A Child's Reality (BBRae AU)

XII

XII
A Blithe Reflection of Someone I Know
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Raven trudges into her house, now — in addition to feeling sick and tired — feeling conflicted, annoyed, and deeply disturbed. On top of all that, she has a test tomorrow that she completely forgot about.

The smell of baked chicken fills the entire scale of the room.

"Mom? What are you doing?" Raven asks dryly.

"What?! I can't hear you, Rae!" Arella yells over the vegetables frying loudly in the frying pan.

Raven shakes her head and walks over to the couch and plops her backpack down in the middle of the room on the way to the TV, but stops halfway. She notices the new mirror hanging on the previously empty wall, she goes over to it and then stares at her reflection.

"Raven?"

She looks at her mother in the mirror.

"What were you saying?"

Raven points back towards the kitchen.

"Oh, that? We're having company over in a few hours! I heard that there is someone new that moved into the city and I thought it would be nice to hold a dinner party." She enthuses. "They have a son in high school. I think they told me his name was Kaleb or Kade or...was it Carl?"

Raven's eyes widen and she whips around to her mother, speaking the loudest she has in quite a while, which was just shy of her normal speaking voice: "Kai??"

"That's it! Kai! I'm guessing you know him?"

Raven shifts her eyes back to herself in the mirror and then she walks away from her mom saying simply, "A little."

"Liar," Arella says jovially. "Raven Roth, you hardly ever 'know someone a little.'"

Raven shakes her head and groans slightly.

"Well, either way, get your homework done before 8 o'clock, ok? And maybe take some more cold meds." With that, Arella goes right back to cooking and leaves Raven to her own devices.

"Ugh..."

I guess I'll start my homework...

Raven slogs back to the couch and reaches into her backpack to pull out her headphones. One of the most isolating devices she's got in her possession next to her books.

She plugs them into her phone and plays her music, instantly drowning out the sounds of the busy kitchen work behind her. She looks once more over her left shoulder at her mother, then pulls her history folder from her bag and a pencil.

'Explain specifically why Hitler hated the Jews. What did he have his soldiers do to them once taken?' Ugh, I hate this unit...

She doesn't even bother reading the article and goes to her phone to Google it. To nobody's suprise, the answer pops up right there. But much to her suprise, the answer is from an online document where her teacher seems to have gotten the questions from along with an answer key.

Thank God. I'm too tired to do this work.

After "working" for about an hour, she decides that she's done enough and she needs to get some sleep. Not only may it alleviate this headache that's developed since she's gotten home, but it will help her mentally prepare for having Kai and his family over. She never realizes how taxing it is to speak to other human beings until she gets sick. Additionally, since she rarely gets ill, when she eventually gets better she forgets that hardship and has to go through the process again the next time.