Actually, she should figure out what today's date is and what country she's in first. Both to look less concerning to people considering putting her in a hospital and in case she's in an alternate timeline where the US is part of France and the prime minister is a leopard. Is there a newspaper box or a public library or a discarded magazine or something of that nature about? Best to act fast before anyone loses their shit about the unaccompanied minor.

She's beside a corner liquor store (closed, apparently) in what is, unbeknownst to her, Reno, Nevada. There is indeed a pay phone booth, heavily graffiti'd. It doesn't seem to be an especially nice neighborhood. On the bright side, there don't seem to be a lot of people about to fuss about her presence. 

She can't find a newspaper box or public library on this block or the next, but she eventually finds a different storefront, this one plastered heavily with posters and notices, some of which have the date. Apparently a burlesque play is showing on June 2nd, 2010 - or may have already been shown, the poster isn't as sunbleached or rain-mottled as some of the others but it doesn't look brand-new either. If she reads the fine print on the poster, she can find the name of the city and state as well. 

Has she ever been to Reno, Nevada? Was this the age she was in 2010? 2010 has the vibe of being a year from the past, but the remembered past not the historical past. Reno, Nevada is . . . a real city. Probably not home. Home is somewhere with an ocean, she thinks. Unless it isn't. (This situation fucking sucks.)

At least everything seems to be basically normal Earth except for the slightly older technology. She can probably pass for a mostly sane abandoned kid from this timestream if she's careful. She invents a birthday in January 2004 (she could probably get away with 2003 but the closer she is to the childhood amnesia period the fewer awkward questions not having a backstory will raise) and some fictional parents' names, Prospero and Allesandra Wellenstein, rare enough that there almost certainly won't be a real couple by those names for the police to bother. Unless she generated her real parents' names by subconscious intuition, but she doesn't think so. She doesn't have the kind of emotional attachment to The Tempest that she'd expect to have if her family had a Theme. 

Now she can go look for a police station.

It's going to take a while to find one. At first she doesn't see any people; it's light out, but judging by the chill in the air, it seems to be very early in the morning. She reaches a larger street, but the area is completely unfamiliar and it's not visually obvious which direction is more likely to offer a police station. 

A couple of cars go by without stopping, and then a car goes by and does pull over, and a woman in officewear gets out and shakes her eyes. "Are you all right?" she calls out to the apparently-unaccompanied kindergarten-aged kid, apparently wandering around a section of downtown that is definitely not child-friendly. 

Snap evaluation: genuine friendliness and concern. Extremely valid concern at that; she doesn't like being alone in sketchville either. "I'm lost. Can you tell me which way to the nearest police station?" Oh god her voice is the voice of a small child. Awful. The worst. At least she has a reasonable number and distribution of teeth right now.

The woman's expression is a blend of relief and additional concern. "It's an awfully long walk. How about I call someone, and stay with you?" She is not asking this tiny child to get into a stranger's car. She always taught her kids absolutely never to get into a strangers' car, though obviously the police are different.

"That would be very kind of you, thank you!" Oh awesome she doesn't have to decide whether to get in the lady's car. She doesn't instinctively object to getting in strangers' cars--rideshares exist/existed/will exist and the vast majority of people are lovely--but her body is so weak and there may well be nobody in this timeline who'd notice if she died.

"Well, aren't you polite!" The woman ducks back into the car to switch on her four-way blinkers and properly lock the door, then heads over, digging in her purse to pull out a cell phone - more specifically, a Nokia flip phone, with chunky little buttons and a tiny LCD screen. She smiles at Miranda as she dials. "It shouldn't be long, I'm waiting to be put through. I'm Debra. What's your–" She cuts off, lifting a hand apologetically. "I - police, please, I have a lost child here. Sorry, one moment." Back to Miranda. "What's your name? Do you know your parents' address or phone number?"  

"Miranda Wellenstein. My parents didn't really. Have. An address or phone number. Sorry." Lying sucks and not knowing who her parents are sucks and the suckages do cancel out any but not as much as she'd like. 

Debra's expression is definitely indicating that she now has ADDITIONAL QUESTIONS AND CONCERNS. She smiles at Miranda, though, somewhat tightly. "I see. When did you last see them? Do you know how far you've walked since then?"

This is starting to sound like an abandoned child of homeless parents, except that she's clean and generally well-groomed – and, of course, she's very polite and articulate, which, well, it's probably some kind of classism to assume that a child with homeless parents wouldn't be, but it's what Debra would expect. Her clothes are clean as well, and look new, but she's not exactly dressed like a normal kid either; she's wearing baggy dark slacks and a vivid galaxy-print top. And her hair!

Maybe her parents are...hardcore Burning Man hippie types? Who live in their RV? ...Debra is not going to get anywhere useful by speculating, but one way or another, she's not impressed with the parenting on display here. 

Fortunately she had a couple blocks to rehearse her pack of lies. "I last saw them yesterday evening. I went around the corner to buy some water and when I got back our car was gone. And I thought maybe someone had made them move it but I couldn't find it and now I'm lost."

This tiny child has been lost outside ALL NIGHT?????? 

Debra exerts a great deal of effort not to visibly freak out, it probably won't help. "Right. - sorry, I'll be right with you." She's occupied for a minute or so, relaying what Miranda told her and specifying their location, before she flips the phone closed and smiles reassuringly at her again. 

"They're going to send a nice police lady over in a car, okay? It shouldn't be too long. And then I think they'll bring you in the police station where it's nice and warm, and look after you while they try to find your parents."

She looks thoughtfully at the little girl. "Have you gotten lost like this before?" What kind of parents wouldn't have already been to the police station themselves, terrified and up in arms about their missing kid? 

"No, this is the first time." Should she pretend to be a sad traumatized six-year-old about this? Probably not, that would only give Debra the empathy-sads and also there is kind of too much risk that she will start method-acting and actually cry about losing her memories and having her body messed with and yeah no better to poker-face through it and hope six-year-olds vary enough to drown her weirdnesses in noise. The truth is wildly outside their hypothesis space and everything she's trying to direct people away from is in fact false, that should help.

Debra is definitely thinking that this is a weirdly stoic six-year-old but she's also very relieved about it! She's not incredibly comfortable with tiny children. 

Probably it's a good idea to keep the tiny child distracted so she doesn't start dwelling on it and get upset, though she's not sure she knows what the correct questions are to ask nearly as well as the police will. She asks when Miranda last ate and whether she's warm enough and - decides not to ask if she needs to use the bathroom, she at least is someone who will abruptly need to use the bathroom five times as badly if reminded of it and it's not like she can offer the kid a bathroom right now. Probably buying her food if she's hungry is sketchy? The police can figure that out. 

And, just because she's quite curious and it's a way to make conversation, she asks if Miranda was the one who decided to have her hair done like that. 

She says she had dinner last night and it's not breakfast time yet so while she could go for some food after all the walking it definitely isn't urgent. (This is actually almost true; it was morning when the thing happened and she conveniently won't have much isekai!jet lag.) She says she's fine temperature-wise. (She's actually kind of chilly now that she's stopped walking but if she actually expresses this poor Debra will probably try to help and she's not actually cold enough to solicit help.) She says the hair dye was her idea; she thinks it looks good on her. (Probably approximately true? This could be a modified version of her old body or a new body constructed to be vaguely similar to her old one or a new one constructed with an eye to her preferences or some even weirder thing, but she's totally consenting to the blue hair now.)

Debra smiles and says it does look good, and Miranda's parents must be very - well, open-minded - to agree to dye their child's hair. 

She taps her foot and tries not to look like she's counting off the minutes that the police said they would take to get here. Does Miranda go to school? What grade is she in? 

School means records and she doesn't even have the name of a school in Reno. "I'm homeschooled. Mostly I teach myself. I'm six but I'm ahead of grade level in everything." It's hilariterrible how all the parts of that utterance sound like bullshit in inverse proportion to how bullshit they actually are, but it all fits nicely into the big lie where her parents were benignly neglectful vandwelling homeless people who have now gone the way of missing persons everywhere and it's totally not weird how unfindable they are.

It sounds slightly less like bullshit coming from such an unexpectedly articulate and - well, adult-seeming - kid. Debra is realizing that she doesn't really have any idea what kids are normally learning in...kindergarten? First grade? 

"Do you like reading?" she says, since this little girl definitely gives off vibes of bookishness. "- Nevermind, looks like that's the police." 

The squad car pulls up behind Debra’s car, which is still flashing its four-way blinkers. A ponytailed African-American woman in uniform clambers out from the passenger side and heads over to them; her partner stays in the car, intent on a very old-style and clunky-looking laptop. 

"Hello," the female police officer says to Miranda, squatting down so their eyes are level. "I'm Roxanne. Miranda, right, and we're going to help you find where your parents have gotten to?"

(Maybe. Honestly, unless there's just been some kind of interdepartmental miscommunication and the parents already reported her missing, this is looking like very negligent parenting – they'll need to get Social Services involved, and this child may well not be going back to her parents until they've had some serious conversations with them.) 

Debra fidgets. "Miranda has told me that she isn't in school but she's homeschooled. And this is the first time she's been lost. She says she had dinner last night but she'll probably be getting hungry for breakfast soon." 

Roxanne makes eye contact with Debra and nods gratefully. "Thank you so much for calling this in and staying with her. I think we're all good and you can head on to work. - Miranda, is that all right with you?" 

"Sounds good to me. Thanks so much for helping me, Debra!" 

And now presumably there will be a ride to the police station. If the officers don't decide to get a head start on questioning her, she'll spend it contemplating the lyrics of "Hymn to Breaking Strain" and "The Mary Ellen Carter".

They put her in the backseat, in a booster seat that Roxanne must have brought out for this purpose, and don't talk to her during the ride; there's a loud crackling police radio up front, and Roxanne would have to twist awkwardly around in the passenger seat to see her. It's really only a four-minute drive to the police station, anyway. 

They get out, and Roxanne offers Miranda her hand. "Have you ever been to a police station before?" she says with forced cheer, clearly trying to put a bright face on the whole situation. "Don't worry, it's not as scary as it sounds. We're just going to sit you down with a snack and something to drink, and ask you some questions. Do you need the washroom first?" 

Being in a booster seat is incredibly fucking weird but she isn't as claustrophobic about it as she'd've worried about being.

No matter what you've lost, be it a home, a love, a friend, like the Mary Ellen Carter rise again! Once she's out of verses she can remember she rehearses her backstory some more.

Once there: "No, this is my first time seeing one. I don't think I'll need a restroom for the next while but I would love a glass of water and something to eat." She has no fear of anyone's malice, only of misguided attempts to protect her. She tries to keep the nervousness off her face regardless.

She really doesn’t look or act like a neglected child, AND YET. The apparent lack of anxiety around strangers is sort of concerning in a different way. Roxanne has already discreetly whispered in her partner’s ear to call social services and fill them in; they’re going to need some involvement here even if they find the little girl’s parents in the next five minutes. 

(She asks him to call the hospital and morgue as well, because one possible, if horrifying, explanation for why loving parents wouldn’t be frantically searching for their lost daughter, is if they were hit by a drunk driver or something with deeply unfortunate timing.)

She sits Miranda down and brings her a glass of water and, after some brief digging in the staff room cupboard, half a box of mildly stale Oreos. 

Settling in beside her on an elderly and sagging sofa, she starts asking more detailed questions, trying to keep the mood light and casual. Were Miranda’s parents traveling somewhere in particular when they came to Reno? Where were they before this? Do Miranda’s parents live in their car or do they rent motel rooms? Does she know if her parents have jobs, and if so, what kind of work?

What’s her usual bedtime? What do her parents usually give her to eat? Does she know if she has any allergies or medical conditions? 

Does she have relatives, grandparents or aunts and uncles? If so, does she know their names? 

She does her best impression of a reasonable, stable, easy-to-interact-with human being who expects her parents to turn up any minute now and whose hidden layer of worry is purely about the fact that they haven't yet.

They've lived lots of places, both in the sense of lots of cities and in the sense of friends' couches, the van, motel rooms . . . lots of places. Her parents do odd jobs when they can get them. Sometimes there's work to do and enough money for nice things (raspberries, hair dye, books) and sometimes there isn't work and there isn't money.  

Her usual bedtime is when she gets tired but she isn't sure when that is on a clock. She knows how to read clocks she just doesn't generally have one. She likes beans and peanut butter sandwiches and fruit and nuts and chocolate. Generally as a family they try not to eat animals but sometimes when there isn't work they eat a lot of McDonald's. (She implies without stating outright that when money is especially tight her parents skip meals to make sure there's enough for her.) She's had colds but right now she's not sick at all. She isn't allergic to anything that she knows about.

She doesn't have any family except her parents. She knows the names of some of their friends, though. There's Fred who has a cat and Jackie from Sacramento and the Millers in Oregon and actually that's all she remembers sorry. How are they planning to try to find her parents? Do they have a guess at how long that will take? (She mentally apologizes to everyone named Jackie in the Sacramento metro area; hopefully she hasn't just set them all up for bother.)

They are planning to put out public bulletins and make an announcement on the local radio station, and all the police will be given a description and told to keep an eye out. Which they should get from her now. What do they look like and what were her parents wearing when she last saw them. (If they dress anything like as distinctively as her, hopefully it'll be something memorable.) 

Roxanne reaches out and squeezes Miranda's shoulder. "I'm afraid we don't know how long it will take." Because she is NOT entirely convinced that these parents didn't just up and leave town without their kid. "Did your parents ever tell you what to do if you were lost like this?" 

Miranda makes up some bullshit about her mom's green hair and sunglasses and her dad's big nose and Hawaiian shirts. She wishes she knew what her actual parents really looked like.

"They told me if I got lost to find a police station or a library and get help. And not to go anywhere with a stranger otherwise." 

"That's very responsible of them." Roxanne manages to say it without sounding sarcastic at all. "And you did wonderfully." 

Roxanne turns, and looks Miranda in the eye. "I know this must be upsetting for you, but - it's possible we won't find your parents by tonight. And - even if we do, the police are going to have to ask them some questions about how you got lost like that, and make sure they know how to keep you safe and take good care of you. In the meantime, a police station isn't a very nice place for a little girl and you certainly can't sleep here, so we're going to be trying to find a nice family who can take you for a few days while we sort all of this out. Do you understand?" 

"I guess that makes sense. I know you'll do your best to find them." Innocent trusting stoic little smile while she tries to figure out if she can ask about getting replacement legal documents and decides it would be too sus on a couple different axes. She'll ask the foster parents once she's had time to "come to grips" with the "fact" that her "parents" are probably "dead".

Roxanne pats her shoulder. "We'll try very hard, I promise. I have to make some phone calls now. Why don't I find you some toys and you can amuse yourself for a few minutes?" This seems like a six-year-old who can play self-sufficiently. 

The toys, once Roxanne finds them, are mostly intended for smaller children; there's a battered old marble run and some Duplo. 

Miranda is so not above fucking around with a marble run. It's probably germy as all get-out and she'll need to wash her hands afterwards but that shouldn't be too difficult. In the meantime, she contemplates her situation.

Sticking her mind in a different but similar body with her memories partially edited seems complicated enough that there should be an intelligence behind it, but she has no idea what the intelligence's goals could possibly be. She should be on the lookout for quest hooks, other people who have been through a similar process, etc but also she won't be too surprised if there aren't any. She can't think of any historical events between 2010 and 202something that she should be preventing other than covid and she has no idea how to start on that other than "do things and hope the butterfly effects reach China". If there's a greater point, any intelligence capable of sending her here at all is capable of dropping hints. If this was all just an unusually complicated negative space wedgie, well, so it goes in a sufficiently large cosmos.

Also, all things considered, she can't really be mad at the hypothetical aliens for turning her into a kid. Being homeless and undocumented as an adult would in fact suck even worse. Maybe the plot hook or whatever is going to happen in fifteen years and the aliens or whatever are giving her time to get acclimated. Maybe not. It's all maddeningly uncertain and there definitely used to be people she could have talked to about it.

She's probably going to have to get braces again at some point. Fuck braces. 

As far as she can tell from poking her knowledge of various subjects she was a software engineer. She should find a computer at some point and check that she is in fact good at programming and decide whether she wants to steer for that or take this chance to respec into something else (biology? law? physics of negative space wedgies in particular?).

(To any external observers she's completely engrossed in the marble run until the next time someone says her name or touches her. If it's the latter she'll jump concerningly.)

Roxanne calls her name before heading over. "Miranda, how are you doing? You'll tell us if you need the toilet, right? - by the way, it's going to be a bit of a wait, but we think we've found a lovely lady to take care of you for now. Her name is Evelyn and she lives in a nice big house about fifteen minutes from here. She's divorced but she has a son, Jeremy - he's a big boy, nearly a grownup - and she's very excited to meet you. She's going to drive over and pick you up as soon as she's ready, it shouldn't be longer than a couple of hours. Are you going to need breakfast?" 

"It sounds like this is a convenient time to use the restroom, so I should do that. And then I could go for breakfast if you have food on hand." All of the everything has her lizard brain underconfident in the future availability of food and it's making her want food more than is logical. Or she's just wrong about how hungry small children are.

The police station doesn't have a kitchen, so Roxanne sends someone across the street to get her McDonalds. A breakfast sandwich, skipping the bacon because Miranda did say her family preferred not to eat meat, and a milkshake. It wouldn't be a good diet long-term but the kid needs food, there isn't another restaurant nearby enough, and she's had such a night and deserves a treat. 

Eating the food, especially the eggs, entails a big fight with her own brain but she was expecting this, so she wins the fight and eats it all. Being visibly a strict vegan would be immensely sus. She can talk meal plans with Evelyn later.

The milkshake tastes amazing and she pointlessly resents this. A lot of the tasty meat substitutes she's used to probably haven't even been invented yet and she pointlessly resents that too. Maybe she'll do biochem or food science in this timeline and help invent vat meat, that would kick ass.

And about forty-five minutes later, a middle-aged blonde woman arrives, car keys in her hand and purse swinging from her arm, looking slightly harried. She sees Miranda, and makes a beeline for her. She sits down cross-legged on the slightly grubby floor beside Miranda and smiles reassuringly at her. 

"That's a nice marble run. And you must be Miranda, right? I'm Evelyn, and you're going to be coming to stay at my house for a couple of days while the police look for your parents and - try to figure out what makes sense to do next. Please try not to worry. I've looked after loads of children before, but for right now you have me all to yourself - well, and except for Jeremy, my son, but he's in his last year at high school and he's not home much."

Pause. "Do you have any questions right now, or is there anything worrying you? I know this must all be very strange, but - you can talk to me."

(Not that she expects Miranda to take her up on that offer, even if her initial read is right and this tiny child is keeping a lot of things close to her chest. Children almost never open up at first. It's Evelyn's job to give Miranda a home that feels comfortable and safe, and slowly earn her trust.) 

Friendly normal human smile and attempt at eye contact! "It's good to meet you, Evelyn. I have loads of logistics questions--and questions about you--but this isn't really the ideal time or place, is it? Thanks for coming to pick me up on short notice." This tiny child is keeping so many things close to her chest. She will say more when Evelyn is a bit more of a known quantity and there aren't cops listening.

"Logistics questions"! What a phrase for a kindergarten-aged little girl to know and use! "Of course. Let's get going, then. We're going to go in my car, it's not far. I'd like to take you shopping soon, at least pick up a change of clothes - Roxanne said you don't have anything on you except what you're wearing - but I have some spares in the meantime, and I think we should stay in today. You're going to be assigned a social worker, hopefully, and they'll come visit and introduce themselves." 

Evelyn's car is an elderly Subaru, with a few scratches and dents on the exterior, that gives off ineffable soccer mom vibes. The inside is impressively clean; she ends up dealing with enough spills and various bodily fluids that she's made a habit of having it professionally cleaned at the end of every placement, and there are seat covers with a flowery pattern, as well as a booster seat in blue plastic covered with stickers. 

Evelyn is apparently also germ-conscious. She offers Miranda a squirt of hand sanitizer. "We'll wash up properly once we get to the house."

She carefully doesn't say 'home'. It absolutely won't feel like that to Miranda, and might upset her, though on reflection it doesn't sound like she had much of a home before either. She's such an enigma - polite and well-spoken, with the vocabulary and poise of a much older child, and yet apparently the child of seriously neglectful parents who surely weren't themselves highly educated or they could do better than odd jobs. 

She nods at the suggestion of new clothes, cheerfully accepts the hand sanitizer (how fortunate to get a foster parent who agrees with her about hygiene!) and buckles herself into the car seat. 

