AN~ I kind of talked out my butt for most of the ferret stuff. All I know about them is that they smell bad.
When she got back to the orphanage, Sabrina ran inside and up to Chris, who was standing in the hallway, looking very forlorn.
"Are they still here?" she asked anxiously, but she already knew the answer, and when Chris shook his head, it came as no surprise. She swallowed and looked down sadly. "I didn't even get to say goodbye."
"Are you all right?" Daphne asked, coming in the door herself and seeing her sister's expression
Sabrina shook her head, walking ahead faster and faster, until she was running, up to the dormitory. She had tried so hard to get back in time, and she'd just barely missed them, and now she'd probably never see them again, and it was so unfair, life was so unfair, that she almost took back her resolution not to cry anymore.
"Sabrina?" Daphne asked, walking into the room.
"Go away!" Sabrina half-shouted.
Daphne looked at her, shocked, and Sabrina was immediately sorry.
"I'm sorry," she said, "But I need some time alone. Go talk to Chris, all right? He's probably sad, too."
Daphne left, and Sabrina spent the rest of the afternoon curled up on her bed, shuddering with the tears she refused to let out.
Downstairs, Daphne and Chris were talking. Daphne explained to the other loners what had happened at their last foster home, and how she had been a little mad at Sabrina before, because that had been a good foster home, but she wasn't mad anymore. How could she be angry when Sabrina was so sad? Chris laughed and tousled her hair, telling her she was a good kid. But Dare and Jason's departure was the beginning of the end for the loners, and soon after, the quieter, weaker loners started to trickle into other groups, or into permanent foster homes, or, for some of the juvie kids, back to their real homes, because Dare had been the heart and soul of the group, and without her, things started to fall apart.
It didn't help that it took Sabrina most of November to recover from the loss, and it was only by the first week of December that she started to really step into Dare's shoes as the bane of all authority figures in the building. Even then, she was changed. She was quieter, laughed less, didn't enjoy things as much. Daphne, as a result, was even louder and more chipper than before. After a few weeks of that, Ms. Smirt finally got fed up and decided it was time for them to go to another foster home.
And so it was that Sabrina and Daphne found themselves in Ms. Smirt's office yet again, facing Mr. Drisco, a single middle aged man with brown hair, beady eyes, and a twitching, pointy nose.
"Nice to meet you, kiddos," Mr. Drisco said. "You like ferrets?"
"Uhhhh..." Sabrina said. Then Ms. Smirt pinched her, hard. "Sure," she said. After all, it wasn't a lie, she'd never been around a ferret, so she didn't know whether she liked them or not.
"Good," Mr. Drisco said, his demeanor becoming much more cheerful. "Then you'll like my house. I'm a ferret farmer. You'll help me take care of them, right?"
"Of course!" Daphne said, seeing Ms. Smirt's fingers approaching her back.
They headed out to the cab. On the way there, the whole way to Mr. Drisco's apartment building, and all the way up to the top floor, Mr. Drisco raved about the ferrets. The girls learned more about the small critters than they'd ever wanted to know (not that Sabrina had been too interested in the first place). They learned that their fur was good for stuffing into pillows, weaving, and pretty much doing anything with; that they could be trained to do practically anything; that their milk tasted good; that they sold for a good price; that they were a thousand times better than dogs, whatever the landlord thought.
Sabrina sensed more than a little animosity there, and she wondered what Jason thought about ferrets, or dogs. She knew he liked cats best of all, but maybe he liked dogs, too. Sabrina liked dogs, and had always wanted one, but she wasn't about to say as much to Mr. Drisco. Instead, she asked him if he did anything other than farm ferrets.
"Yes, actually," Mr. Drisco said. "My landlord raised the rent, so now I wait tables at the restaurant down the street. We'll probably eat there a lot- I get a discount. But that's why I decided to adopt you. I needed someone to take care of my babies while I'm at work. You won't be able to go to school, of course, but that's all right. If things work out, you'll grow up to be ferret farmers, too, and you don't need to go to school to do that."
"Right..." Sabrina said. She got the feeling that this wasn't going to work out.
The feeling just got stronger when she went inside the apartment. There were ferrets crawling all over the place: in the tub, on the stove, through the beds, in and out of tubes that ran along the walls... everywhere!
"I keep my best ones here," Mr. Drisco explained, "And the average ones stay up on the roof. Your room is down the hall. Just tell Dorie to move when you get in there, she thinks that's her room."
"Dorie?" Daphne asked.
"The pregnant one," Mr. Drisco said. "That's why she's inside."
"So how do we take care of them?" Sabrina asked.
"Just fill up their food and water bowls, then play with them. They like attention."
"How much attention?" Sabrina asked warily.
Mr. Drisco, smiled, picking up one of his 'babies.' "Pretty much constant. That's why you can't go to school." He kissed the ferret on the nose, then looked at his watch. "Now, I have to go to work, ta-ta!" He walked out the door with a smile.
That was when the real trouble started.
The ferrets swarmed the two girls. After a minute's terror and a long shriek, Sabrina started beating the animals back with her suitcase, shouting for Daphne to join her. They fought their way to their bedroom, where Sabrina pushed Daphne inside, giving the ferrets one last whack with her suitcase before she joined Daphne in the room, slamming the door behind her and leaning on it, panting.
