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."