This is Me Trying ⭑ Rafe Cameron

forty seven

CHAPTER FORTY SEVEN
[47]
song: the suburbs by arcade fire

Cassie couldn't find an eraser to fix a mistake on her math homework.

She'd dumped out her school bag, crumbled up paper and stray crumbs fell to the ground at her feet, rolling under the kitchen table.

She wasn't sure where Luke kept his pencils and pens. She'd only been staying here for a month, and her pencils that she brought from back home had lasted up until now.

All of them were erased down to little metal nubs, a perfect encapsulation of just how many times Cassie needed to redo a problem.

She sat alone at the kitchen table, one light hung up above her head. She stifled her cries of frustration, looking at how messy her page had become— mistake after mistake.

She didn't want to wake Luke, who lay passed out on the couch as the news quietly played throughout the living room. Something about Germany and the World Cup.

There was a half-eaten sandwich she'd made herself for dinner on a paper plate beside her. But she'd stressed herself out so bad that she lost her appetite.

Her new teacher told Luke she was struggling in school, and that it might not be a bad idea for her to get a tutor. To which Luke told her they couldn't afford a tutor, and joked 'when did 5th grade math get so hard?'.

Her new teacher told Luke that maybe he or her mother would be able to help her with her homework after school. To which Luke told her that Cassie's mother was dead and he didn't have the time.

She quietly went through every drawer in the kitchen, searching for an eraser. Back home, her mom kept them in a junk drawer under the landline, but this entire house felt like a junk drawer.

Thinking they must be kept in one of the upper cabinets, Cassie pushed herself up on the counter and tip-toed around the empty glasses left out to be washed. Opening each door and taking a peak inside.

Most of them were empty, but one of them was full of fancy plates and bowls that were covered in a layer of dust.

As she hopped down, her hand slipped and she knocked over one of the beer bottles on the counter. And Cassie came down at just the right time for it to shatter beneath her left foot, bare. The other one was in a boot.

She let out a loud yelp, first startled by the pain, then the blood, as the beer pooled around her feet. She fell back against the counter and began to cry, unsure what to do.

The back screen door swung open as JJ, who had been playing outside, rushed in to see where the scream had come from.

When he saw the mess on the floor, and the blood, his shoulders fell and he immediately turned and looked over to the living room, where their father was.

"What the hell?" Luke grumbled lazily.

Cassie shook her head quickly, looking to JJ for some sort of help. "I fell." She got out between sobs.

"You fell?" Luke came into the kitchen. "What the— what did you do?!" He flung his arms out towards the mess.

Cassie was too startled by how loud he was being to respond and explain what happened.