Broken Mirrors

Chapter 7

Sophia sat on the edge of the bed. Now she was stuck back in the stupid house and trapped until she could make another run for it. She’d known several people who had decided to run away and got caught, but they’d all been caught by the cops and went pretty much directly back into the system. She didn’t know anyone who had been stupid enough to get hauled back to the people they were running from. She had no idea how the hell this would play out, but it probably wasn’t going to be good and if she was going to have a hope of getting out of here she was going to have to do it before Carol decided to call them to come and get her. She didn’t want to find out what came next if the social worker was right and she was out of families to shuffle through.

Sophia stood up and pace a little in the room. She was angry at herself and angry at the situation she’d found herself in. She’d never understood why it was that some kids ended up with the s**t life while other kids lived some kind of fairy tale.

Sophia crawled across the bed and pulled the window open, satisfied when it slid up. She opened up her suitcase on the floor then and dug out one of the packs of cigarettes that she had in there. She collected them from houses she’d been in where the parents had smoked. Most of the time they hadn’t missed a few here or there, and once she’d lived for about three weeks with a woman who was such a severe chain smoker that she kept half the pantry stocked with cartons. She also had a drinking problem so she hardly ever noticed when Sophia would jack a couple of packs out of the cartons. She kept them tucked around her clothes and the few other items she kept packed up and ready to go for each and every time she moved on.

Sophia lit the cigarette and leaned out the window a little. It was helping to calm her nerves some, at least.

Yep…somewhere someone would one day have an explanation for her of how it all happened. How the hell were the lots chosen in life? Sophia had given up, a long time ago, on having any hope for her life. She’d been through family after family that crammed every kind of possible religion that she could think of down her throat in the time they’d shared together. From Christianity to Judaism to Buddhism and even a few religions that she was pretty sure they’d just made up. But no matter what they explained to her when they giving her the ten cent tour of their religion, she never found an answer there that told her why the f**k she’d landed just like she had with her shitty situation.

Sophia hadn’t thought she was a bad kid…at least she’d never realized it. She figured it out, though. It didn’t take her long to learn. She knew all the catchphrases for it now too. All the pretty language the system counselors painted onto it. They didn’t want to call it what it was, after all they still seemed to believe that somewhere deep down the kids they dealt with had some kind of feelings left, but no matter what they called it, it still meant the same damn thing.

Returnable. Refundable. Exchangeable. Sorry-you-got-the-busted-kid. None of their religions spoke against that. Every single thing that had been shoved down her throat until she thought she’d vomit…every little detail of all of them that told her how precious and wonderful she was supposed to believe she was because she was a child of who knows what entity on some shelf they prayed to…every single bit of it didn’t matter when it came down to it. It didn’t apply to kids like her. In the end, she was defective. They could always ship her back.

And now she was realizing that she was so defective…she messed things up so thoroughly, that she couldn’t even disappear the way she wanted to. She’d been damn near invisible for as long as she could remember…nothing but some kind of canvas for a family to try to paint their perfect little picture on for a while and then wash clean when it didn’t turn out right and roll up to pass to another painter…and still she couldn’t vanish when that’s what she wanted to happen.

Sophia finished her cigarette and hung out the window a little, scrubbing it out on the side of the house. She dropped it down into the somewhat overgrown grass below. It wasn’t her yard, and it wasn’t her problem. Minnie Mouse could worry about it when she was out of here. A little something to remember her by when she finally did manage to disappear.

————————————————-

“Sophia?” Crystal called. She had made a more complicated dinner than she’d originally intended to make, but she needed the time that it took to prepare it so that she could think over in her mind how she wanted to handle this. She didn’t know what the right answer to this problem was. She wasn’t a mother. She had never been a mother. And now she was realizing she wasn’t fit for the job at all. She supposed it was better that she learned that on a troubled teenager than on a new baby like she’d originally planned. She might not be able to spare Sophia all the suffering that having her as a parental figure would heap on her, but at least Sophia wouldn’t drown in the bathtub like Mike said that her baby would have.

Crystal crossed the house to stand at the staircase when she didn’t hear any stirring from upstairs.

“Sophia?” She called again. “Sophia, get down here. Dinner’s ready.”

She waited and finally she heard the sound of footsteps in the hallway. She walked back to the kitchen, almost a little proud of herself. At least she’d managed to call the teenager down to dinner. It wasn’t much, but she had a feeling that she was going to have to relish the small things if this was going to be something that continued on for a while.

