𝐰𝐚𝐤𝐞

iii; we already have a fucking copycat.

throughout her childhood dani watched as her parents suffered. her dad worked two jobs to scrounge up enough money to pay off the bills, and her mother always picked up extra shifts whenever she could to ensure that dani and nate always had food and clothes.
and when her father died it felt like all the weight of everything in the world came crashing down as well as the worries of their finances.

dani loved her father deeply, and when he died from something as tragic and simple as a heart attack she couldn't find it in herself to grieve properly.

although everyone grieves in their own way it seemed on the outside as if dani wasn't grieving or taking his loss hard at all. whenever she was alone she turned to cigarettes and alcohol as an outlet of her pain.
however when her mother and nate caught wind of her spiral into alcoholism her mother forced her into an intervention while nate had shouted at her for being stupid for hours on end.
dani was grateful enough that her mother didn't have a clue of her daughters smoking problems, as it was one of the contributing factors to her fathers death.

and since her fathers death her mother picked up a second job as well as dani working countless jobs to help her mother with the overwhelming amount of bills. whenever food came up short dani would always find a few odd jobs to quickly get more money to make sure her brother was at the very least well fed.

when nate was old enough, he got his own job. he worked at a nearby restaurant as a waiter. the job paid okay and the tips slightly better.
so then dani didn't have to worry about making sure there was enough food on the table or when the electric company was coming to shut off their power. for the first time in dani's life they sat in an okay spot.

they were good enough off that whenever nate made extra in tips he and dani would walk down to the grab and bag and splurge on candy and snacks. dani loved the moments like those—even if nate teased her the entire time about only going to see simon during his endless shifts.

dani sat on her sofa, flipping through the local newspaper to see if there were any quick jobs available. since she wouldn't be working at the bookstore anytime soon she figured she would still need to find a job to gather money to continue helping her mother.
the sun started to set on the horizon. the sky a pretty shade of purple and pink. nate was currently working a double shift at the restaurant and her mother was on her way to her second job, so dani had the house to herself.

she paused from reading the newspaper, her eyes glancing up toward her grey sweater that hung from the rack next to the front door. dani spotted a large red blood stain on the sleeve of her sweater and she sighed. "fuck," she muttered, placing the newspaper onto the coffee table "fucking forgot about that." she frowned, taking the sweater off the rack and into her hands where she touched sam's crusted over blood.

dani let out another sigh before she turned around and toward the back of the house. she quickly opened the top of their washing machine, throwing the sweater in along with the load she was already washing.
she walked up to her room, taking the pack of cigarettes from under her pillow and placing one in her mouth, lighting it as she hid the pack inside the pocket of her sweater.