Title: Musings

Author: SassyAngel

Rating: T

Disclaimer: Not mine, Fosters is owned by ABC Family

Summary: These are the musings of the main characters after the Fallout episode. I intend to write one for Lena, Stef, Brandon, Callie, Mariana, and Jesus, and of course, Jude, which is my first chapter.

Musings

Pity and Lies

I don't know why I lied to Connor. Usually, I'm pretty honest with others and myself. One minute, I was telling him the truth, something I always do. Then all of a sudden, I started telling him about my dad's beach house on an island, that had all my stuff and everything was rainbows, butterflies, and happiness. Even I knew it sounded ridiculous as I said it, but the more unrealistic it sounded, the more details I added, and before I knew it, it was a lie bigger than itself. Connor knew I was lying. I knew I was lying. I never expected him to call me on it. He just asked me out right why I was lying. How do you answer a question like that? How do you put the answer into a few simple words? So I just shrugged a little and said I didn't know

That was another lie. I do know. It was the pity he had in his eyes. He had it when those boys bullied me. He had it when he stood up with me by wearing the nail polish. He had it when he pointed out Jesus' belongings and then was informed that all I owned fit into a backpack. I saw it in his eyes when I told him my dad was in jail. So it just came out.

Callie has taught me to never accept pity from others. She's honestly taught me that I shouldn't accept much of anything from strangers. I'm supposed to depend on her, trust her, and rely on her and her alone. Never accept anything else from others especially pity. She despised it. She didn't want people to feel sorry for us. She always told me that we had each other and that was all that we needed, so no one should feel sorry for us. But let's face it; we've had a less than fabulous life. So I think that's what people naturally do when they realize what we've gone through. But like Callie, I didn't want Connor looking at me with pity. I wanted him to be my friend, not someone that he considered a pity project that needed fixing. And pity makes me feel like a project. I'm not a project. I realize my situations are not always great, but like I said before, it doesn't do any good to talk bad – about people or how life is in general. Life is what you make of what you have and nothing but your outlook will change it.

So I lied to him so he wouldn't pity me. I wanted him to like me. Just like every other pre-teen in the world, I just wanted to be accepted. But it didn't work. If anything, I think he felt even more sorry for me. Poor Jude: dead mom, criminal dad, bouncing around from foster home to foster home. The lies just made him pity me more.

But then he told me that I didn't need to lie to him. And the pity went out of his eyes and he acted like everything was normal. He started talking about video games that I had never heard of or played and his eyes had nothing but excitement as he reached into his backpack to give me the game to use. He seemed happy that I was happy to try it and it was almost like two friends hanging out on a Saturday, not a boy with a hero complex and his sympathy project. And for a second, I felt like a normal boy with normal friends and a somewhat normal family. Pity and lies do me no good. Normal is what I need.

Lena and Stef had pity in their eyes when I had asked them if Connor could come over. And when we came in to tell them that he was leaving, they both looked so desperate for me to have a friend. They were another couple of people who thought about poor, mistreated Jude. It's like they wanted a sign that I could readjust to my life here and become a normal child. A child that was smart, on grade level, with lots of friends. Someone like Brandon, probably. I'm not sure that would ever happen, but I could be normal for me. Connor was my first step to being that way. They said they would walk him out, but when I told them I could take care of it, they shared this warm look between one another, one that said, "he might just be okay" and the pitying, desperate look they had shared often enough between them was gone. Lena smiled and nodded encouragingly and I knew she was telling me that she knew I could do this, be an independent, happy person who wouldn't need anyone's pity any longer. So I turned to follow Connor out to the front hallway.

Connor gave me his game boy. He just handed it over like it was no big deal. Whatever, it's just a hundred dollar game system for you to keep. He had too much stuff anyway. He carried it around with him. It was obviously important to him, but he gave it to me like it was nothing. He smiled at me and told me he didn't need it and he knew I'd have fun with it. I held it in my hand with surprise. I scanned his face for that look I've seen so often before, "poor Jude doesn't have any thing to call his own, so he needs something so he won't be so pathetic", but it wasn't there. He grinned again and headed out the door, the grin showing regular, normal friendship. No strings attached. No charity. No pity. Just a friend giving a friend something to enjoy.

I think I probably stood in the hallway too long. It probably worried Stef and Lena that I would stand so still in the hallway alone. I just stood there, watching the door, processing what the game in my hand meant. I probably shouldn't have accepted the game. It was too expensive, and it was his parents that paid for it. He can't just give that stuff away. They'll find out and be angry. But he seemed so sure that I should have it that I did keep it. Something that would be mine. One more thing that I could call my stuff and keep in my backpack to travel on to my next home. When I used it, I would always think about my first real friend, the first person who didn't talk to me because they had to, the first person who stood up for me because he liked me, not just because he felt sorry for me. Lena came up behind me and hugged me. She questioned me about what I had, but I just shrugged and said, "Connor thought I would like it." And I smiled at her and finally went up the stairs, with her smiling and watching me go to the room that I shared with Jesus, a boy who treated me like a brother, in a house that treated me like a family. Pity and lies did no good. Friends and family do more for a person that pity and lies ever could.