In touch

The Fosters tended to ignore the mail box outside their house for a week then bring in whatever that had collected in there every Sunday morning. This week it was Callie's job and so she joined everyone at breakfast shuffling through the pile of envelopes: mostly containing bills and all addressed to Stef and Lena. There was one letter that stood out to Callie: a small envelope with a handwritten address was hidden in the middle of all the envelopes with printed, official looking labels. This envelope, however, had some personal touches, with little doodles everywhere and an imperfect seal revealing the corner of a sheet of lined paper. Callie moved this letter to the top of the pile, intrigued by it and eager to see the family's reaction as she put the pile in the middle of the table and sat down for breakfast.

"Woah, people actually write letters by hand?" Jude asked, joining his sister and noticing the envelope in front of him. Everyone chuckled and Callie nudged her brother, saying "yeah, dude. It's how people communicated in the old days," and widening her eyes playfully.
"It'll be from Rachel," Mariana said, setting out the glasses and joining them.
"Yeah, we haven't heard from her in a while, actually. She always hated communicating in the 21st century; remember when that boy tried to ask her out by text?" Lena laughed from the counter.
"Oh yeah, she nearly broke her phone throwing it across the room, she hated that thing," Jesus remembered and the rest of the family laughed.
"She certainly was a character, I'm glad she stayed in touch," Stef joined in, adding the food to the breakfast table as Brandon brought over the juice. Lena leaned over her wife to reach the letter and started skimming through it, smiling slightly at the paper.
"Well apparently she's found a pen pal to fall in love with all the way in England," she told the family, "Wow. She's off to college this year, moving away from Cory and Ella for the first time since she got there" she continued, surprised at how fast time had gone.

Callie and Jude sat there, unsure of what was going on. After a lull in conversation, the older girl leaned towards Brandon and asked, "So Rachel is…?"
"We fostered Rachel for a bit about four years ago, she moved to California to be adopted by Cory and Ella, they're pretty cool. We get a letter from her every few months," Brandon said. Callie nodded slowly, the concept of staying in touch with an ex-foster family completely alien to her.
"Oh, that reminds me, Jesus, you need to read Max's latest email, he's started playing a bunch of sports and we don't understand half of his messages anymore," Lena said before sitting down and tucking in to breakfast with the rest of the family.
"Wait, Max?" Callie asked, unwilling to accept that they had stayed in touch with more than one past foster kid. Jesus looked up and replied, "he stayed with us a few years ago, sweet kid, where'd he end up again?" with a mouth full of breakfast, earning disapproving looks from his moms and sister.
"Hawaii, with Bill and Claire, lucky boy," Brandon said.
"You stay in touch with your old foster kids?" Callie asked, picking at her food with raised eyebrows. Stef and Lena exchanged confused glances hearing Callie's scepticism before Stef replied, "yeah, pretty much, as long as they want to,"
"That's awesome!" Jude said excitedly, lapping up the love that surrounded this family and all of its extensions. The Foster family were all surprised by the fact that this seemed to be a novelty to the Jacobs siblings but carried on with the morning routine as normal before all the kids disappeared upstairs to work on all the homework they'd procrastinated on over the weekend.

Mariana and Callie sat on their beds with their headphones in for most of the morning: Callie was working on her homework or texting Wyatt and Mariana was getting distracted by her laptop every time she tried to concentrate on her homework. Just before lunchtime Callie finished everything she had to do that day and picked up her guitar, starting to strum gently. After a minute, Mariana looked up from her laptop, causing Callie to stop and ask "Sorry, do you want me to take this outside?" with an apologetic smile. Mariana smiled back and answered "oh, no, it's nice, I like it," before moving her laptop aside and trying to focus on her math homework once more.
"Hey, do you want to use my laptop at all?" Mariana said when Callie paused before picking up her guitar again, "you know, to contact old friends or whatever,"
"Nah, I don't really have anyone," Callie answered her foster sister,
"What, no old foster families or cute boys from past schools you want to stalk on facebook?" Mariana asked, winking and abandoning her homework once more. Callie just scrunched up her face a bit and said, "nope, I don't have facebook,"
"What?" Mariana said, aghast, "but how are we going to talk once you're adopted?"
"Uhm," Callie said, shocked that it mattered to her foster sister, "I guess it's just never been needed," she responded, "no one's ever asked if I have it," she continued with a shrug.

To Callie's surprise, the next thing she knew, Mariana had been sat next to her on her bed for half an hour, setting up a facebook account and adding most of the school as 'friends'. They laughed together as they pulled faces at the web cam, trying to create a profile picture for Callie then Mariana then demonstrated the art of facebook stalking, guiding the less experienced girl through Wyatt's embarrassing old pictures and Lexi's ancient statuses filled with embarrassing slang and spelling mistakes. Stef appeared at their door as they were laughing at a particularly bad picture of little Wyatt with no hair, she smiled at them and told them that there was a picnic basket waiting for them outside if they wanted to join them for lunch. The girls nodded and went straight back to Mariana's laptop. Stef was just happy to see them getting along so well so she didn't mind and left them to it, going down to join Lena, Jude and her two sons.

Eventually Callie's stomach let out a large groan and the two girls laughed and agreed to go down to the join the rest of the family. As they approached them in the garden Stef looked up and said , "Hey loves, finally prised yourself away from that laptop? We saved you some sandwiches," as she moved over to make room on the little blanket they were using. Mariana beamed as she sat down, "I just set Callie up with a facebook, now she can talk to us when she and Jude go off to Hawaii or California or wherever with their next family," she told everyone proudly. Although Jude looked a bit forlorn at the idea of leaving this house, he smiled at said, "that's awesome," finishing off his meal. Jesus saw the younger boy's slight disappointment and lent over to him, asking if he wanted to set up an account after lunch. Jude nodded happily and Callie looked around at the family as they lapsed into casual conversations once more. For the first time she felt like a friend in the family rather than a random foster kid, and, when she met Jude's eyes she could see the same kind of happiness reflected back at her. The two Jacobs siblings smiled at each other calmly before Callie asked him about his tutoring with Lena, allowing herself to relax into the routine again.