Lola Ride: OK. Maybe the rules will change by then. And if they don't I'll just keep talking to you like this.

Chapter 9

In all of Andrew Sword's eleven years of life he could never recall being more scared than he had been when Wednesday and Billy were being held hostage at the school- or more guilty. The same image of him snatching a shiny green sucker from Wednesday's fist and watching her crestfallen face as he took the piece of candy that she had been good all day to get and jammed it in his mouth. She had kicked him hard enough to leave a waffle sized bruise, but you could tell she would rather have had the sucker.

And he had been so scared that he was going to lose his little sister and the last thing he had ever done for her was snatch a piece of candy. He felt inside of the pocket of his baggy pajama pants that had started out as Billy's and been passed down to him and felt the sucker that he had bought with the five dollars he had found.

Tiptoeing into the kitchen he saw Wednesday curled up with a blanket on top of the refrigerator. He chuckled, Wednesday loved to sleep in odd places. He stretched up and felt around for Wednesday's little fist. Once he found it he gently places the stick of the candy into her hand.

He was finally able to go to sleep after that.

-CBTD -

Everyone at school had heard what had happened by the time they went back to school. Wednesday felt subconscious and all of her siblings subconsciously formed a protective wall around the pail girl who still wasn't totally recovered from all the traumatic experiences that had been going on lately. She was doing well, but a seven year old girl isn't made to cope with the death of her parents and being held hostage in her elementary school all in the same month. At least she didn't have detention any more, just counseling.

But it didn't come as a surprise when Todd Hanks started bothering Wednesday again. After four days it was even less of a surprise when Tyler got a call from the school telling him that Wednesday and Todd had been fighting again and Wednesday was suspended for four days. He was disappointed in her, but there was no way on Earth that he would have the heart to punish her.

With the way the Swords were acting, you would think that somebody had died. All of their grades were slipping, they were getting in trouble all the time, and they were distant from everyone. The Bakers tried not to judge, but everyone else had loose lips about their suspicions of drugs and drinking in the Swords' apartment. It was no longer a shock to Tyler whenever one of his siblings came home with a split lip, a black eye, or a limp. They could no longer stand what people said, a person can only take so much. They had snapped.

No one, including the Swords, could understand what was happening to them. Were they going crazy? Were they in shock? What was going on?

"Tyler?" Suzy had asked out of the blue one day. "Are we going to go to hell?"

Tyler had frozen when she asked that. "Why would you think that?" Suzy shrugged.

"Because the kids at school say that bad people fight and since we fight we're going to go to hell," she explained, picking an apple out of the fruit bowl and biting into it.

"We're no bad people," Tyler said. "We're just having a hard time. Your siblings aren't taking it well and some kids at school are being mean so they fight so that maybe the mean kids won't bother them anymore."

"Oh," Suzy said, picking a brown spot off of the apple with her fingers. "Okay. What's for dinner?"

Suzy hadn't mentioned it again, but the question stuck in Tyler's mind. Is that what his siblings thought? Did they still believe that they were good people or did they think that they were going to hell like Suzy had said? He had lost sleep and given himself a headache with those questions dancing around in his mind and had finally dropped it.

-CBTD-

Tyler had just pulled on his shirt and jeans when the knock at the door came. He glances at the clock, 6:34, before opening it. A woman in a crisp blue blouse and a man in a thin, white button up shirt were at the door and Tyler self-consciously glances around the small, messy apartment. With a sigh he opened up the door.

"Can I help you?" he asked the two people.

"Are you Tyler Sword?" the man asked in a loud, deep voice. Tyler nodded and the woman then spoke.

"I'm Donna Duncan from the social services," Tyler stomach flopped, "and this is Bob Clarke from the juvenile delinquency home. (I made this up. I have no clue what would actually happen in this situation.) You're siblings are becoming juvenile delinquents and we no longer believe you are capable of caring for them. We're here to collect them."

I'm evil aren't I?