Faith shrank into a little ball. The seat was hard and cold and she didn't like it. She'd spent more time in this huge seat answering questions like "does your mom have men over a lot", "what kinds of things do they do to you?", and "do you go to school regularly?" She squinted her eyes shut, wishing she could make everything really disappear.

"Faith?" God, she was so sick of his voice. She wanted to kill him. The same questions, over and over again.. she thought she might scream. "Faith, I asked you how old you were." His voice was firm.

Faith opened her eyes but kept them trained down towards her skinny arms and bony fingers, which were locked together tensely. She mumbled something. How many times did she have to tell them?

"Can you please speak louder?"

"Nine. And. A. Half," she said through clenched teeth.

"Nine and a half," he said triumphantly to the jury. "Now, tell me Faith, does your mom have men over a lot?"

~*~

Faith sat cross-legged on the huge pink canopy bed and picked at a scab on her knee. She hated pink, she hated this stupid girly room, and she wanted to go home. Okay, maybe she didn't want to go home.. she didn't want her mom, or the drugs, or the boyfriends.. But she wanted her best friend Angie, and she wanted her own bedroom and the bed that she and Angie had carved their names into and her old school and the quarry where she and Angie swam every day in the summer..

"Shit!" she whispered under her breath. The forbidden word tasted wonderful on her tongue. She tested it out, rolling it over and over in her mouth. "Shit. Shit. SHIT. SHIT!" she finally screamed out, tears threatening to run down her hollowed cheeks.

She pounded the bed with both fists and slid out of it, her feet hitting the floor with a thump. She padded over to the full-length mirror and looked in it. Her eyes were darkened from lack of sleep and her stomach was concave from lack of food. Her skinny limbs looked like twigs to her, and her knees were knobby.

Her hair was stringy and needed a good washing. Which she would have done if they'd let her go home.. and if she'd had shampoo at home. But they hadn't, those.. those "Shitheads!" she vocalized. They'd taken her straight from the foster home and put her here. Here in this hellhole. She had plenty of shampoo here-stuff that smelled like peaches. She hated peaches.

Except with Angie. She and Angie used to steal peaches from the grocery and go down by the quarry to eat them, letting the sweet juice flow down their fingers and chins.. She wiped an angry tear away. She wanted Angie. Faith suddenly looked on top of the white dresser and saw a phone. It was clear, and she could see all the mechanisms inside it.

She picked it up and cautiously put it to her ear, expecting to hear dead air or someone yelling at her for touching it. She was never allowed to use the phone at home.. when they'd had one, that was. Instead, she heard a dial tone. She pressed zero.

"I need the phone number for Dochney," she said to the operator. "Boston." She hung up and dialed the number, and was rewarded with an automated message informing her that the phone was shut off.

"SHIT!" she cried, the word echoing down the endless hallways and empty rooms, reaching all the way down to the office on the first of four floors.

Eric Freeman glanced up at Marnie, the maid, questioningly. She shook her head. "She's having a rough time settling in."

"No-" he started.

"SHIT!" came another cry from upstairs. He shook his head and bent his head over his paperwork again.

~*~

Faith glared at Marnie. If looks could kill.. well.. Marnie was very glad that looks couldn't kill. The ematiated girl was royally pissed off about being held down in the bathtub by the cook and scrubbed clean by Marnie. Marnie wasn't too happy about it either, but the kid needed a bath. She reeked of dirt and booze.

Faith bucked her hips up and tried desperately to wiggle out of the grasp of the hefty cook, but to no avail. She was strong but no match for Nance, who stood at the head of the claw-footed bathtub and held Faith's arms behind her back.

"No! I hate you! Let me go!" Faith screamed. She felt like that stupid peach-scented soap was going to peel her skin off. She didn't want to smell like fake peaches and money and this house, she missed the scent of the ghetto and the boozy scent of her mother and the quarry water..

Marnie squirted shampoo onto the rat's nest at the top of Faith's head. "You look like a street urchin from the ghetto," she stated.

Faith struggled. "I don't care! I don't care!" she screeched at the top of her lungs. "I hate it here! I HATE IT! IHATEITIHATEITIHATEIT!" She suddenly went limp in Nance's arms, sobbing. Marnie kept her mouth shut and finished cleaning the little rag doll.

Together they lifted Faith's dead weight out of the tub and wrapped her in a huge fluffy towel, which only made her cry harder. They didn't have towels like this..

Marnie carried her into her bedroom and laid Faith on the cotton candy pink bed. She lay with her legs hanging off, her arms spread out hopelessly to either side and her face crinkled in desperate, hopeless tears.

Marnie sat next to her and stroked her sopping wet hair. "It's going to be okay," she whispered.

"Nooo," Faith howled, clenching her fists. "Nooooo it's not! I want Angie! I want my bed! I WANT MY MOM!"

"Your father loves you, Faith."

Faith sobbed harder. "No he doesn't! They made him take me! I hate it here! My mom loved me!"

Marnie kept her mouth shut, wisely choosing not to share with the nine year old what she knew about her mother's fight to keep the girl at home so she could continue using the child support for her habits and boyfriends.

"Do you have clothes?" Marnie asked, unassumingly.

Faith slowed her sobbing a little. "Yes."

"What clothes?"

Faith sniffled and wiped her nose on the back of her fist, turning away the handkerchief Marnie offered her and sliding off the bed. She went over to the dresser and pulled open a drawer. She took a ratty t-shirt from the half-full drawer and put it over her head, then peeked back into the drawer. She sniffled again and fell onto the floor, cradling her head in her hands. She mumbled something, her voice teary.

"I can't hear you," Marnie answered gently.

"I don't have any underwear," Faith whispered, her voice hoarse.

Marnie bit back an urge to locate Faith's mother and beat her senseless and stood. "Well, I guess we'll have to take care of that."

She went into the second dresser in the bedroom and pulled open a drawer to reveal an assortment of brand-new, Faith-sized underwear and socks. Faith sniffled again in response and peeked into that drawer. All pink Disney-themed underwear.

She reached in and pulled out a pair without argument. Marnie rejoiced until she realized it was a pair of boy's Spiderman underwear. "That must have gotten in there by accident. Here, I'll take the boy ones back to the shop."

"No," Faith said defiantly, pulling them on. "I like them." She climbed into the bed and Marnie tried not to flinch at her choice of attire. An adult-sized, torn and bleach-stained Budweiser shirt. She sighed.

There was a long and rocky road ahead.