Chapter 2
Vi gets home from work, without the usual tiredness she has after a shift. Training the new girl had been more amusing than most days at work have been so far. She leans her bike up against the porch and gets her keys off the carabiner hanging off one of her belt loops, she messes with the locks for a bit before opening the door and takes off her shoes while announcing her presence to her family before running upstairs.
She opens the door to her room and shuts it before jumping on her bed. Bookbag thrown on the floor, she rolls onto her back and pulls out her phone. “Cait-lyn Kira-man”, Vi says as she types the name into her Instagram, hoping to learn more about her, she clicks on the first account to pop up and it’s her. She really studies the account, seeing that they have about 20 mutual followers, all being from school.
She clicks on her profile picture to expand it and stares for a bit, it’s a picture of Caitlyn at the beach her hair pulled into a half up half down style in a yellow halter dress that ends a little under mid-thigh. “Woah”, Vi exhales, “you really are something cupcake”. She exits out of the profile picture to scroll through her posts, there aren’t many, only 5 but most of them are her with friends. She sees Jayce in one of them, they are with her family at some nice restaurant, she wonders how close the two are for him to be at her family's outings. She hesitates on following her but, decides against it ultimately deciding not to before throwing her phone on the bed before getting up off the bed to go back downstairs.
“Pow-Pow”, Vi shouts as she jumps off the 3rd to last step, “where are you?”. She looks around not seeing her sister anywhere, groaning. She opens the front door to look for her sister out there, not finding her she shuts the door and runs back upstairs to Vander’s room.
She opens his door, seeing him there at his desk she throws herself onto the bed. “What’s up Vi?" Vander says before turning around in his chair to smile at his eldest daughter, “How was work?”. “It was fine, nothing too special”, she rolls onto her stomach facing him, “a new girl got hired and i had to train her today, she goes to my school”.
Vander hums and nods his head at that, “Oh really what’s her name, d’you get along?”
Vi lays her head on the bed, smooshing her face into it “Caitlyn Kiramman and yeah she was cool, we ate together after we got off”. Vander’s expression changes, becoming one of recognition, “Kiramman huh, her mom is part of the council y’know, Sevika isn’t a big fan of her “. He says laughing at the last part. “Really? Why is she working here if her momma is some big shot, they gotta be rich”, Vi says sitting up, pushing her hair back.
Vander just shrugs before turning back to his desk. Vi walks up to him and leans over his back resting her head on his “have you seen Powder”, she asks, “she wasn’t here when I came home and I looked around the house and, on the porch, and I can’t find her anywhere”, dragging out the last word with a groan.
Vander chuckles at her groaning “She’s with Sevika right now, she picked her up earlier and brought her to the last drop to hang out for a bit”, he explains. “Ohh, ok ok well I have to study so I’ll be in the living room if you need me”, she says getting off him and leaving. He says bye to her as leaves and tells her dinner will be at 7.
She grabs her bookbag and headphones from her room before heading to the living room, she throws all her stuff on the coffee table and goes to the kitchen to fill her water bottle before sitting back down at the table. She gets her notebook and math work out, it wasn’t her favorite subject, preferring English to it but, it had to be done so why complain. She has some random playlist playing in her headphones, singing as she does her work. Getting really focused and losing track of time, it’s not till she hears the sound of the front door opening that she looks down at her phone to realize she had been working for about 2 hours now, she stretches and looks at the door to see her brothers walk in with Powder and Sevika.
“Vi”, Powder exclaims seeing her sister, running over to her, throwing herself over her back and hugging her. “Heyy Pow, I missed you, what did you do with Sevika?" Vi responds, doing best to wrap her arms around her sister behind her. Sevika walks over, letting out an amused snort at the dramatics of the blue haired girl, even though Powder was a freshman in high school she never calmed down much. “This brat spent all our time together getting in my way and messing shit up”. Powder laughs at Sevika’s seemingly cold statement, they know she doesn’t really feel the way she says she does about the family, especially Powder. She won't say it but she has a soft spot for the youngest girl.
Mylo comes and sits on the couch and watches the girls as they talk, Vi putting her schoolwork back in the bag while listening to Powder talk about her day with Sevika. Vander comes down hearing the commotion, he walks to the couch to hug his youngest daughter and then goes to the kitchen where Claggor is hugging him as well. Powder quickly fills him in on what he missed before going back to Vi as Sevika and Vander go to the porch alone. They fall into their familiar routine, conversations and laughter filling the room.