Once they're rolling, she asks in a friendly, casual-conversation sort of way, "Can you tell me a bit about--well, your parenting philosophy? How you make decisions, how you relate to foster kids, that sort of thing?" On a scale of one to Umbridge how authoritarian are you when nobody with power is looking.

Evelyn blinks rapidly a few times, not quite succeeding at hiding her nonplussed expression. What has this kid been reading???? Because she almost certainly can read, and has been, her vocabulary is excellent. Does she read parenting books for fun?

(Does she know that her parents were neglectful? Did it bother her? Or was she happy to be allowed to run around unsupervised, and is worried now that Evelyn will set limits she doesn't want to follow? ...Evelyn can worry about that possibility if and when it occurs, she's not going to borrow trouble when Miranda has been nothing but polite and lovely so far.) 

She spends a moment considering how to answer, but doesn't let the silence stretch out long enough to be an obvious hesitation.

"It may not be what you're used to," she says, keeping your own tone casual as well. "But please don't worry about breaking the rules by accident and getting in trouble - I'm not going to be upset with you for not being able to read my mind. I'll explain all of the house rules - it's not very many, but fostering is a bit different from other parenting, and I have duties to make sure everyone is safe - and your social worker is happy with me, of course. We can go over all the house rules once we're there, but the basics - we don't go into anyone else's bedroom unless they're there and giving permission. I'll never come into your bedroom without knocking, though I will have to come sometimes in to clean." It's part of her fostering agency's "safer caring" policy. "We always give each other privacy in the bathroom - you'll have your own, Jeremy and I both have en-suites. I don't have hard rules about how long showers can be, but if another child is placed with me, then we'll need to talk about sharing." 

She tries to think what else this precocious tiny child might be feeling unsure about. "Other than that, I would say 'the obvious' but I'm aware that families are different, and this is just how we do things." Evelyn always tries very carefully not to sound like she's criticizing a child's birth family, which is usually upsetting to them even if the parenting they had at home was objectively terrible. "In my house, we don't use bad language, and we never hit. We don't eat food in our rooms, and we don't steal food or anything else - if you need something, tell me, I have an allowance from Social Services to buy you what you need while you're living with me." She meets Miranda's eyes in the rearview mirror, smiles reassuringly. "And I'm sure this won't come up, because you will be a good girl, but if children break the rules, there are consequences. I take away television and computer time, which in my household is a privilege and not a right, but I will never take things that belong to you, or punish you physically. If you aren't sure of whether something is breaking a rule, ask me, I'm never going to be angry because you asked a question." 

She hesitates. 

"Also, this might be a bit different from what you're used to with your family, but in my household, six is far too young to be going places alone. I'll never leave you home alone; if I need to duck out for meetings, I'll have another foster carer watch you, or I may need to bring you to their house. You can play in the yard by yourself, as long as I'm home and I know you're there, but you mustn't wander off. If you want to go somewhere, I'm always happy to take you in the car." She smiles. "It's not that I don't trust you to be responsible, but it's a rule I have to follow, because your social worker needs to know that I'm keeping you safe." And hopefully that won't be a problem. She is, again, not going to borrow trouble in advance. 

This is all perfectly reasonable from Evelyn's perspective and even if it wasn't Evelyn is probably heavily constrained by the government, but even without memories Miranda knows that she is used to being a free citizen who can do whatever she likes as long as she follows the law, harms no-one, and keeps her commitments, and it itches. She will simply have to win Evelyn's trust with conspicuous yet natural and unforced displays of intelligence and wisdom. And of course the passage of time will bring greater freedoms and legal rights and money-making opportunities and all the other good things in life. 

On the bright side: computer time. The lack of a smartphone feels like going around with one eye shut. She will return to the embrace of the all-seeing network and also get some kind of development environment and do the one form of art that costs only the price of electricity.

"It is indeed not what I'm used to, and in particular I'll have to put some effort into not swearing, but I don't have a principled objection to any of those rules and I understand that your options aren't unlimited."

"Mmm."

Evelyn drives for a couple of minutes in silence and then, once they've escaped the trafficky section of downtown and are back out in the quieter suburb streets, meets Miranda's eyes in the rearview mirror again. "I'd like to get to know you a bit better. I want you to be happy in my house, even though I know it's not home. What sorts of activities do you enjoy?" 

"Reading. Art, especially embroidery. I want to learn computer programming. Museums and zoos seem cool? I don't really know what things are in your budget." She should probably list some kind of physical activity, both for the conspicuous displaying of normative behaviour and also because this is legitimately a great opportunity to cultivate physical fitness in a new and malleable body, but for some reason the physical activities that come to mind as potentially enjoyable are all combat sports and that's not conspicuously normative at all. Oh hey, rock climbing is a thing. Is it a thing her fake identity has heard of, though? It's probably expensive. She'll be on the lookout for opportunities to become informed of its existence and in the meantime she can just be the total lack of jock she naturally is.

Evelyn beams at her. "Programming! Goodness, that's not one I've heard before, you must be a very clever girl. And those are some lovely hobbies. I actually have some embroidery floss, though I'm afraid I've been very bad at finishing any embroidery projects. We can certainly visit some museums on the weekend, though, and we can drive out to the animal refuge if you like animals. Are you reading chapter books? Roxanne said that you were homeschooled. I have a big bookshelf and you're welcome to it. Reading is such a nice hobby, and it's good for your brain." And she will maaaaaaaybe carefully put away the romance novels and other books that aren't appropriate for a six-year-old; she has a suspicion this particular six-year-old has not particularly had her reading material curated for age-appropriateness. Hopefully they can address that calmly and not have a fight over it. 

(She's already making the mental note that if Miranda stays with her longer term, which is certainly a possibility, then she will have to be in school. And that seems like something there might end up being a fight over. She reminds herself, again, not to borrow trouble before it arrives.) 

"That all sounds awesome and I look forward to seeing your bookshelf! I'm a big fan of nonfiction." She's also a big fan of fiction, but she doesn't want to raise questions about why a six-year-old is seeking out adult SF and the more realistic kind of historical novel. Also nonfiction is a better prophylactic for chronic intellectual understimulation. Even in the absolute best-case scenario she's going to have to do enough high school to put on college applications, and probably a lot more school than that. Something to raise later.

"Wow! You really are a clever girl. I'll see what I can do for children's nonfiction, but we might have to make a trip for the library. I'm sure you don't want to be stuck reading my cookbooks."

And she doesn't want to press Miranda too hard yet to talk about her parents, but she'll go fishing just a little bit. "Are your parents big readers too? Did you have books?" 

There's a moment of disorienting near-awareness, like her memories are trapped behind a wall and fighting to get out, and then it fades again. "Yes, I've had a lot of access to books." Is this the right time to say the thing she's been rehearsing? No, not yet, it can't be unsaid and she wants to say it face to face, not through a mirror.

"I'm very glad to hear it. So many children I've looked after didn't have books at home, but they're such a nice way to explore your imagination. I remember I absolutely loved the Nancy Drew series when I was little, and I would daydream and pretend I was a detective too. Have you read Nancy Drew? I have all of the books." And they're appropriate for children, and there are a lot of them, hopefully enough to keep even a precocious reader amused for a while until they can make a library trip.  

It's mostly not fishing - Evelyn is trying not to get too eager about detective-working her way to figuring this kid out - but she does find herself wondering if one reason Miranda likes to read so much is because it provides an escape from an unpleasant home life. 

"- And we're here," she adds, pulling into the driveway. Evelyn's neighborhood is quiet at this time of day. It's low-density with clean streets, parked cars in driveways, and lots of green, not at all like the Sketchville atmosphere of downtown Reno. Her house is a newish looking two-story construction that radiates the essence of American suburbia; it's identical in design and layout to its neighbors, but painted a distinctive and cheerful yellow. The lawn next to hers is beautifully manicured, but Evelyn's own lawn is a bit long and unkempt, a few spots yellowing where she hasn't been on top of watering it. It's also cluttered. Theres a large plastic play structure - very large, relative to Miranda's current size - and bright plastic toys for various ages scattered around the lawn. 

Evelyn releases the central locking (she always has it on when she's driving a new child home, even if they seem well-behaved and not likely to try to open the door while the car is moving.) She helps Miranda get unbuckled, but lets her scramble down from the booster seat on her own rather than lifting her out. The porch light is on a motion sensor, and flicks on when Evelyn unlocks the door.

Inside, the house feels homey and very much lived in. The front-hall interior has an elderly welcome mat, its nap almost worn away in the center. There's also a wooden bench, the kind with a top that flips up to reveal a storage compartment, and a coat tree and shoe-rack and a closet full of currently-unnecessary spare raincoats and cold weather gear, thrifted over the years and suitable to fit children of various sizes. A sample of what must be Evelyn's previous foster children is shown in a row of photographs above the closet. They're of all ages, from teenagers to infants. A boy with a scruff of light brown hair and Evelyn's blue eyes appears in many of them, passing through a progression of ages. 

"Shoes off, please," Evelyn says lightly, sitting down to untie her own laces. "If you like to wear slippers indoors, I should have a pair in about your size, and we can do a big shop at Walmart tomorrow and get you your own." 

"I haven't read the Nancy Drew books; I should check those out." She suspects she'll find them boring, but she needs to review her memories of Doyle and Christie for Adult Content and other implications before she's willing to admit to reading them. 

The house looks nice. Having painted it a nontraditional color is a good sign about Evelyn's tolerance for the unconventional, much like her lack of comment on Miranda's hair. 

"I'm fine in just socks," she says, toeing off her shoes. Not having shoes is uncomfortable, but the discomfort is a mix of unfamiliarity and a sense of being marginally less prepared for sudden unspecified shenanigans, neither of which will be helped by slippers. Calm down, lizard brain, there isn't going to be shenanigans of the sort that shoes would help with. Last time she got isekai'd she materialized new shoes anyway. "Your house is lovely. Can I see your book collection? And the bedroom I'm going to be in and the kitchen and where the bathroom is and actually I guess I'm asking for a tour."  She chuckles at herself.

"Of course! Let's have a walk around and I'll show you everything. I imagine it's very different from what you're used to." Pause, then she goes on, her voice very light and casual. "Have you stayed in a house before, that you can remember? Maybe with family friends, or maybe your parents used to have a house or apartment when you were littler?" 

Evelyn is definitely not relaxed, yet. She knows she doesn't have a good handle on Miranda, yet; the child is an enigma wrapped in galaxy print. Most new foster children have a 'honeymoon period', when they're still feeling out their new environment and on their best behavior; ironically, it's once they feel comfortable and safe that they start to push the rules and see how much they can get away with. Knowing as little as she does about Miranda's past, she has no idea what behavior to expect to pop up later. 

But, she reminds herself, there's nothing here she can rush. And in the moment, Miranda is very pleasant company, polite and easy to be around. 

House! She shows Miranda the garage, which can be accessed through a door behind the coatroom. It hasn't held a car in years, and is now entirely relegated to storage space, one wall with floor-to-ceiling metal shelves and neatly labeled Rubbermaid boxes, the other holding larger items that aren't actively in use but that Evelyn, who is well aware she has some pack-rat tendencies, didn't want to get rid of. There's an office chair that Evelyn recently replaced with a fancier one that was on sale last Boxing Day, a treadmill and a stationary bike, from Evelyn's past attempts to get in better shape, and a set of hand weights - the light ones, not the heavier ones that Jeremy has in his room. There's also a shelf of power tools, and cans of paint, and some solvents that she prefers not to keep in the house proper. Evelyn tells Miranda very firmly and seriously, looking her in the eye, that she isn't to come in here alone, because both the power tools and the weights are dangerous. (They're also stored on high shelves, deliberately out of reach of little hands, and with a younger child she would additionally child-lock the door, but that's hardly going to keep Miranda out, and Miranda seems trustworthy to follow instructions.)

The house has two main floors and an attic, though the attic is also unfinished and not currently accessible except through a weird hatch in the ceiling of Evelyn's closet. (She doesn't intend to mention this to Miranda; attics are way too tempting for a certain personality of child, and she isn't sure Miranda doesn't have that must-explore-everything-or-else trait.) Downstairs, once they move on from the coat room, there's a big combined lounge/playroom, with a television and lots of boxes of toys, a small study where Evelyn keeps her desktop computer and files (she warns Miranda that this room will be locked at night, as she keeps her confidential fostering logs in the file cabinet) and a big spacious kitchen-dining room with windows and sliding doors looking out on the backyard, which is also large and well equipped with toys, not to mention a tire swing. 

Upstairs is pretty much just bedrooms, four of them. Evelyn's master bedroom is at the front of the house, where she has a view of the yard and driveway; she'll hear if a teenage foster child comes back late, or if one of the previous serial absconders she's looked after tries to make a break for it. Jeremy's bedroom, originally nearly as large as Evelyn's but smaller now since they renovated and put in the second en-suite bathroom, is at the back of the house, where he has the most peace and quiet to focus on studying.

Along the stretch of hallway in between, going from the front of the house to the back, there's a bathroom (reasonably large, equipped with an enormous jacuzzi bathtub set up with an accessibility grab bar) the two spare bedrooms, and then a closet. The bedrooms are much smaller, having formerly been one large bedroom that Evelyn had subdivided when she decided to start fostering. Each has room for a single bed against one wall (arranged so the beds are on opposite walls, after Evelyn learned the hard way that some kids would try to annoy their sibling or fellow foster child by kicking the shared wall), a bookshelf, and a toybox. One is painted a lovely azure blue and the other is pale pink, though Evelyn has spent the last two years mulling on whether to repaint; her brilliant idea to have a boy's room and a girl's room, so she would be prepared in either case, felt a lot less clever when she ended up with a sibling group of three sisters, and also when she was reminded that not all girls like to be stereotyped as being into "girly" things. 

The pink room also has a wardrobe, white with some flowers stamped on as a decoration; the blue room has a chest of drawers decorated with mildly tacky rocketship stickers, and glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling as well as a solar system mobile. There are books ranging from baby board books to thin chapter books clearly aimed at elementary schoolers. There are lots of stuffed animals and, for the pink room, some rather worse-for-wear Barbies sharing a plastic bucket. The blue room has more Lego and a remote-controlled toy car. 

Evelyn stands in the hallway, looking between them. "As I'm sure you can tell, I had some preconceptions about what boys and girls like when I had these decorated. The pink room is where I usually put girls, but you seem like someone who might be interested in space, and you're welcome to have the blue room if you prefer it. Up to you." 

She will agree to stay out of all the areas she's not welcome in. It doesn't even feel like an imposition on her dignity; she's a guest in Evelyn's house and staying out of certain rooms is an entirely legitimate request for a host to make. She compliments various features of the house that it honestly occurs to her to compliment, while vetting all of her utterances in advance for being consistent with an impoverished background. What little she can deduce from her sense of aesthetics suggests she's used to wealth but not extreme wealth; this seems like a normal kind of house for someone to have.

"I would indeed prefer the blue bedroom, thank you! It looks awesome." Fuck yeah Heck yeah, Legos and space decor, what a piece of luck. And of course it's fine if Evelyn gends as long as she doesn't expect Miranda to gend too much. Possibly it's the sudden prepubescence talking but she really doesn't feel inclined to gend.

"So what's next on the agenda?" She's almost feeling ready to say the thing but maybe one or two more logistics tasks worth of procrastination first.

She sounds like she's in a business meeting. It's actually pretty adorable, coming from a tiny kid, but what kinds of books is she reading? Business management books??? 

"Hmm. It's about eleven, so I was planning to make lunch in a few hours, but you can have a snack if you're hungry now. And like I said, we'll have to stay in today, but there are lots of activities we could get out." Evelyn looks thoughtfully at her. "Are you a Scrabble fan? I love Scrabble, but I think you might just flatten me at it!" 

"I'd like to try to get onto your same meal schedule--at some point we should talk about my food preferences but obviously lunch is going to be whatever is in the fridge. I'd love to play Scrabble with you." Is she good at Scrabble? One way to find out! 

(It transpires that she is implausibly good at Scrabble for a six-year-old and merely decent for an adult; her vocabulary is what it is but she has no familiarity with the letter pool or the board structure and a corresponding lack of tactical instincts.)

Evelyn is a very enthusiastic Scrabble player, but in terms of skill she's also merely decent, and they're quite closely matched. Evelyn is suitably impressed, and praises Miranda; she's not actually sure that Miranda needs the boosts to her self-esteem that so many neglected children in foster care crave, but it's basically a reflex at this point. 

At 12:30 pm they can start putting the game away to clear the table for lunch? 

Scrabble is fun and Miranda gets the sense she hasn't played it much; her past self was missing out. 

While they're both comfortable and at ease at the end of the game, she says, "There's something I'd like to clear the air about a little."

Once Evelyn is making eye contact she gives her the most serious, level, adult gaze she can muster. "There are some things about myself, and about my past, that I haven't been saying. And I'm going to keep not saying them. I'm not concealing anything a mandatory reporter would be required to report. I'm not concealing any danger to myself, you, or anyone else. I'm not concealing anything I would be particularly distressed to have concealed from me if I was in your place. I believe if you somehow came to know everything I wasn't saying you would agree that it was reasonable of me not to say it. I wish I could be totally candid with you but I can't, and I hope the reassurances I can give will be enough for you for now." She carefully doesn't say anything about not concealing criminal activity because she totally did lie to the cops several times and she's pretty sure that's illegal.

Her heart rate while she waits for Evelyn to respond is roughly a billion and another song is running through her head. Roland, Roland, you know that you're betrayed/ but in your heart is courage and your voice is not dismayed/face you now grim battle, take your swords and raise 'em high/with honor we have lived our lives, with honor we shall die!

....Wow. Wow. Okay then. Evelyn was not expecting that. ...Or, well, on the one hand she's not surprised that Miranda is concealing something from them, because obviously she is, but she really, genuinely, hadn't expected her to admit to it on her first afternoon in Evelyn's house, let alone in such careful language. She sounds like a tiny lawyer. Has she been anxiously mentally rehearsing that all morning, worrying about how Evelyn will respond? Poor kid. 

Evelyn has no idea how to react, but that's not a first, and reflex takes over. She finds herself matching Miranda's intent, serious tone. "Oh, love. I'm so glad you felt able to tell me that much. And I understand why you aren't ready to tell me everything, of course I understand, you barely know me. It's okay. I'm not angry. I hope that will change, if you stay with me longer, but right now all that matters to me is that you're safe." 

And then she clears her throat. "I do have to put what you told me in my log notes. And - I'm not going to lie to you, it will affect Social Services' assessment of your parents, if and when we find out where they've gotten to. Because we have to make sure that you would be safe with them. But I'm not going to make a big deal of it right now, really, I'm not. If you want to talk - if you ever want to talk - I'm always here to listen, but if you'd rather just get on with our day, that's fine." 

Aaaaaaaaaand hopefully that was the right thing to say, and Miranda isn't upset? She's so weirdly hard to read. Most kindergarteners wear their heart on their sleeve. 

"Anyway," Evelyn adds brightly. "How about some lunch?" 

"I understand. Thank you for--being so graceful about it. Lunch sounds like a great idea. What sorts of food do you have?" Changing the subject is best subject. Maybe in another month she'll feel safe enough to say that the reason she's concealing things is that they're implausible but definitely not now.

Lunch, then! Evelyn promises that tomorrow they can do a proper grocery run, as well as the Walmart clothing run, and Miranda can pick out some things she likes - within reason, it's also a house rule and part of Evelyn's parenting philosophy that they eat junk food only in moderation, and treats are for after healthy meals. In the meantime, she suggests that Miranda can have a poke around her fridge and cupboards and point out foods she likes, and they can hopefully probably assemble a reasonably balanced meal that way. 

(The fridge is well stocked, with milk and cheese and deli meats and various dips including hummus and a wide range of colorful fresh vegetables that can be eaten raw. There's bread in the freezer, and various condiments to have on it, and there's some leftover quiche and macaroni salad from last night's family dinner. Oh, and another house rule is that meals are eaten together, at the table; on very special occasions, they might sometimes get takeout as a treat and eat in front of the TV, but not usually.) 

Evelyn does not bring up Miranda's revelation at all, or even hint that it's on her mind. Inside, she's reeling, but she's used to keeping that off her face, and this is far from the worst mood whiplash she's experienced. She remembers the time a seven-year-old boy confessed that his older brother had been sexually abusing him for most of his childhood, and then two point five minutes later seemed to have effortlessly tucked the memory away in its box and was enthusiastically giving her Lego construction orders. It's a thing. Kids learn how to do whatever they need to do to cope, and whatever happened to Miranda, she's clearly doing exactly that. 

