Callie dropped Jude off at school and then stood on the sidewalk wondering what exactly she should do. Since she was avoiding the streets for a few days just to be on the safe side she had managed to sleep all night. Usually Callie would get home around three in the morning, sleep for a few hours before getting Jude up and off to school, she'd then head back home for a few more hours of sleep before going to her day job at the grocery store where she bagged items at the checkout counter until it was time to pick Jude up again.

But today Callie was free and so she looked up and down the streets before walking around aimlessly. She walked down one road after another passing beautiful homes with gorgeous front lawns and expensive cars in the driveway and then down roads with rundown apartments with graffiti and spit stains on the walls and people standing around smoking weed and snorting coke. She passed the four-storey department store with automatic doors and then past the streets where vendors sold their good on handcarts on the side of the roads. She looked into the window of a restaurant where the tables had actual tablecloths and the servers wore white gloves and then past a fast food joint where flies were sitting on an unfinished burger left on a table.

Callie continued to walk for over an hour, just taking in her surroundings, until she found herself outside the Police Department. Callie couldn't help but look around for the cop that had arrested her. She knew it was crazy but she couldn't forget the gentleness and kindness the woman had shown her even as she arrested her. Callie watched cops come and go, most were men but not one of the few women she saw was the one she was looking for. Callie finally left to grab something to eat before heading to the grocery store for her shift.

"And so my group made a kaleidoscope and we get to display at the the state science fair on Friday." Jude chattered excitedly as Callie walked him home.

"That's fantastic baby." Callie smiled proudly at him. "I'm so proud of you." She ruffled his hair lovingly.

"You're gonna come right?" Jude asked, hoping that his sister would take a day off from work to join him.

"Of course." Callie assured. "I wouldn't miss it for the world." She promised. Her day job was just a cover and it gave her something to do while Jude was at school. The job that really earned the bread was the one she did while Jude was soundly asleep - not that she'd ever tell him that.

"Great, it's at the community sports field and I have to be there by nine." Jude informed her.

Callie nodded, letting him know that she'd get him there on time and then proceeded to ask him questions about his project.

"So what do you have to do?" Callie asked, genuinely interested in this project.

"We display our kaleidoscope and then we have parts for a few more so we can demonstrate how we made it. The backboard has a writeup about kaleidoscopes and the different types and it's surrounded by various geometric patterns that you see through the glass." Jude explained professionally. "Did you know that the kaleidoscope was invented like two-hundred years ago?" He questioned.

"I didn't know that." Callie smiled at his enthusiasm, glad that for once he was genuinely excited about something for school.

Over the next two days Callie kept herself busy. The first day she cleared up their apartment and got rid of any clothes that were too small or too worn out and then made a list of what they would need to buy. The next day she went on a hunt to find a present for Jude to show him just how proud of him she was. She knew he was working extra hard to try and keep up with his classmates and she wanted him to know that she noticed. School had never been easy for Jude - for starters he was small for his age and very timid which made him an easy target for teasing and bullying; he wasn't a very good student and so he was always playing the catchup game; and ever since they had run away, he'd been forced to lay low and avoid unnecessary attention which meant that he couldn't fall too far behind or do too well incase the teachers started really noticing him again.

Callie tried her hardest to give Jude as normal a life as possible and that became a whole lot easier once she found a way to make money. She sent Jude on all the field trips and occasionally packed a bag of candy for him to share with some of the kids to keep them from bullying him too much. She would check his homework each night before bed to make sure that he wasn't doing too badly. She tried her hardest to teach him instead of just doing the work for him but sometimes even she found it difficult. He was struggling most with math and history - the two subjects that dealt exclusively with fact rather than skill and he needed more help than she could give him. Callie was trying to save up for some special classes but even she didn't make that much money.

Callie knew that this wasn't going to last forever - eventually someone would catch them, or Jude's school would want to meet his parents for something or they would notice that he only had his sister; maybe Callie would get arrested again and things could really go wrong or maybe she would finally age out of the system, make enough money to get her GED and then get a real job and never have to live like this ever again. One way or another this was only temporary but she was definitely going to make the most of it while she could.