cracklepaf

They had called her social worker. Jubilee wanted to die.

Her name was Carla Eggers. She was 54, and the kind of Older Black Woman you saw in movies, an immovable mass of stern words and motherly bulk who could put even the surliest of charges in place with a raised eyebrow. She'd overseen Jubilee's case for the past six years. Jubilee had gotten used to the woman's thick greying braid and assortment of cardigans and mom-jeans, looming with that look outside the lock-up of mall security, or with a folder and a hesitant smile to check in on Jubes' at a shelter -- or, worst of all, with the thinned lips and ready arms when she found, by police report or worse, Jubilee hitchhiking on the side of the road two miles from her most recent foster placement. Jubilee hadn't seen her in a while; it wasn't exactly easy to turn the hotel into an acceptable foster placement, and she maintained she was living at the mall or in shelters whenever Carla tried to check on her. Which was more often than Jubilee would like, though she had yet to make any of the appointments. Carla had gotten used to the fact that Jubilee seemed incapable of staying in one place too long -- and that they wouldn't ever really find a family for her. Jubilee was okay with this. She had the hotel.

( Well. Had. )

cracklepaf

Jubilee was not one of those gifted with common sense. She had plenty of other skills -- mass consumption of sugar-based substances with little negative effect, for example, or, more pertinently, how to hotwire economy-sized cars. She had stubbornly stayed in the hotel all day, locked in her room, swallowing down increasing bouts of nausea and attempting to sleep off dizziness. Not that sleeping helped, really: ( it was part of the problem in the first place. )