‘And make sure you don’t let her go back until 01’

‘Doug’s an unending ass’

‘but he dosnt stay up past nightnoon’

‘so he’ll just have to be a sleeping ass’

Jessica sighed as she stared at her phone. Emma wasn’t talking to her right now, but that was no excuse for not doing anything about her situation– even if it did need to be through that girl’s roommate.

That girl. Heh. She’s older than me.

Still, she was a little embarrassed that she forgot the word midnight long enough that she’d just come up with a replacement. At least Mark hadn’t bothered with anything other than a thumbs-up emoji. Then again, he knew at least some of what was going on with Doug. Not enough to really get mad, but definitely enough that he was willing to take her advice when she told him to get her former best friend out of a bad situation for a few hours.

It did bother her that she couldn’t be the one to do that anymore. It shouldn’t have been an issue when she left the team, and she’d expected that her friend would follow her off the team when she’d started that argument, last month… but she wasn’t always that great with people… and that whole thing had very quickly spun completely out of control.

She probably should have been able to tell that Emma had had feelings for her, but, well…

She wasn’t exactly great at that.

And now Doug had used the opportunity to take even more advantage of her friend, getting Emma to block her number and her accounts on every social media that Emma maintained.

Not that that was many, which made it hurt way more. It wasn’t exactly her fault that…

But that was going down the bad path again.

Jessica started walking down the hallway out of her bedroom, checking in on her sibs as she did.

Ari and Lex were both lying in their own pods, like usual. They were only thirteen, but they were already catching up to her rank at a frankly slightly disturbing rate. They were smarter than she was, of course, but it was still a little bit disheartening that they were so much better at this than she had been just a couple of years ago.

She’d need to think of a way to get them out of the game, though. They played it even more than she did, and her own already had to be some kind of unhealthy.

Allie’s room was immaculate, of course, as it had been for the past three years.

Josh waved to her without even turning to face the door, caught up as he was in some sort of drawing on the computer. He had a cup held in his teeth at the side of his mouth, and she thought she could see water in it.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“Hey. Do you need so’thin’?”

“No, just checking in on you three.”

“’N we’re all fhine.”

“Didn’t think it would be anything else,” she responded, defensively.

“Butcha still check.”

“But I still check.”

“Good. Eh’a okay?”

She didn’t have an answer for him, so she just let the silence speak instead.

“Nnkay. Go show off.”

Jessica snorted at then, then turned away from her little brother’s door. It wasn’t really intended to show off, but their “backyard” had a lot of different changes in elevation along with a lot of space to find new places in. It would have been a shame not to use it, really. And the neighbors wouldn’t exactly going to be watching the side of the mountain for some random kid running up and down it.

She didn’t appreciate his characterization of the work she put into staying in shape as “showing off” given that nobody was looking, but if her siblings weren’t nettling her for no reason, would they really be siblings?

----------------------------------------

The trees were darker than she’d have liked, Jessica decided a while later. She had parts of the mountainside memorized, of course, but given her constant varying of the route, she’d somehow ended up much lower than she’d meant to be, and the sun had issues penetrating through the mountain in the way.

Everything would still be visible for another half hour or so, but that would involve a much more complicated route up if she wanted to make it home before it got dark, or a less complicated but much slower route following the road.

Obviously, it wasn’t even a contest.

Large parts of the mountainside had sections that were basically impossible to get up on anything even resembling a consistent basis, but she had learned a long time ago never to take those sections all at once. Instead, she pushed off the up-slope section of the thicker trees, grabbing on to the next one in the chain each time.

The first few times she’d done this, she’d ended up missing one of those grabs every once in a while, falling all the way back down and needing to restart.

Now though, it took her less than five minutes to reach the rocky section behind the Johnsons’ place.

Here, she didn’t even need to slow down to grab on to anything. A series of jumps between boulders and one kick off of a particularly annoyingly placed spire-like rock sent her back on the right path with barely a stumble.

Less than fifteen minutes after she’d decided on heading back to her house, she jogged back onto the back porch, slipping out of the boots she’d put on before heading out.

She noticed herself breathing hard, of course, but before she could think about much more than the mild annoyance attached to that, she had already let her mind drift to the fact that she’d gotten all covered in dirt.

Jessica was out of the shower and wandering back into her room before she caught up to herself enough to notice that she’d been zoning out again.

A quick walk around the house revealed that she’d left her phone next to the iron, and the clothes she’d been wearing were all sorted wrong,

That wasn’t exactly a difficult thing to fix, of course, but given that she’d wanted to get into an Arrows game it was still an annoying delay.

Of course, she should really work on that photography thing that Josh had been pointing out the other day. She’d managed to get some really good pictures out of that, too, with the new focusing thing he’d taught her about the…

Focusing.

She sighed, annoyed, and laid her forehead against the nearby doorframe. It had gotten better, these last few months, but she still had issues keeping on task. And that reflected in her Arrows energy score, too. Sixty-three was almost three-quarters of the way to average, as she reminded herself every time it came up.

It just stung every time the world decided to remind her of that deficiency so directly as it had today.

At least I’m calmer going in, though, she convinced herself, as the boot from the desktop to the game started.

Autofill- Carry

Nevermind.