Like Cats and Dogs -Jori

Sweat: Chapter 12

{~~~JADE~~~}

My phone buzzes. I don't know what time it is, but I know it's entirely too fucking early for someone to be texting me.

Language! Tori scolds me.

"I can curse in my mind if I want to." I mumble. I've long since stopped questioning my sanity when I verbally answer Tori back. Especially because I only seem to do it when I'm either drifting off, or just waking up.

I pat my nightstand until I find the stupid thing and nearly turn it off without checking who the message was from; but curiosity gets the best of me.

I have to squint my eyes a little because the screen's entirely too bright and I can't read what the stupid little words say. Not until after nearly a minute of straining anyway.

Vega: Good morning! Wanna go to the beach with me?

That's what the stupid little words on my phone say.

Seriously?

I blink in disbelief a few times at the text, then at the time.

Seven o'clock.

It's Saturday, the sun's barely up, and my girlfriend just texted me wanting to know if I wanted to go to the beach with her....at seven o'clock in the fuckin' morning!

Honestly, going to the beach today is not an entirely bad idea, but getting up now to do it...?

I turn my phone off and roll over after texting her back a quick "hell no!"

When I wake up again, my phone says it's eleven. I wipe the morning boogers out of my eyes and double check it. It just has to be wrong. Not that I would never sleep in that late, but because Thing One and Thing Two have made it a habit to come into my room no later than nine in the morning on days that are school free, just to bother the crap out of me. Yet, I haven't heard so much as a peep from either one of them.

I get up slowly, yawning and stretching out my kinks before telling myself not to be stupid; to just to take advantage of the peace and go back to sleep.

And I try to do just that; but no more than a full minute of me lying in my bed passes before I realize it's not gonna work. I can't go back to sleep. I feel like something's wrong...or missing.

Dammit! It's the brats. I can't just go back to sleep. There is a certain way my mornings have been going for the last couple of years, and it's as follows:

One of those brats, usually Riley, comes into my room to pester me awake.

Then I yell at it.

Then it goes downstairs to tell on me.

Then Joy comes up and asks me to be nice to it.

I mutter under my breath about where she can shove it.

She huffs and calls me "un-freaking believable."

And then I groan and go back to sleep.

That's how it's always been. And that's how I need it to be. I don't take to change very well.

God, I seriously sound like one of those OCD freaks with the fucking...routines.

With a loud and very frustrated groan, I get up and head out into the hallway to take my morning wazz. I barely register something's off until I actually make it to the bathroom. Then it hits me. The silence. It's never this quiet when the brats are here unless...