She shakes her head. "Maybe they exist, but I've never met one." She takes a moment to consider the question further. "Except maybe my brother, but I don't think that counts."

"Yes, that seems different."

"Now I'm trying to think if we would've gotten along back when I was your age. Depends on the context a lot, but... probably, I think?"

"Really? I find that hard to imagine. What were you like, when you were my age?"

He thinks for a moment. "Describing yourself is hard... I was a boy scout and very serious about it, the way some children can get very serious about things. Being honorable, helping people, feeling like I was given a place in the great joint project of making life better for everyone. Back when we thought we could just all do that," he sighs. "And of course all the outdoor things - I liked pretty much all physical activities, didn't like reading very much. Liked people but wasn't good at talking to them, so instead I followed them around and tried to help them with things. I did a lot of keeping bigger kids from being mean to the smaller ones, so we would've had that in common. And I think I would've liked the way you're very serious about things, even if they're different things. I would've definitely thought some of them were strange or bad, but I bet you would've been able to out-argue me about them," grin. She can do pretty well at that now, she would've argued circles around him when he was that small. "But of course maybe I would've annoyed you terribly," cheerful shrug. "You'd know that better than me."

"Hmm. No, that does sound more tolerable than most children," she acknowledges.

"Good to know." He may be a little ridiculously pleased on behalf of his 11-year-old self, in all honesty.

"What's your brother like?"

"Smaller and weaker than I am. He won't even take revenge on his bullies, I have to do it for him. I hope he'll learn to fend for himself without me."

"I hope so too." He looks a little worried, but only briefly - it's not something he can do anything about. "Or that someone helps him. I'm assuming the teachers are no use," since apparently the future, metaphorical or otherwise, has not solved all problems, "but what about your parents? I don't think you said much about them, but I got the impression you liked your family."

She takes a few seconds to think this one over before finally admitting, with some reluctance, "My parents are... good. We have our differences, but they understand the important things. I do wish Mother wouldn't insist on sending me to school, though. It's never been anything but trouble."

The reluctance is odd, especially for Wednesday, who doesn't usually seem to feel normal human levels of unwillingness to admit things. But, well, parents are usually a difficult issue, and she still is 11. He nods.

"Do you know why she insists on that? If I disagree with her, I'd like to at least know what about."

"I think she's still hoping that someday I will learn how to get along with normal children."

"Ah. I hope you will too - or normal adults, at least. Honestly children may not be worth dealing with for everyone. It's... children grow up, you know, and they become pretty different people you need to deal with in different ways, and... if you want someone's life to go well, really you should aim for the final goal, them being a competent adult, rather than trying to get them on a normal trajectory as early as possible, even if that's often the obvious thing people think of."

Is he making sense? He's not entirely sure he is. He doesn't normally try to explain the thing he's doing, he just does it. Most of the time there's absolutely no call to explain your... childraising philosophy?... to eleven-year-olds under your care. But talking to Wednesday makes him want to give her some reason to trust that he's making reasonable decisions.

"But what if I do not want to get along with normal adults?"

"Depends on what you mean. I think it's useful to have the ability to get along with normal adults, enough that you can go to university or buy things in stores and so on, but setting up your life so you mostly don't have to do that is a type of being a competent adult."

"At home I could expect to grow up rich enough that I wouldn't need to do much of that sort of thing. Here..." She sighs. "I suppose I'll need to learn."

"Ah. Yes, here you do need to be able to deal with at least one of people or soil, and you didn't look very happy with soil either." He may be a tiny bit amused by her clash with normal life.

"But you don't really seem the type to turn down a useful skill anyway."

"Skills can be useful and also annoying."

More seriously, she adds, "But sometimes annoying things are necessary."

He nods. "Both of those are true. You need to do some things, unless you prefer the consequences of not doing them, but either way you don't have to like it."

"But my other point about your mother's decision was... It can be hard to learn how to deal with something if it's constantly annoying you, and easier if you get some time away from it. It's like with everything else - if you fall off a wall you were trying to climb, sometimes the best thing to do is to push yourself to keep trying, but sometimes you've strained your muscles or broken your leg and you'll have a better chance of climbing the wall if you take some time to recover. And in my experience pushing someone else to do things doesn't help even more often than pushing yourself. Sometimes it does, but it sounds like you've already spent plenty of time trying that, so I think it's a good idea to try something else."

She mulls this one over for a good few seconds before she says, "I see what you mean, and I agree."

"I can hope your mother would too, if she was here. But since she isn't, well, let's give you a break and see how it goes."

"Agreed. On both counts."

And then they can do a few more rounds of reading, and eventually Marek will go to sleep and leave Wednesday to whatever it is she does at midnight.

She organizes her notes and refreshes her memory of some vocabulary and then goes to bed, thinking idly of the novel she's planning to write.

What a good child. He keeps leaving her to her own devices and so far she keeps spending that time doing responsible and useful things. And nobody's gotten electrocuted even a little bit!

The house smells like baking bread when Wednesday wakes up the next morning.  If she comes downstairs about the same time as yesterday, she can have it still warm for breakfast, with boiled eggs and various produce from the garden.  (Or possibly other things if she asks or looks for them, but this is what's already out.)  There's no meat, which she may have noticed being a regular pattern on Fridays in the orphanage as well.