Jelka glanced down from her place on the couch, sighed, and nudged her father aside with a toe.
At first he seemed confused to be facing in a new direction, but his halting, tentative steps eventually built into a somewhat-lopsided scuttle to the other side of the room. Something over by the radiator seemed worth revisiting.
Cheerfully clomping down the stairs, Talena flounced into the living room and stopped short, blinking as she took stock of things. Her little sister – two years mattered a lot, she was sure – was frowning, arms crossed. Their mother looked glassily earnest, doubtless trying to impart a wooly platitude and meeting with utterly predictable but somehow unexpected resistance. And their father was licking at the floor, or maybe along the seam where it met the baseboard.
Talena was So Not Interested; she spun around and marched to the door, snagging a jacket as she disappeared without a word, leaving Jelka to deal with the familiar dreary nonsense by herself.
Jelka sighed and brushed some loose hair behind her ear. She regretted it immediately because it had been hiding part of her face, had allowed her gaze to wander in obscurity. She’d already missed her chance to find a reason to leave with Talena – she might’ve gotten lucky; hadn’t been quick enough.
“Jelka, honey – are you even listening to me?” Her mother was frowning.
Jelka stalled by picking a few salted groundnuts out of the end table’s ever-present dish, eating a couple as cover. The dish was kept stocked in the hopes that someday a guest’s hand might ever again stray towards it, but since nobody drank beer or watched the Premier League in the room any longer – or came by the house at all, really – the nuts mostly languished. However, since they were good Dad-bait (as she thought of them), they could also be… useful.
She tossed one to the floor.
The promising sound it made against the wood drew her father’s snuffling attention almost immediately, his nails clicking lightly against the repetitive laminate as he waddled over to repel the incursion. Floor-level groundnuts were a singular affront to his sensibilities.
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