To Chill Out [On Hiatus]

04 | live wire

After an uneventful Tuesday that involved nothing exciting (and revealed that she would be doing the whole backup photographer assistant thing for as long as Jessie was away—meaning: probably the entire next two weeks), November wakes up on Wednesday morning especially early to a loud banging and/or crashing noise downstairs.

"Oh my God, Victor, again?" Cameron yells, pulling November's door closed as she passes by. "You're going to wake up the whole neighbourhood!"

The clock reads 5:52.

"The whole neighbourhood is awake already," he retorts. "Everyone works the morning shift."

"Your daughter's best friend doesn't."

At least one of them is standing near an air vent. They have to be—there aren't many other ways she would be able to hear their conversation this well.

"Why do you think I care about what Jessie's friend thinks? You didn't even ask me if we could have her over; you just told me she'd be staying here! In our daughter's bedroom, no less."

She tries to go back to sleep.

"November has a name," she hisses. "Clearly you don't care. Just go to work; we can talk about this later."

She tries to pretend to go back to sleep.

There's a loud grunt, the opening and closing of the front door, and then, the clomp-clomp-clomp of Cameron coming back up the stairs.

"November?" She whispers, knocking at the door. "Are you awake?"

She stops trying.

"Yeah."

She opens the door and turns the light on, to which November—with a tiny yelp—immediately slinks under the covers (and tunnels down to the end of the bed for good measure.)

"Oh, sorry." Cameron dims the lights to about halfway, and she hesitantly pokes her head out from one side of the covers. "Can I sit down?"

Oh, no. Incoming mom talk. "Sure."

She glances, confused, at a J-shaped pillow at the footboard and catches it before it hits the floor. "I take it you heard that conversation?" She doesn't sit down.

She moves the comforter so it's beneath her and nods.

"Look, Victor, he's a great guy. Great husband, father. What he's not great at is working under pressure, and he's been doing that a lot lately, with his coworkers piling their work onto him. It's not ideal, and I'm not trying to make excuses—" she puts up her hand to stop November's incoming interruption, "—but that's how he's going to be for a while. Plus, there's Jessie, and now you, and he thinks I'm trying to 'replace Jessie' or something—yes, stupid, I know—even though Jessie's nowhere near dying."

November says the only thing she can think of. "I left about four hundred dollars in the girls' change room last week." As Cameron tilts her head, she feels the need to clarify, both what she means and how it relates to, well, anything. "We were doing a thing for charity, and Jessie put me in charge of the money."

"I'm sure they'll let you in to get it when you go back tonight."

Her heart speeds up. "No, they can't, it's attached to the science hallway and the science hallway is filled with grasshoppers so they can't let me in."

"Hey." She places her hand on Jessie's comforter, and even though it's nowhere near her, she scrambles backwards towards the headboard. "It'll be okay."

It'll be. It will be. As in, it's not already okay now.

"You should go back to sleep," she says quietly, and it's almost as if she knows November lies awake for hours, even if she goes to bed at seven like last night. "They're letting non-family members see Jessie starting today. She asked to see you."