"Here's a thought," Sean growled. "Maybe we could all remember I'm standing right here and that just because I play music, it doesn't mean I'm weak or can't do this crap. I choose not to do it.
"But before you start in on my sister..." This man may be their dad, but Jenna was the one Sean would always defend. She was the one who had always been there for him and he'd be damned if their dad was going to berate her for looking after Sean, no matter how grating Sean found her statements himself. Especially when that berating came in the form of lauding the girl who'd clearly replaced them in their dad's affections. "...maybe you should also tell her the rest of it, how your new girl was put in jail because she was trying to escape and destroying equipment, instead of making sound like you treat all new people that way and we should be grateful you deign to treat us like your kids by letting us stay here with no choice in the matter and where Savannah provided breakfast.
"If basic necessities are such special treatment, why don't you keep those and this whole mall thing, too. We get paid for doing this, right? Fine. Keep your money and your distrust of us and our apparent unwillingness. Skip chances and benefit of the doubt. It's obvious you can't take anything on faith, though you'll ask it of us. Just let us fend for ourselves the way everyone else would. Just point me to a place where I can wash my clothes until I can get decent ones with my own money. Give us your schedules and rules and let us deal with it because the very last thing we need from you is a lecture on what our lives have been like, good or bad, and how grateful we should be to you for deigning to treat us like you do your real family because you don't get to ask to be a family and then tell us how much she's earned the right to be treated as such and we haven't."
Sean stepped up right in front of his dad. "So, which is it? Do you want to be a family, where we actually look out for each other the way Jenna has looked out for me all my life? Or, do you want little drones to just follow orders to survive. Because if you really want the first one, being your kids isn't a reward for good behavior regardless of what some little cheerleader has or hasn't earned. We are your kids. Not her. And if you expect us to earn the right to be treated as such, all you're ever going to get is option number two."