"All right. Good night, I'll see you in the morning."

"Good night." She goes into the guest room and flomps onto the air mattress under some blankets and is shortly asleep. Zzzzz

In the morning Tabitha is gone and Veronica is making scrambled eggs.

"Good morning."

"Good morning. How'd you sleep?"

"It was good. I like balloons."

"I'm glad. We had a regular bed in there but we gave it away when a friend of ours moved and needed a new one, since we don't have too many guests, and haven't replaced it yet." She serves up scrambled eggs.

Om nom scrambled eggs. She eats them at a more reasonable pace than she ate the pork medallions last night. "Where's Tabitha? Is she at work?"

"Yes, Tabitha is an actress. You probably haven't seen anything she's in."

"An actress?"

"Yup! Magical girls make good actresses because we can look different."

"What's she in?"

"She's in USS Castle, where she's an alien."

"Can I see it?"

"Hmmm... maybe parts of it, but it's not really for kids."

"I can read way above my grade level."

"That'll mean you can read more of the books we have in the house, as long as they're just difficult and not inappropriate, but USS Castle is a TV show with a lot of violence and stuff."

"Like hitting? Okay," she says, hand creeping to one of the bruises on her arm under her sleeve. 

"I think it's more ray guns but there's some hitting, yes. I'm sorry."

"I don't think I mind ray guns but I don't wanna see people get hit, yeah. It's okay."

Veronica nods. "Have you thought about where you might want to go longer term? Do you have other relatives who are better to you?"

Headshake. "I have an uncle who's in prison and my grandparents are dead except for Grampa who has Alzheimers."

"Oof. Okay. That probably means foster parents."

"Is that bad?"

"Not necessarily. I don't have a lot of experience with the system. I do think they prefer to place with relatives but obviously yours won't do."