Straighter than Parallel Parking

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Thanks, @mispaint (Abhi) for the wonderful comments <3

{ Chapter Sixteen: Procrastination is Avoiding the Issue Too Much }

JANICE IS CERTAIN THAT SHE IS ALMOST DEAD. Not the type of death that origins from short circuits in your brain, pauses in your heart, or lapses in your lungs, but when you're so stressed and whiny and so frigging done with your work, that you might as well be.

500 more words, she reminds herself blearily, 499 more words, one last paragraph.

She curses the American education system for bringing mental and emotional torture to their children, as she struggles to complete the two thousand word essay she had a week's time to do but decided to do today.

It wasn't really her fault. She had work. And she played football. (See, she had her priorities in check).

Janice can imagine her history teacher crackling as she assigned the paper, surely hoping that one particular student of her's would pass out and enter coma for the next twenty years.

All she needed left were conclusions, which seemed like the most difficult for her to do. It was like a huge "so what"?

So what that all these people sacrificed themselves to fight a war, which caused more pain than justice? So what people don't realize that war only brings grief, so what that they only do it over and over again?

God, these things were so thought provoking, insightful and deep, that she just wanted to hit it over and over again.

Almost three quarters through, Janice feels like she's in a dire need of a break. Stretching her swollen joints out, cracking her worn out fingers and wincing as she hears the sharp kinks of her muscles clicking back into place, she stands up.

She'd been at the paper for an hour, working hard for the project. Janice seriously reevaluated herself from the lazy person she'd been a week ago.

With her sore neck and blurry eyes, all she can think of is, this is why I don't reevaluate myself.

Yawning, she notices that her Monday night had come to an end, a beeping 1AM peering down on her. She sighs, rubbing her eyes, which were burning slightly from the constant focus on her laptop screen, and tries to get herself up the stairs without tripping and cracking her neck. She succeeds and heads straight to the kitchen.

She'd isolated herself from dinner because of the paper, and the result was a grumbling stomach that made the T-Rex sound like Barbie. She's afraid she'll wake everyone up because of it, so she thought it was in the best interest of everyone, in getting a post-midnight snack. Or dinner course (she's a selfless one, always thinking of others).

It was if the tension in her shoulders evaporated the minute she stepped inside the the kitchen, the ache in her wrists dulled and the cricks in her back alleviated. "Now, let's see if they were considerate enough to leave me any leftovers."

While normally she would treat herself to a recipe from scratch, even the adrenaline that came with just stepping into the kitchen wasn't enough to persuade Janice to do anything more than heat up whatever was left from the meal before in the microwave.

She could've had it worse than the vegetarian pizza in the box (since Janice made most of the meals, they decided not to burn down the house today).

Blinking in a languid fashion, Janice wrestled with her instincts to stay awake before she fell face flat on the plate in front of her and didn't finish the essay that taunts her from a floor away.