At the look, he leans over his bed and sticks his head underneath. There is a shriek, and then a little girl in blonde pigtails comes streaking out into the open. She is wearing Iron Man pajamas and a sparkling purple tutu, and she screams as Peter jumps out of bed and chases her into a corner.
"I knew it!" he says, descending on her with wriggling fingers. "It's a tickle monster!"
For just a second they are both caught up in the mirth of the moment, both laughing. Then—
"Lily!"
The mirth drains away. Peter straightens and turns around to find Skip standing in his bedroom doorway, eyes wide, staring down at the scene in front of him—a scene which includes a reddening Peter, who is already scolding himself for thinking, even for a second, that just because the scenery changed the danger might have passed.
Have the last five months taught him nothing?
"Sorry," he says, backing toward the bed. "Sorry, I wasn't—"
Skip's eyes are not on Peter. They are on the little girl, Lily. But when Peter turns to her, she doesn't look frightened. She pushes herself to her feet, panting, and runs toward Skip.
"Daddy! The new boy is a tickle monster! And he's a vegetarian!"
Peter braces himself as Skip looks at him.
And then, amazingly, Skip's expression softens.
"I know for a fact that he is not a vegetarian," he says to Lily, "and it looks to me like you're the monster in this scenario. Didn't I tell you to let him sleep?"
"Sorry," says Lily, clearly not sorry at all, "but Daddy—"
"No buts. Go wake your sister up and get dressed, Bea is going to take you to school this morning."
"Is the tickle monster coming?"
"Nope. The tickle monster and I are going to have a talk."
"Okay. Okay, okay, okay, okay…"
Lily continues to sing okay as she flounces off, out of the room and down the hallway.
Peter shuffles his feet while Skip stares at him. Skip's expressionless face makes Peter certain he has done something wrong, and he thinks with a pitiful surge of self-loathing that at least at the halfway house he knew what to expect when he was in trouble. The edge of anxiety, waiting for Skip to reveal how his anger will present, is razor-sharp, the anticipation almost worse than whatever is waiting on the other end of this long silence.
"You're good with kids," says Skip.
Peter's shoulders snap up automatically, his body on the defensive before the words can sink in. When they do, his mouth falls open.
"I'm—what?"
"You're good with kids," Skip repeats. "My last foster kid didn't know what to do with the girls. You'd've thought they were a couple of vipers for all he wanted to do with them. But you—you're a natural, huh?"
"I'm… yeah, I guess. I mean, I like kids. And there were younger kids at the halfway house, sometimes."
Skip looks Peter up and down again. Again, Peter feels that inexplicable shiver, but this time it is mostly lost under the unexpected flush of pride. Peter used to thrive off of the praise of adults—it was one of the reasons he was such a target for bullies in elementary school. But it's been so long since he's experienced it that having that now feels like uncovering a fossil of his old life: familiar and a little foreign all at once.
"Come on," says Skip.
He leads Peter into the kitchen, where Peter is greeted by another familiar-but-unfamiliar sight: breakfast is waiting on the kitchen table. There are scrambled eggs and waffles and bacon and fresh fruit, a carafe of orange juice, a pitcher of coffee. He almost doesn't understand what it's all doing there until Skip offers him a seat and places a plate in front of him, piled high with a little bit of everything.
Peter stares at it.
"Eat," says Skip lightly.
And Peter is, incredibly, grateful for the instruction. Because for some unfathomable reason, his first instinct was not to eat. For just a second upon seeing the stack of waffles dripping with syrup, the fluffy eggs, the fat red strawberries, the new voice in his head screamed at him to take it and run.
Peter takes a shaky breath, picks up his knife and fork, and smiles while Skip takes the seat beside him and pours two cups of coffee.
"Again, I'm setting a bad precedent," he says, setting one in front of Peter, "but you look like you could use it. You're old enough to drink coffee, right?"
Peter has never tasted coffee in his life. But he nods, and Skip looks pleased when he takes the mug, just like he did when he praised Peter for being good with Lily.
Coffee is awful, Peter discovers. But he works very hard to turn his grimace into a smile as he takes a sip, because Skip is still watching him.
"I'd like to tell you a little bit about myself," he says.
"Okay."
Peter sets down his fork. (Save some for later, Parker. You don't know when you'll get it again.)
"No, keep eating. I want you to feel at home here, Peter, do you understand?"
Peter picks the fork back up, trying to hide the little tremble in his hands as he does. What the hell was that?
Skip doesn't notice.
"The first thing I think you should know," says Skip, "is that I've been a foster parent for almost ten years now. You've probably already noticed that I'm an unusual candidate, right? Single men aren't usually social workers' first choice for placements. But what I do is very specialized. I work specifically with kids who have had a really rough go of things, kids that have been in trouble or who have very specific needs—things that make them difficult to place otherwise. And whenever I get a new child—or young man, like yourself—I like to explain to them why.
"When I was a younger man, Peter, I had very different priorities. I was married, and I had two children—a son and a daughter—but my real love was my work. I was in finance, and it was very competitive and fast-paced and I was very good at it. My main goal—the only thing that was important to me—was making more money, because that was what made me feel important. It probably goes without saying, but my family suffered very much because of this. My obsession eventually led my wife to leave me, but even that wasn't enough of a wake-up call. I dismissed her as ungrateful, and I continued as I always had: ignorant to the pain I was causing others, so long as I got ahead.