Over lunch, she feels Miranda out on what board games she knows, and slips in a question about whether she has a usual bedtime and what kind of routine before bed she's used to. 

She assembles herself a plate of hummus and carrots and a PB&J. Her knowledge of board games is fairly limited; she keeps trying to search for memories of playing games and coming up empty instead of mentally reviewing games that exist and checking her familiarity with the rules. Probably for the best since she has no clue when any of the games she likes were invented. Her bedtime routine is to brush her teeth and change into pajama pants and she generally does it whenever she's tired. 

"I don't know if the police officer told you that I prefer not to eat animal products. Is that something you're comfortable with?" She's expecting a bunch of worries about balanced nutrition that she'll try to defuse with a willingness to eat tons of beans; if that doesn't work she'll offer a compromise on dairy products. She doesn't have a good plan for getting supplemental B12 other than "just ask for it" but given the apparent good health of this body that isn't this-week urgent.

"Oh. I see." If Evelyn is worried about Miranda's nutrition, she's clearly being careful not to show it. "I think I'd be more comfortable running that by our pediatrician, but I imagine that should be fine, as long as you're eating a balanced diet otherwise. One of my gym friends is a vegan, I think, I could bother her for recipes." She looks thoughtfully at Miranda. "Were your parents vegan as well? That can't have been easy, living on the road." 

"Talking to a pediatrician makes sense." Oh no now that she's given the concealing-things speech she doesn't want to repeat the same lie she told earlier. She'll give standing mute a try. "Getting recipes from your gym friend would be great too." Stupid conscience.

If Evelyn notices the evasion, she doesn't show it. "Then I'll do that. I should give her a call and catch up anyway, it's been ages." She chuckles. "I'm not exactly the best at sticking to my New Years gym resolutions. ...Speaking of our pediatrician, do you happen to remember when you last had a checkup? And whether you've been to the dentist or had your eyes checked this year?" 

"I'm afraid I don't remember; I probably ought to get one of everything." Hah, that was totally accurate and basically complete. Presumably Evelyn has some kind of insurance situation that will make getting Miranda's meatsack tuned unproblematic.

"I'm sure we can arrange this. I know an absolutely lovely dentist," who is particularly good with kids, but as a general rule kids hate having their kidhood made salient like that. "It'll take a couple of days to sort out all the paperwork, but I'm sure we can arrange something within a couple of weeks."

And she sighs, because they really should have this conversation, given that she's heard absolutely nothing all day from the police or Social Services about Miranda's parents and this does not bode well. 

"Miranda, I understand you were homeschooled before, and I wish I could keep doing that with you if it's what you prefer, but I'm not a qualified teacher and Social Services wouldn't agree to it. Your social worker is going to want you to be in school, and I think it's a good idea, you should be meeting other people your age and not spending all your time cooped up in here with an old fogey like me. There's a very nice primary school a five-minute drive from here. I don't know how long you'll be staying with me, but - I'll be honest, I expect at least a month, and maybe a lot longer." 

Ah yes, this conversation. It was inevitable and now she shall have it. "It makes complete sense that you want me to be in school, and I'm entirely on board with the project of getting me as educated as possible, but I'd like to try to talk you into some flexibility on the matter of what grade I start in. It would be no use to anyone for me to repeat one or more years of material I already know, and I'd really like to take some placement tests and try to get matched with classes that will challenge me intellectually." Serious level gaze that definitely isn't a proud challenge? Nope, can't thread that needle, she's looking at the air next to Evelyn's head now.

Evelyn bobs her head, keeping her expression open and trying to convey in body language that she's taking this request Very Seriously. It seems to be important to Miranda. 

"Of course. I understand that, and you certainly seem to be a long way ahead of most first graders. But, love, school isn't just about the reading and math." Aaaaaaand how to handle this diplomatically without making Miranda bristle about it. "I imagine this might be another difference in parenting philosophy, but I think it's important for children's wellbeing to play with other children of the same age. Even if you can keep up academically in a higher grade, I worry you would feel isolated there." 

She smiles sadly. "Can you look me in the eye and tell me you think I would fit in better socially with first graders than with sixth graders? If you can, I would like another few days of interaction followed by you re-evaluating the question." That wasn't the tactically optimal thing to say but her heart is full of nothing but pride and loneliness. She can tell it would be so easy to give up, to lean into being alone, to be completely alienated from humanity, and she doesn't know how hard she wants to fight against that impulse, and she wants to cry. She will get on the internet and have adult correspondence and if that doesn't work she can consider seceding from human interaction then.

She doesn't know why this topic hurts so much. She doesn't remember anything. 

"Oh, love." Evelyn slides her chair closer and lowers her chin to rest on her folded hands on the tabletop, so her eyes are a little bit lower than Miranda's.

"I can tell that I upset you," she says gently. "I'm sorry. You really must feel very different from other six-year-olds. I can see that you're very precocious, and I can see that– well, I don't actually know, do I, but I can make a guess that your parents treated you like a much bigger kid, or even like an adult. And I know no one likes to feel like someone sees them as a baby. I can't blame you. But the thing is, you are six, not twelve, and that does matter."

Aaaaaaand that is probably as close to 'criticizing the birth family' as she's willing to step; she's arguably already overstepped what she should have said, but the thing about Miranda is that it is hard to remember how young she is. 

She sighs. "Once we've got your new social worker and all the paperwork is done, I'll give the school a call and see what their options are for skipping grades. See whether they have some kind of enrichment, so you can be challenged in class and still have classmates who aren't literally twice your age. And I'm not going to labor the point any more right now, but - I hope you'll decide to give the other kids a chance, rather than deciding at the start that you'll never fit in." 

God damn her lack of a poker face when it matters. Her voice cracks as she says, "Understandable. I would appreciate options to socialize with older children in some kind of extracurricular thing." She has no idea if older children will be any more interesting than younger ones. She doesn't remember if she had friends before or where she got them. She thinks she did; if she was used to being alone then the loneliness wouldn't hurt this much. She will email scientists with thoughtful questions about their publications and she won't tell Evelyn she's doing it and she won't tell the scientists jack shit. 

And now she's crying, mostly out of shame at her own incompetence for crying. Fuck. "I'm sorry, I've--had a very long day and--I would like to be alone for a little while. You haven't done anything wrong." She will wait for some kind of acknowledgement before fleeing to her bedroom.

Evelyn feels terrible about having hit some kind of clearly very sore spot for the poor kid (and is also pretty confused about...something...she hasn't quite pinned it down yet but her instincts are telling her that she's missing a key swath of the Miranda-picture. Which isn't surprising, Miranda as good as straight-up told her that she was, but that doesn't mean she likes it.) 

In a lot of cases she definitely wouldn't let an upset six-year-old on her first night in foster care away from her parents go run off and hide alone, but her instincts are also telling her that Miranda will be fine, and calm down faster if Evelyn gets out of her face and definitely in no way makes a big deal about it. 

"Of course. You can go to your room if you like." Evelyn does have a good poker face, and is not visibly ruffled or upset at all. 

"See--you later." And she will go hide among the plastic stars and go through half a box of tissues weeping silently about the loss of her home and her family and her freedom and part of her mind, and about her own lack of skills, and about some source of pain she can't remember and thus can't process. And swears vengeance against it all in the form her soul names legitimate, which is to become so competent and impressive and beautiful that any attempt by the universe to fuck with her will look like a sad joke against the backdrop of her glory. She has advantages most children never dream of and even a lot of adults don't have, and she's going to kick reality's ass.

(She is not going to kick Evelyn's ass, even metaphorically. Evelyn is merely honestly mistaken. Miranda is like unto a fae wandering the Earth in human guise deceiving everyone, and Evelyn has been kind to her, and the only proper result is for Evelyn to unexpectedly benefit in the long run.)

And after about 45 minutes she emerges, and detours to the bathroom to splash cold water on her face and drink and generally recover her countenance, and go looking for Evelyn again. 

"Hello! Sorry for the interruption. All my beliefs about what would be optimal for my social life are entangled with the thing I'm not talking about and I'm not going to ask you to believe me without evidence. But I predict that I will benefit from opportunities for mixed-age socializing and that ought to be an easily testable prediction."

What Evelyn should have spent the last forty-five minutes doing is updating her log notes while everything is fresh in her mind, but she's instead spent it on Google, looking for online educational content and alternative schooling options close enough to be driving distance. Now that she's actually stopped to think about it, the local primary school really doesn't feel right for Miranda. 

When Miranda comes down and makes her (clearly carefully rehearsed) little announcement, Evelyn somehow isn't even surprised. She pushes back her chair. "I've been thinking. I still think it's not healthy for a child your age to only socialize with adults, but I decided to do some research, and there are alternative education methods that don't split children up by age so much; they have kids of different ages all in the same classroom, but working at their own pace based on what they're interested in. Have you heard of Montessori schools? I didn't know very much about them until today, but there are a few in town, and one of them is free. It's a longer drive, but I think you might be happier there. Would you be willing to try it?" 

"Sure, Montessori sounds great! And I'm happy to socialize with loads of people of whatever age, I just want somewhere I can learn trigonometry and enough people interested in discussing philosophy that I don't bore them all to death in a week, you know?" She's not even lying about the trigonometry; she's forgotten enough high school math that she frankly ought to repeat it while she has all this free time. Maybe this time she'll get the hang of diff eq before she turns 16 and gets distracted by the opportunity to exchange labor for fiat currency, LMAO.

It's so nice to see her happy. Evelyn feels like she finally got something right. 

"Trigonometry, wow!" That's not just ahead of grade level, that's high school math. "I don't know if they'll teach it at the Montessori school, they usually only go up to eighth grade curriculum, but if you like math that much, we could look into finding you a tutor."

(Which will be expensive, Evelyn can't afford to pay that out of pocket, but Social Services has funding to pay for extra classroom support and tutoring for children who are below grade level. And Evelyn is pretty sure she remembers reading somewhere that kids who are bored because they're ahead of their peers are also likely to act out and get into trouble, and if she digs up that citation she can maybe persuade the local office to scrape together the funding. ...All of that, of course, is assuming Miranda stays with her long-term, which would in a sense be bad news - it's generally considered much better for children to stay with their natural family, with support and supervision from Social Services of course, even if the parenting isn't ideal - but Evelyn is finding that this is definitely the outcome she's personally gunning for. Miranda is a neat kid. Relevantly, Miranda is a kid - even if Evelyn is starting to see how one could drift into treating her like an adult - and she needs parenting. She needs someone looking out for her and making sure she has as much of a normal childhood as possible, even if she's clearly a deeply unusual child.) 

"I don't want to cost you a ton of money? I can study stuff on my own if I get curious about something the Montessori school doesn't have. But maybe there are cheap tutors, I wouldn't know."

Aaaaaand Evelyn is not entirely comfortable about this six-year-old child going off and learning things on her own without supervision. She isn't going to say that, though; she'll find a way later, once Miranda is more settled, to have a conversation about age-appropriate reading and Internet safety. 

"I was thinking we look for a college student who's hoping to earn some extra money over the summer." Sigh. "I suppose you probably won't be in school before the schools let out for the summer, anyway, it always takes a while for the wheels to move. Maybe tomorrow we can have a look at summer programs, see if any of them are cheap - I do get an allowance for you and that should cover a few weeks of summer camp, if there's an affordable one you're interested in." She grins. "Probably not tennis camp. Don't ask me why tennis camp is so expensive, but it is." 

She grins back. "Don't worry, I'm honestly not that into sports. I know exercise is important, but I'd rather just go on walks or something. I bet there are a lot of awesome cheap summer camps, and of course for the rest of the summer public libraries are the crown jewel of civilization." She's lowkey expecting to end up having her browser history read, but the nonfiction section of a public library is the most wholesome place on earth and it has totally failed to occur to her that anyone would consider denying it to anyone else.

"Of course. That would be delightful." Maybe Evelyn won't borrow trouble yet; she obviously intends to keep an eye on what books Miranda is seeking out, and if any of it is concerning then she will have to bring it up, but Miranda seems receptive in general to actual explanations of rules. And if she really just wants to read science books, it's not like those are really age-inappropriate, just too advanced for most children to follow. 

"I was looking for education content online," she adds. "But if you're going to be using the computer, I think we do need to have a conversation about Internet rules, because there are rules I have to follow there as well." It feels bizarre to be having this conversation with a six-year-old instead of a fourteen-year-old, but it seems like academically Miranda might be ahead of some fourteen-year-olds she's known, so. "Did your parents ever talk to you about how to stay safe on the Internet?" 

"I know there's a lot of lies and scams and--" how the heck does she say porn without saying the word porn--"inappropriate pictures, but I just want Wikipedia and programming websites and ideally to have an email address. If it would make you feel better to look at my browser history I'm open to that. Though at some point I might want to send emails to friends and that might be weirder for you to read? We can cross that bridge when we come to it, for now I'm not planning on doing anything that would benefit from privacy. I don't even have any friends with email addresses."

Nod. "Educational websites are generally safe, though keep in mind that anyone can edit Wikipedia and not everything written there is true. There are parental controls on my computer that should block sites with, er, inappropriate pictures, but if you do find anything that upsets or disturbs you, please tell me and we can talk about it. You won't be in trouble."

Personally Evelyn feels like six is much too young to have an email address - what email could she possibly need to send? - but it could be worse. At least she's not asking for a Facebook account. And the computer is in a public location in the house, with parental controls and browser history; she won't be surfing on her personal mobile device where Evelyn has no way of monitoring it, like far too many teenagers these days do. 

She frowns. "What I want you to be very careful about, is making friends on the internet, and especially if you're not telling them your age. I imagine it might be very appealing - and you're very clever, I'm sure you could convincingly sound much older than you are in writing - but the thing is, people on the Internet can say whatever they like about who they are. I'm sure most of them are perfectly lovely, but there are a few bad apples, and you wouldn't know. Does that make sense?" 

"I won't tell any internet strangers my personal information and I definitely won't agree to meet up with anyone in real life. If I want to send emails to people who aren't friends from summer camp or something like that I'll ask you about it first." She's going to frogboil her with wikipedia talk pages is what she's going to do. After at least three days and ideally a week of extremely wholesome read-only activity so it looks organic and not like a Plot. (It doesn't count as plotting against people if the plot doesn't harm their interests at all, but it is plotting in their general direction.)

"Very good. It sounds like you know how to be responsible." And Evelyn is very tempted to give her a cuddle, but she knows from long experience that the last thing most kids newly in foster care want is a hug from a near-stranger who is, notably, NOT their parent. Some kids do seek affection and get clingy almost immediately, but that's almost more worrying in a way, indicating a lack of deep attachment to their natural family. She'll offer a goodnight hug and kiss at bedtime, while making it clear that it's fine if Miranda says no, and then let her take the lead from there. 

She glances at the clock. "It's nearly seven-thirty. Which I think is a reasonable bedtime for a child your age, once you're in school, but I’m guessing it’s not what you’re used to? So for today we won't rush it."  smile. “How would you like fifteen minutes of computer time right now, and you can start getting ready for bed after that?”

"Sure, sounds good!" That's way earlier than she expected but she knows nothing about normal six-year-old physiology; for all she knows she'll be out like a light in an hour. If her circadian rhythm has matched up to her body then she'll be able to sleep at a plausible hour; if it's stayed with her mind then she'll lie awake scheming for multiple hours and "have a mysterious sleep disorder" if she can't adjust over the next week or two. 

So, what operating system is Evelyn a partisan of? She comes off as a Windows woman, more's the pity, but you can't judge a book by its cover. If Evelyn uses Ubuntu then that's evidence Miranda was sent back in time by an intelligence with her best interests at heart.

Yup, Windows! It looks like an old Windows machine too, both based on the noticeably bleached area on half of the casing where the sun must sometimes hit it through the small window high on the wall, and the fact that she's still running Windows XP. Also Evelyn has clearly never cleaned up her desktop files maybe literally ever and the entire screen is cluttered with various text documents; most of the filenames look vaguely educational.

At least her Internet is reasonably fast. (This is Jeremy's doing; he has a laptop for schoolwork, and complained about how long it took to download large files.) 

This is a perfectly reasonable set of priorities for someone's purchasing decisions to reflect and she will be a hardware snob when she can afford her own box. Figuring out how to set up a dev environment on Windows can wait until she has a longer block than 15 minutes; for now she can just read some fun chill Wikipedia articles with . . . Internet Explorer. Figures. How sus would it be to immediately ask to download Chrome? Probably enough sus+rude that she should at least put it off; Wikipedia is Wikipedia regardless. 

Hmmm, what's a nice fun topic to wind down with before bed? Evo-devo is cool and she's never read as much about it as she'd like but it's too close to "where babies come from". The Federal Reserve is interesting but she wants to start with something STEM to set up accurate stereotypes. Trilobites. Yeah.

Background tab on biostratigraphy . . . background tab on the benthic zone . . . trilobite swarms! Semiterrestrial trilobites! What a lovely world she lives in, in the grand scheme of things.

Evelyn putters about the house and mostly doesn't obviously hover, but is clearly trying to be ambiently Around and keeping an eye on Miranda's computer use. (Not closely, she's not actually coming nearby enough to read the words on the screen, just get the general sense that Miranda is, in fact, on Wikipedia and not trying to look at social media or something even less age-appropriate.) 

Fifteen minutes later, she slips over to tell Miranda that it's time to get ready for bed, and - ends up beaming, surprised, at the screen. "Wow! It looks like you're learning some fascinating science stuff. It's time to start getting ready for bed, but I'd love to hear about it." 

"Ah, so it is--if you want me to reliably notice when it's a specific time without someone having to point it out you should probably give me a kitchen timer or something." She wants a SMARTPHONE with ALARMS and CHECKLISTS and all the other parts of her extended brain she's used to having. She shares a couple of trilobite facts while looking through the bedroom for pajamas and the bathroom for toothbrush, toothpaste, and dental floss, and then stops talking so she can make use of the latter in a civilized manner. Also she attempts to subtly scope out the shower for soap and shampoo, for scheming reasons.

Evelyn has a routine for this! She's already set out spare pajamas in Miranda's approximate size (she pulled them out of the storage ottoman before she had met Miranda) and a spare toothbrush and facecloth. The bathroom has a range of toothpastes including various children's toothpastes in non-minty flavors, and floss. There's a wall-mounted shelf beside the bathtub with soap and shampoo and conditioner (all of them strategically transferred into travel-size bottles because Evelyn has recently looked after a whole series of children who liked to make bathroom messes.) There's an electric heated towel rack. 

(Evelyn watches her discreetly to see if she seems to know how to brush her teeth properly, but quickly ducks out and stands in the hall instead once the answer is clearly yes.) 

She flosses and brushes and gets a mental habit-trigger to write a diary entry but she really cannot be arsed to deal with that right now. Evelyn doesn't strike her as the diary-reading type but that's not nearly certain enough to write her actual thoughts down in plaintext.

"Is there a particular time you'd like me to be up in the morning for clothes shopping?"

"- Well, I was really hoping your assigned social worker would be by today so we'd have a better idea of our schedule tomorrow, but things seem to be moving slowly. I don't need you up at any particular time for shopping," on the assumption that even a very sleep-deprived child can't possibly sleep past noon, "but if you do sleep in, it's possible I'll end up having to wake you if the social worker is only available first thing. Either way there won't be anything before nine am." 

"Okay. Goodnight; I'll see you in the morning." She still isn't tired yet but it might just be being keyed up from the shenanigans. Once Evelyn is no longer watching and her door is shut: does her room possess an alarm clock?

Evelyn backs off and goes downstairs, stepping less quietly than she might usually; it seems like Miranda might be more able to relax if she feels like she has privacy and Evelyn is no longer paying attention to her.

There is not an alarm clock in evidence. 

(There has been, at various points over the years, but these days Evelyn mostly fosters younger children - she finds it's simpler when there's a big age difference between them and Jeremy, he's able to be patient with younger kids but can get genuinely quite upset when older teenagers recklessly break rules and tease him for being such a goody-goody - and she hasn't really seen the necessity, since she always wakes her foster children in time to get ready for school. Also, cheap digital alarm clocks are confusing, both for young children and for herself. And she's formed a habit of minimizing how many objects in a child's room will break irreparably if thrown violently at the wall in a fit of rage.) 

This is inconvenient, because, you see, she has a scheme which requires being up at least an hour earlier than Evelyn and she doesn't trust her circadian rhythm to cooperate. If there's a window she'll leave the curtains wide open and that should help. 