Sophia came into the kitchen, standing with her arms crossed. Her signature snarl pasted across her face.

“Wash your hands and sit down,” Crystal said. “I’ll bring your dinner to you.”

Sophia didn’t object. She crossed to the sink and washed her hands, drying them on the dish towel that was by the sink. She made her way then to the table and sat down. Crystal loaded up a plate. She figured that whatever Sophia didn’t eat she could throw out, she wasn’t in the mood to play a game of trying to suit her when the scowl she was wearing indicated the girl would probably refuse to be pacified if she offered her the best meal known to man.

Crystal put the plate in front of Sophia and went back to fix her own. She put hers on the table and stood for a second.

“What do you want to drink?” Crystal asked. Sophia looked at her like she’d just asked her what her preferred style of execution was.

“What can I have?” Sophia asked. Crystal shrugged.

“Try me,” she said, a little exasperated. “I bought just about everything, so take a shot.”

Sophia stared at her.

“Rum and Coke,” Sophia responded, raising an eyebrow at Crystal . Crystal smiled a little.

“Coke it is,” she said. She went into the kitchen and fixed two glasses of Coke, bringing the beverages back to the table. She sat down and started eating before she noticed Sophia begin to eat. The girl had an appetite, which much was obvious.

Crystal waited a moment before bringing up what was on her mind.

“No bullshit,” Carol said. “Where did you go today?”

Sophia stopped eating for a moment and stared at her, her fork partway to her mouth.

“I’m not going to be mad,” Crystal said. “Where did you go?”

Sophia finished the bite of food she’d been about to take, chewing it with a little more thought than she had any of the others that she’d devoured so far.

“It doesn’t matter,” Sophia said, finally.

Crystal sighed.

“It does matter. You take off with your suitcase? You were running away?” Crystal said.

Sophia just looked at her.

Crystal rested her forehead on her hand. This wasn’t going to go like she wanted it to, she could already tell that. They were supposed to have an open, honest, meaningful conversation…just like they showed on the Brady Bunch or something like that. Except Crystal didn’t know how to have that kind of conversation and Sophia wasn’t exactly functioning like one of the wind up pod children that appeared on the show. She was pretty sure they weren’t going to sing songs while they washed dishes and hug after dinner either.

“What did I do?” Crystal asked. “What made you decide to run away after the first night?”

Of course there was no response from Sophia. Crystal might as well have been talking to the cow shaped cookie jar on the counter.

“It’s fine, really,” Crystal said. “I can call them in the morning. You don’t have to explain.”

“Don’t act like you weren’t going to call them anyway,” Sophia said. Crystal looked up from her plate.

“What?” She asked.

“Don’t act like you weren’t going to call them in the morning anyway,” Sophia repeated. “I’m not stupid. Don’t try to play some psychology s**t on me and act like you weren’t going to call them. You want to be rid of me just as much as I wanted to get out of here.”

“So you did run away?” Crystal asked.

“Of course I ran away,” Sophia said with a sigh. “Jesus, do you really think I’m going to go for a walk after school and drag my suitcase around? You’re not really that stupid, are you?”

Crystal frowned.

“For your information,” Crystal said, “I wasn’t going to call them. Not unless you wanted to leave. If you don’t want to be here, I’m not going to keep you here against your will, but you don’t need to be running away. You don’t know what you could run into out there. A girl your age shouldn’t be wandering around alone.”

Sophia chuckled.

“Like you give a damn,” she said.

“You know what?” Crystal said. “I do give a damn. You’re a little s**t, and I’m not going to lie about that, but I still wouldn’t want to think of what could happen to you out there on your own. You don’t want to stay here, that’s fine. I’ll call them tomorrow. They can find you something better. They probably should have in the first place.”

Crystal went back to eating. She assumed the conversation was over. She had thought that they could talk about things…maybe they could work them out, but if Sophia wasn’t going to be happy there she really didn’t think there was any reason to keep the girl with her. She couldn’t blame her. Crystal knew she wasn’t a prize, so why would Sophia be particularly thrilled about her placement. Tomorrow Sophia could go and find a better family, and Crystal could get on with her life. No harm, no foul.

Crystal could feel Sophia looking at her, probably brewing some smart ass comment. She glanced up, making eye contact with the girl again.

“You really weren’t going to call them?” Sophia asked.

