Jade sat down at the dinner table with her family and pretended that she was hungry, but in reality she was just twisting her fork in her food to pass the time. Too many things were running through her head.

"How was your day?" Her father asked from behind his shield of opened newspaper. Those seemed to be the only words he ever spoke to her at the end of every day. It was almost like he were a robot. Her mother was the same, but she had gotten used to it in the six months that she had been living with them. The last family hadn't been much better. While they hadn't spoken to her in memorized lines, she was somehow assumed to be their indentured servant. She sighed. Thinking through all of the families that she had lived with would give her a headache so she let the subject slip from her mind and answered her father's question.

"Fine," Jade tried on a smile. Why did she always have to feel so awkward within her own home? And Drake's thoughts were still ringing in her head.

You're adopted? He asked her. She shook her head hard in a futile attempt to get him out. He knew that.

"Jade," her mother asked in a rather shape tone, "where is your mind and your appetite? Did something happen today?"

She shook her head no because she could barely hear her voice. It was drowned by the incessant ticking of Drake's mind. She put her pounding head in her hands. She vaguely remembered her mother helping her up to her room and laying her in her bed before she blacked out from all of the noise.