt continued to build.

Callie went back into one of the stalls and took a couple deep breaths. She knew she was about to cross a line, but couldn't make herself stop. It was a line she'd gone over before, after she and Jude had been tossed out by the Olmsteads. Getting a beating from another kid at the emergency group home had taught her two things: 1) she never wanted to go to another group home again, and 2) enduring physical pain made her guilt about her mistakes feel almost tolerable. Once her busted lip and bruised cheek from the beating had healed, Callie started giving herself new injuries. She deserved the pain and the marks reminded her of how badly she'd screwed up - and how much she never wanted to screw up like that again.

But she'd gotten too comfortable in her life with the Fosters and her body didn't have any more fresh scars. She'd almost made a colossal mistake, and that deserved punishment. She dug through the front pocket of her bag for the only thing she'd taken from the house besides clothes and a few pictures - the pocket knife that had been attached to Jude's backpack. After their father's incarceration, Callie had owned the knife, but she'd decided to give it to her brother a year earlier. She hadn't shown him the trick to getting it open, out of concern about what he might do with it. That worry seemed ironic; she'd already used it for some pretty bad things.

Callie grabbed the edge of her shirt and pulled it up slightly. Just above the waist of her jeans, where no one would see, there were a few half-inch lines of pink scar tissue, leftover from two years prior. She managed to get her knife open and scratched a couple new marks around the others. The flashes of pain made her wince and bite her lip, but she figured that she really deserved worse. This would have to do, though, and she grabbed some toilet paper to wipe away the blood. As she inspected her handiwork, she did feel a little better. Now she had physical reminders of her screw-ups again.

% ^ % ^ % % ^ % ^ %

By the time that she left the bathroom, their food was already on the table. Wyatt looked up at her in concern as she rejoined him. "Hey, are you okay?"

Callie nodded and forced a smile. "Fine."

TBC...