𝐃𝐎𝐕𝐄𝐒.

ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀ ₂

"Let me tell you a secret," I could hear June blasting Supermodel by SZA through her bathroom speaker, the shower water running. I glanced towards my phone, noticing that I was being woken up a bit before my own alarm, but I had no problem with that. I was used to that type of shit from June and it was worse when we were roommates, but now she had increased the volume of her speaker louder and in this case, started to sing louder as well. Unknown to myself at first, I had messages from the groupchat between my mom and my sister.

Familia 🌹

6:15 am.

MaDukes 🌍: Heading to work a bit early this morning to meet new coworkers. Doordashed some donuts and kolaches.

June 🌼: Love you mom. Jade is still asleep.

Drive safe, Mom. June, turn the music down please.

Mom had left early for work in the morning before, so it was no surprise that the trend would continue here. I had no problem with not eating breakfast with family, that was a bit cliche and unrealistic in a working household. My mother wouldn't settle for being a housewife even if she had the luxury to, she just wasn't that type of woman. It was the main reason why her and Dad had a failing relationship - her job was bringing in more dough than his construction management job and she was the one responsible for the money in and out of the house. Mom had divorced when June and I were in grade school, but we were unaware that the divorce to Mom would mean that he would be divorcing us as well.

With divorce came unclaiming. Dad had eventually settled down with a white woman who catered to his every need in Virginia only 45 minutes to an hour away from us, yet he couldn't even tell us himself. We had been out eating breakfast on the weekend in Virginia when we spotted them together. His new wife was very pregnant, it almost looked like she was in pain. It affected Mom and us for a bit because it then came into our reality that we would have no relationship with our half siblings that Dad would produce whenever he wanted. Mom, however, turned her sadness and anger into adrenaline for her work career. There would be nights where we would have to order in pizza because she refused to leave her office just to be two steps ahead of her coworkers.

It's the reason she's got the promotion she's got now to be the head of a law firm here in Texas. June had respected my needs to have her music turned down, so I rose from bed after a long time of thinking to get my outfit ready for school. June and I had two different tastes, but sometimes they blended. She was definitely more of a girly girl, whereas I could look homeless one moment and a girly girl the next. Mom kept us in the newest fashions, but I didn't necessarily breathe for them like June did sometimes. Her entire Christmas list one year was things from FashionNova, just to have everybody else copping the same thing.

I liked thrift shopping sometimes, but that wasn't my entire choice of outfit every time. June had grilled me last night somewhere in our conversation to not dress like I was homeless on the first day of school, so I made note of that when picking out my outfit. I had picked out a nude crop jacket with a crop shirt to match with it, a pair of black jeans and nude balenciagas for the footwear. Backpacks were hardly a thing on the first day of school, at least back at Clark, so I grabbed a cute Louis Vuitton tote.