Her circadian rhythm really does not want to cooperate with falling asleep before 21:00. She makes medium-term plans and contemplates possible motives of the aliens/simulators/her own highly timey-wimeyed self/whatever else sent her here until she falls asleep and wakes up at whichever of dawn or 06:00 comes first.

What huh where is she what's wrong with her body oh right all of that shit happened. Fuuuuuuck everything.

Is she in time to sneakily get showered and changed and present this as a fait accompli before Evelyn can have opinions about it? She doesn't want to pick any unnecessary fights but she also does not want anyone else's opinion on when or how she should become clean. (Her own shower opinions are pretty conventional except for washing her hair with cold water so the dye lasts longer; it's about the principle of the thing.)

Dawn comes a little before 6 am in Reno at this time of year. She seems to be up before Evelyn, at least, and can sneak out into the hall, notice that Evelyn's door is still closed with no light coming through the crack, and reach the bathroom without incident.

...Unfortunately, Evelyn is a light sleeper, and also on a hair-trigger because it's her first night with a new foster child and she's always on high alert. As soon as Miranda starts running the tap or shower, she jolts awake, glances at her own digital clock, and then slips out of bed to go check on her new foster child. She remembers within three seconds that Miranda is probably not going to be up to trouble, it seems implausible, and of course there's a limited amount of trouble she can cause in the bathroom because Evelyn has carefully made sure it contains nothing sharp or fragile - and she can't lock herself in because the bathroom door doesn't lock - but Evelyn still has habits. 

The door is shut. Evelyn pads over and knocks gently, without opening it. "Morning! You're up early. Are you finding everything all right?" 

There is talking but Miranda can't parse it over the shower.  What kind of uncivilized person tries to have a conversation while someone is showering fucking whatever. "I can't hear you but I'll be out in ten minutes!" she yells in the hopes that this will placate presumably-Evelyn long enough to get clean and shut the water off.

Evelyn doesn't quite catch all of that but she definitely gets the idea that Miranda is busy and wants privacy. And she doesn't hear any suspicious non-shower sounds. She backs off, and heads back to her own room to get dressed, throwing on a dressing gown and leaving the door ajar, because she wants Miranda to feel comfortable and like she has the privacy she's clearly used to, but also she really wants to be sure she hears it if any disasters happen. 

Miranda takes an extremely normal shower and puts her hair back in the same abnormal style as yesterday and puts on clothes that are among the more colorful of the available options but presumably still within Evelyn's concept of normal what with them being in her house and then emerges with intent to breakfast. If Evelyn emerges in response she can have a cheery "good morning"; Miranda is always 90% less of a bitch after a hot shower and a change of clothes.

(The selection of clothes that Evelyn left out in Miranda's room weren't sized to fit her exactly, and were mostly pretty "girly". Evelyn's gender assumptions, or maybe the gender assumptions of the stores where she shops, clearly include that most little girls like pink, and that "tomboyish" girls who want to wear pants instead of skirts or dresses will prefer dark or neutral colors. Miranda can choose between several brightly-colored shirts, where two out of three options are glittery and/or Disney-themed, and can easily find a pair of stretchy jogging pants that fit her better than the slacks she appeared in.) 

Evelyn hears the shower stop and then Miranda's footsteps leaving the bathroom, and - carefully doesn't actually emerge from her room, in case Miranda is planning to run back to her own room still wearing only a towel, but does call out a cheerful "Good morning! I hope you found everything all right?" 

She's not wearing a towel; she's wearing the glitteriest shirt that doesn't have a horrible texture and the least leggings-like of the pants.

"I did, yeah. Having hotel-sized shampoo when you have lots of people in your house temporarily is very clever. I'm looking forward to breakfast and Walmart--oh wait, social worker and then Walmart, right?" She's not looking forward to the social worker, who will probably be an innocent person who deserves better than to be adversarially optimized at but also constrained by the law so heavily that Miranda will have to adversarially optimize at her.

Well, no, that's not quite true. She always has a choice. She just intends to choose based on what serves her own interests rather than on any abstract principles, and feels no guilt about this.

Evelyn ducks out of her room. "That's right. And I imagine you'll meet my son this morning, though probably not for another hour or two, he's not an early bird like you. And he got in late last night, he's been prepping for his SATs and has a study group with some friends. He knows you're here and he's looking forward to meeting you." 

And she can head downstairs with Miranda. Miranda being an early riser is going to be convenient for school, once that's a consideration, but at the moment she's slightly wishing Miranda were perhaps a bit less of an early bird, she always ends up feeling like she started her day on the wrong foot if she doesn't have a chance to drink her first cup of coffee by herself in peace. 

There are plenty of breakfast options even once animal products are ruled out. Evelyn stocks granola and muesli and Cheerios and bran flakes, and there's pre-sliced bread in the freezer available for toasting, and jam and peanut butter as spreads. 

"I look forward to meeting him too." Both as a fellow human being and as a source of SAT prep workbooks. The time for being gracious and not a ridiculous showoff is when there aren't effectively years of freedom and employment at stake.

Miranda would totally let Evelyn drink a cup of coffee by herself in peace if she had any way of knowing this was desirable! Instead she will simply sit quietly and eat granola while trying and failing to remember what the state of fake milk was in 2010.

She hopes she gets on with Jeremy. She's confident in her ability to be amiable housemates with anyone who isn't a thief, a vandal, a smoker, a complete slob, or loud during sleep hours, but it would be pretty great to additionally make a friend. Hopefully he'll have some kind of interest she can show at least an unsophisticated interest in and get out of the "boring little kid" pigeonhole.

Evelyn seems content with this; she sits across the table with her coffee and the newspaper, and occasionally looks up to smile at Miranda.

Miranda can have a very leisurely breakfast and still be done eating by 6:45, at which point Evelyn suggests she can have some computer time until Jeremy comes down, which probably won't be for another hour, he usually sets his alarm for 7:15 and snoozes it at least once. 

(Evelyn supervises her a little less closely this time. She leaves the door of the study open, and glances in every so often, but isn't coming close enough to read what's on the screen.) 

Is it cool if she installs Python? It's a programming language. Look at all these nice reputable websites that say it's fine. 

Mmmmmmaybe she can wait until Jeremy is up and do it with him? It's not that Evelyn doesn't trust her, it's just that one time when Jeremy was fifteen he tried to download and set up a game because his friend had it, and he had to do something fancy with an ""emulator"" because it was a Nintendo game but they don't own a Nintendo, and in the process of trying to follow the gaming forum instructions he did something that made Evelyn's files impossible to find. Jeremy's pretty good with computers now, though, he'll be able to make sure they don't break anything. 

Nintendo emulators are the worst. She doesn't have any episodic memory to back this up, of course, but she knows they're all third-party because Nintendo won't just shut up and take her money, and they're all on sketchy websites and 3/4 of them suck butt.

She doesn't say any of this. She says, "Sure, installing shi--stuff is a great source of things going wrong. I'll wait." And then she finds a Logo website that will let her get her fix in-browser and spends the next hour making the little turtle draw a Sierpinski triangle. 

Evelyn smiles at her. "Thank you for being careful with your language, I appreciate it."

As predicted, Jeremy's alarm starts going off at 7:15 on the dot. Very loudly; it's audible from upstairs even with his door shut, and beeps for a while before he presumably snoozes it. Ten minutes later, Miranda can hear thudding footsteps through the ceiling above her, and then the shower running. At 7:35, there are footsteps out on the landing and then thudding down the stairs, and a tall, lanky teenage boy with a clear family resemblance to Evelyn hurries past the study en route to the kitchen. 

- and then stops, and doubles back. "Oh, hey. You must be Miranda. Sorry I wasn't in to meet you last night, I'm Jeremy." A slightly awkward laugh. "I live here. I guess that was probably obvious." 

"Jeeeeeremy!" Evelyn calls from the kitchen. "She wants your help installing a thingy! Do you have time before school?" 

"I will if you drive me!" 

Rather than keep shouting across the living room, Evelyn pads over to join him. "I suppose that'd work. I'll have to bring Miranda along, but if we leave at 8:30 we'll definitely be home by 9 and I can't imagine the social worker will come earlier than that. And then you'll have almost a whole hour to mess around with your computer stuff. Miranda, is that all right with you?" 

"That would be awesome, thanks!" And Jeremy can sit and watch and optionally help with the acquisition of Python and a C++ compiler and VSCode whoops apparently that doesn't exist yet, she'll get emacs or something. She should definitely take this period of mandatory unemployment to pick up several new languages/tools/etc but she hasn't decided which yet so for now it's just some nice familiar ones she'll be able to contribute to OSS projects in. She has to fight the temptation to cuss at the computer on several occasions but cussing isn't strictly necessary for installing software, just helpful.

Jeremy has a little bit of advice (mostly on the existing local setup of the computer) and a lot of questions. He's so impressed. "You're super smart, you know? ...You probably get a lot of that, sorry. Where did you learn all this?" 

You must be at least a level 4 friend to unlock her tragic lack of a backstory. "Thanks! I've spent a lot of time at libraries." She's only like 90% sure that's technically true and it's totally a Gricean deceit thingy. "I don't know if Evelyn mentioned that I'm a very cagey person; it's nothing personal." Friendly smile because she's so harmless and friendly. (Does git exist? It does! Hello git her overcomplicated beloved.) "Do you like to code at all or are you more on the power user end?"

Shrug. "Clearly not like you do! I took a class last semester, my high school offers it as an elective, but we were learning C++." Another awkward chuckle. "Which is coincidentally also the grade I got. Mom was pissed." 

"Jeremy! I heard that. Language!" 

Jeremy rolls his eyes. "So-orry, Mom." He lowers his voice. "She's really anal about the not swearing, it's a whole thing. Anyway, we've still got ten minutes - what sort of thing can you do in this?" 

"Well, not much in ten minutes unless you're a lot faster than me. Eventually I want to contribute to open source software but I'll probably start with a minesweeper clone that plays itself or something . . . oh, you know what's fun and takes less than ten minutes, printing out a bunch of Fibonacci numbers." She writes a tiny python script to print out however many Fibonacci numbers she requests. Makes it recursive even though the iterative version is arguably better because she can do whatever she wants. "It's not useful but it's, you know, aesthetic."

"You're pretty cool, you know! We'd better get ready to go before Mom starts getting all stressed about it, but you should totally show me more later. I mean, if you want to." He scrapes his chair back and hops up. "Mom! I'll be ready in two minutes!" He thunders upstairs. 

Evelyn sets down her coffee. "Everything good? Let's go get your shoes on, all right?" 

What a good kid. She can't tell if he's actually interested in further interactions or just being nice and is inclined to assume the latter but if he's being nice it's nice of him. "I'd love to hang out more later!" She goes and gets her shoes on and dismisses mental checklist notifications that if she's leaving the house she should have her wallet and keys.

Her booster seat is still in the backseat. Jeremy comes running out more like five minutes later, out of breath and with a very stuffed-looking backpack swinging from one shoulder. 

"Jeremy! I know you're in a hurry, but please go back and lock the door." 

"You'll be gone for like twenty minutes!" But he grumpily doubles back and locks the door with his own housekey, before jogging out and hopping into the front seat. He's now smelling strongly of aftershave. 

"Jeremy, please set a good example for Miranda and do your seatbelt." Evelyn raises her eyebrows. "And what's with the perfume, anyway? Special day?" 

Jeremy does up his seatbelt, then lets his head flop back against the headrest and lets out a long-suffering sigh. "Mom, it's not perfume. Also, shut up." 

Evelyn pulls out of the driveway. "Jeremy, language, please." 

He groans loudly. "'Shut up' isn't even a swearword. And Miranda doesn't need me to set a good example, she's great the way she is. ...Would it get you in trouble with Social Services if I pay her to do my homework? I don't know if that counts as child labor or not." 

Evelyn catches Miranda's eye in the rearview mirror and mouths 'sorry!' to her, then glares at Jeremy. "It would get you grounded, is what it would do. - and can you please be quiet, we're about to hit the bad traffic." 

It's kind of convenient that a third party has banned her from selling Jeremy homework services, because her sense of honor says that anyone paying anyone else to do their homework is Bad And Wrong but also she wants to exchange her labor for fiat currency. Maybe she can sell him academically honest tutoring. Is that condescending to offer while being under four feet tall with a voice like a cartoon character? Even if he wouldn't be offended, she'd quite like to have a relationship of approximate equals and tutoring might mess with it. Fortunately she has the excuse of the bad traffic to avoid saying anything for now and bring it up later when she's had more time to think.

The traffic is really quite bad and they don't reach Jeremy's high school until almost 8:50. Evelyn pulls over and drops him off at the curb, and he calls out a "seeya later!" to Miranda and then scrambles out of the car and runs for main doors, leaving his car door wide open. Evelyn rolls her eyes, tries to reach the handle from the drivers' seat, fails, and then sighs and unbelts herself and goes around to shut it. "I really don't know what to do with that boy sometimes. Come on, let's get back. Hopefully the social worker won't make us her first visit of the day." 

They make it back to the house by 9:05, and there's a blinking voicemail notification on Evelyn's landline phone. She tells Miranda to go sit in the living room and find a book or play with some toys (she's distracted and it does not occur to her at all that Miranda might find this objectionable), and she picks up the phone and listens to the voicemail. (Not on speakerphone, unless it's something private, or bad news about Miranda's parents that she would want to break to her gently.) 

It's not news about her parents, but Evelyn is smiling when she joins Miranda in the living room. "Good news! You've got a social worker assigned and she'll be visiting us in about an hour. Though knowing her, 'about an hour' could mean anytime from 10 to noon, but we should still be able to make it out shopping before it gets busy. Anyway, her name is Barb Evans and I've worked with her before. She's a bit of a character, but I like her. I hope you'll get along with her too." 

The phrasing is a bit rude but going and finding a book is not at all objectionable and she hardly has a leg to stand on about receiving a reasonable speech-act in a kind of rude way; she has it cached as a fact that she's the sort of person who does that. She will be quietly annoyed for a few seconds and then distracted by book-selecting.

"I look forward to meeting her." This is the totally normal and ethically uncomplicated flavor of bald-faced lie. "How often do social workers normally interact with foster kids? Should I be expecting to see her regularly? What about after they find my parents?" She just barely remembers to add that last question onto the end.

That's a very understandable question. "Well, it depends a lot on the social worker, and on how things are going overall. They're required to visit and talk to you - including in private, without me, so you can say anything you might not be comfortable saying to me - at minimum every six weeks, but some social workers are more hands-on than that. It varies whether it's scheduled in advance or not, and whether it's a quick visit or one where they stay for a couple hours. Barb's one of the social workers who tends to swing by whenever she's in the neighborhood." Which can be very annoying when she forgets to call in advance and Evelyn is in the shower or something. "This is the first visit, so it'll be longer - or it normally would be, but most of the time Social Services has more background on a family to fill me in on. Barb will ask you some questions, hopefully not too many questions you've already answered for multiple people, and we'll fill out the legal paperwork. Does that all make sense?" 

"That all makes sense, thanks." She starts contemplating how much she wants to consider herself bound by legal documents signed under various levels of duress and then remembers that she's considered legally incompetent to sign contracts. Which makes her want to go find a contract and sign it and consider herself bound by it out of spite. LMAO, brain, have better spiteful impulses than that.

If that's all for this conversation she can go back to distracting herself with the contents of Evelyn's bookshelf until Barb gets here.

Barb arrives at 10:55 am. (Evelyn, who thinks that children shouldn't spend all of their time on the computer even if they're using it for educational purposes, has been encouraging Miranda to read a book.) 

Whatever Miranda's stereotype of a social worker is, Barb almost certainly isn't it. She's in her fifties, overweight, with frizzy black hair barely restrained by a headband. She's wearing stretchy floral-pattern leggings and a blouse with cap sleeves that stretches tightly over her stomach, and hauling a handbag that looks big enough that Miranda could ride in it. When Evelyn answers the doorbell and lets her in, she immediately pushes past her to head straight for the kitchen; she's out of breath and looks very overheated, her feet and ankles noticeably swollen. 

"A cold drink, please, I'm dying here." Barb has a deep voice, and very little in the way of volume modulation. She plops herself down on one of Evelyn's kitchen chairs, which creaks, and sets her huge handbag on the table, then bends over, her blouse riding up on her back, and takes off her kitten heels, which are clearly pinching her feet. 

"Where is she?" Barb calls to Evelyn, having walked right past the living room without, apparently, seeing Miranda there. "Send her over on, please." She straightens up with a groan and starts digging in the handbag. "Gawd. What a day." She seems to be talking to herself, though her voice is still quite loud. "Come on, where did I put you...?" 

Miranda with her head in a book only arguably exists so that's quite valid of Barb actually. Eventually the unfamiliar voice causes her to return to her body and thence to the kitchen. 

"Hello Barb, I'm Miranda. It's good to meet you," she says in a job-interview voice. Oh, possibly she wants to be called Ms. Evans? Well, if she does she'll ask. (Miranda didn't have language parsing online yet when the request for a drink happened so it doesn't occur to her to go get one.)

That's okay, it's definitely not Miranda's job to wait on guests. Evelyn is pouring her a glass of apple juice from the fridge, and carries it over a moment later. 

"Miranda is settling in well," she says, in a voice that isn't not her own job-interview voice. "She's adapting well to our household routine and rules. She's polite - and very articulate, as you can see - and she's lovely to have around." 

"Honeymoon period," Barb says dryly, and then blinks at Miranda and opens her eyes very wide, as though in exaggerated surprise that Miranda is sitting right there as requested. "But don't you go getting any ideas." 

She turns back to Evelyn. "Bad news on the parents. Well, no news, but this isn't a case where no news is good news, is it? At this point, I'm afraid Social Services will apply for a care order even if they do turn up full of regret. They'll be needing to appeal to the court to get her back." She shakes her head. "It's not right."  

Miranda is right there, Evelyn doesn't say. Pointing things like that out to Barb always seems to bounce right off. 

Barb sighs, and turns back to Miranda. "So. Are you happy here?" 

She's been here for one day. Evelyn doesn't say this either. Barb is just direct like that, and - well, to her credit, it goes over better than Evelyn would expect. Most of the time. Barb definitely has more complaints on her record than most social workers. 

"Yes, Evelyn's been lovely."

"That's what they all say. Well. Except the naughty teenagers who don't want to be told when to do their homework."

Barb is still digging around in her handbag, and finally pulls out a manila folder. She flips it open and sifts through papers, fumbling it slightly with her very long false nails. "Sorry, hon, this is the boring part. Blah, blah, blah.... No allergies or dietary restrictions, right?" 

Evelyn clears her throat. "Not on the medical side, but actually, she's a vegan. I'm planning to pick up some recipes." 

"Dear god!" Barb does the exaggerated-widened-eyes expression again, and then leans in conspiratorially toward Miranda, though without actually lowering her voice. "If you're not planning to be snooty about it, I'm sure we can still get along fine." 

Barb. Has she ever, once, in her entire life, thought about how something was going to sound before she said it Evelyn is diplomatically silent. 

Barb scribbles something down on her paper. "She's in good health, right? No special needs?" 

Evelyn winces, and then clears her throat. "Not in the - usual sense - but actually, that's one of the things I wanted to speak with you about. Miranda is very far ahead of her grade level. She was homeschooled, mostly self-directed learning, but it's obvious she's a very self-motivated learner," glance at Miranda, "and I know she legally needs to be in school, I'm not set up to continue with the homeschooling, but I think she has some requests and we should do our best to accommodate that."

She turns to Miranda. "Can you tell Barb a little bit about your learning, and where you're at on reading and math and things?" 

She doesn't know if it's strategic to be honest here but it probably is and also not being honest would hurt.

"I'm solid on Algebra and shaky on trig and calculus. I can understand, and discuss, most English texts that aren't in specialized fields. My composition is pretty good but I won't be getting a novel published any time soon. I have enough understanding of civics to be an informed voter and read the news and whatnot but my coverage of world history is rather patchy and unsystematic. My understanding of various fields of science is pretty good but I'm not sure how to quantify it; if you pick a scientific topic I can summarize my knowledge of it and tell you whether it's one of my stronger or weaker ones. My understanding of the more procedural, less list-of-facts side of science is solid; I can design an experiment and do at least some basic data analysis and interpretation of the results. Mostly limited by my stats knowledge there. I have some experience with python and C++."

“Gawd,” Barb says, heartfelt. “You’re going to end up in the history books, aren’t you.” She rolls her head back on her neck, eyelids half-lowered, and whuffs out a gust of air between pursed lips, as though abruptly exhausted by the weight of Miranda’s academic achievement.

