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The floor was covered with one of those puzzle piece foam mats with animals on the tiles. Leo didn't say anything, but she could hear him sucking in a breath, and if she looked now she was pretty sure his eyes would be wide open. Even Vivi let herself grin. "Okay," she said, "this is pretty good." And then, with a laugh, she ran and jumped onto the blue bed. "This one's mine! You wanted the pink one, right Zhuzhu?"

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"Hey, that one's mine," said Leo, frowning at her, but she just ignored him. She knew that he only said that because Mother always bought boy things in boring colors for him, and sometimes the help said he was weird if they saw him with 'girl stuff'. Leo really did like pink, and everyone thought Vivi was bossy and didn't think about other people, so she had figured out that if she took all of his stuff, then Leo could have the pink things he wanted sometimes.

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They were wrong about her too, of course. She thought about other people a lot. It was just that most people weren't nice to her, so she had to be mean right back at them, or else she would get bullied, and Leo would get bullied too. She could deal with it, probably, but Leo was a baby and he would cry, so she had better act up as much as she could so he didn't get picked on too much.

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And she had to play these awful grown-up games with them of pretending to be meaner and brattier and more awful than she was, and doing things to force them to do stuff for her, because if she just pointed out that what they were doing was bad or unfair, they would ignore her or tell her she was being a brat or something. They were the ones who made up the rules to their game, so if they didn't like how Vivi played, that was their problem.

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She liked pink stuff too, actually, but she wasn't going to die if she didn't have it. Blue was okay too, even if it wasn't as cute. And people were always giving her pink stuff anyway, so it was fine if Leo got some of it, when no one ever gave any to him.

Vivi saw a very small smile on Leo's face, tucked away like he was trying to keep a secret, as he climbed onto the bed and tested it.

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That was good enough for her. She jumped off the blue bed and began looking around the room, to see what the rest of it was like. There was a bookshelf, but she ignored that. She wasn't good at reading yet, and the books were probably no good anyway. Mother didn't spend enough time with them to know what they actually liked, and the kinds of things she would want them to read were all educational books about how to keep quiet and obey your elders and all that junk.

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The only thing she seemed to care about was how easy it was to ignore them, and Vivi had no interest in playing along with what she wanted.

The window, she decided, was pretty good. It was a very big window, and it had one of those ledges under it for sitting, which was padded and had a couple of stuffed animals sitting on it. The stuffed animals were even pretty good, fluffy and soft and nice to hug.

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Sometimes the stuffed animals they got were the kind that were only good for decoration, the same as almost everything else in their house. What was the point of that? She had never really understood it. These ones were fine though. It didn't make up for the situation they were in, but at least not everything about this place was completely terrible.

"Look, Leo, this one's a dinosaur." Vivi held up one of the toys, a green stegosaurus that was probably half as big as she was.

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She waved its little paws around in the air, and made a growling noise.

"Stegosaurus doesn't growl like that," Leo pointed out.

"You're no fun, you know that?" Vivi stuck her tongue out at him, and Leo frowned back at her. "I'm gonna ask for a shark next. We should go shopping for more toys, this room doesn't have enough." She didn't actually know that for sure, since she hadn't had a good look in any of the cabinets yet, but knowing their mother, she probably hadn't actually bought enough.

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And they hadn't been allowed to take a lot of things with them either, on account of everything happening in such a hurry. Vivi was a little cross about that too. She had had a lot of really nice and pretty dresses that she had wanted to take with her, but she had only been allowed to pack two.

The only thing that made it better was knowing that she could buy more. They could buy whatever they wanted, so long as it kept them quiet.

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Vivi didn't know when she had learned that rule. It felt kind of like she had always known it. She definitely didn't think Mother actually told them that was how it worked, but they could almost always buy something if they wanted it, so long as it wasn't something that would make Mother really really mad, like knives or guns, or something that would attract a lot of attention. Toys and clothes and all, that stuff was easy. If she wanted it, she could have it.

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They really should go shopping soon. She needed more than two pretty dresses, and they needed more toys, and picking out new things would make them both feel better. Or it would make her feel better, anyway. She didn't think Leo liked stuff as much as she did, but that might have been because his head was still full of thoughts of Mother. If he stopped caring about her so much the way Vivi did, he would probably feel better faster too.

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But she couldn't say that to him either, because then he would say that she had to be filial, whatever that meant. It sounded like a word that grown-ups used to get kids to do whatever they wanted, so she didn't care about that kind of thing.

Leo climbed off his bed, and came up to join her on the sitting ledge in front of the window. He climbed up and scooted forward on his knees until he could press his face up against the glass.

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He didn't say anything, but his eyes went wide again, so Vivi turned around so she could look too. They were real high up, just like they had been before, so she didn't think there would be anything really interesting to see. In their old house, it had been buildings and buildings and buildings, all around. Sometimes it was fun to watch the people crawling around like little ants, but only for a while. It was hard to see anything so far down.

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If she did it for too long her eyes would start to hurt, and she had little toy soldiers that she could play with, which were much more fun because she could move them around.

This place was different though. There were still a lot of buildings, but most of them weren't as tall as the ones she remembered from their old house. And past all the buildings she could see something else: a big wide blue ocean, just like in the movies.