Rites of Passage | Damian x OC

8. Coffee with a Side of Karma

"What on earth did you do to your hair?"

Lora's eyes nearly bugging out of her skull was an amusing sight, and Jess had to bite back the urge to laugh. She'd already known her aunt wouldn't approve of her impulsive decision to dye her locks an unconventional color, but nothing would have prepared her for the cartoonish look of horror and stupor on the woman's face.

"I dyed it," she answered matter-of-factly as she stood at the bottom of the staircase with two suitcases on the shiny, hardwood floor.

"You dyed it blue." Lora's tone was thick with incredulity.

The teen remained silent, watching her struggle to process the fact that her niece's whole head was now a bold shade of indigo from root to tip, all twenty inches of it. She could practically see the gears turning in Lora's head as she wrestled with the idea that, between yesterday afternoon when they'd last seen each other and this morning, Jess had managed to do something so unexpected.

It was like she'd woken up with blue skin with the way the woman was reacting.

Her hand went up to rub at her face tiredly before swatting it in the air, like she could just wave away the nightmare. "Never mind. Just... get in the car."

Lips twitching into the smallest of smiles, Jess wheeled the suitcases out the front door of the house and to the luxury car waiting in the driveway. Sporting unnatural hair colors wasn't new to her, not after she'd left her aunt's for good last year. In the months following, she'd experimented with bleach first, trying out blonde for a little while before slapping on purple, then pink dye. Most of it had to do with changing her appearance to evade anyone looking for her—although, she'd always doubted her aunt was actually trying to find her—but at the same time, there was something therapeutic and melodramatic about making such spontaneous decisions when life was just kicking your ass.

Besides, Lora was no longer going to be responsible for Jess, at least for the summer, so the teen felt even less inclined to do anything that she would have deemed appropriate or within her rules—not that she'd felt all that willing in the first place. It was one of the handful of consequences Gotham's juvenile court judge had ordered after her first and only hearing a few weeks ago. The two of them hadn't stayed in the city for more than a few days after the library incident, having had her arraignment and then been granted permission to return to Central City until the hearing. In spite of Jess's initial thoughts, Lora had found a lawyer through her professional network, one who had done his best to gain the teen the most reasonable and rehabilitative punishments that would keep her out of juvie.

That meant a plea agreement constituting many hours of community service, probation, and out-of-home placement, none of which Jess had ever done before. Apparently, the judge had (accurately, in her eyes) determined it would be a good idea to remove Jess from Lora's care and see how much better she fared in another environment. Cue the decision to be fostered with a new family or live with other juveniles in a shelter, and Jess had chosen the latter.

Her reasoning was simple: she wasn't really fond of the idea that she'd have to find a place within a family of strangers. The last time she had taken that chance, she'd gone and made a lot of mistakes, then they'd turned around and rejected her without warning.

And here she was.

The charges against her were burglary, theft-larceny, and assault and battery, terms that she'd never before thought sounded as frightening as they did now. She had her young age, the decision to turn in Jax and the gang, as well as no actual murders working in her favor, but it hardly seemed like a silver lining in the mess she'd gotten into. People had still gotten hurt by her hands... that in itself felt unforgivable.