The state of things...

Fred sat at the small writing desk she tucked in the corner of 'their' room, the one and only place she really felt she'd left her mark on since moving in. There had been thoughts like that before, when she first showed up in Boston, about holes and just exactly how they get filled in. The loss of someone you loved better than yourself, a dart in a board or even the snap of a chair, they all left holes. Holes and cracks and fine lines that splintered away from the surface, so a thing can never be put together the same way again. Even pegs in holes, as a kid, Fred remembered that too. There were stars and squares, and a circle that caught them all inside, those brightly colored plastic shapes. Only they never fit exactly. It was all mass produced, and one was never a perfect family for the other. There was always that bit of space of something left out.

She looked down at the blotter on the desk, and Fred realized she'd been covering it with shapes and numbers, stars and squares and all the others. With a hiss of breath she forced the pen down, careful to push her newly finished lesson plans out of the way. Those weren't to be doodled on.

The President had been on the other night, hadn't he? She briefly remembered that, and the way he rambled on without saying anything, again. The way he'd chattered on in ways that even she couldn't follow. It wasn't the State of the Union, that night. It really wasn't any sort of state of anything, at all. But it did make Fred wonder about her. What was her -- what was the state of Fred? She figured it just might be time to adress that.

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