Crystal shook her head.

“Believe me,” she said, “if I were planning on calling them I wouldn’t have bought all this junk food, and I wouldn’t have opened any of it.” Crystal gestured over toward the living room. “Your backpack is on the couch, by the way. There are some notebooks and stuff. You can take it with you when you go. I don’t need it but you’ll be going to school somewhere.”

“What if you didn’t call them?” Sophia asked.

Crystal raised her eyebrow at the girl. Sophia had drawn one of her feet up into her chair while she ate and Crystal considered telling her to put it down, but she decided that the girl was talking to her, and that was a step above what dinner conversation could be. She might as well sit in the chair however she pleased.

“And why wouldn’t I call them?” Crystal asked. “So you can run away again and end up some statistic on a r**e poster? No thanks…I could do without that on my conscience.”

Sophia tipped her head to the side and narrowed her eyes a little at Crystal.

“What if I said I wouldn’t run away again?” Sophia asked. “What if I said I’d try to stay here?”

Crystal had thought about the possibility during dinner. She was fine with the girl staying here, provided that they established some kind of rules. If she was supposed to be a foster parent, for whatever length of time they saw fit to leave the girl with her, then there were going to be rules.

“You want to stay?” Crystal asked.

Sophia shrugged a little, but Crystal thought she saw something in the girl’s expression change. Crystal decided to take her chance. The worse that could happen was that the girl’s snarly attitude took over again and they were right back at square one. Regardless she could still call the place tomorrow.

“I don’t know how long you’ll be here before they find you somewhere better,” Crystal said. “But if you want to stay until they do then why don’t we try a trial?”

Sophia picked at her food a minute, pushing it around with her fork. She stopped after a moment and looked at Crystal. Crystal was almost taken aback by the hard look in the girl’s eye.

“They’re not moving me out of this house,” Sophia said. “If you’re waiting on them to call with your salvation then you’re waiting in vain because it isn’t coming. This is it for me, end of the line. They told you they’d look for somewhere else, but I’ve heard them talking.”

“If you wanted to go back, Sophia, they’d find somewhere for you,” Crystal said. She really didn’t know how the system worked, not entirely, and she had flipped through the girl’s file. It was actually quite remarkable how much the girl had apparently been moved around. Crystal l thought it was sad, when you looked at it on paper, but she could tell that Sophia could be difficult.

She didn’t know how much of Sophia’s difficulty was owing to the brief blurb typed up about where she came from, how much of it was owing to the shuffling around that she’d done since then, or how much of it was owing to the fact that Sophia was, perhaps, simply an unpleasant person.

Crystal thought, though, that there wasn’t an end of the line for foster kids, not really. Maybe there was some other place that they went, some special line of parents. Someone better equipped to handle the likes of Sophia…but they would have something for her.

Sophia tightened her lips until they almost disappeared, the freckled skin above them taking their place.

“What kind of trial?” Sophia asked after a moment.

Crystal shifted in her chair, putting her napkin beside her finished plate.

“A month,” Crystal said. “There are rules. You’ve made it clear that I’m not your mom and you’re not my kid. This is still my house, though, and I’ve been through a lot of s**t myself to make it my house. I’m not letting you rule it. I’m willing to discuss the rules, but only if you can do so in a civilized manner. There will be consequences if you break the rules. At the end of a month, we’ll sit down and talk about it. If you hate it here, then we’ll call services and there will be no hard feelings.”

“What do I get out of this?” Sophia asked, narrowing her eyebrows.

“You get food, shelter…we could negotiate for other things,” Crystal said.

“What kind of rules?” Sophia asked after a moment.

Crystal sighed and glanced around the kitchen. She’d only somewhat prepared herself to get this far in the conversation since she never really thought they’d arrive there.

“For one,” Crystal said, “there’s no running away. You can leave here at any time that you want. I’ll be glad to call services, but you’re not running away again. You come straight home after school unless you let me know where you’re going. If you go for a walk, a legitimate walk, then you leave a note.”

Sophia didn’t respond, she just kept staring at Crystal . Crystal could only hope that she was listening. Crystal thought back to some of things that she’d read in the file the night before, trying to remember what it might be that she needed to set as ground rules for the girl.

“No smoking in the house,” Crystal said. “I don’t particularly like the idea that you smoke at all, but if you’re only staying for a month I guess I can deal with it. You’re not doing it in my house anymore, though, and I hope you didn’t burn anything upstairs.”

