Chapter Four: Lucky
Mr. Adams unchained the soda-drenched David and set him down on the floor. Wiping away his tears of shame, he did a head count of the children.
''Aren't there supposed to be thirteen of you?''
Kenny, his parka covering up his superhero outfit, took that as his cue to come down. He put on a show of babbling unintelligibly and pointing upstairs with the arm that did not have Karen attached to it like a vine. The social worker ran upstairs and into the kitchen, with the children following curiously.
The Weatherheads were pounding on each other and shouting obscenities back and forth (in Southern accents, for some reason). A spilled can of Pabst Blue Ribbon lay at their feet. Cartman laughed and started to film the unattractive scene on his cell phone camera, but Mr. Adams started crying again.
''Oh my god!'' he wailed. ''Kids, get yourselves outside while I call the police!''
Within minutes, the Weatherhead house was surrounded by police cars and TV cameras. To Kenny s delight, Cartman was the first to get handcuffs slapped on him, and he was dragged to a police car kicking and screaming. Then the drunken foster parents were dragged from the house, still screaming at each other and struggling against the officers' tight grips as they were forced to tell the whole country that they were "white trash in trouble''.
''What do we do with all these kids, Mr. Adams?'' asked one cop. ''Find them new foster homes?''
Adams shook his head, still in tears. ''No, officer! Make sure all these kids are taken back to their parents! The foster care system has become an embarrassment that nobody will want to be a part of...like a Penn State homecoming party!''
The joy on Karen's face as Adams said this made Kenny willing to forgive that last stupid, tasteless joke. ''Did you hear that, Kenny We can go home!''
Though it wasn't visible from under his parka, Kenny smiled too as he overheard a cop tell Cartman that he could possibly face two months in prison for filing a false police report. This had certainly been Kenny's day.
Once the Weatherheads and Cartman were gone, the remaining children were allowed to return to the house and pack. The girls were quiet as they got their things together; their feelings about returning to their parents were mixed. Some of the girls' parents had been in jail, like Karen's, or suffered from mental illnesses, or had been in some other situation that prevented them from caring for their daughters, and the girls silently worried about their futures.
''I wish I had a guardian angel too,'' Inez said sadly. ''You're really lucky, Karen.''
''Maybe you do,'' Karen suggested. ''Maybe you all do, and you just can't see them.''
''I guess so,'' Melissa hesitantly agreed.
Once everyone had packed, Karen saw that the other girls were in a group hug. As Karen had only been here for a few days, she hadn't formed attachments to any of her foster sisters, and felt more than a little awkward. She watched for a minute, and then left.
Kenny and Kevin were the only boys left in the house, the others having packed and left in a hurry. They waited in the hall for Karen, and when she came out of the girls' room, she wordlessly slipped her hands into theirs. The siblings walked downstairs together, and Kenny found that he liked this. Hopefully, his recent lucky streak would last awhile.
