Hidden Burdens (working title)

Chapter Seventeen

The headphones ended up working great. Maybe a little too great.

Kimmy was still startled awake when she felt the headphones carefully removed from her head. Her gaze opened to Kayla standing over her.

She apologized for startling her. Kayla then set the headphones on Kimmy's nightstand and informed her it was time to get up.

Kimmy rolled over to go back to sleep when Kayla walked away. She heard Kayla inform her if she had to come back in to wake her, Kimmy wouldn't be able to use the tablet for that entire day.

"She's not kidding, either," Kimmy heard Claudia say from her side of the room.

The kid moaned inside of her mind, stretching her limbs out under the comforter. If she was at home, Kimmy would be pleading with her mom to stay home with a stomachache or headache or any other illness that would allow her to skip a day. Most of the time, Stella would allow it, but once the school had started getting on her mom about Kimmy needing to go to school, it took threats of throwing away her video games and toys to get Kimmy out of bed. Even then, the anxiousness she sometimes felt caused mixed and fearful feelings to conflict in her little mind.

Kimmy opened her eyes. The first thing she saw was the morning sky through the crack between the window blinds and wall. Like most of the days in Arizona, the sky was a clear blue with small bursts of clouds, if any, and the sun was shining the brightest, even at six-thirty in the morning.

Why did the sun have to be a morning person?

It took several minutes to push herself into a sitting position and even then, Kimmy continued to sit there. Claudia had already left for the bathroom, so it was just her. When she eventually got out of bed, Kimmy leaned her hand on the bed to grab a hold of the comforter. She tossed it back into place, sort of like Kayla had showed her, but did not fix any of the creases or where the corner was folded in. Chester stayed in the spot she left him.

Kimmy lingered, picking out what to wear, changing into a pair of basketball shorts first. She stood on her side of the closet, shirtless, flipping through her shirts to decide what to wear. Being only nine, Kimmy hadn't developed yet, so she wasn't embarrassed if Claudia returned before she chose a shirt. Well, except for maybe her stomach sticking out.

After flipping through her shirts a couple of times, Kimmy settled on another one of the new Minecraft shirts she got last week. As she pulled her head through, Claudia returned, dressed for the day.

"Must be nice to be a kid and have the confidence to change in here," she remarked, tossing her pajamas into her laundry basket.

Kimmy slipped her arms through the sleeves, watching her. She didn't mind anyone seeing her top half. It was her bottom half she was more cautious of.

"You like school?" Claudia walked over to her dresser to grab her hairbrush and brush out her long, blond hair with a small mirror she had sitting there.

Kimmy shook her head.

Even though Claudia's back was turned, she saw the head motion in the mirror. "Yeah," she scoffed in agreement. "Yeah, I'm not much of a fan myself. But the dreams I have, takes an education." After she finished brushing her hair out, Claudia set the hairbrush down and grabbed a hair tie. She slipped the band onto her hand while she pulled all of her hair back and wrapped the hair tie to hold it in place. To finish, Claudia yanked on her hair with both hands to push the hair tie closer to the back of her scalp. "Besides, I hear college is a lot better than high school."