Dirt Lifter | Craig of the Creek High School AU

I don't know what Valorant is and at this point I'm too afraid to ask

The door to Craig's room creaked open. He'd been in there doing homework for biology and physics since he got back from school. Why in the world did he think double sciences was a good idea? Both classes were much harder than he expected, and combined, they were vicious. Now it was five in the afternoon, and he was completely drained from trying to memorize the formulas for organic carbon compounds, and from organizing data for a physics lab.

He trudged into the living room and collapsed face-first on the couch, right next to his sister.

"Hey," said Jessica. She didn't even look at him when he walked in, her focus completely on the television. She had headphones on, and was mashing buttons on her controller.

"Hey," Craig said, face still in a throw pillow.

"Oh my God, get your ass on the left."

"Excuse me?" He lifted his head to glare at her.

"Not you ," she snapped. "Yasmine." She adjusted the microphone attached to her headphones. "Get your ass on the left."

"Watch your mouth." He looked at the screen. "What are you even playing?"

"Valorant."

The game was some first person shooter, with enough saturation to give Craig a headache with long-term exposure, but it was distracting enough. Jessica was pretty good, which kept him invested in the game, despite having little idea what was going on in it. He stopped playing video games a while ago, and he only played Power Punchers when someone offered to co-op.

He watched the screen until he heard a familiar voice yell "I'm back!" from the entrance of their house.

He sat up. "Hey, Mom."

His mother held a shopping bag in each hand. She kicked the door closed with her foot. "Hey, guys! Help me bring in the groceries."

"M'Busy," said Jessica, eyes not straying from the screen. "After this round."

Craig helped his Mom bring in the bags. There weren't that many, so he didn't feel the need to yell at Jessica for not helping, even though she totally should have been. He set the bags down on the kitchen table, and started emptying them out. He had no idea how long Valorant rounds lasted, nor when Jessica would be done. At least he was helping their Mom. He wasn't playing video games and swearing at his friends. Sure, he had other, more important work he could be doing, even besides sciences. The list of things he had to do to prepare for college was growing every day, like practicing for the SAT that he'd take in a month, or making that list of every single extracurricular activity he'd done since middle school. But at least he's doing something besides staring at a screen and insulting people.

"What's wrong, Craig?" His Mom asked. "You look mad."

He looked mad? How did he look mad? He wasn't mad. He was just tired. And stressed. And discouraged from getting any of his work done after spending so much time on it with so little progress. And annoyed at Jessica for not helping out.

Okay, maybe he was a little mad. But he couldn't put a reason on why (that wasn't just him complaining), so he said "Nothing, I'm just tired. I got a lot of homework."

She gave him a soft smile. "Oh, Craig, I know you're working hard on all that." She pulled him into a hug. "I'm proud of you."

"Oh, thanks," he said, slightly surprised from the hug.

She continued. "Maybe we can go out to dinner or something, just me and you. As a treat."

That sounded... really good. Maybe being spoiled would cure the funk he was in, even though he definitely didn't deserve to. He definitely had not been working as hard as he could. "That would be nice," he murmured.

"Maybe for your birthday," Jessica yelled from the living room. "Next week, right?"

"What?" said Craig, because no, his birthday was definitely not next week. It's only- Wait, he had a biology test next week, and that was on the-

"Oh, that's right! What kind of cake do you want?" Craig's Mom squeezed him tighter. "Oh my God, you're getting so old! My baby boy!"

Uh, I'll think about it," he said in response to the cake question. He couldn't decide right then; he was too busy thinking about how he forgot his own birthday.

He wasn't completely ignorant to the passage of time. He was very well into his adolescence. He had a drivers license he got the previous summer. He drank too much coffee, and probably has a caffeine addiction at this point. He shaved every other day. His voice had stopped cracking a year ago, and settled into a steady and deep tone. Half of his best friends were at college, and that's for adults, they were adults now.

He knew that winter was almost over, and his birthday was the beginning of spring, but the numbers didn't match up in his head.

"And I guess your Dad hasn't started on dinner ," his Mom said, obviously annoyed. "So I'm gonna get on that."

"Yeah, okay. Hey, I think I gotta get back to work," he mumbled and turned around. He really did need to figure out if he was going to re-do his entire tennis ball lab experiment, because the data he'd gathered was so inconsistent, his graph that was supposed to have a positive association was a straight line. His Mom's sentimentalism was getting on his nerves, too, and so was Jessica and her video games, and so was the whole birthday thing, and he could only fix one of those things right now.

"Okay, get it done. Knock it out before dinner, my future 17-year-old!" yelled his Mom from the kitchen. He could hear the smile in her voice, and a lump made its way to his throat.

Once he was in his room, Craig went to his bed and sat down, hunched over to not hit his head on the top bunk.

He still had to finish his homework for this afternoon, as per his excuse to retreat back in here, but he was still completely drained, even after his 'shove face into couch and watch Jessica play video games' break. He felt scattered, like he'd been dissected and strewn across his room, stomped on by every single thing in his life, whether massive or miniscule. He was somehow on-edge and exhausted at the same time. That doesn't even make sense, so why was that the only way he could describe it? He felt like imploding, or exploding, or curling up into a ball until something changed, for better or worse.

He'd given up on fixing his scatteredness a long time ago. He was usually able to channel it into extra energy, even if he had none now. Maybe coffee would help his tiredness. No, it's too late for that, unless he wanted to be up all night. Maybe a nap? He could use some more rest. It's not like he could focus on any meaningful work at this point.

He laid down, threw his arm over his face and didn't even think to turn off the lights.

"Craig? Craig!"

"Hm? What?" He rubbed the sleep out of his eyes.

Jessica was in his room. He would have been mad at her for invading his personal space without at least knocking, but he was still a bit dazed. The ceiling light made him squint when he removed the arm from his face.

"It's dinner time," she said.

"Oh, shoot. Thanks for waking me up." He didn't realize he had fallen asleep.

"No problem. It took forever, 'cause Dad didn't thaw out the chicken."

He hopped up off his bed, glancing at his clock out of habit. "Hm, yeah, it's- it's 8:15?!"

"As I said, it took forever." She was already walking out of his room. "I'm starving."

The clock kick-started his brain. Now, he's going to have to stay up until midnight re-doing his physics lab and graphing that data. Maybe he will drink some coffee, to pull the late night he needed to get everything done.

He was hungry, though. He could eat and then get back to the work he didn't do before. "Yeah, I'm hungry, too," he said, getting up from his bed.

So much for knocking it out early.