Phoenix Maplewood well, now what

Well, too bad! Easy was going to cry. And then maybe she'd think about yelling. But for the moment, she was just too upset to muster up the defiance to yell. She just felt gross and guilty and awful, and when Aditya talked to her like that, she remembered that she was a child. He'd made it clear that, to him, she would always be a child.

So she turned away and tried to take deep breaths, but they were wracked with shudders and sobs. Everything sucked and she hated this place. Why had she ever thought she was old enough to go with? She wanted the plateau, she wanted her dad, and she wanted her littermates to play with instead of big, dumb Adi and oh-so-serious Dawn.

"I wanna go home!" she wailed, unable to hold back any longer.