Thalatta!

"If I go to jail or I die or I get shipped off to the wall, you two are out on your ass. Considering the fact that any of those things could happen to me at any time, I'm not sure it's such a good idea for you two to be here but if you want to stay then you better start getting it into your heads that my safety is the only way you get to be in this house."

The two green eyed girls came each to one side and started to thank him for letting them stay. All Mike could do was admit defeat and roll his eyes.

After breakfast when Mike was getting ready to get to his one Tuesday class Carmen came to him."Thank you for saving my life."

"You already thanked me."

Then she hugged him, only this time she came in very close. Mike was startled. What to do? He looked up at the mountain's shadow in the rising sun.

"On my birth certificate it says I have a twin. I don't know why but I had thought or hoped I could meet them if I came here. And then I found you."

"You have your birth certificate?" Mike asked.

She looked up at him with her arms still around him and nodded. "My original name was Mikayla Freedman. My parents thought it was stupid so they changed my name to Carmen."

"Why would they name you that if they thought it was stupid?"

"My adoptive parents, obviously. They didn't want me to have a name that was just a bunch of made up sounds with no meaning so they renamed me the Spanish word for song."

Adopted. Of course. Cause girls get all the breaks in life. Not like Mike.

"Um ... you can go ahead and let me go now." Mike said.

"Oh. Ok. It's just that you're so nice to hug. Can I help with your project?"

Mike looked at her and then looked at the bike. Help? With what? "No, that's ok. I better do this myself."

"Ok. Just let me know if I can lend a hand."

"No, this isn't part of what you have to do to pay rent."

"Oh, I know. I just ... Well, I know this sounds ... I know how this sounds since I just met you and all but ... I know you're not or probably not my brother or anything like that but ... you know, you saved my life and I care about you."

Care about him? She used the care about you words. Mike's eyes went wide and he tried to back away from her. She released her arms and saw his face.

"Ok. I understand. Too much. Too strong. Way to go Carmen. I'll just be inside."

"Hey, wait."

She returned and had this hopeful look on her face.

"I'm sorry for being too hard. This is all just a big shock to me. I hope you do find your brother one day."

"Thanks." she said as she ran back to him, hugged him, and ended by giving him a kiss on the cheek.

...

Once at school Mike got himself ready for science class. He was waiting outside the class in the hall when Susan seemed to somehow sneak up on him and grab his arm. She wasn't even trying to get into conversation with him. She was just holding him. It was strange for Mike that she would be doing this since in the entire time they dated it wasn't something that they did. While Susan was holding onto him like that Mike nearly shat in his pants when Dr Holland passed by in the hall. She gave the two of them a look but didn't stop. She kept going forward and likely didn't see Mike's subtle facial expression where he tried to say sorry to her.

Science class itself went ok as well as lab and then Mike decided to sneak away from Susan and swing by Dr Holland's office before going home. As soon as she saw it was him she went to the door to lock it and then she grabbed him and started to kiss him.

"Oh, wow, ok." he said.

"You're so smart." his teacher said.

"I ... I am?"

"But, you can't come see me everyday. If you do then someone will notice that it's different from before."

"So, what should I do?"

"Let's keep it to only twice a week. That won't be suspicious cause you used to come see me about that much anyway. Keep seeing that girl. That way ..."

"You want me to keep seeing her?"

Dr Holland looked guilty as she smiled. "I have to admit, it was kind of hot, actually."

"Really?"

"I mean, I don't want you to have to go too far with her but it's sort of ... I don't know, interesting to think about."

"Ok. But then what should I do if she wants to go, you know, too far. I mean, I'm sort of pretending to date her partly because I want to protect you, if you think it's best, of course."

"I guess we'll cross that bridge when we get to it. Oh, this is so exciting. But we have to be so careful. Ok. I know you can get in trouble and you know I can get in trouble so we have to be together in this. Are you with me?"

"I'm with you." he said.

"We need a way to talk that's secret. I'll see what we have to do and let you know."

"Like a secret place? Cause I heard they had cameras everywhere on campus. Maybe we should meet off campus. Like way far off campus. Like off the island even."

"But for now just remember Dr DTF."