"Um... Sabrina?" Daphne asked. She sounded worried.
Sabrina looked over at her sister warily. "What?"
"There's one in here," Daphne said, "And she looks scary."
Sabrina's eyes follwed her sister's pointing finger to the corner of the room, where she stared at the biggest ferret yet, a huge brown thing with nasty, sharp teeth, dripping saliva onto one of the two beds. The ferret snarled at them, and then it charged.
Sabrina jumped onto the other bed, dragging Daphne with her. The ferret snarled, climbing up the covers to get at them. Sabrina shoved the covers off the bed, burying the ferret. It immediately started thrashing around, shaking the mound, trying to find a way out. Sabrina shoved Daphne on top of the pile of blankets.
"Keep it from getting out!" she yelled, heading for her suitcase. She opened it, dumped it out, and raced back to Daphne, who had just been bitten through the blanket. "Get back on the bed, now!"
Daphne complied, and the ferret scrambled out through the hole she'd bitten in the blankets. Sabrina positioned the suitcase, then slammed it down on top of the ferret. The suitcase began to slide across the floor with scratchy noises, and corners of it lifted up off the floor. Sabrina sat down hard on the suitcase, eyes wild and hair messy as she resolutely set about ignoring the snarls and scrambling coming from underneath her.
"That wasn't very nice of you, pushing me on top of her," Daphne pouted, nursing her bitten arm.
"Sorry," Sabrina apologized. "I had to be fast, and one of us needed to stay there."
"You could have sent me for the suitcase," Daphne muttered, "Or at least warned me."
"I said I'm sorry," Sabrina said. "But there wasn't time."
"It's okay," Daphne said, "But don't do it again." She smiled at her sister. "That was a close one."
"Right," Sabrina panted. "I hate ferrets. With a burning passion."
"I think that was Delia, or whatever her name was," Daphne said. "She's pregnant. Animals get fierce when they're protecting their babies, even if they haven't been born yet."
"I don't really care right now," Sabrina said. "See if you can find something heavy, will you? I don't want her getting out, and I can't sit her forever."
Daphne searched the room, coming up with a large book of ferret breeds after several minutes. "Does this work?"
"Yeah," Sabrina said, replacing herself with it, and getting up to fix the bed. "Thanks."
"How are we going to get out?" Daphne asked.
"We could... climb out the window and down the fire escape," Sabrina suggested.
"No, you don't have a suitcase," Daphne said. "Plus, I don't want to get locked in the basement again."
Sabrina sighed. "I guess we'll climb up the fire escape, then. If we can get what's her face locked in the suitcase, we could bring her out to the roof. He said that's where he keeps the rest of them."
They spent a few minutes trying to figure out how to accomplish that, then decided to slide one of the blankets under the suitcase to keep her in while they snapped it shut, dragging the blanket out again after they were done. Then they headed up to the roof, dragging the suitcase after them. They dumped the ferret out into the mesh pen that took up most of the roof, then went downstairs again to try and escape the ferrets that attacked them whenever they left the room.
Over the next two weeks, they discovered that the ferrets hated Daphne much more than Sabrina, taking every opportunity to chase her. They seemed to have a strange affinity for her arm, which gained a number of welts throughout the time they stayed there. Sabrina wondered if it had something to do with the pregnant one's first bite.
Sabrina spent most of her time helping Daphne fend off ferrets and trying not to think about Jason. But she finally snapped when, one day, she had left her shoes in the kitchen, and went to put them on to feed the outside ferrets. When she put her feet in the shoes, she felt a warm wetness and heard a loud squelch.
The ferrets had peed in her shoes.
That was the last straw.
"Daphne, we're leaving," Sabrina said, kicking her feet free. "Go pack, I have to wash my shoes. And my socks."
She stalked down to the laundry room fiercely in her bare feet, then decided leaving wasn't enough. Besides, they'd need a distraction to keep Mr. Drisco from looking for them. So she concocted a plan. Once her socks and shoes were dry, she headed upstairs, passing the apartment and going out onto the roof. Once there, she stalked over to the ferret's cage, glared at them, and opened the door. Then she headed back down to the apartment.
"Time to go," she told Daphne. "You ready?"
Daphne nodded. She didn't want to get stuck in the basement, but she'd had enough of ferrets, too, and these ones were evil. It was like a scene from a horror movie, with the ferrets following her, trained on her arm. Besides, Sabrina was her big sister, and she'd follow her anywhere- most times.
The two headed for the fire escape. Sabrina didn't close the bedroom door behind them, or the window. As they climbed down into the street, a wave of ferrets swarmed out the window and off the roof behind them, climbing all over the building. Sabrina watched them with some satisfaction, then turned away, not looking back.
"Where are we going?" Daphne asked.
"No idea," Sabrina said grimly. "All I know is, we're not going to the orphanage."
"Ms. Smirt's probably going to find us again," Daphne pointed out.
"I know," Sabrina said.
Daphne glanced at Sabrina. "You know we're just going to get punished worse."
"I don't care anymore, Daffy," Sabrina said. "I'm sick and tired of stupid, or crazy, or just plain evil grown-ups trying to control my life. I'm perfectly capable of taking care of me, and you. We don't need them, and-"
"And what?" a cruel, cold voice said from behind them.
