Vanessa was trying to ignore the voice that kept whispering in her ear, the familiar tone of her foster mother - whispers alternating between soothing and cruel words that the woman who'd raised her would never have said. Even that knowledge didn't quite take the sting out of hearing them. She was blinking back tears as she walked, trying to get back to where she'd parked her car, holding her keys tight in one hand.
"Tell the truth now - you came back because your father and his wife got sick of you."
She froze unable to ignore that one as she hissed. "Just stop it. Just shut up," tears threatening to fall as she took a deep breath. Her foster sister had warned her about the weirdness here, and she'd experienced some of it before this but this wasn't just weird - it was bordering on cruel. She stood there for a moment, taking deep breaths to calm herself before continuing to walk. She'd get to her car, turn up the radio to drown out any whispers and then get home and it'd be fine. Maybe she'd even call her parents, talk to her mom over the phone and just let herself be reminded how much her foster parents loved her.
She turned a corner and that was when she saw the guy on the ground. Her first thought was that she needed to call 911 but as she took a step closer to him she realized he didn't seem to be hurt so much as crying. "Hey...are you okay? It's not really the best idea to be crying out on the streets," she said, stopping a short distance from him, free hand reaching into her pocket to grab her phone. Just in case.
Oh what. You're going to try to help someone. That's rich. This time the whisper was that of one of her sisters, mocking and right in her ear and she turned to look even though she knew that the girl was on the other side of the country.