Getting home from school on a Thursday, Eva is feeling a bit wiped out from the week.

People are being confusing. And effort. Why can't they just conform and fit with each other nicely, and glide past each other like well-oiled parts of a well-designed machine? There are so many ways that it could be better but no. Brad has to be a dick, Janet has to bitch about Verity, and Erik has to just be present with his weird obsession over her clique, and she has to deal with it all.

Of course, she knows why they can't just do that – Brad is, admittedly, a dick. Janet has some valid grievances against Verity, Verity was just doing what she thought was best for herself at the time without considering that it might hurt other people, and Erik is kinda hot so he hasn't been told to fuck off yet.

But it's fine. Fortunately, she was made for this job. She has the appropriate skills, she has good knowledge of similar prior scenarios, and she can just send off a few texts to try to reduce the fallout from the few incidents of the day. The rest of her evening she spends doing homework and studying – intermittently talking to people on the phone, of course – because it's late October and... there's nothing much on. She also hasn't planned anything, because again: late October, she had quite a lot of work to complete, and she didn't want to dig into her sleep.

Fortunately, she should be fine to get into bed after a nice, relaxing bath.

And eventually, she'll fall asleep.