Prompt 4, Risk Management

I have six locks on my door all in a row. When I go out, I lock every other one. I figure no matter how long somebody stands there picking the locks, they are always locking three.

~Elayne Boosler

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The door slammed so hard it bounced back off the frame again before the lock was violently turned.

Rachel stomped across the once comforting space of her bedroom, now little more then a exceedingly temporary retreat from the harshness of reality (on the nights she could get any consistent sleep anymore between homework, gymnastics, and the war and the blood and the screaming and the rush of the enemy dying under her claws), and flung childishly herself facedown on the bed. She was tired, frustrated and her mind just wouldn't stay on one thought at a time any more- and it terrified her how senselessly mad she had just gotten at Jordan over something so stupid she once would have just laughed off.

She was fully aware of the length and breadth of the wall she was building between herself and her family, what with the physical distance from her father, the lies she constantly told her mother, and the rarity of time spent with either of her sisters anymore…

…But while they were watching the wrong fire burn, nobody would see her real issues through the smoke; so Rachel gladly distracted them with the all the external drama she could cause- it might be the only thing protecting them by the end.

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