Gracie Abrams is eking out a solitary existence, fighting day-in, day-out against the drain of working customer service and nursing two newborn kittens in her off time. Out on her own ever since her sister moved in with her boyfriend, the burden of...
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The next week passed in both a blur and painful detail.
"Gracie?" Sam called me one day.
"...Yeah?"
"Someone canceled the lease on my apartment. I'm...being kicked out."
A pause.
"Okay."
Sam and Kirishima began living with me. I cleaned up both my room and Kakashi's. An ancient inflatable bed with duct tape patching two holes became my haven, stacked along the side of the wall I never used to touch in my living room.
Sam's mismatched furniture that had the distinctive style of "garage witch band" lay scattered beside my dark green three-seater. Surprisingly, we fit almost all of it inside, throwing only a few old lampshades to the curb to be scavenged by junkers. Mattresses and bed boards lay stacked in each bedroom, but overall, there was still full mobility.
"Are you going to school today?" I asked Sam one morning as she valiantly attempted to free herself from tiny claws. Kirishima, still mostly asleep at 6AM, had to intervene.
The teenage boy plucked up Sintar's springy form, nestling her into the wayward spikes branching off his head. His bowl of cereal lay dangerously on the linoleum, where the orange kitten made a mad dash. Unsurprisingly, Kirishima's movements were too slow, and Hable fell face-first into a vat of cheerios.
Instead of a bursting reaction, the three fell silent. Disappointed, they looked at the mess on the little brown and white squares.
I silently ripped off a couple pieces of paper towel, letting them float down to the general vicinity of Kirishima's form.
"I can't go there," Sam replied, having missed the entire interaction in full. "What if they grab me?"
Tingles waved about like kelp in my stomach at the casual reference to her potential kidnapping.
"Would they?"
Sam just shrugged, crunching another bite. Grains from the base of the muffin fell, showering the plate in a tinkling of rain. "Wouldn't know, would I? I haven't been going."
I sighed, preferring silence to snapping. Teenagers had no filters, no polite phrasing. Part of it was learned, but part of it was just natural. No sixteen-year-old had mastered "think before you speak."
"Alright," I said. "What do you want me to pick up for dinner?" Forget cooking for myself, it was now dark before I even got home sometimes. There wasn't enough motivation in the world to make me cook for three people when the sun couldn't even stay out.
"Mmm, pizza?" Sam asked, tipping back on the stool a bit to look at Kirishima.
Half-heartedly, Kirishima swiped at the milk and cheerios on the floor. A furrow dented the middle of his bottom lip—a new detail that fleshed him out more than the character on the screen.
