If there’s anything in life that has any sort of permanence for the average person, it’s their family. Who you grow up with, who you share most of your life with, who’s there for you when life is at its most difficult; your family is always the first to come to mind. Unfortunately, for a particular 9-year old boy, family was just another source of stress and his budding self-hatred. Jessie Cooper stepped out into the brisk late-Autumn afternoon breeze, clutching the hem of his tattered old jacket as he surveyed the surrounding area. The schoolyard was completely empty at this point, as school technically ended over 2 hours ago. The young child had fostered a routine; every Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday he’d stay after school and perform his assigned duties, which usually involved cleaning out desks or clearing the chalkboard after class was finished. Of course, this usually only took around 20 minutes, the rest of his time was spent in the 2nd story boy’s bathroom reading in an empty stall while he waited for the custodian to make his daily rounds. Jessie despised leaving school on schedule, as it usually involved running into (and subsequently walking home with) his sister Alice.
If there was anyone in Jessie’s life that he could safely and definitively say he hated, it was his sister. She embodied every sickly-sweet, passive-aggressive, and utterly hate-filled feeling one could possibly harbor for another human being, and most of that genuine hate was directed at her younger sibling. Alice was 16, though she easily passed for 20, and somehow wore a near-permanent cocky smirk that occasionally morphed into an almost haunting scowl during her…episodes, as Jessie had taken to calling them. Her long auburn hair mimicked Jessie’s own natural color, spilling over her shoulders and flowing down to the small of her back, though despite her innocuous (and arguably beautiful, not that Jessie would ever admit it aloud) appearance, she was truly awful in most every way imaginable. The young child kept his head low as he swung wide around the parking lot situated to the east of the schoolyard, trying his hardest to avoid being noticed (an impossible task given how barren the rest of the surrounding area was). He hoped that one of the teachers would do their job and make sure that no strange individuals were lingering in the schoolyard before heading home for the day; it made getting home without being spotted much easier. Unfortunately, today just wasn’t his day.
“Hey Jess, you’re pretty late.”
Jessie jumped, quickly turning and staring at (or rather past) the young woman looming over him, that trademark smirk plastered on her face. “I’ve been out here waiting for you for almost an hour, y’know you’re not supposed to be staying after today,” Alice said sweetly, placing a gloved hand on the boy’s shoulder. Jessie continued to stare past the girl, a look of sheer contempt glued to his scarf-concealed coun
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