“We’ll have to get her tested,” she adds, presumably to Evelyn. “What’s the world coming to?” This seems to be said to no one in particular. “An actual genius, in care. The parents don’t deserve her, if they couldn’t tell what a special thing they had.”

Does Barb HAVE to say that when Miranda is, still, RIGHT THERE.

Miranda is actually kind of busy freaking out about the prospect of convincing everyone her intelligence and work ethic are on a level she can't actually keep up without further time travel and then everyone will be disappointed. Intellectually she knows this is not the end of the world. She doesn't owe anyone ending up in the history books. But consider: aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.

Also she's not a shiny object to be deserved and her real parents were probably great, but the part of her brain that's supposed to be vetting all her sentences for consistency and non-suspiciousness is returning 500s, so she just sort of stares unhappily into the middle distance.

Barb may be constitutionally allergic to tact, but she isn’t blind. That is not a happy child.

She lets out a gust of breath again, pulling her chin forward and down, oddly like a marionette having its head yanked around by an invisible puppeteer. 

“I put my foot in it, didn’t I,” she says, looking directly at Miranda through her lashes. She doesn’t sound incredibly sorry, but it’s starting to seem like she has exactly one tone of voice. “You’re a little girl, not a thing, I didn’t mean it that way. And it’s not your job to make us look good with your accomplishments.” Sigh. “But it’s our job to make sure you get an appropriate education, and I’m already seeing us having a bit of a time with that.”

"It's okay. I'm--having a lot of emotions today. But let's talk about me getting an education, because I agree that it's a complicated question. Evelyn was thinking of sending me to a mixed-age school and I think that's a good idea, because it'd be kind of a coincidence if I was at the same grade level in everything. And yeah, I should get formally tested at some point." She is still full of aaaaaaa but she is in fact getting what she wanted and not being called a liar or a braggart so really this is a win and she needs to woman up about it.

(Barb is, to a significant extent, not even assessing the question of whether Miranda is lying about her academic level. Kids can tell if you're eyeing them with the goal of deciding whether they're lying or telling the truth, and also she's actually very bad at judging that. It's not like they wouldn't notice if it turns out Miranda is exaggerating her knowledge, and why worry about it before that point? ...Also she did read Evelyn's log notes from last night and it fits.) 

"Like a Montessori school sort of thing? Good plan. Evelyn's probably stressing herself out about your 'social development'," she says it with invisible but definitely aubible air quotes, "but, honestly, I don't see the advantage of learning to getting along with other six-year-olds when you're six too." She shrugs ponderously, setting her midsection jiggling. "You may find them a lot easier to appreciate when you're older."

What a reasonable sensible woman. "You're so right. I don't have an inherent objection to six-year-olds but I really don't want them to be my entire social circle. I genuinely think more diversity in my social network would be good for me." Hopefully she didn't just step in a trap. She doesn't think so.

Barb nods. She rolls her neck from one side to the another, grabbing a chunk of her tightly curled hair and using it to pull her head to the side, as though doing a neck stretch, before releasing the springy curls to boing back. She blinks, also in an exaggerated sort of way, scrunching both eyes shut and then opening them wide as though hoping the room will look different if she resets her vision. 

"Some advice," she says. "Bet you're all impatient to be a grownup - and it's tough, being a little kid, stuck with everyone treating you like a little kid because you are, and wishing you were a grownup already. And it can feel really nice, when you meet a grownup who does treat you like an adult trapped in a little body, not like you're too young to know what you want or look out for yourself."

She sucks in her breath, making a whistling sound. "Thing is, you've got to be careful. Most adults are lovely, but the lovely ones usually do want to keep kids safe, yeah? And I get that, it's not a comfy vibe, but - a lot of times, an adult who treats you like you're grown up too has an agenda, and it's not a nice one." She widens her eyes again. "Do you follow what I mean or do I need to be more clear?"

Wow. That was...actually more or less reasonable advice? Go Barb. 

"I know what you mean. It's very reasonable of you to be afraid for me, but--I know not everyone is good, I know what safety precautions to take. I want to strike a balance between--being a target--and walling myself off from a world of mostly decent people." And if she pretends to be an adult on the internet she won't have the adverse selection problem. "I believe it's possible to make friends without doing anything that would leave me vulnerable if some of them aren't what they seem. And the risks will only get smaller as I get older, or mostly at least."

Sunny smile. "You've thought this through, haven't you. I'm proud of you." Her tone shifts a little on the last sentence, not exactly quieter but slightly singsong, as though it's a Memorized Script.

She turns abruptly back to Evelyn, clearly putting a lid on that part of the conversation. "I'll look into the Montessori schools for the fall term. We should get her assessed before that, I'll see when I can get an appointment on the books with the educational psychologist. Is she happy to keep going with self-directed learning in the meantime, or should I be looking into tutoring or special summer programs? We can't send her to a normal chess camp for kids, she'll crush them and they'll hate her about it." 

She sucks at chess though! But she doesn't say that because it sounds like a reason to send her to chess camp and she doesn't actually want to memorize 999 openings and endgames.

"Enough library books and computer time will keep me happy as a clam but not necessarily balanced across subjects and I should probably leave the house more often than that. You know what would be great though, would be a summer camp with like archery and hiking and stuff. Fresh air and sunshine and exercise and socializing with no academics to make the socializing weird. Or I could do a science camp or something. Lots of options. Like I said earlier I don't know what anything costs so if I say something ridiculous it's not because I'm super attached to it."

Also any amount of spending on her makes her feel bad for mooching even though it is literally illegal for her to pay her own way. She should ask for chores and an allowance or something just to build some sane mental habits around money.

Barb's eyebrows rise almost enough to vanish into her hair. "Well! At least you're not one of those bookish kids who fights tooth and nail against ever doing physical activity. You're right, it's good for you. I doubt the fostering stipend will stretch to cover archery camp, but I'm sure there's something outdoorsy. Girl scouts? I think they do a sleepover camp in summer break, and they offer some scholarship places for disadvantaged kids." 

Girl scouts suck boy scouts rule all of her evidence for this belief is missing and she's suspicious that it's actually an assertion about gender roles. News flash, brain, hiking doesn't have a gender. "Sounds good! I don't know much about the girl scouts apart from that they sell cookies and I have no particular desire to sell cookies unless I get to keep the money, but probably they let you go to the summer camp without doing all of the other things?" Also she's not, like, firmly against selling the cookies even if she doesn't get to keep the money, heck maybe it'd look good on her college admissions, but it's not an obvious part of an ideal time allocation.

Barb laughs; her laugh is deep and booming, like her voice. "Understandable!" She turns back to Evelyn. "Look, if it's what would make her happy, there's no reason she can't find ways to earn a bit of pocket money. She's a bit young still for a paper route, but it's not against the rules for kids in care to run lemonade stands, or do some light yardwork for the neighbors. Oh, and you wrote in your log notes that she likes embroidery, that's a business idea right there. I had a friend once who made cross-stitched bookmarks and put up a little stand on Saturdays." 

Evelyn...looks kind of nonplussed about this, but like she doesn't actually have an argument against it. 

"I'd love to get paid for yardwork! I have no idea if my embroidery would sell" and I'd rather earn money from honest work than from being adorable at people until they buy something to make me happy "but I'm going to be doing it anyway so I might as well find out." Wages! Participating in civilization! Yes!

Evelyn is still looking somewhat conflicted about this, but Barb gives Miranda a sunny smile. "Good plan! Evelyn, was there anything else that came up, or is now a good time for us to have our private talk?" 

Evelyn is honestly kind of feeling like she's lost the plot of the conversation at this point. "Not that's coming to mind right now. School was my main concern. - Oh, there is the routine stuff, she's not sure when she last had a dental or optician check-up. I'm not worried about her teeth, she has excellent self-care skills," a smile at Miranda, "but we'd better check off that box. I was going to take her to Dr Rosenberry for a well child visit and see if he has any worries about a vegan diet and nutritional deficiencies for a child her age who still has a lot of growing to do. If all the paperwork's in order for that then I'm happy to take care of it." 

"I don't see any problem with that." 

Nod. "Miranda, can you think of anything I'm forgetting?" 

Does she dare ask about a birth certificate? . . . No, she should still be assuming her parents will come back. "I don't know which vaccines I've had. Or which ones I'm supposed to have had."

Barb waves her hand. "Hopefully we'll find your records soon - they'll be somewhere, the Social Services are just notoriously slow at bureaucracy. We're still mostly using actual paper for our paperwork, can you believe it?" She shares a look with Miranda that says she hopes Miranda will be just as appalled by it as she is. "If that doesn't work out, I believe there's a blood test. I'm inclined to say it's not an emergency for now, you probably had all the right vaccines as a baby, but summer camps want proof of it so we'll need to sort it out before then, and definitely before you start school." 

F in the chat sympathetic facial expression for actual paperwork! (Is F in the chat even a meme in 2010? She should Google all the memes and news events she isn't sure about so in five year's Google's database is full of suspicious time traveller queries as soon as she has a good explanation of the resulting browser history.)

"As long as it gets sorted out eventually, yeah." If this body materialized with appropriate vaccines that would be very polite and civilized of the simulators/aliens/whatever. If not, it's evidence of nonsapient negative space wedgie. If she still has all her covid antibodies, it's ambiguous yet based (and the blood test probably won't notice). She should wash her hands even more than usual until she knows one way or the other because fuck getting the measles. "I'm not immediately thinking of anything else important."

Then Evelyn will duck out and go hang out upstairs so they can have a private chat! 

Barb rubs the small of her back with a groan, then hauls herself up and takes her glass to the fridge to top it up with juice. "Anything for you, Miranda?"

She doesn't actually wait to give Miranda time to reply, but goes on, in exactly the same tone of voice as she always uses (i.e. probably audible from Evelyn's bedroom, unless Evelyn is very scrupulous about not overheating and is putting in earplugs or something.)

"By the way, there's no rule that you have to talk to me. The point is this is, you can bring up complaints against Evelyn - or just have a chance to let off steam, if you want to complain that she buys shampoo that smells funny then Evelyn never needs to know." She's turning a little on the spot, rotating one ankle, mostly looking out the kitchen window rather than in Miranda's direction. "But I know I'm not your friend. I'm the lady from the social who you met twenty minutes ago, and if you tell me the wrong thing, I can make it so you never get to live with your parents again. I wasn't born yesterday – I know we get a bad rap and sometimes we even deserve it. I like you, you're a neat kid, but I don't need you to like me and I won't be hurt if you don't. But if you do want to talk - now, or later - then it really is my job to listen." 

Speech complete, she turns back to look at Miranda, waving her juice glass like a stage prop. "So should I get you anything since I'm already up?" 

"Some juice would be excellent, thanks. Fortunately things are pretty great here and I don't have anything to say at the moment. I appreciate your self-awareness about the matter." Barb is honestly awesome and has surpassed her most optimistic expectations for Lawful and courteous and easy-to-deal-with behavior from a social worker. Just goes to show you really cannot judge a book by its cover.

Barb brings the juice over and bangs it down on the table. "There you go. Mmmm." She sits down and bends to rub her foot again. "Didn’t expect problems, Evelyn’s a very experienced carer. But she can’t read your mind, and most of the kids she’s experienced with aren’t much like you. I hope you feel like you can tell her when something’s not working so well for you?”

"She was very understanding about my weird food preferences! I expect her to act pretty reasonably in general even in things where I'm not what she expected."

"She's probably just relieved you eat green things and know how to use cutlery," Barb says cheerfully. "- So, if there's nothing else, I should let you get on with your day." She reaches in and starts digging in her enormous handbag again. "I'll give you my phone number, but - do you have an email address? I can be hard to get ahold of on the phone, what with all the meetings and driving." 

"Not yet but I'm planning to grab mirandawellenstein at gmail if it's free. Do you get texts, I can text you when I have an email in case that's taken."

"I do get texts! Or Evelyn can pass it on to me with her log notes." It seems like Miranda is a civilized person who agrees that phone calls are overrated when email exists and works just fine. "I'm not expecting you to report in on a regular schedule or anything, but you're always welcome to ask me questions." 

She doesn't ask why Miranda doesn't already have that email address. There could be half a dozen reasons, from 'she had a non-gmail account' to 'she had an account with a stupid name like xxx_bestestgirl_xxx and regrets it' to 'she only had access to public library computers that didn't let you sign into an email account' to 'she shared with her family', though probably not because she would have said so, so if it's that then Miranda is deliberately withholding her parents' contact information for some reason.

(Which she might be. There are kids who have good reason not to want to go home - and sometimes, though not very often, they're even the same kids who lie to protect their parents' image. Barb is not going to be pushy about it right now.) 

"Sounds good." Ask her no questions she'll tell you no lies. Or careful glomarizations either.

Should she say something about how she doesn't want to try to be famous, doesn't want to try to end up in the history books, just wants the sort of ordinary pleasant life that happens to have the college part be from age 12 to 16? No, she can't think of a good way to say it--and there's a part of her that wants to see how far she'll go if she's pushed. What was that Neal Stephenson quote? Every man wonders if maybe he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world, if he dropped everything and dedicated ten years to being bad. And here she is already having dropped everything.

Barb smiles at her, looking a bit distracted. "Good girl. Why don't you run upstairs and get your foster mom?"

Barb does not look like the sort of person who chooses to take stairs without a good reason for it. She's already getting ready to go, downing the rest of her juice and donning her shoes again with a sigh. After apparently failing to find what she was looking for in her handbag, she leaves her phone number for Miranda in glittery blue gel-pen on what looks like the back of a slightly crumpled 7/11 receipt (for 6 boxes of Oreos in various flavors and nothing else.) 

Evelyn has in fact been listening to a podcast through earbuds to avoid eavesdropping on Barb's half of the conversation, but she hears Miranda's knock and gets up, pulling the earbuds out as she opens the door. "You're all done down there?" 

"Byeeee!" Barb booms from downstairs, footsteps already headed toward the door. 

"Well, I guess I don't have to walk her out!" Evelyn shuts her the bedroom door quietly behind her, tucking the headphones and what looks like a very old non-touchscreen iPod into her pants pocket. "So, that's Barb. She's a bit of a character, isn't she? I'm curious what you thought." 

"I liked her. She seems like a straight shooter." And she didn't ask any questions Miranda had to respond to with total fabrications! "I told her I was planning to get an email address because it's easier than playing phone tag, so I should do that at some point, but it can wait until after errands are done for the day. Was there anything else to do before we leave?"

"I don't think so! Give me three minutes to get everything together. - Oh, and make sure you've used the bathroom before we leave, Walmart technically has one but trust me, it's a last resort." It's staff-only, and the staff will let her use it if, for example, she's trying to shephard a screaming child who has just soiled himself on purpose and is now trying to smear feces all over the home decor aisle - but they will be very rude about it, and also the bathroom leaves a lot to be desired. 

Evelyn checks that her wallet is in her handbag and her phone is charged and she has a sufficient backup supply of bandaids and other supplies, and will be at the front door donning shoes within three minutes. 

She uses the bathroom (excellent point, public restrooms are grody) and off they go.

They're making an early enough start that there's almost no traffic. Evelyn asks Miranda to keep quiet so she can focus on the road, and then puts on the radio to a station that plays bland but catchy pop music, alternating with advertisements. The parking lot is three-quarters empty, and Evelyn is able to nab a spot almost right next to the main doors. 

"Do you want to push the shopping cart?" she asks Miranda, more out of habit than because she thinks Miranda will find this a particularly exciting privilege. 

At her current height and mass pushing the shopping cart is going to be, not exactly difficult, but nontrivial enough that she'll actually have to notice she's doing it, which of course makes her more interested in doing it. "Sure, thanks."

Onward to the clothing for tiny people section! She probably wants to look for pants in the boys' section, for the pockets, and definitely wants to look for shirts in the girls' section, because she wears a size they make shirts with unicorns on them in. Will people take her less seriously if she has a full wardrobe of colorful unicorns, rainbows, wolves, dolphins, etc, yeah of course. But if you give up your aesthetic for a bit of extra being taken seriously then you will gain the whole world and lose your own soul.

In her size in the boys' section, she can find jeans and corduroys and slacks with pockets, and cargo pants with lots of pockets. The jeans in the girls' section have fewer and less useful pockets, but most still have the usual front and back pockets at all, and the texture is better. One set has vaguely reasonable pockets and glittery rainbows printed on it. 

Once Evelyn realizes the kind of shirt she's looking for, it turns out that she knows the Walmart children's section inside and out, and also seems to have in her model that some children have texture preferences for their clothes. The T-shirts with unicorns and rainbows on them tend to have them printed on in a way that makes the front stiff, and many of the options have sequins sewn on such that they a) have itchy stitches on the inner side and b) will start falling off in the wash almost immediately, but there are some soft polyester-blend short and long sleeved shirts with glittery images that Miranda might like. How does Miranda feel about sparkly rainbow kittens? A blue whale on a colorful space-nebula background? A glittery pegasus against a rainbow?

Cargo pants! Soft shirts with awesome pictures on them! A bunch of identical black socks and underwear! (Not having to figure out bra sizing!) All of this is excellent. Changing into a bunch of different outfits to figure out her pants size and confirm the non-itchiness of the shirts is so not excellent but it doesn't take that long.

Evelyn is incredibly relieved to be looking after a child who's so pleasant to shop with! Miranda doesn't seem at all inclined to run off or have a tantrum or start throwing clothes on the floor, and she isn't insisting on buying half the store or putting incredibly impractical outfits in their cart, and she seems to be enjoying it rather than miserable but she also clearly wants to be efficient and get this done, rather than dithering for ages. 

Does Miranda want a backpack too? And while they're here, if Miranda wants she can pick out some toys or craft supplies to be hers. (Evelyn has a huge array of toys and art supplies at home, of course, but she knows how important it is to kids, especially kids from deprived backgrounds, to have things that are theirs.) 

Backpack and art supplies is a YES. The backpack should be sturdy and capacious and ideally of the kind with a zipper around the top like a lid rather than arcing over the top but those are hard to find and arcing over the top is fine too. She hasn't actually had time to go through Evelyn's stash yet so doesn't know what art supplies are already available; please stop her if she attempts to get duplicates. . . . Also, what is her budget here, she should know that going in. (Her memories of making art and buying art supplies are gone but her knowledge of what art forms are awesome and what she would recommend someone buy when getting started are intact and her desires are both expansive and expensive.)

Walmart indeed does not have the lid kind of backpack in a size that's at all reasonable for Miranda to be hauling around, but she can find a reasonably sturdy and spacious backpack with several compartments and side pockets.

Evelyn, after a moment of thought, tells her she can have a $50 budget for craft supplies. At Walmart prices, this is enough to kit her out with (the cheapest versions of) a minimum viable complete set of supplies for one kind of art or craft, or else she can work around what Evelyn has and get fancier supplies. Evelyn, to her best recollection - it's been a while since she fully inventoried the Art Boxes in the garage - thinks she still has a decent selection of watercolor paints, but any given color may be out. She doesn't think she has as much for acrylic paints (she disprefers it because it's not water-soluble and doesn't wash off if a kid paints it on her furniture), and what she does have is one of the boxed kits that comes with a lot of paint colors but in teeny pots, so she suspects half of it is probably out. She has brushes but cannot speak to how many of the brush sizes will be ruined or missing. Possibly they should do a proper craft store shop for Miranda after she's had a chance to sort through everything that Evelyn has already. 

She knows that she has a huge supply of non-paint drawing supplies, which are relatively unmessy and take longer to use up than the tiny Walmart paint portions in the kits - she has crayons, colored pencils, charcoal pencils, watercolor pencils, pastels, felt pens in every color you could ever want including metallic and glittery colors - so anything Miranda picks out there is more likely to be redundant. She has some amount of the heavier-duty fancy paper for sketching and painting, in various sizes, but mostly she has the kids use printer paper since it's cheaper, and anyway Miranda might want her own sketchbook; she also doesn't have canvases anymore, they're pricier and she buys them one-off when kids want to do paintings. She has modeling clay for sculpting, both Plasticine and the kind you bake in the oven to make sculptures harden. She has beading and jewelry-making supplies, though mostly cheaper plastic beads, and yarn for knitting, and some fabrics and thread for sewing. She has boxed kits for a range of child-friendly crafts like fusebeads. As previously mentioned, she already has embroidery floss, which Miranda is welcome to. 

