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  The receptionist, who was thoroughly engrossed in her typing, gave a nervous start, swung around in her chair, and emitted a choked scream at the sight of a shining, dripping fish directly in front of her nose.

  Julie took a cautious step backward but persevered. “It’s dead,” she said boldly, fighting to keep her voice empty of the sentimental pity she felt. “The other fish are going to eat it, and I don’t want to watch. It’s gross. If you’ll give me a piece of paper, I’ll wrap it up and you can put it in your trash can.”

  Recovering from her shock, the receptionist carefully suppressed a smile, opened her desk drawer, and removed several tissues, which she handed to the child. “Would you like to take it with you and bury it at home?”

  Julie would have liked to do exactly that, but she thought she heard amusement in the woman’s voice, and so she hastily wrapped the fish in its tissue-paper shroud and thrust it at her instead. “I’m not that stupid, you know. This is just a fish, not a rabbit or something special like that.”

  On the other side of the window, Frazier chuckled softly and shook his head. “She’s dying to give that fish a formal burial, but her pride won’t let her admit it.” Sobering, he added, “What about her learning disabilities? As I recall, she’s only at a second-grade level.”

  Dr. Wilmer gave an indelicate snort at that and reached for a manila folder on her desk containing the results of the battery of tests Julie had recently been given. Holding the open file toward him she said with a smile, “Take a look at her scores when the intelligence tests are administered orally and she’s not required to read.”

  John Frazier complied and gave a low laugh. “The kid’s got a higher IQ than I do.”

  “Julie is a special child in a lot of ways, John. I saw glimpses of it when I reviewed her file, but when I met her face-to-face, I knew it was true. She’s feisty, brave, sensitive, and very smart. Under all that bravado of hers, there’s a rare kind of gentleness, an unquenchable hope, and quixotic optimism that she clings to even though it’s being demolished by ugly reality. She can’t improve her own lot in life, and so she’s unconsciously dedicated herself to protecting the kids in whatever foster care facility she’s put into. She steals for them and lies for them and organizes them into hunger strikes, and they follow wherever she leads as if she were the Pied Piper. At eleven years old, she’s a born leader, but if she isn’t diverted very quickly, some of her methods are going to land her in a juvenile detention center and eventually prison. And that’s not even the worst of her problems right now.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that despite all her wonderful attributes, that little girl’s self-esteem is so low, it’s almost nonexistent. Because she’s been passed over for adoption, she’s convinced she’s worthless and unlovable. Because she can’t read as well as her peers, she’s convinced she’s completely stupid and can’t learn. And the most terrifying part of it is that she’s on the verge of giving up. She’s a dreamer, but she’s clinging to her dreams by a thread.” With unintentional force, Terry finished, “I will not let all Julie’s potential, her hope, her optimism, go to waste.”

  Dr. Frazier’s brows shot up at her tone. “Forgive me for bringing this up, Terry, but aren’t you the one who used to preach about not getting too personally involved with a patient?”

  With a rueful smile, Dr. Wilmer leaned against her desk, but she didn’t deny it. “It was easier to follow that rule when all my patients were kids from wealthy families who think they’re ‘underprivileged’ if they don’t get a $50,000 sports car on their sixteenth birthday. Wait until you’ve done more work with kids like Julie—kids who are dependent on the ‘system’ that we set up to provide for them and have somehow fallen through the cracks in that same system. You’ll lose sleep over them, even if you’ve never done it before.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” he said with a sigh, as he handed back the manila folder. “Out of curiosity, why hasn’t she been adopted by someone?”

  Teresa shrugged. “Mostly, it’s been a combination of bad luck and bad timing. According to her file at the Department of Children and Family Services, she was abandoned in an alley when she was only a few hours old. Hospital records indicate she was born ten weeks prematurely and because of that and because of the poor condition she was in when she was brought to the hospital, there was a long series of health complications until she was seven years old, during which time she was repeatedly hospitalized and very frail.

  “The Family Services people found adoptive parents for her when she was two years old, but in the middle of the adoption proceedings, the couple decided to get a divorce, and they dumped her back into the arms of Family Services. A few weeks later, she was placed again with another couple who’d been screened as carefully as humanly possible, but Julie came down with pneumonia, and the new couple— who’d lost their own child at Julie’s age—went completely to pieces emotionally and pulled out of the adoption. Afterward, she was placed with a foster family for what was only to be a temporary time, but a few weeks later, Julie’s case worker was seriously injured in an accident and never returned to work. From then on it was the proverbial ‘comedy of errors.’ Julie’s file got misplaced—”

  “Her what!?” he uttered in disbelief.

  “Don’t judge the Family Services people too harshly, which I can see you’re doing. For the most part, they’re extremely dedicated and conscientious, but they’re only human. Given how overworked and underfinanced they are, it’s amazing they do as well as they do. In any event, to make a long story short, the foster parents had a houseful of kids to look after, and they assumed Family Services couldn’t find adoptive parents for Julie because she wasn’t very healthy. By the time Family Services realized she’d gotten lost in their shuffle, Julie was five, and she’d passed the age of greatest appeal to adoptive parents. She also had a history of poor health, and when she was removed from the foster home and placed in another, she promptly came down with a series of asthma attacks. She missed large chunks of first and second grade, but she was “such a good little girl” the teachers promoted her from one grade to the next anyway. Her new foster parents already had three physically handicapped children in their care, and they were so busy looking after those children that they didn’t notice Julie wasn’t keeping up in school, particularly because she was getting passing grades. By fourth grade, though, Julie herself realized she couldn’t do the work, and she started pretending to be ill so that she could stay home. When her foster parents caught on, they insisted she go to school, so Julie took the next obvious route to avoid it—she started cutting school and hanging around with kids on the street as often as she could. As I said earlier, she’s feisty, daring, and quick—they taught her how to snitch merchandise from stores and avoid being picked up as a truant.

  “You know most of the rest: Eventually she did get picked up for truancy and shoplifting and was sent to the LaSalle facility, which is where kids who aren’t doing well in the foster care system are sent A few months ago, she got busted—unfairly, I think—along with a group of older boys who were demonstrating to her their particular prowess with hot-wiring cars.” With a muffled laugh, Terry finished, “Julie was merely a fascinated observer, but she knows how to do it. She offered to demonstrate for me. Can you imagine—that tiny girl with those enormous, innocent eyes can actually start your car without a key! She wouldn’t try to steal it though. As I said, she only takes things the kids at LaSalle can use.”

  With a meaningful grin, Frazier tipped his head toward the glass. “I assume they can ‘use’ one red pencil, a ballpoint, and a fistful of candy.”

  “What?”

  “In the time you’ve been talking to me, your prize patient has filched all that from the reception room.”

  “Good God!” said Dr. Wilmer but without any real concern as she stared through the glass.

  “She’s quick enough to do sleight-of-hand tricks,” Frazier added with reluctant admiration.