Author's Note: Finished Volume II... and that's it. I have ideas for how I'd do the rest of it, but I don't think I could keep this up that long without you guys and me getting thoroughly fed up. I'm glad you enjoyed it!

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VOLUME 2: Page 9 - Feels Like Home

Despite Luke's complaining that his uncle always won, it became apparent very quickly that both of them were very, very good at Trivial Pursuit. Toria, who had never played the game before, only managed to earn two 'pie' pieces in the time it took for Sean and Luke to get all six and make their way back to the centre of the board... where they then spent a good fifteen minutes trying to give each other the most difficult questions they could.

"Another 'Arts and Culture' question, please, Toria," said Sean, as Luke got his piece into the centre again.

Luke sat with his arms folded on the table as she pulled the card out of the box. His shoulders were forward and his face tensed – he looked ready for far worse things than a trivia question.

"Oh," said Toria, "this is okay, this is an easy one. It says, 'in Edgar Rice Burrough's Tarzan books, what was Jane's maiden name?'"

Luke frowned, furrowing his forehead as he tried to remember. "Oh, crap," he muttered. "Give me a minute... I know it. I'd recognize it if I heard it."

"Well, are you going to answer?" asked Sean.

"I'm thinking," Luke told him.

A couple of seconds passed in silence, then Sean leaned back to look at the ceiling and started humming the 'Jeopardy' song.

"Don't do that," groaned Luke.

"I think you're out of time," said Sean. "You can't take forever to answer, or we could take a week at these games. Now what is it?"

"I'm thinking," Luke repeated, but soon he was forced to give up. "I don't know... Goodall?"

Sean slapped his knee and laughed out loud, while Toria, though she knew the answer, checked the back of the card anyway. "It's Porter," she said.

"Porter!" Luke echoed, smacking himself with the heel of his hand. "Of course."

"Goodall!" Sean gasped through spasms of giggles. "Jane Goodall!"

"It's not that funny," said Luke. "Toria, give him a 'Wildcard' question."

She pulled another card out of the box. "It says," she read, "'which city was the capital of China during the Han Dynasty? Was it (a) Beijing, (b) Shanghai, or (c) Nanking?'"

"Argh!" Luke let himself fall face-first against the table. His forehead hit the wood with an audible 'clunk'.

Sean grinned. "That would be Nanking," he said cheerfully, "and I win again. Excellent game, Luke."

"How do you always manage to get the easy questions?" Luke demanded, sitting up again and rubbing his forehead. "Do you rig the boxes, or what?"

"Nope," said Sean. "Believe me, I'm just as mystified as to how you manage to forget the answers to the easy questions."

Luke scowled. "So am I."

The two men began to pack up the game pieces, and Toria put a hand over her mouth to cover a yawn. "What time is it?" she asked.

Sean checked his watch. "Eight-thirty PM," he said, "but looking at you, I'd say that's late enough. Why don't you head for bed?"

Bed sounded lovely... "but what about the dishes?" asked Toria.

"We have a dishwasher," said Sean, "and despite our Y chromosomes we do know how to use it. Besides, I should say you need sleep a lot more than we need clean dishes. Once you're well, we'll let you clean the entire house for us – how's that for something to look forward to?" He waited a moment for a response, and did not receive one. "I'm teasing, Toria."

"I know," she said quickly.

"Good. Now go to bed. That is an order, Miss Henderson. We will take care of the dishes ourselves."

It really didn't seem like she could argue too much with that, and Toria was tired. She shook her head sleepily as she climbed the stairs – what a strange couple of days it had been! Yesterday morning she'd had a job and a place to live... and by evening she'd lost both of them. Then she'd wandered into somebody's backyard without really knowing what she was doing, and now here she was with a job (potentially) and a place to live (temporarily) again.

"I guess you were right, Mom," she said softly. "Once you hit the bottom, there's nowhere to go but up."

The door to 'her' bedroom was open. She reached in and flicked on the light.

"Hey!" exclaimed Kyle.

Toria stared. The room had been dark... she hadn't expected to find anybody in it. But there was Kyle, standing on the end of the bed, leaning forward awkwardly to support his weight against the wall as he put up a set of Venetian blinds on the window. He was blinking rapidly in the sudden light.

"What are you doing?" asked Toria, too startled to be polite.

"Putting up blinds," he replied testily, around two screws he was holding between his teeth. "What's it look like I'm doing?" He took a screwdriver down from the top of the bookshelf and resumed what he must have been doing before Toria turned the light on; making sure the blinds were level above the window frame.

"In the dark?" she asked.

"I'm fine." He took one of the screws out of his mouth and started twisting it into place. "Sean left me a list of shit he said I had to do today if I wasn't going to school," he added. "This was one of the things."

"I see." Toria nodded. He wanted her to know he was doing this because he had to, not because he wanted to make her more comfortable. "Did you like the lasagna?" she wanted to know.

"Mmmph." The noise could have been positive, negative, or indifferent. Kyle stuck the second screw into its hole.

In the absence of anything to go by, Toria decided to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that was a 'yes'. "There're brownies, too, if you want some."

"I had one."

"Okay. Three more of them are yours," she said.

"I'll keep that in mind," Kyle promised. With the screws in place, he gave the blind a good shake to make sure it was attached firmly, then yanked the string to drop the slats over the window. "There," he said, straightening up and then hopping down from the bed. "Now it won't get so hot in here tomorrow."

"Thank you," said Toria.

"And next time," he added, "just fuc... warn me if you're going to turn on the light."

"Sorry."

He grabbed his screwdriver and the long cardboard box the blinds had come in, and walked past Toria without saying anything. She turned around to close the door behind him, but he stopped in the doorway and waited a moment.

"Was there something else?" she wanted to know.

Kyle stood there a moment longer. "Toria, right?" he asked, without turning around.

"Victoria Henderson," she agreed. "My middle name is Elizabeth if you want to know. Mom named me after Queens of England. You're Kyle. You're in my math class." At least, he was when he showed up.

"John Kyle Somers." He waited a bit longer, twirling the screwdriver between two fingers as if it were a baton or a drumstick, then added, "look. Since I guess you're going to be here a while whether I like it or not, I thought... about this morning. I..." he shook his head. "I've got some issues, okay? Everybody in this family has issues, but I just... I tend to kind of spazz out about things. It's not personal. All right?"

Was he apologizing? Maybe he didn't hate her after all. Toria smiled. "It's fine," she assured him. "I guess it must've been a bit of a shock to find me here."

"Yeah," said Kyle. "It was. Don't think we're gonna be best friends or anything," he added, finally turning to face her, "because we're not. I still think this is a bad idea. You'd better keep the secret, all right?"

"Right," Toria nodded, and noticed that Kyle wasn't wearing his sunglasses... and it was, she realized, no wonder he wore them at school. His eyes were bright yellow-green, with a darker green rim around the pupils. Eyes like that ought to look at you from behind glass in a pet store, not out of a human face.

"Right," Kyle echoed. "Good night."

"Good night," said Toria, and he turned and walked away.

She shut the door softly behind him and climbed into bed, pulling the warm covers up to her chin. Despite knowing that she should not get too attached to this place, it already felt more like a home than anywhere had in months.

"Goodnight, Mom," she said to the photograph on the bedside table. And although it, of course, could not answer, somehow Toria knew that right here was exactly where her mother would have wanted her to be.