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Caitlyn closes the car door as she gets into the back of her mom’s car, looking up at the rearview mirror to find her mother’s eyes on her. She just looks back through the mirror until her mom coughs then asks, “So how was your first day Caitlyn?”, the girl looks down to buckle her seatbelt before responding. “It was...”, she hesitates, wanting to tell her mother the full details of the day but chooses not to, "Good, I was trained by this girl who goes to Piltover , it was nice to see a familiar face I guess”. Her mom made a face at that, raising an eyebrow, ”Oh really, anyone I would know?”, she thinks about it for a second not sure her mom would be the biggest fan of her hanging out with the girl but, she also doubts she would even know her. “No, I doubt it. I didn't even catch her last name so there is no way for you to recognize her family”, she responds. Her mom says ‘ok’ to that and starts to drive off.
It's not a long drive home, only about 10 minutes but it's one filled with silence. Once they arrive at their home her mother lets her know dinner will be at 7 and to be down by then, Caitlyn nods and walks off to her bedroom upstairs. She opens her door hangs her purse and apron up before going to sit on her bed, leaning back against the headboard she opens her laptop and goes on Instagram, scrolling through her feed liking and commenting on some of her friends’ posts before going to the search bar to look up the red-haired girl she met at work today.
First, she tries the name ‘Violet’ but none of the accounts that come up are her, then she goes for Vi remembering how the girl requested to be addressed by only that. She finds her account and clicks on it, she doesn’t have any posts up but she has some highlights that Caitlyn is more than happy to go through.
The first one named ‘friends’ has a bunch of archived story posts of her and some other kids around school, in most pictures it had the same kids 2 brown haired boys, seemingly older, a shorter girl with short blue hair, and a boy with white dreads. She recognized the blue haired girl as Powder, and they had a class together, gym. She didn’t seem to be a big fan of hers when they got randomly partnered up more than once and Caitlyn was nothing short of a try hard.
Forgetting about Powder, she goes to the next highlight named with nothing but a basketball and as the name suggested it was a bunch of her basketball highlights, she was a good player, really good. Caitlyn couldn't help but admire the way her muscles flexed with every shot she took, shamelessly rewatching a few videos before stopping herself with pink cheeks.
Her last highlight was named with a simple red heart, and in it was a whole bunch of photos obviously taken by her, of the sunsets, of her friends, of random animals she’d seen on the street, etc. It was endearing, the way she captured such simple moments in a way that showed they obviously meant a lot to her. She closes that final highlight before going to tagged pictures, there weren’t many, but they were with the same people seen in her ‘friends’ highlight. Caitlyn finds herself with a smile after looking at the girl's account, closing it to get to work on some of her homework.
She started with her Math, since it’s her favorite, enjoying the fact that it’s a straightforward subject. Something that isn’t up to interpretation but, instead with one true answer and processes that stay consistent and work how they should. She gets done with it quickly, her enjoyment of it making it easier and moves onto the rest. She honestly is not having the best time in English right now since the unit is all about poetry and it is one thing she just does not understand, she just isn’t able to understand all the metaphors and fancy wording used to say something so simply and is not a fan of it. It’s not like she is stupid, she just would prefer it if poems would just directly state what they are trying to portray.
She checks her phone seeing it’s 6:50 so she heads downstairs for dinner with her family. She heads downstairs to her father in the kitchen finishing up the meal and her mom helping set up the table. She goes to do what she can to help for dinner and in a few minutes, they are all sitting down to eat.
Conversation is held by her parents who talk about work and all things boring she could care less for as she sits and plays with her food. Pushing her food around and taking bites every once and a while. She ends up asking if she can be excused early, claiming she had more work to finish and would like to go to bed early. Her mother allows it, she says goodnight to her parents after cleaning up her dishes, kissing them both on the cheek and heading up to her room.
Once inside she closes the door and goes to get ready for bed, showering, brushing her teeth, changing into pajamas before falling onto her bed and putting her phone on the charging cord, turning away from it and closing her eyes to go to sleep. She has to get up early for a track meet anyways so she had an excuse for going to bed so early. She won't admit it but, when she sleeps there is a kind red haired girl in her dreams.