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Interrupted, again. Justin sighed before he really even processed the voice, just thinking distantly how there were way too many people here, always tripping over each other. No real privacy at any time. Annoying. The glance he sends over his shoulder is more of a formality than any real curiosity, at least until he lays eyes on her. A brand new face, but not one that he hadn’t been expecting. At least for a few days.
“…our resident ginger ghost kid, this is a surprise,” Justin drawls in monotone, repeating more or less the phrase he’d heard from those who had seen her first. Seemed like kind of a heavy phrase for such a small kid. People here had issues. She apologizes for knocking things over, to which he just shrugs curtly. “‘Not my shit.”
Which wasn’t to say he wasn’t annoyed at her presence here. Justin wasn’t a babysitter. And he’d been so on edge lately, even the thought of dredging through ‘normal’ politeness just to be nice to strange kids was totally unbearable. He frowned down into the group’s stash and continued rifling around, his search for relief more desperate now as he forced words of greeting out of his throat.
“In a manner of speaking. Too bad there’s nothing,” he slaps the side of the plastic bin in irritation, satisfied by the sound of something being hit, “here to help with that.”
Stuffing his hands in his pockets, he turns to look the young girl up and down. “’You know where the nuns keep their stuff?”
Our resident ginger ghost kid. Doe finds it easier to reign in her expressions, then. No matter where she went or who she spoke to, they always seemed to know something was off with Doe. Sure, she wasn’t helping herself by hiding but, seriously, it’s a cruel reaction she thinks. A mean-spirited thing.
Not my shit, he says. The curse flung out like it’s nothing. It is nothing, she supposes, even if the harshness keeps her on edge. Some swore like they were saying a word as commonplace as ‘and’ but in her experience, it meant they were angry. That there was a good reason people called it ‘bad language’. The man she was with before the nuns liked to curse. It got worse when he drank.
Doe knows she’s right about this stranger when he slaps the plastic bin in frustration. People hit things when they can’t hit their real problem. Next, they hit people. She watches him intently, especially when he turns around. In a manner of speaking means, he isn’t hurt. She knows about people taking medicine when they don’t need it, about being addicted to it. Like a man who ‘needs’ to drink or a man who ‘needs’ to smoke.
It was a mistake letting him see her.
“No,” she lies. The nuns aren’t ‘her’ people so it’s not her things to share, at least that would be a less confrontational logic if caught out in her lie. She doesn’t think he’s hurt.
“You don’t look hurt. Even in a manner of speaking sorta way.”

















