Bullet Point

Chapter 10: Falling

"Can you help me with my homework?" Chad heaves a big three-ring binder onto the table and places his pencil next to it, looking hopefully up at Mrs. James. 

"Uh, sure. Oh, fractions. My favorite." Mrs. James smiles.

"Mom, can me and Jess go upstairs?" Darien drags Jessica up the stairs like he's not even waiting for an answer.

Mrs. James pushes her reading glasses up on top of her head. "Hell no."

Darien sighs and Jessica pouts at him. 

"Why not?" He pleas.

"Because I'm your mother, and those are the rules. Just hang out in the den." Mrs. James is about to shoo them when her phone starts to ring and she takes a deep breath. 

As soon as she picks it up and looks away, Darien and Jessica run off into the den in a fit of giggles. 

Chad keeps working on his assignment and hums lightly to himself. 

Mrs. James's face pales. "Yes this is Diane." She stands up and grips the back of a chair, her jaw dropping open slightly. "Oh my god." she breathes. "Are you serious?" her lip quivers a little. "How?"

"What's wrong?" Chad asks. 

"Kids!" Mrs. James cries out, holding back a few tears. "Kids!"

Everyone files down and around the stairs and looks at her like she's insane.

"What?" Naya almost laughs and Christal gives her a hateful look.

"Ninette's in the hospital. Darien, Tre, Mads, go get in the car. Jessica, can you watch everyone?"  Mrs. James grabs a scarf off of the coat rack and wraps it around her neck. 

"Uh, i guess?" Jessica says uneasily, looking at all the kids like they'll give her a disease if she gets too close.

"Why can't I be in charge? I'm just as old as Jess!" Naya protests.

"I don't have time for this. My daughter's in pain." Mrs. James runs out the door, the three kids following suit behind her. 

"All she cares about is her real kids." Hailey mutters. "She didn't even ask if we wanted to go."

"Well when's the last time any of us ever did anything for Ninette?" Adrian says angrily. "I'm the only one here who actually cares about her!" He argues.

Naya shrugs. "Well it's not like she ever shows any compassion for us."

"That's not true." Christal says. "She watches out for all of us."

"Name. One. Time." Naya tries her.

Christal looks down a little, like she's avoiding looking at Cya. "She caught me dealing at school. She made me promise not to do it again."

"That doesn't mean anything." Hailey sneers.

Christal sighs. "But she didn't take the drugs away from me. She let me know why I should stop, and then gave me the choice of what to do about it. She cares."

"Whatever." Naya blows it off.

Chad looks up. "She flashed her gun at a kid when he was threatening to hit me in the hallway." 

"She showed me around and talked to me when no one else would." Eamon chimes in and the all give the same new kid look they had been since he got there.

Everyone gets sort of quiet after that. "She always tried to talk to me." Cya says and everyone exchanges those glances again. "Even though she knew I wouldn't respond." 

Christal hugs Cya warmly and Adrian speaks up again. "We all owe Ninette alot." before trudging back up to his room. 

.

***

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"How is she?" Madison asks once they make it to Ninette's room.

"Stable. She's still asleep, but she'll be okay." The nurse says.

Darien nudges in front of Tre, "What exactly happened?" 

The nurse flips through the charts in her hands. "It says here that she fell out of a helicopter onto an abandoned rooftop. Luckily, she landed on a sack of something, otherwise she might have snapped her spine in half and killed herself." 

"Fell out of a helicopter?" Mrs. James looks horrified, and steadies herself by sitting down in a plush waiting room chair. "I swear, everyday she's working at that job i fear for her life. She's been injured before- even shot, but never anything like this."

Tre squints. "Remind me again how her doing this stuff is legal?"

"The government makes the labor laws. She's working for the government, so I guess it slides?" Mrs. James tries. 

"I'll get us some coffee." Madison excuses herself and walks off down the hall.

She didn't have a sudden desire to make a drink run, but Madison needed a moment to herself.

No matter what genetics said, Ninette was as much Madison's sister as anything.

They're siblings, best friends, and even each other's dates when neither of them got asked to homecoming freshman year.

There were entire photo albums filled with pictures of Madison and Ninette when they were little.

The only thing missing from the family albums, are baby pictures. 

The day Madison got adopted, she was a little bit too young to understand. 

She was barely 5 years old, and all she knew was that she was being moved clear to the other side of the world. 

Madison can barely even remember Australia nowadays. 

Her and Ninette agreed that they would spend a summer abroad there after graduation, and Madison wouldn't know what to do if she lost Ninette.

She thanked God for saving Ninette's life and then pushed the thought out of her head and tried to replace it with a more positive notion. 

Even Tre felt thankful. 

What if Ninette had died?

He'd been lying to her so much lately- about Naya.

Tre had been lying to pretty much everyone in the past few months. 

He knew it was wrong what they were doing, that it could get Naya sent away.

But it also felt right.

He spent an hour at the school library last week researching the codes on relationships between foster siblings.

He had hoped there would be an exception that said foster kids and adopted kids were okay, but there wasn't. 

If anyone found out about him, he would never see Naya again. 

And he wasn't okay with that. 

As much as this accident sucked, it seemed to have given everyone a much-needed wakeup call.