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KAT
"THIS IS DELICIOUS, MRS. WHEELER," Lucas said, looking up from his egg salad.
"Thank you, Lucas!" Karen beamed. "But Kat made the salad,"
"It's pretty good," Lucas looked at them both, impressed.
Kat gave him a sarcastic look, knowing that he was mostly trying to flatter her mother.
"I'm gonna go over to Jane's tonight," Mike said. "Is that okay?"
"Sure," Karen shrugged. "I'll drive you,"
"No, it's fine. I'll bike," Mike said quickly, looking to Kat for backup. Kat rolled her eyes before silently agreeing.
"Yeah, Mom, it's way easier to bike where Jane lives," she said.
"Yeah," Lucas chimed in.
"O-Okay," Karen said, a bit surprised at how passionate they all were, and Kat almost regretted the thought of potentially overdoing it.
Ever since a couple more talks with her mother about responsibility, Karen had finally begun to follow through. Yet, Kat knew that ultimately, Karen would never fully understand her. Karen only could ever think of her requests as a kid asking to do less homework, not an adult drowning in pressure. It was a hard pill to swallow, but she could only change herself and not her mother. However, she was still trying to make her understand even if Karen wouldn't listen, and Kat was indeed processing her anger in a better way.
"Kat, you're going to work soon?" Nancy asked, taking a sip of her orange juice.
"Yeah," Kat sighed.
"Can't wait till Michael starts working," Ted said from his steak. "Never known peace with all you kids in our hair,"
They laughed a little at the unfunny joke, Mike mumbling about he'd never work.
"I'd wanna work at Orange Julius when I'm older," Lucas said.
"You wanna make Fanta slushies for five hours straight?" Kat joked.
"On second thought," Lucas frowned.
"Honestly, I don't get how you can work in a place like Starcourt," Nancy sighed. "It's so loud, how can you concentrate?"
"Says the person working in a tiny office building with totally-not soundproof walls," Kat retorted. "I just suffer,"
"At least you don't work at the movies," Mike said.
"I guess. That'd probably be horrible," Kat agreed. For after she'd been to the new movie theater a couple times, she'd made the difficult ruling that working at Jazzercise was slightly better than working at Starcourt Cinemas. "Anyways, I gotta pack,"
