Abandoned. Unsupervised.

Part 1

"Hmm."

Ugh. She hated when he got like this. "What now?" She sighed, trying to keep the annoyance out of her voice. The miffed, and slightly offended look he gave her was more then enough to tell her she didn't do very well.

"This is interesting!" He exclaimed.

She nodded, not trusting that if she opened her mouth she wouldn't argue.

"Humph." He turned away and started writing in his trademark small notebook.

"Oh, come on Liam! Just tell me what it is already!"

Earlier that day, while Stella was out on her daily routine with Luna, Bonnie, and a few others from her gang. They were looking for food and money (while they weren't proud of it, they often ended up stealing) Stella found an old metal plaque. She had grown up illiterate, as she was found on the street as an infant by some of the kids who 'founded' the gang, so she brought it to someone who could read. Unfortunately that someone was Liam (he was her annoying, know-it-all best friend)

He glared wordlessly at her from the corner of his eye, still scribbling in his notebook.

"Fine. Play it like that then. Luna!" Luna whipped into the room and gazed happily at her mistress. "Who's a good girl, who's a good girl? Luna's a good girl! Who's a bad boy? Liam is!" Stella told her dog fondly. "Can you help me get him, girl?"

"No she can't Star, and you know it." Bonnie (Stella's other best friend) clarified, from where she stood leaning on the door frame. "Liam, what's up with the latest haul?"

"That's what I want to know!" Stella exclaimed, plopping down on her spinning chair.

"Then you should have asked nicely." Liam retorted back.

Stella groaned while Bonnie stifled a laugh.

Liam eyed her expectantly with a cheek grin on his face, as Stella looked between him and Bonnie.

"Fine! Will you please inform us of the latest haul?" She asked with false sweetness.

Her two best friends just erupted with laughter.

Stella sighed and began to walk out of the room, giving up. She had only taken a few steps, when she was almost bowled over by a stampede of people rushing into the room.

"Where's the fire?!" She called after them.

Adam stopped and turned around when he saw her, while the others ignored them both.

"Star! Liam sent an alert down the window telling us to come. Do you know what's going on?" He asked worriedly.

They lived in an old, rundown house outside of town, that Bonnie's uncle inherited when his father (Bonnie's grandfather) died. He didn't care about the house and lived a few hours away, so when Bonnie and her friends needed somewhere to live, she sent a letter to her uncle asking if they could stay. It took a few months for him to reply (he didn't even know what house she was talking about), and by then they had moved in already.

The house was more like an old mansion and had four stories. They have a system, where they have a teapot tied to a rope out the window. They write a note and put it in the teapot, then they use a second rope to ring the bell out the window and someone on that floor should notice and read the note. They call this system an alert.

"I have no idea." Stella replied. "But don't get excited. It's probably just another rotten floor board or something."

Adam looked unconvinced, and the two of them entered Liam's study anyway.

"...are getting suspicious of a group of kids that never go to school, rarely buy things from the shops, never participate in community events, are only ever seen hanging around town." Liam explained. "We have to do something so that the police don't come and put us into foster care."

At this new information everyone looked around with concerned faces. No one wanted to go into foster care.

"We should go to school!" Daniel exclaimed. Daniel was the youngest of the group, at the age of eight. He ran away from home after his mother died and his father became an alcoholic. There were no posters or reports from the police around so they assumed his father didn't really care. Stella found him walking around while she was getting a drink of water one evening.

Since no one is paying the bills the orphans have no power or water, but they were just glad to have a house and beds.

"Won't we need a parent or guardian to sign a form or something?" Bonnie questioned.

"We could find someone to do that for us." Liam explained.

"They would need proof though." She countered.

Liam shrugged. "We can make the proof. We have a lousy police force around here, and I doubt they need to get it checked."

"Well we have to do something." A new voice pointed out. "Whatever we choose to participate in, people will need to see a guardian or will wonder why they haven't seen us at any community events." The voice belonged to Autumn. She was a new addition to the group, and joined just a few months earlier. Her parents couldn't afford to look after her and she had been jumping from foster home to foster home since she was 9. She was now 14.

"So should we call a meeting after dinner and do a vote?" Bonnie asked no one in particular.

Even though no one replied (except for Daniel who nodded eagerly), they all knew the answer was a yes. Most of them had been living with almost no rules their whole lives, except a few that attended school in their younger years. They were not looking forward to the strict teachers and harsh punishments they had heard so much about.