Possibly she should hold off on most things until she's gone through Evelyn's stash and can go to a proper craft store, because the main things she wants are embroidery supplies (not just thread but fabric, hoops, erasable pen for pattern transfer, etc) and weaving supplies, and both of those will be easier to figure out when she's had a look at what's already present and a bit of time to plan. But she's very appreciative of the offer and definitely intends to take Evelyn up on it! Art is great and having art supplies will be great. And it sounds like Evelyn doesn't have a ton of paint so she'll get a set of basic colors of gouache and one fine-detail brush and that will be unlikely to be redundant.

The paint looks nice! Plausibly they should just go to the dedicated arts & crafts store a bit further away once Miranda has a wishlist. It's more expensive, but mostly in the sense that it doesn't specialize in boxed kits with 10 cheap brushes and 50 colors of watercolor in teeny pots for $35, a price Evelyn is still fine paying even if it gets used three times before all the brushes are ruined. But the art store might actually come out a better deal if you know exactly what you want and are going to end up using up all of it. 

Evelyn will take the cart with Miranda's clothes and backpack and little stash of paint to the checkout. They've taken long enough that it's starting to get slightly busier, but there are still only three people in line ahead of her. (The self-checkouts are free, but Evelyn finds them confusing and also likes getting to briefly chat to the cashiers, she knows almost all of them, in many cases since they were kids at one of the local schools. Two of her former foster children work some hours here, it's a good part-time college job.) 

...Actually, Evelyn seems to just know a lot of people here period. The lady ahead of them in line used to be on the PTA board with her at Jeremy's primary school. They start chatting. 

It's good when people know each other. She'll casually listen in if it's in the sweet spot between "immensely boring" and "why are you talking about that where someone could overhear you" and otherwise zone out until it's time to start piling stuff on the conveyor belt.

The lady, Pippa, is apparently into gardening in her retirement. She's here for a top-up on potting mix and fertilizer, and she's thinking about getting a plot at the community gardens so she can grow more than she can fit in her tiny backyard. They also exchange some gossip about the school board that is veering toward "why would you talk about that in public." 

The line moves quickly, and Evelyn checks out and loads the bags into the cart. "Right. It's getting close to lunchtime, so we could go home, or if you want we could go to the proper grocery store and look at vegan foods for you." Walmart technically has groceries but Evelyn abhors buying her food there unless she's really in a hurry and only has time for the one stop, their produce is always old and the ratio of junk food to fresh healthy food is way too high for her to want to shop here with most foster children. 

"Sure, I'd be down for a grocery shop." she says, and then realized she has no idea what sort of things to get. Does she cook? She can follow a recipe even if she'll need a stepstool to use the stove safely. Prepackaged food is great when you're busy but she's objectively not that busy, she's just going to be studying things at the library and making the occasional art for the next several months, and cooking is both cheaper and more nebulously virtuous.

Evelyn takes her to Whole Foods, a ten-minute drive away. She starts to head for the produce and refrigerated-foods section at the outer edge, which is where she usually starts first, and then stops. 

"Actually, hmm, to be honest I haven't done much shopping here for specifically vegan foods. We already have lots of ingredients - I should maybe have gotten recipes first - but, hmm, maybe we can just walk around and you can pick out things you like? I especially want to make sure you have enough protein in your diet." 

"Hmm, yeah, I don't have a ton of recipes memorized. Tofu and beans are good for protein and I can see what else is available." This is a weird, weird situation to be pretending to have been poor in. On the other hand, it's a great place to find soy milk. Normal breakfast cereal experience, here she comes.

Evelyn doesn't seem especially suspicious about this. She grins. "Beans! I remember in college whenever I complained about money, my mom said, just eat rice and beans. It's supposed to be very healthy, and cheap. But I haven't met many kids your age who would put up with that." 

They can go explore the canned-food aisle and all the kinds of beans, and then hunt down the tofu in the Asian food section. Evelyn stares at the display. "Wow! I had forgotten there were so many kinds of tofu." She...honestly doesn't actually like tofu very much, and hardly ever buys it. "Firm, soft, silken, 'sprouted' whatever that means... Ooh, and seitan, do you know if you like that? I think I've had it at Chinese restaurants, I'm sure I could find a recipe." 

"I'd be pretty sad if I never got to eat things that weren't rice and beans, but rice and beans are good." Black beans and kidney beans and navy beans and cannellini beans and chickpeas! 

"Let's go for the firm tofu, I think you can bake or fry that and I'm not sure what to do with the other kinds." She makes a show of inspecting the seitan package. "Yeah, this looks neat and I bet there's recipes with it on the internet somewhere." There's definitely at least one but she doesn't remember what else goes into it.

"We can look at recipes and try one tonight!" Evelyn is obviously not going to be letting Miranda use the stove or a chopping knife unsupervised, but cooking together is an activity she approves of for children, and she can already tell that Miranda, unlike most six-year-olds, will actually be net helpful. 

They can get soy milk. "Or almond milk? Is that better? - oh, and do you want vanilla or plain or vanilla but unsweetened?" Evelyn would normally be against unnecessarily-sweetened beverage products but maybe soy milk is a sufficiently inferior milk substitute that it's unpalatable to children without extra sugar?

"- Whoa!" She's now reached the section of vegan-dairy-products that has the yogurt cups, which seems like a great idea. (Though a moment's glance confirms that they're full of additives, which Evelyn is vaguely superstitious about - there's a lot of debate on the foster parents Facebook group about whether certain additives really exacerbate ADHD or behavioral issues in children but Evelyn FEELS like there's a pattern. Though Miranda isn't really one of the kids she would worry about, she's not sure she's ever met a child who was less ADHD.)

"Have you had these before? We could just get a couple to see if you like them, but it'd be convenient to have something ready to go for a snack. ...Ooh, vegan cream cheese! Hmm, and I think they might have a vegan deli section a ways over, we could get you something protein-y to go on sandwiches. Oh! And I think they have vegan ice cream here, I've never bought it before but I've seen it with the regular ice cream, we could buy some of that for treats?" 

Oh nice, this is such a broad selection. She'll go for unsweetened vanilla almond milk. She doesn't know if she likes vegan yogurt so they shouldn't buy a ton of it but getting a few would be good. Cream cheese and fakemeat sandwich fixings are also worth a try; if they don't have mustard at home they should get some mustard to go with the fakemeat. She's very enthusiastic about trying vegan ice cream! It'll be good to have something to eat for dessert when Evelyn and Jeremy are having dessert.

(Grocery stores are also a jewel of civilization and she's having a great time.)

Whole Foods is great! (On the pricy side, especially for fancy vegan alternatives, but Evelyn makes no comment about that. It's her job to feed Miranda, and it's not like money is especially tight now that the mortgage is paid off, she can't afford to unthinkingly book fancy vacations or archery summer camp, but a vegan yogurt cup being $1.99 each instead of $5 for six regular yogurt cups is not going to bankrupt her, and her practiced grocery-shopping eye notes that the vegan cup is bigger anyway. Also, beans are cheaper than meat and should cancel it out.) 

They have mustard at home (and pickles, and mayo– oh, right, mayo is not vegan, but at this point they're near the checkout and Miranda didn't ask about it, if she turns out to desperately miss vegannaise they can get it on a later trip.) Evelyn does grab soy sauce and sesame oil and a pack of dry rice noodles, on the premise that fried tofu sounds like an Asian stirfry sort of thing and that's not a set of ingredients she religiously keeps in stock.

It's nearly 12:30 by the time they check out, and Evelyn at least is definitely hungry. (She reminds herself not to react to this by unthinkingly tossing more things in the cart as she passes them.) As per her usual procedure for shopping with the kids, Miranda can pick out one (1) treat from the candy display at the cash register, if she wants. 

Miranda is vaguely aware of Whole Foods as The Obnoxiously Expensive Store but hopefully if she sticks to ingredients and not prepared foods she won't give Evelyn too much trouble. 

Ooh, stir fry ingredients. Stir fry is good.

She will grab one (1) pack of Oreos from the register while reminding herself that a) it's not an affront to her dignity because Evelyn is paying and b) she should not develop any kind of psychological food scarcity issues around the concept of other people having influence over what she eats.

(Evelyn is actually pretty familiar with kids having food-scarcity issues! Children who had chaotic home lives or whose parents were often short of money tend to be hyper-aware of where and when their next meal is coming from. One boy, over a six-month period, filled his entire suitcase - which Evelyn had assumed was empty and stashed under his bed for storage - with squirreled-away packages of snacks that he must have snuck from her cupboards, never taking so much at once that she got suspicious. And, given what she knows of Miranda's background - and particularly the mention that sometimes there wasn't enough money and she had to eat non-vegan fast food - she's going to be keeping an eye on that. She usually expects that giving kids the option to pick out something they want will help with this, though.) 

They get everything packed away in the trunk and head home, Evelyn playing bland pop music on the radio again. Does Miranda want to help carry in some of the lighter items? 

Miranda is happy to help put away the groceries with, not exactly total disregard for her physical stature, more deliberate defiance of it. (She should really pick up a weightlifting habit. Unfortunately lifting weights sucks.)

While they're transitioning from putting away groceries to putting together a lunch, she looks seriously at Evelyn again and says, "I just wanted to say explicitly: I really appreciate your willingness to open your home to strangers who are down on their luck. It's really admirable of you and I intend to pay it forward eventually."

Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!!! 

"- Can I hug you?" Evelyn asks after a moment. "'No' is fine, we don't know each other that well yet, but - that was such a sweet thing to say -" 

Evelyn is a sweetheart and she asked permission so "Sure!" Hug. 

Evelyn seems to be in a very good mood for the rest of lunch. She chats to Miranda, telling her a bit about the neighborhood; she seems to be the sort of person who has close relationships with all of her neighbors, and a perfect memory for all their jobs and hobbies and relatives and children. "And Krystal's brother is a programmer at someplace or other! He lives in Vegas but he visits pretty often to see his nephews, we could invite them over next time he's in town?" 

People being embedded in their communities is so good and sparkly! And also really makes her wonder if she was ever this embedded in a community no shut up brain it is GOOD and SPARKLY.

"That would be great. Maybe by then I'll have some meaningful programming projects underway." She wants to have at least one thing that's not part of a larger project, one codebase that's fully hers to do whatever she wants with and make all the decisions according to her own sense of how things should be done and not make any hacky compromises with preexisting work. But also big multiperson projects are how important things get done, and reading other people's code and navigating the hacky compromises is an extremely important skillset. "How old are his nephews?"

"Tyler is nine - he goes to the local primary school, though I don't imagine you'll end up there - and Ethan is three and a half, he's such a sweetie. I guess I don't know if you like playing with younger kids much?" 

"You know, I'm not sure either." And even if she did know, it's probably totally different when she looks like a slightly older kid. "It'll be fun to find out though!"

"Maybe we can spend some time with them, then! I can call Krystal up tonight and - hmm, since you're not in school yet, we could maybe plan a picnic lunch at the park or by the river tomorrow? I know she appreciates some help burning off Ethan's energy, he's one of those kids who never stops." 

And once they're done lunch, how does Miranda feel like spending their afternoon? They could do a library trip, or if it's already been an errandful enough day for her, she can have some computer time and explore Evelyn's books some more? 

She's up for a library trip! 

Once they get there she takes in the signage and heads straight for adult nonfiction, intending to see what they have in any of math, CS, and bio. She'll take pop sci if it's what's on offer but if the universe decides to bless her with something with exercises in it she's super down.

I'm gonna be, the very best, like no one ever was/to catch them is my real test, to read them is my cause . . . 

It’s not a huge or incredibly well-stocked library (or at least this is Miranda’s vague sense, she doesn’t recall specific libraries to compare it to), and the adult nonfiction section is much smaller and sadder than, say, the adult romance and thriller section. There are a lot of books on practical topics, gardening and cooking being favorites but home improvement shows up as well. There’s a lot of history and politics. There are self-help books and relationship and parenting advice books. There are some pop science books, and some biographies of famous scientists. There is a copy of Gödel, Escher, Bach. 

Evelyn is the one with the library card and will end up reviewing Miranda’s picks when they check out, so she  doesn’t try to supervise Miranda’s picks too closely at this stage. She’s in the same general section, though, looking for vegan recipe books.

If the fates have decreed it history week then she will read history. Indian and Chinese if they have it, classical antiquity otherwise. No milhist, that'll raise eyebrows. One pop science (paleontology, because the physics ones are probably full of lies-to-children). Plus Glorious, Excellent, Based: the Enlightening Glittery Book, partially out of the joy of meeting an old friend in a strange land and partially because she wants to at least try sharing the gospel with Evelyn. If Evelyn does not want the gospel that is fine but she should have the opportunity. (Miranda should reread it herself first, both to avoid questions about where she's seen it before and to refresh her memory.)

This is probably more than she can read in a week if she's also coding and setting up the Wikipedia strat, but better safe than sorry. (Having scarcity issues about books is normal, hinged, ranged, etc.)

Evelyn has no concerns with Miranda's book selection, though she discreetly checks the titles and blurbs as she hands them to the librarian to scan. (She also makes small talk with the librarian and asks him how his daughter's first year of college is going.) 

"Do you know much about paleontology?" she asks Miranda as she loads the books into the reusable grocery bag that she has mentally assigned as For Library Books. "I know my friend Roberta's foster son Elliott is on a dinosaurs kick right now - he's a bit older than you, eleven, but I doubt that would bother you." 

"Not as much as I'd like! It's one of those fields where there's a handful of important principles and then kind of an infinite number of facts, you know? I'd be happy to meet Elliott and hear what he has to say about dinosaurs." Being infodumped at about dinosaurs by an eleven-year-old sounds adorable. Is this before or after the emergence of the scientific consensus that lots of dinosaurs had feathers? She's pretty sure it's after the discovery of the Chixulub crater.

"You'll definitely run into him sooner or later, we have regular get-togethers with some of the foster parents around here." They have a Facebook and everything but Evelyn is not going to remind Miranda of the existence of Facebook in case she asks for an account. "But I can definitely give Roberta a call and see if she'd like to have us over for dinner or do a museum trip on the weekend? ...It's not a paleontology museum or anything, just science in general, but it's a nice outing." 

And they should head home and get dinner started. Does Miranda want to help try out an Asian stirfry recipe with the tofu, or would she rather enjoy her newly-acquired book stash? 

Miranda would not book her face unless there was some really important reason to do so, but cannot read Evelyn's mind and so cannot reassure her on that point. "Highly in favor of the science museum; science museums are awesome."

She's happy to help cook; she'd like to learn some recipes. (Also it's her fault Evelyn is having to cook and eat unfamiliar things, she doesn't say.) She's very careful with the knives because they're so much larger relative to her hands than her muscle memory thinks they ought to be. Also she needs to stand on a stepstool for using the countertops to not suck but presumably Evelyn has one.

Evelyn does have a stepstool! Evelyn doesn't especially want to start out giving Miranda tasks that involve chopping things, as opposed to tasks that involve stirring the pan or fetching things from cupboards and fridge drawers given instructions, but she does let Miranda cut the tofu into cubes, under close supervision. 

Jeremy is home for dinner tonight! He wanders in while Evelyn has Miranda on a stepstool with a wooden spoon, stirring the pan of tofu and veggies to make sure it doesn't burn. 

He tosses his backpack down on one of the dining chairs. "Wow! Mom, how is that not child labor." 

"Because I get to eat it afterwards! Hi Jeremy." Ah bugger she forgot to ask Evelyn whether Jeremy was serious enough about the paying-for-homework joke that he'd take an offer of mutual tutoring in the spirit it was intended and not as condescending douchery. So it goes. "You also get to eat some afterwards, I physically could not hog all of this if I wanted to."

He grins at her. "I'll wait and see if it comes out edible, how about that. Is that tofu?" 

"It's very healthy!" 'And sustainable for the planet' she had been about to say, but actually Evelyn has no idea if...soy?...farming is sustainable, and normally this would be fine as a joke but Miranda might actually know and wow that would be embarrassing if she were wrong. "And it's delicious at Chinese restaurants, right?" 

Jeremy rolls his eyes - but cheerfully - and goes to sit down at the table. 

The tofu is done soon afterwards. It's not restaurant-quality but it's cooked all the way through and not carbonized anywhere. (And it's more sustainable for the planet than beef and Miranda is completely incapable of not ruining jokes and was even before the memory wipe.)

"Alright, let's see how this experiment worked out!" She turns off the stove and brings the pan to the--wait--shit heck--she takes the handle of the pan with both hands and picks it up and does not in fact burn herself or dump food all over the floor.

Evelyn looks like she is maybe about to dive in and intervene, but restrains herself to a dignified "be careful, Miranda, it's heavy," and to slipping ahead of her to set a cork plate coaster on the table. "Jeremy, love, why don't you bring some plates and cutlery to the table for us?" 

Jeremy leans in to sniff the stirfry. "That almost smells edible, good work." 

"Jeremy." 

"I'm joking, Mom." He gets up to retrieve plates. "So, Miranda, did you meet your social worker today? Were they terrible?" 

"Jeremy," Evelyn mutters again, this time keeping it under her breath. 

"She was pretty cool actually! We talked about school stuff and ways I could earn some pocket money and what kinds of summer camp exist. And then Evelyn and I went and got clothes and groceries and went to the library and that was all good too. How was your day?"

Jeremy sighs dramatically and puts his head down on the table. "I'm going to fail English. I have to write an essay about symbolism in and it's due in, like, three days." 

"You're not going to fail English," Evelyn says immediately. "And I know for a fact you already handed in your first draft weeks ago, so you must be nearly done." 

Jeremy groans dramatically. "My first draft was bad! Why do they even care if we can analyze symbolism in classic literature, anyway? Has anyone who's not a high school English teacher ever had to use their knowledge of symbolism at work?" 

Evelyn's lips are twitching. "College literature profs, I imagine." 

Jeremy flings himself back in his chair with a groan. "I'm not going to be a literature prof, Mom, ew." 

Just let go of your concern for quality and write 1000 words of bullshit in a fugue state, that's the way to get As in English.

"It's probably good practice for writing about other stuff, at least. Want me to read it and see if I can ask potentially enlightening stupid questions?" That didn't sound condescending, did it? "Or at least I can be a person to complain at."

"It's terrible practice! Can you imagine how much everyone would hate me if I wrote normal work emails like you write a literature essay on symbolism?" Jeremy slaps some stir-fry onto his plate. "You can look if you promise not to be rude about it." 

"I promise to do my best to avoid rudeness and my best will improve with additional information about what things you consider rude. I'm not going to tell you it's awful or anything." How would she even know if it was awful, she totally doesn't have a weirdly hollowed-out gestalt memory of How English Class Essays Be.

"Thanks. You're the best little sister." Jeremy cautiously tastes the stir-fry. "And not a terrible cook! This is almost okay." 

"That means he likes it," Evelyn adds in a stage whisper. 

He called her his little sister! Awwww and also oh no intimacy is terrifying and she's a cuckoo bird impostor in a fake little-sisterly body.

"Glad you like it! Evelyn picked the recipe and did most of the hard parts but it was fun getting to help." Shit that was a weird thing to say probably. She will fill her mouth with tofu and veggies so there will be no more room in it for her feet.

That was a totally normal thing to say and Jeremy has no particular comment. He shovels food into his mouth, and takes seconds when his plate is empty. 

Evelyn finishes her own food and clears her throat. "So, Jeremy. Did you meet a special girl?" 

"Mom! Do you have to embarrass me in front of Miranda." 

"Dating's not embarassing but if you don't want to talk about it I'll butt out."

Jeremy ducks his head. "You're fine. Dating is normal but being interrogated by your parents about it is not normal." 

Evelyn is clearly trying not to smirk. "Actually, love, it's very traditional to embarrass your teenager in front of their friends." She pretends to fill out imaginary paperwork. "Parenting box checked." 

Snrk. "Oh, hey, have you ever been to a summer camp and what kind was it and was it good?"

"Soccer camp is, like, fine? That one's not a sleepaway camp, it's just days. I did theatre camp summer after tenth grade and I think it would've been great if I were, uh, more of a theatre person. Also it was only for kids older than thirteen." 

"He went because of a girl," Evelyn says out of the corner of her mouth to Miranda, sotto voce. 

Jeremy is not even going to deign to respond to that one with a groan. 

"I'm pretty sure I'm lousy at both soccer and acting but I suppose that's not really a reason not to do them. Except inasmuch as one can't do literally everything and has to pick somehow." There's some kind of slogan or catchphrase or something one says when experiencing the "oh no I can't do everything at once" emotion but it appears to have been eaten by the memory eater and it was probably weird future internet slang anyway.

