It had taken Joy a while to warm up to Eliot. It was nice of him to help her out, but she'd spent her entire life having it drilled into her that strangers were bad and dangerous, so it had taken some effort on her part to give him the benefit of the doubt in her mother's absence, mostly out of need and only secondarily out of a growing trust. She couldn't provide for herself, after all, because no one was going to hire a mostly deaf fourteen year old girl with no experience or skills. He seemed nice enough and he never tried to be pervy or fresh with her, so Joy had finally, after a little while, gotten more comfortable and settled in.
When she'd gotten home from school, she'd pushed her hearing aids back into her ears as she reached the front door, having taken them out when she'd gotten on the bus that morning and not wanting to get in trouble for having hidden them instead of wearing them. They were embarrassing; old people wore hearing aids, for crying out loud. Joy called out to Eliot but when he didn't answer, she just retired into the living room with her book bag and started her homework, assuming that he was at work or something.
At the sound of his voice, Joy looked up from her math book. "...what?" she asked, pushing herself to her feet.