"Wait. How do you know about that?"

"I'll make a profile and then invite you to join an app. You'll know it's me if it has that name."

"DTF?"

"Yeah. Down To Fuck. I mean, that's what we're doing, right? I hope that's not all we're doing but it's part of it and I'm adult about that."

Mike was getting a hard on just hearing her say that. "I concur."

"Great. For now, get out of here and let me get back to work."

Mike left the office and tried to just make it seem like everything was as it had always been but before he could leave campus while he was walking outside the library Susan found him again and this time she wasn't alone. She had three of her friends with her

Jenn, the tall light skinned black girl who was generous and soft spoken.

Gina, the Italian girl with blonde hair and blue eyes the same as Nikki in the commissary.

Leah, the red head whose hair was actually more orange than red.

"Mike!" Susan said as she instantly attached herself to his arm.

"Oh, hello ladies." Mike said.

"I was just telling Susan that you guys should stop hanging out on campus all the time and go out on a real date." Leah said.

"Yeah, I agree. You'll never know if you really want to get back together or not unless you ..." Gina was adding.

"Get back together?" Mike asked.

"It's not set in stone. It's just one idea." Susan corrected.

Mike leaned in close to Susan to whisper to her. "You know I don't really have money for anything like that."

Instead of responding to him she instead address one of her friends. "Jenn, what was that you were saying about Saturday. I think it's a great idea."

Soft spoken Jenn smiled. "Yeah so, like we'll all go out together as girlfriends. We all pitch in what we can. It doesn't have to be the exact same amount for everyone. We can all help each other out. We'll take the ferry into the city and then ..."

"Actually, I have to do a thing at the police station on Saturday."

"That's ok. We take the ferry into town and stay overnight at a hotel." Leah said.

Mike was slowly shaking his head. "I'm not allowed to stay overnight anywhere."

"Come on, Michael. You're one of us now. You're just like one of our girlfriends." Gina said with a bit of a tease.

"Girlfriend!" said a voice that Mike knew but the others did not.

The group turned to see and there standing near them were two green eyed girls with brown hair, one taller and more developed than the other but still giving the very clear impression that they were sisters.

"Hello." Susan said.

The shorter girl stepped forward with a box. "Michael, I made you some lunch."

Susan and her friends all turned their heads towards Mike with expressions that all asked the same question.

So the thing about foster kids and former foster kids, they know how to lie when they really need to. The social workers were so good about busting everything except the most expertly crafted lies. Why would a foster child need to lie in the first place many people might ask. Shouldn't we teach kids not to lie at all and always tell the truth? And yet all kids learn how to lie, becoming as good as they have to in order to accomplish what they need. For a foster kid the incredulity from adults to believing them was super high and also the urgency of the things they needed was similarly super high. The fact of the matter was that there were just too many kids in the system and too few social workers trying to care for kids on too small a budget from taxpayers because the greedy politicians had no sense of priorities other than their next reelection or demonizing the guy from the other side. The government didn't care about those kids and most politicians just wanted them to all die off so they could stop spending any money on foster kids at all. With so many kids to deal with, even a kid who had decent foster parents would often discover that they and their needs had simply been forgotten about because no one wanted to volunteer to do free overtime. So foster kids learned to lie. They were sort of in competition with all the other foster kids to get social worker attention so they could get their school clothes paid for, or permission to go on a field trip, or a ride to a court date, or permission for their real parents to come and see them. It wasn't exactly life or death but in many ways it was living at the extremes of society and so the skill a foster child had to have at lies and manipulation had to be super high so they could use it when necessary.

Mike looked to the distance past the group in front of him and saw Dr Holland also taking an interest from far away. Seven faces but he only needed to fool five of them.

"For me? That's great. I'm so hungry. Thank you. How did you find me?"

"It wasn't that hard." Carmen said innocently. From the look on her face Mike could already tell that she didn't know what he was doing but he could already see on Michelle's face that she was ready to back him up with whatever he was going to say.

"I'm so glad you guys are here. Let me introduce you to my wolf pack, ok. This is Susan. She's awesome. In fact, not bragging or anything but we used to date."

