My alarm starts screaming before I'm even conscious enough to hate my life properly. It's that high pitched, broken robot sound, the one that feels like it crawls straight into your brain. I don't turn it off. I just lie there like a corpse and let it torture me, because at least something in this house cares enough to yell at me.
Eventually I smack my arm out from under the blanket and hit the clock so hard it yeets itself off the nightstand and disappears under the bed. Small win. Whatever.
I sit up slowly, hair sticking out in all possible directions, eyes unfocused, face doing that half-smirk thing automatically even though I'm pretty sure I don't have emotions before 9 a.m.
Down the hall, the twins are already awake, which is just... great. Perfect. Love that for me.
Their voices are bouncing around the house like someone's throwing them at the walls. Lara's yelling about her notebook, Tommy's yelling back like she stabbed him, and they're sprinting around the living room like two caffeinated raccoons fighting over a chicken bone.
Mom, somehow calm in the middle of that apocalypse, calls out from the kitchen:
"If either of you bleeds, do NOT get it on the new couch!"
I pull on black jeans, a hoodie, step into the hallway. She's there at the stove in her robe, hair in a bun so messy it's basically performance art. She's flipping eggs with one hand and drinking coffee with the other like she's been doing this since the Roman Empire. She looks exhausted but also strong, in the way only single moms who've been through hell and back can.
She looks at me and raises an eyebrow.
"Well, look at you," she says. "You woke up."
"I'm still alive," I mutter.
"Barely," she replies, sipping her coffee like she's narrating a documentary about my downfall.
Tommy zooms past with a plastic sword. Lara's behind him in a crooked princess crown, looking like she's about to commit her first felony. Mom doesn't even blink. She just watches them like: Ah yes, the circle of life.
"If one of them breaks something," she says, "I'm pretending I didn't hear it."
I steal a piece of toast.
"Peter's outside," she adds, tapping her mug. "Tell him he still owes me five dollars."
"For what?"
"For promising me he'd make you go to bed before midnight."
I snort. "You should ask for that money back."
"Oh, I know."
I grab my backpack and head for the door, and she calls after me - lazy voice, sharp words:
"And tell him not to speed today. I do not have the energy to identify your body."
"That's the sweetest thing you've ever said to me."
She waves her mug like a goodbye. The twins crash into something behind me, the TV starts blaring cartoons, and Mom just keeps sipping her coffee like she's immune to the chaos.
Honestly?
There's something comforting about this house being a disaster. Makes me feel less like the only one.
Outside, Peter's leaning against his car. Hood up, hands shoved deep into his pockets like he's trying to disappear inside his clothes. The fog is thick and low, curling around him like a bad special effect. He looks like he hasn't slept in a week. Same, bro. Same.
The morning is cold and quiet in that weird way that makes you think the world hasn't fully loaded yet. My footsteps crunch on the gravel. He hears the door slam and lifts his head just enough to look at me.
"Jesus," he says. "You look like someone unplugged you and plugged you back in wrong."
"Funny," I say. "You look like you've never been plugged in at all."
He lets out this tired laugh, the kind that's half sigh, half apology for existing.
"You want a ride or not?" he asks.
"Do I have a choice?"
"Nope."
His car is old as hell. The kind of car that shakes when you breathe near it. I get inside and the air is cold and smells like metal, gas, and mint gum.
He turns the key and the engine growls like it genuinely hates being alive.
"That noise is concerning," I say.
"That noise," he says, "is personality. Don't bully my car."
"It's literally vibrating."
"So do you. I don't judge you for it."
"That's because I'm emotionally unstable."
"So is the car."
We fall into silence after that. Not awkward, just... our normal. The radio keeps flipping stations on its own, switching between static and half-dead rock songs like it's possessed.
"You eat anything?" he asks eventually.
"Toast."
"Just toast?"
"Yeah?"
"You know toast isn't a personality trait."
"Says the guy whose blood type is Monster Energy."
He snorts. "Shut up."
"You started it."
Traffic thickens as we get closer to school. Fog fades into normal morning chaos. students crossing the road, cars honking, people yelling across the parking lot like they're auditioning for a reality show.
Peter parks and turns off the engine, but he stays sitting there for a second, head resting against the window, breathing slowly like he's trying to load the latest patch of his soul.
"You good?" I ask.
"Yeah. Just... loading."
"Same."
We get out. The air is sharp and cold and loud. Someone calls our names from across the courtyard. Peter gives me that half-smile. the tired but real one.
"Our fanbase is loyal," he says.
"Yeah," I say. "And tragically misguided."
He laughs for real this time.
We walk inside, and the hallway swallows us. lockers slamming, people yelling, perfume, coffee, wet sneakers, all of it mixing into one big chaotic mess that somehow feels... normal.
And for a second - just a second - it feels like everything's exactly where it should be.