Brae sat at her desk, wrapped in a blanket, a half-smoked cigarette hanging from her lips. She stared at a progress bar on her computer between responding to messages in a chat window.

“Are you trying to break up with me?” Brae typed. She was a very fast typist, even if that was a dying skill.

She ashed her cigarette, and lit another. The whir of machines working filled her bedroom with pseudo-industrial dissonance. Two machines dutifully worked away, shooting precise dots of resin and silicon as they built… whatever it was they were building.

The message window beeped. “No, of course not.” Scarlet responded.

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“Remember, your father will be picking you up after school.” Braelyn’s mother, Valerie, said.

Brae was half way out the door with her step-mother. The statement stopped her in her tracks. “Really? Mom, that makes no damn sense.”

“Braelyn, he’s your father. You should spend time with him.”

“No, that’s fine. It doesn’t make sense because, for one, he will forget to pick me up, so I will be waiting at school forever. For another, this woman… ” Brae gestured emphatically to her stepmother. “She’s the damn principal. And…”

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Braelyn could ignore the incessant chiming in her headset no longer. She tapped, nearly punched, the button to accept the call. “What, Scar? I’m busy.” The young teen’s shrill voice angrily proclaimed.

“Busy not doing what you promised.” The voice, Scarlet, on the other end retorted.

Braelyn, Brae or Brat as her friends called her, looked away from her computer screen to the clock besides her bed. “It’s five-o’clock. There’s like two hours before I have to be logged in.”

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