"You're embarrassing me." Susan said.

"This is Gina. If you're feeling down and need a pick me up, she's the one."

"Hi." Gina said.

"And right here we have Leah. When I need to cheat in science class I always cheat off her. She has designs for all kinds of stuff like time machines and rockets for going into space or inter dimensional portals."

"Wait, you cheat off me?"

"And finally we have the beautiful Jennifer who knows everything there is to know about Dragon Ball, anime, and practically everything else from Japan. Oh, and she knows how to speak Japanese."

"Really. That's totally amazing. I'd love to learn Japanese." Michelle lied.

"Yuroshiku." Jennifer said.

"These are my friends. So you see, you didn't have anything to worry about. I'm fine. Even my ex still hangs out with me."

Not knowing why they felt they had to do it, Susan and her friends all said "aw" at the same time and then all hugged Mike.

"Ok, Ok, I'm sorry." Michelle said. "We shouldn't intrude on your at school and all. I am so happy to meet you all. It means a lot to me that Micheal has such good friends."

"Hey, everyone. My relatives are going to be staying at my place for a bit longer. No pressure or anything but you all should totally come by and have a girls night."

"Relatives?" Susan asked.

"It turns out my family tree is really wide so it's a bit complicated to explain exactly how I'm related to them and I'm pretty sure it's by marriage anyway, though, I say it still counts. I have family now." Mike said.

"Michael is our long lost cousin." Michelle said. "We were so happy to find him. And it means a lot to us to be able to reconnect."

"That's great." Susan said. She let go of Mike and went to Michelle. "You're Micheal's cousin?"

"Guilty."

Susan hugged Michelle and then Michelle brought the flabbergasted Carmen into the hug as well. "This is so great. I love you guys. This is a dream come true for him." Susan said.

Carmen was still speechless with all this. She just stood there going over everything in her mind while wondering if she was being gas lighted.

"Thanks again for the lunch. This is so great. I really appreciate this. Oh, but let me not impose upon your time any longer."

"Oh, it's ok." Carmen said, still not in the loop.

"I'm so sorry we can't stay for just a few more minutes but we have to run just now. But Micheal, we're a little lost. Can you walk us to the gate?"

"Of course, of course. Susan. Ladies. Duty calls. I'll see you all later."

There were multiple overlapping goodbyes being said and then Mike marched to the campus gate that was closest to the road that would lead to the house. Behind him Michelle was pulling Carmen who still did not know what had just happened.

"Nice cover." Michelle said. "Close enough for it to make sense if we stay and distant enough for it to equally make sense if we disappear."

"Why didn't we just tell them about ..." Carmen started.

Mike and Michelle spoke in unison. "NO!"

"I don't get it. Why not?"

Michelle was going to start to explain but Mike put up a hand to let her know he had this. "You probably have more in common with them than we do. Think about the last time you heard someone tell you that they were at a department store with their mom. What did you think about?"

"I don't think about anything. It's normal."

"You might not even notice but I do. When I hear someone say that it's jarring. It kicks me out of whatever thought process I'm in."

"Yeah, it's totally weird." Michelle concurred. "You get that too?"

Mike nodded.

"I don't understand." Carmen said.

"You grew up with parents so people talking about their parents, talking about doing things with their parents all sounds mundane to you but to us it is a different world. You all sound like space aliens or conspiracy theorists." Mike explained.

"And if those girls knew that we came from the system just like Mike they wouldn't see us as people. They'd see us as some kind of freak show act." Michelle said.

"I'm not saying I absolutely always hide the fact that I'm a foster child but you don't want that to be the first thing people know about you. If you're going to stay here then you're going to need friends here and in order to have friends here you have to get them first and let them know you're adopted later."

"Oh. Ok. That I understand. For a second there I was like, 'whoa, they must be in the life or something' cause I mean you guys just slid right into it." Carmen said. "I'm glad it was something more normal."

"Uh, yeah." Mike said, himself being the one who was confused now.

"You want to look normal first and then if someone actually is interested in you as a real person, then you can tell them that you're an orphan." Michelle said.

"We haven't had the 'what are we going to tell people' talk yet so ..."

