Erin's POV

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The next morning, the alarm blared, waking me up. I groaned, glared at the clock and flung it across the room somewhere. Fire, as usual, got up first, and ran to switch off the alarm. I sat up, cursing the very word school.

Marya immediately marched out of the room to go get her breakfast, while Fire and I got dressed. In Marya's eyes, the less time spent with us, the better, which meant she left us alone a lot of the time. But that was fine by us.

We met Jam downstairs, and had breakfast, scrambled eggs and bacon, before marching determinedly to the door. In the orphanage, only the kids under seven got driven to school (because they couldn't fit everyone in the minibus), the rest could catch the bus or walk, as long as they got up at the right time, and so, we were free to leave for school anytime we wanted, as long as we got there on time.

When we arrived at school, we were the first of our form in.

"So," I asked, when we'd finished sorting out our books for the day, "How are you going to get detentions?"

Jam grinned and said two words, "Gorilla essay," Which would probably work, as his was so offending.

"Me too," I told him, "What about you, Fire?" I asked.

"I'll not hand in my maths homework," She said.

"Well then, we're all good!" I muttered with fake enthusiasm.

The day passed slowly and I was almost completely consumed with boredom, only a small part of my brain was worried about what would happen later on today. Ashley came in then, with a load of her friends from our form. She gave us one of her award winning scowls, and then went back to talking with everyone else.

Fire got her detention in Maths, looking very upset by the fact that she now had a tiny stain on her perfect record.

When we came into English, luck was with us; Mr. Spleed was in a very bad mood, so it wouldn't take much to make him give us detentions.

Sure enough, minutes after we'd handed in our essays, Mr. Spleed screamed, "Jam Lansfield! Erin Laurel! Come here now!"

He even read out some of our essays to prove his point, which set the class off into hysterical laughter, and, in turn made him angrier. He shoved the essays back in our hands and roared. "Detention, both of you! After school until five o'clock!"

We went back to our seats, trying not to look too relieved. The only people in the class not laughing at us were Fire and Ashley, both of whom were scowling.

"What did you put in your essays?" She hissed at us as we sat back down next to her.

We gave her our essays to read through. By the time she'd finished looking at them, she looked ready to kill us.

The rest of the day went faster, now that we knew that we wouldn't be able to go home until five. Or, at least that was what we thought, until the end of the school day, at half four, Mr. Spleed and Ms. Pine, our maths teacher, came rushing up to us.

"You! You won't be able to have your detention tonight. All the detention rooms are full. I've swapped it for tomorrow night." Mr. Spleed growled at Jam and me then stormed off.

"I'm afraid that you won't be getting a detention after all Fire! All that hassle over nothing! It turned out that the maths papers didn't need to be in until tomorrow! Silly me!" Ms. Pine told a delighted Fire, then walked off.

Jam and I stared after the two teachers in horror.

"I can't believe I got off!" Fire yelped happily.

"Neither can I," I muttered, "Ashley must have something thing to do with this, c'mon," I told the others, heading towards after school care, which was in the hall.

But when we arrived there, it was to find a very angry teacher shuffling everyone out of the hall yelling, "After school care isn't on tonight kids! There is a staff meeting here instead! Didn't you all get letters?"

All the other kids looked ecstatic by this news. "No after school club! Fantastic!"

"Ashley," The three of us muttered in disgust.

"What now," Jam asked us, as we were swept outside by the crowd of kids. "Bus?"

"Yeah, the last one leaves at 4:40 though, so if we want to get there in time to catch it, we'd better hurry."

We ran down the street, and saw, to our horror, the last bus pull out of the bus stop.

"Hey!" Jam frowned, looking at his watch. "That one was early!"

"Or it could've been late?" I asked.

Fire shook her head, "It was the 65 bus, which is the last one of the day, and the one before that's the 47, so it couldn't just have been late."

We turned back, hoping to be able to hide out in the school until five, but the teacher was just shutting the gates behind us.

"I guess there's nothing else to do," I sighed, eyeing the road that led back to the orphanage.

"Guess not," Fire muttered, and started walking. I came up next to her.

"At least we'll finally find out what all of this is about," I said, trying to remain positive.

Jam was still standing in front of the deserted school gates. "Wait a second!" He said hurrying to catch up with us. "You guys are actually just gonna walk in to trap? That's crazy!"

"Well, it's most likely that Ashley will have gotten someone to make sure that we got a move on if they spotted us trying to wait back there. And anyway, we've got a slight advantage against whoever's trying to 'collect' us 'cos we know what they're doing, so if they jump out at us, we'll run away rather than stand there staring at them like idiots. Who knows, maybe we'll get away from them, or maybe this whole thing is Ashley playing a stupid joke on us," I said.

"We'll that hologram wasn't exactly a practical joke thing, was it?" Fire pointed out.

"Thank you," I told her with mock irritation, "For crushing my dream into a thousand tiny pieces."

Fire grinned, "Any time,"

Jam looked at us weirdly, but didn't say anything.

I was really nervous, but I didn't have anything on Jam, who was practically shaking with fear.

"You need to do scary stuff more often," I told him.

Jam smiled faintly. "Well, it's OK doing scary stuff if it involves pissing somebody off, but apart from that, I'm a complete coward."

I grinned, then teased him, "Your sister looks like she wants to go up and slap every single one of these dudes for even daring to come near us. There is a lot of differences between you two."

Jam got what I was hinting about. "Oh, come on. Don't older sisters have to look after their younger brothers or something? Besides, I'm not that cowardly" Jam argued. Fire had always prided herself in being older than Jam, even if it had only been by a few minutes.

"Um… Jam, you just admitted to being… how did you put it? Oh yes! A complete coward," Fire told him as we turned the corner, into the street another street, and saw immediately the gate to the disused park.

I gulped, my mouth going dry. Jam suddenly lost his urgency to argue with his sister.

"What was that phrase again," I whispered, don't ask me why I did, it just felt appropriate, "Out of the saucepan and into the fire?"

"Oh God." Fire muttered, "You are so helpless!"

But she didn't say anything else. We were about ten metres away from the park now. None of us said anything. I glanced around, forcing myself to look everywhere but the park. Five metres away. Jam shivered, and walked closer to us. Three metres away. Fire was looking straight ahead, refusing to look at either of us. Zero metres away.