Day Seven < | Challenge Home Page | > Day Nine

Jazmyn woke up early... and bored. So she did some experimenting. That Mental skill wasn't going to raise itself.

Benji and Phoenix were up early - Benji found Phoenix working on his homework last minute in the twins' room... so he elected to help him work on it to get it done faster (although Benji's idea of "help" wasn't really Phoenix's... and I'm not sure how much faster it really was. At least it did get done in time, though.)

Marnie and Bennie actually had time to sit down together for breakfast before the twins got up again, although Bennie was FAR from talkative. And by the look on his face, Marnie decided not to push him.

After breakfast, Marnie set about trying to fix everything that had gone wrong with the house already. Before long, the toddlers were awake, however, and having spare time to fix things went out the window.

Bennie's mood was atrocious. Yes, he'd been doing really well at work... but the bills had come in this morning.. and when he looked at the bank account, even someone who wasn't good with numbers could tell he wasn't going to be able to pay them any time soon. His only choice was to open the store, and spend what little cash he had on advertising a sale. Maybe that would get enough people in the store to make opening it worthwhile?

Oblivious to the looming financial crisis, Marnie was scrubbing toddlers, and floors, and counters, and toilets.. It seemed she never ran out of things to scrub.

Brett was teaching himself some skills.. since nobody else seemed to be interested in teaching them to him.

By the time school let out, the storm that had been brewing in the morning was starting to hit. So playing outside was out of the question. While walking through the store to head upstairs, Jaz noticed one of the customers. And unfortunately, Billie Jang had noticed her, too. It was the girl who'd been torturing her at school (with the help of her friends.. and now, the rest of the school, too.) Billie snidely jeered at her across the room, and Jaz had had a bad enough day that instead of ignoring her, she simply jeered back.

... Which, unfortunately, delighted Billie, who had been trying to taunt a response out of Jaz for a week now. Jaz fighting back finally was Billie's idea of a good day.

On the other side of the store, Benji noticed his best friend, Jay, was perusing the toys, so he headed over to say hello. It turned out Jay's younger brother had a birthday coming up, so Jay was sort of casing the joint to look for something he could swipe for his brother. Benji didn't think there was any reason to tell Bennie to expect some unexpected inventory discrepancies today, and gave Jay an enthusiastic welcome.

Upstairs, the twins were pestering their older brothers, who were having an after school snack. Cold breakfast. Yum. Phoenix poked fun at his brother, calling him a brown noser, and blaming him for the fact that he had HAD to do his homework this morning. Myles blinked at his brother, unconcerned, and went back to eating.

Downstairs, Billie had most definitely gotten the reaction she had wanted. Incensed, Jaz finally grabbed Billie's ponytail and yanked. Hard.

The rest of the store noticed the fight, and headed over to spectate. (Jay took advantage of the moment and snagged an airplane for his brother, stuffing it into his leather jacket's pocket.)

Bennie, however.. had NOT noticed yet, and was ringing up another customer. As soon as the sale was complete, however, he turned around and couldn't help but notice the fight.

He wasn't sure who it was, but there was no fighting in HIS store... so he went to break it up, his bad mood spiraling into a worse one.

... Then he found out it was HIS kid who was breaking the rules. And he could only see red. Not only had Jaz LOST the fight, she was now in big trouble.

Jazmyn waited until Bennie wandered off to help other people, then threatened Billie should she ever try to come to this store again. (Billie didn't get time to answer.. as Jaz ran upstairs to start her homework... but based on the fact that she then confidently picked out a few toys and went to get her purchases rung up by Bennie... she had no intention of following Jaz's directives.)

Marnie, by this time, was hard at work restocking the store... and had decided Jaz had been yelled at enough. She let Jaz head upstairs unhindered, and continued her restocking.

Benji was still talking to Jay.. or congratulating him on a good swipe, I'm not sure which.

What Jay wasn't telling him... was that everyone knew about Benji's secret. Jay had told Cade, and of course Cade had told his girlfriend, Shaylee, who .. was flattered, but not interested in Benji that way... had quickly told her friends.. and from there it went to the rest of the school. The last to know would be Benji. And Jay didn't want to be the one to let him know. So he didn't. He finished the conversation and headed back home with his new toy airplane as Bennie finished closing up the store, still not noticing the missing airplane.

Upstairs, Phoenix was listening to music way too loud.. and Brett was complaining. Even more loudly.

One look at Bennie's face, however stopped all of that, and everyone shuffled off to get ready to go to bed. Bennie raged, mostly internally, and pulled out some more cheese to refill the mousetraps... and laid down to sleep.

Marnie finally finished restocking.. and headed back upstairs. But didn't make it through the storm unmolested. Lightning luckily only struck once.. and .. too exhausted to take yet another shower, she went straight to bed.

Unbeknownst to the adults who were sound asleep, Phoenix woke up after a nightmare.. (pretty close to the same one Benji had the night before, if not the same one.) and, feeling disgusting, he snuck out of bed to go take a quick bath.

After Phoenix left the room, Jaz woke to a nightmare, as well. (Poor baby wasn't having a good day.)

Phoenix finished his bath and crawled back into bed silently. Luckily.. that was the end of the night. Not the end of the storm, however, because that raged into the next day.

Day Seven < | Challenge Home Page | > Day Nine