"Yeah, that was my fault." Michelle said. "I wasn't even thinking you'd have that many girls around you. Sorry."

"It's ok. For now, you guys need to get home and once I'm there I can start to really fill you in on what's going on."

Once Michelle had Carmen walking with her down the street Mike sat on a bench outside one of the campus buildings and ate his lunch. Nice. It actually was really nice. Once finished he stored the container in the compartment in his bike. If he started home at that moment he might reach it just about the same time that the girls would be getting there. They could have a 'family' meeting and then Mike could get his homework and online job stuff done. However, there was another errand he needed to tackle before doing that.

"Hi, Mike." Nikki said as Mike walked up to her in the commissary.

"You look really cute today." Mike told her.

"What? Really? You think so?"

"Definitely."

"Oh, now you're making me feel bad."

"It's not my intention."

"The shaving cream still didn't come in. I'm sorry."

"It's not a big problem. Actually I came by to ask if there was anything you needed help with."

"Oh, we already had a girl apply for the job. I think she's going to be hired but if you apply maybe I can put in a good word for you."

"No, I'm not interested in that job. I want to know if there's anything I can do for you. Nikki."

"Me?"

"Certainly. You're always nice to me and I just realized that I haven't been as good a friend as I know I could. Ask me for a favor. Anything. It's yours."

"That's ok, Mike. You don't have to do anything for me."

"But see, now I feel bad."

"Why?"

"Nikki, every time I come in here it's because I need something and you're always the one helping me. What about what you need? I really worry that you might start to think that I'm taking advantage of you."

"I don't feel that way at all."

"I mean, I'd ask you to have lunch with me but you're always working at lunch time. I'd ask you to come and maybe have dinner at my place so we could hang out and talk but then everybody would know and I'd get a call from someone asking if I was following all the rules or not. I really wish nobody would have ever found out about all that stuff, honestly."

"I'm sorry. It sounds nice, though. You know, having lunch together."

"My point is, Nikki, there has to be something I can do for you. Come on. Anything."

"Anything?"

"Absolutely anything, so long as it doesn't involve me dying or going to jail."

"I wouldn't ask for anything like that."

"But there's something you will ask for."

"Actually there is. But I can't ask this of you."

"Sure you can. You can ask and if I don't want to do it I can say no. Does that make it easier?"

"Oh, God, if I asked and you said no I would ... I would ..."

"Nikki, don't worry. I want to help you. I probably won't say no."

"Are you getting back together with Susan? I heard that might be happening."

"Might be is bit too strong. It's a very distant possibility if it is even possible at all. Me and Susan are trying to feel each other out so we can see if we can be friends. She is not my girlfriend and if you ask her she'll tell you that herself. In fact, she even told me that she'd be ok seeing me date someone else."

"Really? That's great."

"But, we're getting way ahead of ourselves. See, to be honest, there is this huge favor that I want to ask of you."

"Oh!"

"Yeah. But again, I don't want you to think that I don't consider your feelings. You're always so nice to me and I don't deserve it."

"Yes you do. You're nice to me too."

"I want to be even nicer to you. I want to show you that our friendship is not only one way. Let me do something for you. And then after that I'll ask for my favor but I'll go ahead and tell you up front that you can say no. In fact I'm sort of expecting you to say no."

"I would try, whatever it is."

"I know you would. And I know it would eat up at you to have to tell me no. So first I want to do something for you. I want to show you that our friendship is bigger than just me asking for favors. You know, for me, life hasn't always been easy."

"Yeah, I know."

"I'm in a particular situation right now where, even knowing that you would almost certainly be forced to tell me no, I have to ask you for this favor. And I understand that you have to tell me no. I wouldn't have any hard feelings about it at all. And to show you that, I want to do something nice for you."

"What's wrong? What's the situation?"

"I'm not allowed to tell you. Not exactly. But we can save that for later anyway. What can I do for you? Sky's the limit. Ask away. In fact, give me something really hard. Let me really show you how much I want to be your friend."

"Can you ..." she started while she fanned herself. "Can you give me a minute to think?"

"Sure. I'm going to take a look at the sports drinks."