"I should look into the girl scout camp more, that one sounded fun. And less likely to have age rules than academic camps." Not that she's given up on the latter yet either. Some rules have moral force and some are a challenge.

"I never got to go to sleepaway camp when I was little," Jeremy says wistfully. "'Cause it was, like, literally the law that I had to see Dad every Friday. And I guess money was tighter before the mortgage was paid off. I can ask my friends for ideas, though." 

Evelyn would kind of prefer that Jeremy NOT bring up this ENTIRE TOPIC but he's allowed to talk about his childhood. "I think day camps probably have more flexible age rules than sleepover camps anyway," she offers. "There's an arts and crafts camp at the rec center, I think, and it's officially 'all ages'." 

"Yeah right, ""all ages"". High schoolers wouldn't be caught dead in the rec center, Mom." Jeremy turns to smile at Miranda. "It might be all right, though. Mom has nicer craft stuff, honestly, but she's hopeless at drawing and they actually have lessons over there. I remember I learned two point perspective once." 

She has no idea what to say about divorced parents and money issues but probably nobody expects her to. "Sorry you didn't get to go to sleepaway camps? Learning to draw sounds neat though. Also, where do high schoolers prefer to be caught dead?"

Shrug. "We hang out at someone's house, usually. Not here, Mom is too embarrassing. The mall, sometimes."

...He looks slightly stricken. "I can't take you with me! I like you, you're great. Just. We, uh. Talk about things that aren't appropriate for little kids. Sorry." 

"Hey, no worries, I get how having a little girl around would be a total awkward buzzkill." Actually now that she thinks about it, her listening to a bunch of teenagers talking about their love lives would be kinda fucked up the other direction too. However old she was last week was definitely old enough for the thought to be mega awkward. "We can hang out in some other context. And I like you too; you're pretty cool." So many boys his age would treat someone who looks like her like an inevitable annoyance or part of the furniture or possibly a mascot/pet.

"Yeah." Jeremy tucks his chin into his chest. "Thanks for being cool about it." 

"I'm so pleased you're thinking about including Miranda," Evelyn said. "Maybe you could have the study nights here instead of Paul's house? I'll provide the premium Steel snack service, and it's not like you can complain about Miranda being disruptive." 

"...I guess. We could do that for a couple weeks until there's another placement who's a screamer." Glance at Miranda. "- Sorry, don't mean to stress you out. It's only some foster kids who scream. But you could hang out with us and help us study if you want." 

"I'd love that!" She would not love a roommate who screams but she is zero in a position to complain about Evelyn taking in other people who need it at least as badly as she does and probably moreso.

...Actually Evelyn is going to put in a request to her supervising social worker that she NOT have a second placement in Miranda's age range until she's more settled, and ideally in some kind of school placement and not always at home. Having two kids near in age can be great, sometimes, but it's hit or miss, and Miranda actually seems more likely to get along well with an older kid. 

She asks Jeremy for help cleaning up, and suggests that they can watch some family television before Miranda's bedtime. "I'd been thinking of starting the new documentary show on the Discovery Channel, it's called How The Universe Works and it's about science. I bet Miranda would love it." 

This is not his mother's usual TV habit but Jeremy will refrain from embarrassing her, since Miranda probably would think it was pretty rad. 

Gosh it's like she's incredibly obvious and easy to read or something :D

"That sounds awesome! Mind if I grab some embroidery stuff from the crafts cabinet first so I have something to fidget with?" 

"No, of course not!" Needing something to occupy one's hands while listening or watching to something is an ADHD thing right? Miranda otherwise doesn't show any suspicious ADHD-type symptoms but Evelyn will make a quiet mental note of it anyway. 

The episode is about 40 minutes long and about the Big Bang. Jeremy is clearly sitting on his usual teenage tendency to point out all the ways that family activities are uncool, which Evelyn appreciates a lot. 

It's almost 7:30 again by the time they finish. Miranda can if she wants have 15 minutes of computer time again before Evelyn calls her upstairs to brush her teeth and get ready for bed. 

Miranda has no idea if she was ever diagnosed with ADHD but she can diagnose herself with "will bite her fingernails if she tries to focus on video content". 

Computer time sounds good and is it cool if she uses it to set up a Gmail account, she told Barb she was going to exchange email addresses and she should actually do that before she forgets. She won't give out her email to randos without permission.

...Evelyn doesn't think that's the sort of thing where an inexperienced or careless computer user could accidentally download something and give her computer a virus, but she'll send Jeremy over to supervise anyway. 

Jeremy is super non-sketchy and Miranda seems to know what she's doing but sure, Jeremy can hang out with her and make suggestions if she gets stuck on anything. 

Setting up a Gmail account is not like installing a text editor. It's more like falling off a log. Actual normal six-year-olds can probably do it. A possum has probably done it once by accident. She emails Barb confirming she got the address she wanted and has some time left over to set up a recurring calendar reminder for her bedtime and then Google the girl scout camp before the reminder goes off.

Jeremy is impressed by her speed and kind of assuming she's done this before but he's not going to tattle, Gmail is super tame.

The Sierra Nevada Girl Scout website is brightly colored and has lots of pictures of happy smiling kids, mostly a bit older than Miranda. It advertises a couple of Reno-based day camps ($10/day) that include a picture of some kids in armbands in a sunny outdoor swimming pool and a tiny girl on a climbing wall, and day trips to national parks, and a weeklong road trip to Oregon in July though that one costs $400 per child. If there are age limits they're at least not marked. 

Ooh, climbing wall. And the national park trips look awesome. ($400 is probably too much money and also a week under the authority of a bunch of random adults with a bunch of random kids sounds like a bit of an unpleasant crapshoot. Something to sleep on and generally contemplate the pros and cons of.)

She does not have time to go down the rabbit hole of local academic summer programs before bedtime; she leaves an open tab with "academic summer programs Reno" typed in as a reminder. (She needs a day planner. This whole no-phone-having thing is ass.)

Evelyn praises Miranda on her proactiveness (and not Googling anything inappropriate, though she doesn't say that) and suggests they have a look together in the morning. She nudges her upstairs to get ready for bed. 

(It's too bad that $400 would in fact be a financial strain; it's not that she literally can't afford it, but she can't afford that kind of expense for every child and it's not fair to start treating kids differently like that. Maybe she can convince Social Services to cough up some extra funding if she can find a program that counts as educational enrichment, which that specific one probably doesn't but there must be options.) 

(Miranda would feel utterly dishonorable if she noticed Evelyn spending more on her than on other children unless it was specifically related to giving her the opportunity to do something totally badass and possibly even then.)

She goes upstairs and brushes her teeth and goes to bed and lies awake for two hours again. Sleeps a bit better now that she's not expecting to have to execute her shower like a heist.

The next few days fall into a comfortable rhythm of autodidacticism and embroidery. She looks at academic summer camps and finds most of them a mix of expensive and unbearably childlike in a way hiking camps are orthogonal to, and longs for an internship in a lab or a job bagging groceries or something else bright and clean and honest. She reads a solid chunk of Göedel, Escher, Bach and sings its praises to Evelyn and asks if she can make a Wikipedia account to add some of the information from one of her history books to the relevant pages ("it'd be good writing practice") and embroiders a patch for her backpack (abstract Tron circuitry in blue and green on back). She gets a notebook for keeping track of todos and appointments (mostly stuff like Jeremy's study group nights and her slate of medical checkups).

Evelyn writes up detailed log notes and emails them to Barb, who never replies but Evelyn knows from experience that she reads everything and has a memory for it like a steel trap. She recruits Miranda's help in cooking and learns some more vegan recipes, including an absolutely delicious bean salad. It's still just the two of them at home during the day, and since school won't be out for a couple of weeks and summer camps mostly begin on July 1st, she tries to coax Miranda out on some nature hikes. 

She asks Jeremy if editing Wikipedia is, in his opinion, safe and appropriate for a child Miranda's age. Jeremy tells her that he can't see the issue with it if she's staying off pages about sex and stuff, which Jeremy is sure she's responsible enough to do, who even wants to read about sex when they're six. Evelyn hadn't realized that Wikipedia had pages about "sex and stuff" - and Safe Search won't even block most of them - although in hindsight it's pretty obvious it would. Jeremy promises that edit logs are viewable and he can keep an eye on Miranda's Wikipedia activity for her. 

After some careful thought, Evelyn agrees to Miranda setting up a Wikipedia account, on the condition that they sit down first and have a Conversation about how not everything on Wikipedia is appropriate for kids, and Miranda should tell her right away if she accidentally runs into anything that makes her uncomfortable. 

They have a pleasant weekend and Jeremy spends more time at home than usual, and even joins them on errands and a trip to the swimming pool, which Evelyn is delighted about. On the Monday night, Jeremy says he's having study group. (Miranda's doctor's appointment is on Tuesday and her dentist check-up is on Thursday.) 

Miranda will cheerfully go on nature hikes and promise sincerely not to intentionally go on child-inappropriate Wikipedia pages (i.e. sex and especially-bad historical atrocities). She gets the good kind of physically exhausted swimming laps in the pool and then eats a ton of bean salad about it. And she shows up to Jeremy's study group, with a book on ancient Egypt in case everyone is just going to put their heads down and study and the minimal concession to appearances of wearing her most soberly-colored shirt (it has a wolf on it).

Jeremy arrives home from school with Paul, apparently his "best bud" since elementary school. He's shorter than Jeremy but clearly works out, and has dark hair, a much worse case of teenage acne, a straggly not-quite-moustache, and a tatty Green Day T-shirt. The two of them slam down their backpacks in the corner by the table until Evelyn mutters that there are hooks RIGHT THERE, and then makes them smoothies. 

Paul tilts his chair back and squints curiously at Miranda. "Jer says you're some sorta prodigy and you can program. That's sick. Also I dunno if you're into math too but we're doing calculus tonight." 

"Calculus sounds great! And so does Green Day, good taste." Ah crap that's probably inappropriate for children. Boulevard of Broken Dreams doesn't have anything too fucked up in it right?

If Evelyn thinks this is notably inappropriate for children, she doesn't show it or make any comment. (Once you've seen enough cases where birth parents thought it was normal and fine to watch adult videos while their toddler played in the floor in their studio apartment, parents playing rock music that occasionally uses swearwords or mentions the existence of sex in a way that would go over a six-year-old's head barely registers.) 

She carries over smoothies. 

The two other study buddies, Ethan and Tyler, arrive together five minutes later in Ethan's mother's car. Ethan is tall and skinny with longish red hair and glasses. Tyler is overweight, though more in the range of 'chubby' than 'obese', and quite good-looking, with thick curly dark hair, soulful nut-brown eyes, and olive skin unmarred by teen acne. He's dressed in what is somehow very obviously a theatre kid's outfit, and wearing eyeliner. 

Ethan seems more introverted, and doesn't make eye contact either with Miranda or with Evelyn, but Tyler practically swaggers into the room. "This is the kid? Nice shirt." 

"Thanks! It's good to meet you." Paul Ethan Tyler Paul Ethan Tyler she's going to forget which is which in two days maximum but she has a chance at remembering for the rest of tonight if she works at it.

They can get down to some studying! Mostly they're doing practice problems on integrals for polynomial functions. They're all clearly familiar with the theory, but slow at using it in practice. They're also not spectacularly focused; Jeremy and Paul in particular keep accidentally ending up talking about non-math things, mostly sports and plans for the summer. Tyler is trying so hard not to make any sex jokes about curves. 

Miranda has very faded memories of polynomial integrals but she remembers the chain rule and if anyone has a textbook she can refamiliarize herself with the product rule. Then she gets distracted working through a proof of the product rule in the hope that this time around she'll be able to retain it indefinitely.

Ethan is the one who spots what she's doing, since he's faster at solving the problems than the others (it helps that he doesn't seem incredibly interested in sports and apparently isn't making plans for a summer job, so he's less drawn into the conversation.) 

"Wow! Are you just - rederiving the proof? The teacher walked us through it in class but that's not even going to be on the exam, I don't think." 

"I checked what the end state is supposed to be and now I'm trying to get there looking at the book as little as possible, yeah. I don't have to be ready for the exam so I can take as long as I want to make sure it sticks in my head." She's pretty sure she's gone down a complete wrong track so she starts trying something else branching off from four steps earlier.

"Wow. Yeah. That makes sense. It's neat you have the free time to do that - I guess you probably have a lot of free time, you must be bored stiff in school." 

"I haven't started school yet. I'll probably start in the fall and then I don't know how busy I'll be. Hopefully not too busy to--do things at a speed I like; apparently there are schools that let you pick what order to learn things in and they're going to see about letting me go to one." 

"- Oh, right, Jer said you were homeschooled before." Ethan looks if anything even more impressed. "Were your parents super-geniuses too?" 

She suspects she looked up to her parents. She's almost sure she loved them.

"That's a very reasonable question I'm going to refuse to answer for no apparent reason, sorry. --Would you like to tell me about your parents instead?"

"- Maybe when we take a study break, I should actually be doing these problems." (And Tyler wants Miranda's advice on unsticking himself from a problem, he's confused about which one of the rules to use.) 

They take a break at 6:30 and Jeremy puts a frozen pizza in the oven. "Mom, you're getting a night off cooking. - I guess Miranda can't eat pizza even if I put in a plain cheese one. Do you want me to make you something, Miranda? ...I can't do fancy like Mom." 

"Jeremy, love, you're entirely capable of following a recipe." 

"You have actual obligations and stuff, I can eat crackers and a fake yogurt cup from the fridge or something."

"Yeah, but I feel bad. Mom, buy vegan pizza next time you go shopping. I'll make it up to you on a night I don't have study group, 'kay, Miranda?" 

Does Miranda still want to hear about Ethan's family while they take a break and eat? 

"Aww, thanks Jeremy." She's happy to hear about Ethan's or anyone else's families while they eat.

Sure! They can all (except for Miranda, who doesn't want to talk about it, and Jeremy, whose family is right here) have a "let's talk about our families" session.

Ethan's mother is a trauma surgeon at the local hospital, apparently the only woman on that particular medical team. His father is an accountant, also working at the hospital. They clearly have high academic expectations of him. He's not sure if he wants to be a doctor but there's a certain expectation of it, since he's especially strong on chem and bio. Maybe he'll be the research kind of doctor? He's heard an uncomfortable amount about hospitals and he doesn't think he has the stomach for it, and (implicitly) doing some kind of medicine - or being a scientist, but he thinks it's pretty hard to get tenure as a bio prof - at least won't mean stomaching his mother's disappointment. 

Paul's parents run a reasonably successful flower shop with a side delivery business; they live upstairs over it. His mother does some clerical work on the side. They're considering expanding into greeting cards, which his mother thinks is a Promising Business Decision because probably people who are ordering flowers delivered to someone would also like a card with a custom message written in it. His family sounds reasonably well off, and he would be the first in his family to attend university - his mother has a two-year community college diploma in interior design, his father never finished an overly-optimistic program in architecture - but they're eager to pay his tuition to whatever quality of school he can get into. 

Tyler's mother is a single parent, who works as a receptionist in a legal office. His father is apparently in New York, acting in Broadway, "though he doesn't, like, get the really cool gigs." Tyler sees him on holidays sometimes and they exchange emails. He clearly wants to follow in his dad's footsteps, and it comes across just as clearly that his mother doesn't really approve; as a compromise, he's going to do an undergraduate degree in "whatever I can get into, really, but I'm applying for theatre arts and musical arts at a lot of places." 

Humans! With backstories and plans and lives! The sensation of being part of society feels really good. She says encouraging friendly things about everyone's decisions and adds that she might want to be a scientist too someday. "But of course it's too early to commit to one plan for sure yet."

And then they can study some more! 

...It's getting kind of close to Miranda's bedtime, though. Does she want to hang out with the boys until 7:45 and then go up, or have some computer time? 

She'll hang out. She's having fun and learning math and is happy with this. (She still hasn't acquired the ability to fall asleep before 9PM or so, but that's earlier than 9:30 so she's holding out hope she can early-shift a little farther if she gives it a few more weeks.)

She has not mentioned this fact to Evelyn, who is aware that some children need less sleep than others and would consider a later bedtime if Miranda continues to wake up at a reasonable time for future school days and not seem tired. The boys downstairs keep studying, but after Evelyn's reminder they're trying to keep the volume down. 

Hello, nebulous sense that the preceding social event featured her doing something terribly wrong. You're probably a brain glitch. Shut up and let her sleep.

After the usual wait: Zzzzzz.

In the morning Jeremy is, as usual, nearly late out the door (when Evelyn isn't driving him, he takes the public bus, and the nearest stop is a fifteen-minute walk or 6-8 minute run away. He usually has to run for at least some of it.) Miranda can have a couple of hours to read her books and go on Wikipedia, and then it's time for the doctor's appointment. 

Evelyn loves her current pediatrician. It's a bit of a longer drive, he's on nearly the opposite end of the city, but she finds it very important to have a doctor who can be patient and kind with kids and put them at ease. It does also mean that his clinic runs chronically behind, meaning that Evelyn has to be careful about appointment-scheduling when she has more than one kid and has to pick one up from school at a fixed time, though in a pinch she can message the groupchat for her foster carer friendgroup and usually find someone to rescue her. The waiting room has actually-very-nice toys and children's books and some National Geographics as well as the usual fashion and gardening and interior-design magazines (WHY are interior-design magazines such a feature of waiting rooms). She tells Miranda to bring a book just in case. 

Dr Beringer is only running fifteen minutes behind today, and not all of that time is wasted, Evelyn spends it filling out the intake questionnaire with Miranda's details and Evelyn's contact info. Dr Beringer is capable of picking up on cues and quickly notices that Miranda is not a child who needs, or particularly appreciates, silly games with stethoscopes. He will instead seriously tell her anatomy and physiology facts and point to relevant wall posters while he examines her and declares her to be in perfect health. 

The dentist the next day is a more brusque; Evelyn had to settle for the clinic that reliably has same-week openings rather than filtering on provider. (If she expects a child to be difficult about it, she calls ahead and asks to schedule specifically with the one (1) dental hygienist who is reliably lovely.) Miranda is not difficult about it. Miranda's teeth are in perfect condition and both she and Evelyn receive gushing praise on her tooth care. She gets a large glittery tooth sticker. 

Evelyn writes log notes to Barb every night. A couple more study nights happen at their house, this time with vegan pizza (it's pretty terrible compared to Miranda's nonspecific expectations-not-tied-to-memories) and vegan ""nuggets"" included. Jeremy takes his final high school exams and is a ball of nerves about his results. 

And then Evelyn gets a call from Social Services.

She had put down that she didn't want to foster children in the 5-8 age bracket until the autumn term when her current foster child is in school, but how about a teenager? Teagan is thirteen, turning fourteen in August; she'll be going into ninth grade in the fall. She's been in care for eighteen months and hasn't settled, but kids always settle with Evelyn. How does that sound? 

Sheeeee would like some more information. And a pre-placement meeting. But more information first. She wants to run it by the family. 

Teagan's current carers would really like her moved ASAP. Tomorrow, ideally. They have another sibling placement with them and are struggling to cope with all three now that school is out. 

Evelyn probably knows them, it's a small fostering community in Reno. The Abbotts, Susan and David. Teagan has been with them for two and a half months. 

The girl has been in care for a year and a half. How many placements has she had? Hopefully this was unusually short... 

(Also, Evelyn does indeed know the Abbotts. And the siblings staying with them, Todd and Sammy, respectively twelve and nine. They're both shy quiet boys, and the Abbotts are very experienced with teens, and - Evelyn can think of some ways a placement could break down that don't involve Teagan being...challenging...but it's not a good sign.) 

Evelyn will be her sixth placement. 

...They really can't scrape together a pre-placement meeting by tomorrow, half the social work office is out on holiday this week. How about instead, the two families meet at a park. Evelyn's kids can meet Teagan face to face, Evelyn can ask the Abbotts some questions about Teagan's routine, and Teagan's social worker will be there. If it goes well, Teagan could come over that evening? 

(Five placements in eighteen months. That's...less than four months spent in the same place, on average. The poor girl. And she's got to be running low on options, teenagers are hard to place to begin with. Evelyn very badly wants to offer her a landing pad, and...Miranda still has to come first.) 

Evelyn can't make a decision on the spot. She wants more information - why was Teagan taken into care? What was her background before that? What exactly went wrong in her previous foster homes? And then she'll need to hang up and discuss it with her family. But she promises to call back within the hour with a decision. 

Great! 

