the spade brothers' little sister

fifteen

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The next few days passed slowly and uneventfully. Jace was on his laptop and his phone all day every day making phone calls for his work. He seemed really stressed out because of everything he had to do and I think not being able to go into his office made it worse.

Charlie was doing a lot of reading and emailing as well, and he made it known that he was ready to go back home so he could go to his internship. He said it was an important experience to be able to get into medical school, and constantly asked Jace to use his car to drive all the way to his internship back home. Jace said no.

Brady was being typical Brady, moody and rude a lot of times. He had found some other high school guys to play football with in the park, so at least he was out of the house a lot of times.

Larson picked up a few shifts at a local construction site that Benny told him about, so he was up early in the mornings a lot of times. He hadn't fought since the first time I'd seen him, but I knew he would again once we got home.

I had been doing a math workbook that Jace had gotten me. According to him, I needed to keep up on my math skills so that when I went back to school, I wouldn't be behind. I couldn't even think about going back to school. It felt like summer was going by too quickly, and I did not like that.

About ten days after we had first gotten to the house, we all were sitting at the kitchen table eating dinner when Jace told us that we would be moving back to our real home soon.

"Really?!" Brady asked, showing excitement for the first time in a long time.

"Tomorrow," Jace replied, grinning from ear to ear. Brady and Charlie high fived each other and Larson shot me a smile.

Then a realization hit me. "Is it safe to go home?" I asked. As much as I wanted to go home, I wanted to make sure that me and my brothers - especially Larson - would be safe if we did go home.

"Yes," Larson spoke up. "I worked things out with Benny and Jace and a few friends back home and everything is okay now. No need to worry about anything." He and Jace exchanged a quick glance.

Jace spoke up. "You're safe, B," he said. "There's nothing to even think about." He paused. "Except for working on your math workbook. You haven't been keeping up with it as much as I'd like you to." Of course, leave it to Jace to turn a moment of celebration into something serious.

After we ate dinner, Jace made us start packing things up so that we could get an early start on the road in the morning.

We had left our real house so fast that I didn't really get a chance to pack much of my own belongings, so I threw my clothes and books into a bag and then flopped onto my bed.

"Hey, you don't get to just sit there while the rest of us pack everything up," Jace commented, walking into our room.

"I'm done!" I protested, moving my arm to show him all of my packed bags.

"There's still stuff in the kitchen that needs to be packed," he replied, eyebrows raised. "Go help Brady pack up the food."

I sighed and rolled my eyes at Jace, only to be reprimanded for being disrespectful. I trudged out of the bedroom into the kitchen where Brady was.

"Jace told me to help you," I spoke.

"Great, just who I want to spend time with," Brady responded, sarcasm dripping from his voice. How sweet.

"I don't have to help then," I retorted. "I don't exactly want to spend time with you either." I turned and started to walk out of the kitchen to tell Jace that I at least tried to help Brady pack up stuff.