Who: Leisha Camden and Carl Grimes What: Meeting someone around their own age Where: The park When: Mid-afternoon, the day after Leisha's arrival Warnings: None
The lady who was letting Leisha stay with her – she couldn't say foster mother, it sounded too awful and final – had been kind enough to give her some supplies for her outing. She was sitting in the middle of the park, on a blue checked blanket, a small picnic basket beside her and her new portable terminal on her lap. Was that why they called it a laptop here? It was much larger than her own portable, but her own wasn't much use here. No datanet access, which shouldn't have been a surprise to her – they had no datanet, only something called internet which operated differently – but somehow it was still troubling.
Leisha was going to pay back the money for the laptop when she earned some. She'd remember. She wasn't going to take anything she hadn't earned, Kenzo Yagai said that was being a thief just as sure as if you stole directly. She'd been worried when she first read about it in his book; she'd thought she was stealing from Daddy, but then he'd explained to her about non-monetary values and she'd understood better.
She missed him. She tried not to, because she knew he wouldn't want her to, he'd tell her she had to be stronger than that, but it crept in at the edges. They'd only been apart a couple of days, he'd been away from her for far longer when he had to take business trips for work, but this was different. Leisha didn't know when she was going to see him again. Or Susan or Alice or Mamselle or...any of them.
Hadn't she told that other lady that the way to keep from feeling lonely was to keep busy? Leisha was trying. She'd been reading all morning, history, learning about this place she'd found herself in, until it had made her feel uncomfortable and she'd decided to go out for fresh air. Now she was in the park, and studying Japanese. It was one of her very favorite languages and it was just the same to learn here as at home. Although she didn't have any of her learning materials, choosing a passage in English she knew and then typing out a translation was almost as good.
She'd been at it for nearly an hour, and she was starting to feel better. Maybe it was the concentration, or the bright sunshine. Either way, when Leisha set aside her laptop and stopped for her picnic, late lunch, she was more her usual self again. She laid out her sandwiches, fruit and biscuits neatly, small plates on the blanket, and lifted her head to look around the park, taking in her surroundings. It wasn't busy, but neither was she completely alone, so it was just as she liked it.