"If you want to chat tomorrow, during lecture works. Or maybe we draw out the lab, usually works okay if we do finish it."

Shrug. "I don't usually talk just to fill silence."

She snickers. "Yeah, that's what phones are for. Bye then."

"Bye."

Well. That could've been better and it could've been worse.

The remaining classes are uneventful.

More admin stuff, then Kent picks her up on the dot. "Good afternoon."

"Good afternoon."

Did it go well? He doesn't ask. "Feeling alright? I'll take care of the no doubt huge pile of paperwork they handed you when we get home."

"Thanks.

Someone asked why I moved here in the middle of the year and I told them my foster parents died and I didn't say how."

"Hm. I gather they didn't ask how? Probably offered sympathy?"

"Mhm."

"Then perhaps they were trying to be your friend and there is probably not some kind of imminent social disaster."

"But what if they find out?"

He sighs. "No easy answer. If you're good enough friends, maybe they let you explain. We should get ice cream. Ice cream always cheers one up."

"Okay.

...I don't know if I can be friends with someone while wondering all the time if they'd hate me if they knew."

"...I think everyone needs friends. Maybe we can find you some who we already think wouldn't hate you if they knew."

"It's--I know I shouldn't have done what I did but they shouldn't have done what they did, I--if I'd had a better way to get away from them I'd've taken it but I didn't. I don't think someone who'd rather I was back there is really my friend."

"I hear you. Feelings are messy though. Especially ones about violence - sometimes, someone hears 'kill' and that's all they think about, they can't move past it. And nobody thinks parents could possibly be that terrible. Not when they haven't seen it themselves. It sucks, but it's the truth. That's just how humans work sometimes. People who look past that first reaction, those are the ones you might actually want as friends, I think."

"I don't want to get attached to someone and then lose them like that."

...She could really use a hug right now, probably. But she doesn't want one.

"I can't speak for anyone else, but I won't turn on you, stop supporting you. That is what I promised myself when I volunteered for the program to foster you."

"If I didn't believe that I wouldn't have told you something that amounts to 'given the choice, I'd do it again'."

No hug. No. Hug.

"Yeah... So, ice cream? Or not?"

"...Yes to ice cream. Thank you."

Ice cream! Behold the bewildering array of flavors - she's probably had some ice cream ever.

Kent asks for strawberry.

She is familiar with a normal variety of flavors of ice cream; her foster parents were terrible to her when they were in her vicinity but they didn't prevent her from doing things like joining extracurriculars. She orders pistachio.

Ice cream is delicious!

This is one of those ice cream parlors with board games on some of the tables. "Want to play checkers? In my opinion it's a classic experience, checkers and ice cream."