𝗘𝗔𝗦𝗧 𝗢𝗙 𝗘𝗗𝗘𝗡 - 𝘁𝘄𝗱

𝟬𝟬𝟳: 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗦𝗘𝗖𝗥𝗘𝗧 𝗔𝗡𝗗 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗦𝗛𝗢𝗧𝗚𝗨𝗡

The next morning, Tiger wakes up early, and because she can't manage to run away fast enough, Lori somehow convinces her to come feed the chickens with Carl. She tries to argue, threatens to make Boots eat them, but in the end, Boots just gets left by the tents and Tiger still has to go anyway.

Carl's almost back to his ordinary, annoying self now. He can walk and talk and all that sort of stuff, and currently, he's showing off his renewed motor skills by chucking chicken food at Tiger whenever his mom isn't looking.

Tiger grabs a handful of the stuff and shoves it down the back of his shirt, grinning as he squirms.

"Assface." She whispers. He throws birdfeed in her hair.

"Freak."

Tiger doesn't like that word very much – people at school used to say it to her a lot – so she lunges forward to try and shove some of the seed in his mouth, but Lori chooses that exact moment to finally start paying attention. Plans ruined.

"You two!" She says, glaring at both of them. "Quit messin' around with that stuff, OK?"

"Stop being so worried," Carl mutters, flicking a final piece of chicken food at Tiger. His mom half-chuckles, petting one of the chickens.

"It's my job."

"No it's not." Carl grins. "You're a housewife."

Tiger resists the urge to laugh at that. It's rude, and she likes when people are rude to anyone that's not her, but at the same time, it was Carl telling the joke, and she doesn't want him to think that she finds him funny or anything. She doesn't. He's ugly and he got shot, so he's also stupid.

"Oh yeah, punk?" Lori mocks, throwing a handful of birdseed at him. How come she's allowed to do it? "You see my house around here?"

Tiger sees a tent. She feels like that counts. Besides, Lori is a housewife, or a tentwife, or something. She just hangs up clothes and worries about Carl and makes people wash their hands, all day, every day. It's kinda dumb.

Pretending like she's not smiling, Tiger sidesteps Carl and throws some food to the tiny chickens, 'cause they're all too stupid and small to come and get it themselves. Carl copies her.

"They don't have a mother." He says, to no one in particular. Tiger shrugs.

"How do you know, dumbass?"

"'Cause they're by themselves. Obviously." He pauses to look at them, face all screwed up in thought. "Maybe she got eaten."

"Or shot."

"Or got a disease."

"Yeah, probably got it from you."

Carl shoves Tiger and Tiger shoves him back, ignoring Lori's disapproval in favour of trying to push him into the dirt. Unfortunately, it doesn't work 'cause Carl's a good few inches taller than her, and stronger too. Instead, he trips over his feet, nearly treads on a chicken, and that, according to Lori, is the permanent end to their chicken-feeding career.

𓆩ꨄ︎𓆪

After a particularly sharp lecture on taking their responsibilities seriously, Tiger and Carl are finally set free again to have breakfast, with Lori watching them very seriously from the sidelines. Tiger mostly just picks at her eggs, feeding scraps to Boots whenever no one's looking, but Carl's wolfing his down, staring hard at the RV as he does so. She digs her shoe into his ankle.

"Eat mine; 's gross."

"Eat it yourself, freak."

Carl swallows the last mouthful of his food and drops his plate to the floor, already speeding in the other direction. Curious, Tiger goes to follow. He's being all weird. A different sort of weird than normal, too. Not just ugly teenage boy weird, but sneaky weird. Tiger weird. It might just be nothing, but she's so bored at the moment that she doesn't even care. She just wants to do something interesting for once.