Teagan's birth family came to the attention of Social Services in September of 2008, when they moved to Reno and 12-year-old Teagan started seventh grade at a new school. Her teachers said she was a bright girl, who was polite to her teachers and did well on in-class work, but she made no friends, never handed in any homework, repeatedly "lost" textbooks, was constantly late, often unwashed, and had a tendency to fall asleep in class. She never had a packed lunch or lunch money, and three weeks into the term a yard monitor caught her negotiating with an eighth-grade boy to kiss him in exchange for two dollars to buy something at the cafeteria. 

They don't have a lot of history before that, but it sounds like she's moved around a lot. They do know that she was being monitored by Social Services from birth, but that was over in Oregon, and - well, sometimes a family drops off the radar when they move, and communication between different state departments is still spotty even with more digitalized records. What they do know is that Teagan's mother Meg was a teen mom, the daughter of a drug addict who was herself in the care system, she spent her primary school years in a kinship placement with an aunt. Meg herself isn't known to be a drug user, but she never graduated high school, may or may not have a mild developmental delay, and has - well, 'questionable taste in men' is putting it lightly. It sounds like in recent years, Teagan was the one looking after her more than vice versa. 

Social Services tried for home support first, because while there clearly wasn't enough money and Teagan's home life was chaotic, there wasn't (yet) any suspicion of abuse. A community support worker made some home visits to their one-bedroom apartment, and noted that Meg was rarely home in the evenings and the fridge was often nearly bare, but Teagan always had an explanation – her mom worked evenings as a janitor but they'd had takeout earlier, they were about to go shopping once her mom's paycheck came in, she was behind on laundry because the building's machines were broken, etc etc etc.

Her school attendance and timeliness improved a little, and despite the fact that a gym teacher reported seeing bruises on Teagan's arms in November, with dozens of more pressing cases the matter was left alone until Christmas Eve. Which is when Teagan called the police, almost hysterical, to say that her mother's boyfriend (who had apparently been living there since early October, entirely unbeknownst to Social Services) had locked her in the bathroom and was hurting Meg. By the time the police arrived, the fight was over and Meg, now fawning over her partner, insisted that nothing had happened and Teagan must have "gotten mixed up." Which left them with insufficient grounds to press charges against the boyfriend, but - given earlier concerns - more than sufficient grounds to take Teagan into care. The initial hope was that if Meg left her partner, they could put in place some support and return Teagan home, but that...didn't happen...and Teagan said some things to her first carers that drastically increased their concerns about Meg's parenting skills and ability to provide her daughter with a safe home. (The social worker calling Evelyn does not have any further details.) 

After being taken into care, Teagan's behavior actually deteriorated. She started skipping school entirely, instead spending the day with a particular rough crowd of mostly-much-older teens. She swore at her foster carers, refused to clean her room, cut up her foster mother's favorite blouse, shoplifted, snuck out at night, got into a public fight in a mall with another girl that resulted in police being called, stole money from her carers, stole jewelry and probably sold it, was caught coming home drunk, was caught half-clothed making out in a car with a 21-year-old "boyfriend", was caught red-handed by a corner store proprietor shoplifting condoms, showed up in class high, tried to offer her foster father a blowjob in exchange for getting to stay out past 11... The list goes on. 

She's good with little kids, though. Her behavior was actually best at her first carers, who had a four-year-old; there, she had to move on not because of a placement breakdown, but because the couple had a relative in another state who was diagnosed with cancer and made the decision to move closer to support her, and Social Services thought it was best for Teagan to stay at the school she knew rather than having to cope with yet another move. (Reading between the lines, Teagan was NOT HAPPY about this.) 

Teagan does not at present have any contact with her birth mother, who did end up breaking up with her abusive partner but only to move in with a known drug dealer, and then fell off the radar again nine months ago and is almost certainly in another city now. 

...Oof. 

It wouldn't normally be a difficult decision. Teagan is a child who must feel rejected by the entire world, right now, a child who's never had a stable safe haven, and every act of teenage defiance is her making clear to the world how hurt and angry she is and how little she wants anyone's help, and who can blame her, it must seem to her like the meddling hand of Social Services came into her life far too late and in the worst possible way. Evelyn wants to give her a home. 

There is, however, Miranda to think of, and she's not actually sure if it makes it better or worse that Miranda is not at all a usual six-year-old. 

Well, the obvious way to approach it is to go ask. Jeremy isn't home, inconveniently, but she'll give him a quick call, and he almost never objects to a new foster placement. 

She finds Miranda at the computer on Wikipedia. "Hey. I need to talk to you about something." ...That probably sounds so ominous. "About maybe having a second foster child come stay with us. But it's your home too, so you get a say. Come to the kitchen?" 

"Okay." Miranda follows Evelyn into the kitchen, thinking that she would rather share a house with a velociraptor than try to stop Evelyn from showing another child the same kindness she's showing her.

...Okay. Evelyn can do this. She knows the script she would use for an actual six-year-old, and the script she would use for an actual fourteen-year-old, and Miranda is neither of those but she can improvise. 

"Her name is Teagan and she's about to turn fourteen and start high school. She had to come into foster care a year and a half ago because her mother wasn't taking good care of her - wasn't making sure she had enough to eat or help with her homework - and she was living with a partner who - wasn't very nice to her. It sounds like before that, they moved around a lot and Teagan had to go to lots of different schools, and she's had to move around a lot since then too. She's - very hurt and angry, and was behaving very badly, shouting nasty words and sneaking out at night and stealing their things, and the other foster carers she was staying with were finding it too difficult to have her living with them. ...I think she won't be mean to you, but you might have to watch her being not very nice to me." 

Evelyn lets out her breath. "If I tell the social worker I'm willing to think about taking her, we'll have a chance to go meet her tomorrow - she's living with some friends of mine right now, but they have two other boys and they don't think they can cope anymore. But I'm not going to agree to that if you think it would be too hard for you to live with a teenager who behaves badly, even if hopefully she'll start behaving better once she feels comfortable." 

How to phrase this, how to phrase this . . . "It sounds like she really deserves to catch a break. If you don't think I'd actually be in physical danger from her, and from what you've said there's no reason to think I would be, I'm not going to be what stands in the way of her getting that break."

". . . If she starts stealing my stuff or harassing me I'd really like a lock on my bedroom door so I can hide in it. But I'm willing to assume good faith starting out." Benefits of not having a smartphone or a laptop or much in the way of expensive possessions: way harder to fuck with.

Evelyn, too, looks like she's trying to figure out how to phrase something. 

"It's against the fostering regulations to put locks on the bedroom doors. I know you would be responsible with it, but it's the rule. If she harasses you, you should tell me. I have a cabinet in my room that locks and I keep my handbag in there in - situations like this one - or I carry it with me all the time."

She frowns. "...I think I have a nightstand in the basement spares heap with drawers that lock, you could keep anything particularly important in there. And of course if she takes any of your things, tell me, and I'll have a talk with her and make sure she gives it back, or replace it. But I like to give kids the benefit of the doubt at first." 

It's against the law for her to have privacy in her own bedroom. Fuck the government, honestly.

"I'm nervous about the prospect of not having anywhere I can go and be certain I won't be bothered for a while, but I'm willing to cross that bridge if we come to it, it's entirely possible that we won't." Just because someone is desperate enough for money to steal things doesn't mean they'll ignore any given other norm for no reason. "I like to think about the pessimistic scenarios so I know I have a plan, not because I think any given pessimistic scenario is likely."

Sigh. "I know. If firm boundaries and keeping her busy don't work, I can talk to Barb. She's - likely to be understanding, I think, you made a good impression." 

Evelyn pinches her lips together for a moment, clearly trying to think. "The other thing is that Teagan a teenager, and - likes to spend time with even older kids, Jeremy's age or older, so she acts more grown-up than she is. She - may bring up things that aren't very appropriate for a girl your age. If that happens, I want you to tell me, okay? It might be uncomfortable, if it feels like tattling on her, but it's the sort of thing I need to know to take good care of her."  

"I--would like to talk about that in more detail before agreeing to anything. I don't want to put myself in the position of being--an enforcer of your rules, or a spy for you--I know you mean well and I think I understand why you want that, but I'm. Concerned that that will lock my and Teagan's interactions into being more adversarial than they would be otherwise. Also I don't want to participate in the enforcement of rules on someone who didn't consent to them without thinking more deeply about the rules in question. Also I care a lot about being someone who doesn't betray things told to me in confidence and don't want to make any promises that would come into conflict with that. None of this is a flat no, to be clear, I just want to talk it through and see if we can get a solution that satisfies everyone's consciences."

Yeah in hindsight that's exactly what Miranda would say. And - it's definitely making Evelyn feel pretty uncomfortable, but she - probably shouldn't be seeing Miranda as a normal six-year-old, should she. 

"...Hmm. Let me think about what would be reasonable here. - I'll explain it all to Teagan too, obviously, it's only fair that she know where she stands. I - think that if she just wants to talk about her life and what's on her mind, and you're not uncomfortable with the conversation, that's - it's up to you and whether you want to tell me? If she's making you uncomfortable, or if she - says something that makes you think she might be in serious trouble, or even in danger - I do need to know, but - I'm okay with you trying to talk it through with her first and try to persuade her to tell me or at least get her permission, as long as you don't leave it for days or anything. If she's in trouble, I won't be angry and I won't punish her for it - though I might have to take safety precautions that feel like punishment to her, like taking away her computer access if she's using it for something inappropriate. But I'll do my best to help her, and not make her regret me having found out."

A crooked smile. "And you know me better than she will, you might be able to convince her of that." 

Internet access is a human right

If you don't let people talk about things in confidence then they won't talk about them

"I think that will be okay as long as I'm up front about what I can and can't keep confidential. Which I expect will result in her being careful not to tell me anything she wouldn't say to you such that it won't even come up. Again, not that I would expect it to come up regardless."

...Nod. 

"It's one of the things that can be so tricky about fostering. There are lots of things where I could use my judgement, if it were my child, but - Teagan won't legally be my child. There are laws at the state level, like mandated reporting, and there are also policies my fostering agency has that I had to agree to. I don't expect it to come up with you, because you're very thoughtful and careful, but - it does come up more, for teenagers who want to be adults and aren't yet. I don't always agree with the policies, either, but - it is what it is." 

"Wait, will I have legal obligations towards Teagan? Beyond the usual ones of citizens not to bother each other? Are you not allowed to take her if you can't expect me to report some set of things?" Surely that can't be what Evelyn means and she's missing some other subtext entirely.

"No, no, you don't! You didn't sign a contract with the Sierra fostering agency and the State of Nevada Social Services."

And also cannot legally sign contracts but Evelyn isn't going to rub that in. Evelyn is honestly not sure this conversation is a good idea to be having, but she thinks most of her massive feeling of discomfort is because it feels like way too much to put on "a six-year-old" as opposed to way too much to put on Miranda. 

"But I did, and it applies for you and Teagan, which means that on top of keeping Tegan safe - as much as I can, I can't lock her in the house and I wouldn't anyway - I need to be taking precautions to make sure that having Teagan here isn't going to harm you or make you feel uncomfortable about living here. If I were worried that you would find it hard to stand up for yourself if you felt uncomfortable or scared - some kids are a lot more vulnerable to peer pressure than I think you are - then, yeah, I might consider whether taking Teagan was the right thing to do."

Shrug. "I hope you're right that it won't come up, and we'll have had this whole silly conversation unnecessarily, but I don't know Teagan yet. Sometimes kids who grew up in - difficult circumstances - don't really understand that some things aren't appropriate for younger children." 

"I really don't think you need to worry about it, yeah. I'm not worried about her making me uncomfortable, I just want to avoid any moral dilemmas that I can trivially avoid now and would have a harder time with if I wasn't prepared. It sounds like we have a reasonable solution of 'I promise to tell you anything that I think Teagan would be seriously harmed if I didn't tell you, I make sure she knows I promised that'?"

"...That seems fine, yeah."

Evelyn is not 100% sure that Miranda is on the same page as her about what she's agreeing to, and is impaired in checking this by the fact that, while she dozens if not hundreds of examples she could use to clarify, almost none of them are appropriate to discuss with a six-year-old, especially when it's probably not even relevant because Teagan will know perfectly well not to talk to a six-year-old about her sex life. She's also not sure that Miranda is right to be unworried about Teagan making her uncomfortable, and suspects Miranda has no idea what kind of thing Evelyn has in mind, but - well, the same thing applies, the last thing she wants to do is make Miranda uncomfortable right here and now to prove a point. 

"...And, just to remind you, we don't have to decide for-sure for sure until after we meet her tomorrow." 

Teagan could totally make her feel uncomfortable, but more in an annoyed way or an empathy-concern way than in a traumatized way, and fourteen is young enough that Miranda feels a certain instinctive protectiveness. Being more worried about being harmed by Teagan than about accidentally wronging her, when Miranda knows full well that Teagan is the more vulnerable party here in anything other than a physical fight, would be--undignified. Obviously Evelyn has no way of knowing any of this because Miranda isn't telling.

"None of the concerns I raised are major enough that I might want her to not live with us over them." She's going to be cordial and welcoming and conclude that Teagan will make a totally sustainable housemate if it's at all within her power to do so.

Jeremy replies to a text confirming that it's fine. (Evelyn will have a private conversation with him later about What To Do If Teagan Offers Him A Blowjob.) Evelyn calls the social worker back and is rewarded with a level of gushing gratitude that, as usual, makes her kind of uncomfortable. 

A midmorning park meetup is put on the calendar for the next day. Evelyn drives them over at the scheduled time. 

The Abbotts are already there, and wave brightly at Evelyn. The two younger boys playing on the swings. 

Teagan is pretty unmistakeable. She's a petite girl with bleached blonde hair in deliberately messy and off-center pigtails, her banks scraped back from her forehead with bobby pins. She's wearing a lot of black eyeliner (though well-applied and not smudged), black lipstick, cutoff jeans over ripped black tights with chunky boots, and a long-sleeved shirt with horizontal slits deliberately cut all the way down the sleeves, edges fraying, and a print of a skull with roses growing out of the eye sockets. She also has a pierced eyebrow and one of those plastic stretchy chokers around her neck. 

She's sitting two park benches down from her current foster parents and the social worker, typing on her phone - a surprisingly new-looking iPhone - and clearly deliberately ignoring the adults. Though she isn't quite successfully hiding her sneaky sideways glances at Evelyn and her accompanying party. 

She looks like, well, a teenager who's doing the stereotypical teenage rebellion thing. Miranda's hardly going to judge; for all she knows she had a very similar phase at some point. (Huh. Part of not having any memories is that she can't remember any of the most embarrassing and awkward moments of her original life. That's kind of neat.) She waves the next time Teagan looks over and tries to gauge how open she is to less-adult interaction.

Teagan doesn't wave back, just raises an eyebrow and then quickly returns her eyes to her phone, but she doesn't look annoyed either. She won't object or glare at her if Miranda wants to join her on the bench. (She won't immediately speak to her or look up from her phone, either, though she's clearly sneaking sideways glances.) 

They can sit in peaceful silence and sneak glances at each other while Miranda plays music in her head again and contemplates whether to proactively bring up her promise to Evelyn sometime tomorrow or leave it until it becomes relevant. And listens to Evelyn talking to the other foster parents, if she does it audibly.

(Evelyn and the foster parents are trying to be discreet and are not incredibly audible from two benches away.) 

Teagan eventually clears her throat, though still without looking up. "So you're the other foster kid?" 

"Yeah. Miranda. You're Teagan, right?"

"Mm. I guess." Teagan tosses her head, making her pigtails bounce. "- What's the house like?" 

"It's nice. Good collection of books, clean but not the obsessive kind of clean where you feel weird existing in it. And Evelyn's pretty cool."

Teagan makes a dubious hmmfff sort of noise. ...Looks like someone who might be considering whether to say something else and is running into a pre-existing stubbornness not to say anything on particular topics. 

Relatable, honestly. Unfortunately that doesn't give Miranda any idea how to react to it, so she just swings her legs where they don't reach the ground.

Teagan kicks at the grass with her boots. 

"- They're all ""cool"" if it's a cute little kid like you," she mutters after a minute or so of silence. "- M'not mad at you. Just. No one wants teenagers, we're too much trouble." 

"Yeah, the system is bogus." And Miranda in particular is cheating in a physically implausible number of ways. "Evelyn tries to keep the bogosity to the legally required minimum, at least."

Teagan - blinks, like that wasn't what she was expecting to hear, but then rolls her eyes. "Riiiiight. So she's the 'subtle manipulation makes the medicine go down' school of parenting, not the," finger-quotes and a high-pitched voice, "'going out is a privilege, young lady, and you haven't earned it.'" 

"I'm hardly an expert at detecting subtle manipulation so I can't be sure, but I haven't noticed any from her." Committed some on her, yes; detected any incoming, no. "What-all are you worried she'll manipulate you into doing?"

Shrug. "Being all convenient for her and not making a fuss about the child prison system, I guess." 

"Hmmmm. So, the way I see it--not the best way or the only way to see it, just what I'm doing--is, I'm not going to get her to back down on any of the stuff she's legally required to do, because the government has a bigger stick than me." And because Evelyn is a very law-abiding person in general, which is a convenient trait in authority figures as often as not. "So I ignore all that stuff and focus on getting what I want on all the other axes. Gets me most of the available gains with the minimum of effort."

“- Sorry, what?” Teagan is giving her a spectacularly nonplussed look. “Say that again like a normal person and not some sort of weirdo law professor?”

"Uhh--" she doesn't have that lever she is a master of the English language and she has all the levers. "I don't bother Evelyn about the stuff she only does because it'd be illegal for her not to, and then on other stuff I can usually get what I want? Like, I have weird complicated food preferences and she buys the groceries I want and doesn't bug me to eat stuff I don't want, and she legally has to send me to school in the fall but I think I'll be able to get a school that sucks less than usual, stuff like that."

Shrug. "You're a nice kid and you're cute and you don't want anything only a bad kid would want. S'different for bad kids." 

"What do you want that you think is bad?" There are a lot of bad ways to get good things but most people's terminal values are good.

Teagan sets her phone down in her lap and turns to look at Miranda for the first time. 

"Look, no offense or anything, but you're, like, in kindergarten. I'm already getting kicked out of the last place for," she puts up air quotes and a shrill voice again, though she's speaking quietly, "'being a bad influence' and 'giving the other kids ideas.' And they're, like, twice your age." 

"I'm sorry, I'm being a nosy parker and I should stop." Poor kid. And no good way to explain that Miranda has already had a thousand of the relevant kind of idea.

(Incidentally, thank whatever powers there may be for the fact that her sex drive is weak enough to be trivially ignored and none of the people she's met have registered as attractive.)

"Nah, you're cool." Kick kick kick. "I mean, don't get me wrong, you're a fucking weirdo," though her tone is impressed more than anything, "but it's not your fault they're sticking me in kid prison." 

"Thanks. And guilty as charged on the weirdo front."

That actually gets a small smile. 

"What house rules did she tell you? They're all different, you know, and then they lie and say it's the law and not just their opinion." 

"Uh, don't cuss, that's obviously not a legal thing, don't go in other people's rooms without permission, don't eat in your room, I'm not supposed to go in the room with the power tools but that might not apply to you, I'm not supposed to go places alone but that probably won't apply to you . . . what else . . . no theft or violence or being loud when people are trying to sleep. And she reads my browser history, which'll probably be more annoying for you than me." (Whether fortunately or unfortunately, she's not enough of a hacker to confidently offer to get Teagan some privacy so she doesn't have to decide whether she should. Anyone can install TOR; the trick is hiding that you installed it on a computer with unknown amounts of monitoring software already present.) "I think the only annoying stuff she's said is the law is school and none of the doors having locks. Oh, that's the other one, leave the bathroom door open when you're not using it so people can tell it's available."

Teagan's nod is almost sympathetic. "The no locks thing sucks. It's, like, half of them? I think it's an actual policy thing, otherwise for sure they'd put locks on their own doors. - though the ones that do have locks can be pretty bad too, there was a kid at one home who used to lock himself in the bathroom when he was mad, and the parents didn't trust us to use their ensuite, so then I just couldn't shower or pee. And if he was really mad he'd block the toilet too, they had to get an actual plumber in once because he tried to flush my hair straightener." A small crooked smile. "Learned not to leave my shit in the bathroom after that, at least." 

"Wow, that sounds super annoying! It's just me and Evelyn and her son Jeremy right now so your hair straightener will be safe."

Teagan raises one eyebrow (the pierced one.) "Haven't had a foster sibling like that before? How long've you been in care, anyway?"