Sophia looked at her, her mouth opened a little and she looked confused. Crystal smiled a little.

“The smoke travels through the whole house, and you smell just like an ashtray. Just because you can’t smell it anymore doesn’t mean I can’t,” Crystal said. “If you’re going to insist on keeping up with the habit for the time being, then I’ll give you a bucket outside.”

Sophia closed her mouth but continued to stare at Crystal .

“Your curfew, should you decide to go out, is nine. You don’t go out with anyone unless it’s been cleared with me first,” Crystal said.

Sophia raised her eyebrows at her.

“Anything else?” She asked sarcastically, tossing her head to the side.

“I could do with a little less attitude,” Crystal said, “but I’ll pick my battles. This is still my house. I can change the rules when I want.”

Sophia huffed.

“If you don’t like them, just let me know. I can call services for you in the morning. Your call,” Crystal said. “What’s it going to be?” She folded her hands across the table.

“So I agree to your rules and you let me stay here?” Sophia asked. “You said we could talk about me getting things…what kinds of things?”

“Depends on what you want,” Crystal said. “The first thing I’m letting you do that I don’t want to let you do is continue with the habit you picked up somewhere of smoking, so that means you’ve got some time before you start making demands. Your little run away fiasco today is going to have consequences too. You scared me to death. I thought you were going to end up being some kind of child on the back of a milk carton and I was going to have to feel guilty for that forever. You’re not getting off on that easily.”

Sophia knit her eyebrows together.

“What the hell do you want for that? I came back!” Sophia said. Crystal saw something behind her eyes spark.

Crystal nodded.

“You came back, but that’s not the point. There’s all kind of work that needs to be done around here. Plenty to keep you from getting bored after school. I’ll be nice at first. The grass needs to be cut, the bushes need to be trimmed, and there’s a mailbox under the carport out there that needs to replace the old one on the post and I haven’t gotten around to it. You take care of that and I’ll forget the fact you ran away,” Crystal said.

“Anything else?” Sophia asked, leaning on her hand.

Crystal thought about it. She shook her head.

“Do we have a deal?” She asked.

Sophia sat there a moment, alternating between scraping her fork across her plate and staring at the table.

“I want a mirror in my bathroom,” Sophia said.

Crystal smiled.

“I’ve got one in the attic. I’ll put it up for you tomorrow after work instead of having to figure out where you are and how to handle the problem of a missing person. I can do that while you’re working outside,” Crystal said.

Sophia looked at her.

“One month?” Sophia asked.

Crystal shrugged.

“You decide. You can leave at any time, but we won’t have a formal discussion about it until a month has passed,” Crystal said.

Sophia nodded her head.

“Deal,” she said.

Crystal smiled. She was surprised that Sophia would agree to it, but she was willing to give it a try if the girl was genuinely willing to give it a try. She guessed that only time could tell, though.

“I bought ice cream for dessert,” Crystal said.

“Did you buy board games too?” Sophia asked sarcastically.

“Fine,” Crystal said. “No ice cream for you, that just means more for me.”

Crystal got up and gathered up the finished plates.

“I do want some,” Sophia said watching Crystal carry the dishes into the kitchen.

“Sarcasm isn’t a good topping for ice cream,” Crystal said. She heard Sophia’s loud huff and the following sucking of teeth. “If you apologized, though, you’d be welcome to have some. Otherwise I’m eating it all myself.”

“Fine,” Sophia said. Crystal snickered to herself since the tone she’d acquired was yet again the tone that sounded like rolling eyeballs. Crystal hated to admit it, but she remembered well employing that tone against her own mother. “I’m sorry. Can I have some ice cream?”

“Why not?” Crystal said.

She made the ice cream and brought it to the table, dropping a bowl in front of Sophia. Part of Crystal was pretty sure this was going to crash and burn. It would probably blow up in her face within about three days. She wasn’t a very lucky person and pretty much everything in her life had been a complete failure. Everything she’d set out after with high hopes had pretty much tail spun out of control before she’d even got going good. Still, she was stuck in this now so she might as well ride it out to the end. As long as Sophia didn’t end up on the six o’clock news she could still send her back whenever she was ready to go and feel like she’d hopefully done the girl no lasting damage. She’d just end up being another name, probably forgotten by the girl, stapled inside the cover of Sophia’s file.