Silverly Random Legacy: 1.28 Keep Busy

Their disagreement seemingly forgotten by Sage, Naomi's driving lessons soon resume.

"I don't want you cycling to and from the graveyard at night," Sage says as they get into the car, "It's dangerous for a girl your age to be so...exposed."

As Naomi hoped, her mother has been supportive of her job. Too bad it means she's also increased their car rides together.

"Naomi, look where you're going!"

Naomi's eyes snap forward. Nothing's there; she breathes a sigh of relief.

Sage nods approvingly.

When they get home, it's chore time. Relieved to be off the road, Naomi cleans the bathroom without complaint.

Normally the laundry doesn't trouble her, but every so often the machine overflows.

She just sighs at her soaked arms and fetches the toolkit. Like her mother says, no use panicking over it. Still, her hands tremble as she reaches into the machine. The manual can only be so helpful when she journeys into the mess of circuits and wires inside of it.

Everything would be so much easier if it was neat and orderly.

Nevertheless, she gets the job done.

She decides to take her mother's silence as approval.

And then it's off to work for another shift of dusting and carrying urns and gravestones back and forth.

It's good to keep busy.

It keeps one's mind off of things.

Naomi finds that the best cure for her silly feelings of...she's not sure of exactly what... is to talk to her friends.

Though she certainly won't forget about her schoolwork for it. Her grades are important, too.

Naomi looks up, mentally trying to calculate vectors for their math assignment, "I wish I hadn't left my graphing calculator at home," she sighs.

"I wish I hadn't left my will to live back in math class but here we are," Brianne grumbles.

The two girls lock eyes and laugh. "This does suck," Naomi agrees.

"You sure you don't want to catch a movie instead?" Brianne only half-jokingly tries to distract her friend, "We just finished geometry."

"Well if we get it done now it won't bother us anymore," Naomi is the voice of reason.

Brianne rolls her eyes, "You're too damn logical, you know?"

Naomi shrugs, "I also have to go to work... if I don't do it know then I have to do it after my shift and then I would be way too tired to do it."

"I know, I know. You're responsible."

"You say that like an insult."

Brianne smiles, "Naaah. I'm just joking. But still, if we have to do homework, biology would be so much more...well, not fun, but easier? We just have to write about those fish we did that experiment on."

Naomi scratches her head, "Right, the uh... fish gathering one?"

Brianne laughs, "And here I thought you were the nerd. The schooling experiment, Naomi. A school of fish?"

"Well, you did all the work for it, I don't even remember what variable we were testing," Naomi admits. Her right hand begins fiddling with her pen.

"It's fine, dude. We have three more days to write it."

Naomi nods, but her fidgeting doesn't stop.

It never really does.

Before Brianne can try-in vain- to reassure Naomi, Calvin breezes out of the front doors of the school building.

"Hi Calvin," Naomi greets cheerfully.

He looks over at the pair, his cheeks flushing, "Hi..."

"Hi," Brianne returns flatly. She looks up with disdain as Naomi gets up to make conversation with Calvin.

"What are you doing?" she hisses in a whisper, "We still have four more math problems to do!"

"It's rude not to say hi!"

"You already said hi!"

Naomi waves off her friend's chagrin and approaches Calvin.

"Hey, I didn't see you in biology," Naomi says, her voice soft and concerned. She reaches out, unaware that she's even doing it, to pat his shoulder.

Calvin intercepts her hand, "Yeah, I skipped it. Then I got caught skipping it and well..."

"Calvin!"

He laughs, "It was just bad luck. I don't skip normally but I had a history test right after it that I didn't study for... so naturally the one time I skip class- for academic reasons!- I get caught." His expression becomes surly. He looks down at their hands and abruptly lets go.