Family

Rachael's here now too. Steev must have told her what happened. She keeps going around with a photo of me and my sister, asking people if they'd seen me.

I made eye contact with her for one second before looking away and the next thing I knew she'd come up to me and hugged me. "My baby." she said, letting go of me a little so I could see her face properly. She looked down at me and smiled. "You've grown up. Come on, your sister's waiting for you in the car. We'll take you home."

"No!" I pulled away and stood back with Jay. "I want to stay here. I'm happy here."

Still smiling, she shook her head. "Don't be ridiculous, darling. You can't stay here on the streets with no one to look after you."

"But we do look after eachother."

She looked back at Jay and began to laugh. "Two children can't look after themselves alone."

I looked behind me at Jay, then back at Rachael. "It's not just us who look after each other, it's them too." I pointed behind her to where Sam and Naober were running up to us, having seen what was happening.

"We're a team. We look out for each other and we stay together."

Rachael wasn't smiling anymore. She looked stunned at what she was looking at. She crouched down in front of me. "Listen, baby, you can come home with us now and you can see your sister again. You come home in the car, you eat dinner with your family, you get some sleep in a nice comfy bed. You can go back to watching T.V and playing with your toys. We can have family outings and you can go back to doing piano lessons. You stay here and you'll have to go on sleeping on a rough bench every night, reading books from a library, begging for food to survive."

We all looked pretty angry at this.

"I don't need toys here. I don't need piano lessons anymore. And I like reading in the library. It's much quieter than at home. And as far as family—this is my family. And we have a lot more fun than I did with you."

"My point is, it's better for you to come with us. Look, if you come with us now, we may even tell you about your real family."

I froze. This was what I had wanted for a very long time.

"Steev knew them for a while. He can tell you about them."

I thought about this. "Then can I come back?"

She paused for a moment, then nodded. "If you really want to."

I looked back at the others again. "Sorry, I've gotta find out about this."

"We understand. Just make sure you come back. Ok." Jay said, hugging me goodbye.

"Oh, I will, don't worry I'd never leave you all forever. I said, hugging the others goodbye. Then I went off with Racheal.

Tiana really was waiting for us in the car. She was looking out of the open window, waiting to see if I was coming back or not. I don't know why but when I saw her I just couldn't help running towards her. I got in the car and we went back home, to Newark and the truth about my family.