Hey all! It's a new chapter of Heat Wave! It may have left my area, but it definitely hasn't left my kitchen!
Un-beta'ed as always.
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Chapter four: Dana and Trip
Trip slouched into the kitchen shortly after ten AM, dressed in shorts and a ratty tank top that Dana was pretty sure had been Vince's at one point. She smiled as she got the cereal down from the top cupboard and set the box in front of her nearly-catatonic son.
"Morning sleepy," Dana said, sitting down at the kitchen table. Her son mumbled something that might have been a reply, or a snore. If he spent too many more hours up on the roof looking for the Cape, she was going to bolt his window shut and forbid him from going back up there. This was getting ridiculous!
"Can I turn the AC on?" Trip asked after a few minutes. He had been stirring his cereal around the bowl with his spoon, as though contemplating eating it but not making any actual effort to do so.
"It's already on," Dana muttered, standing up. She walked into the living room where the air conditioner was mounted in one window, and scowled at the machine. She'd turned it on the second she got up that morning, and it hadn't cooled down any in the last two hours.
The heat was absolutely miserable, and according to the broadcast, it wasn't going to get any better. People were being advised to stay indoors with the air-conditioning on. If they had to venture outside, carrying water bottles was advised.
"This day already sucks," Trip mumbled when his mother came back into the room. Dana scowled at him, and he ducked his head. A mumbled apology, and everything was back to normal. Except for the heat.
"If the heat gets much worse," Dana said, "would you like to go get ice cream later? Or go to the pool?" Ever since they'd moved into the apartment, Trip had been moving further away from her. After hearing the news about his new friend "the Cape", she'd made significant strides in trying to be there as much as possible for her son. She didn't want to lose him too…
"No thanks," Trip mumbled, pushing his cereal bowl away. "I'm gonna go watch cartoons or something."
Dana watched him go, sighing. No matter what she did, she always felt like the enemy after talking with Trip. Was she just not trying hard enough? Or maybe she was trying too hard; it was something to think about during this miserable heat wave.
The public defender began washing the dishes from breakfast, feeling almost mechanical in her movements. Eight months since Vince had died. Eight long months, in which her son had slowly been slipping away from her; if he weren't already talking to the psychiatrist at school, she would have taken him to another.
Imagining a superhero—even if the superhero was his friend, and told him good stories about his dad—wasn't healthy.
She checked the temperature and sighed. 109 degrees, and it wasn't showing any signs of going down. Dana sighed again, hanging her head. It was going to be a long week…
"Trip!" she yelled, "get some shoes on. We're going for ice cream!"
And that was that. She wasn't going to let her kid mope around, especially not during a heat wave. If he was hallucinating, she was going to do everything she could to keep him grounded in reality.
And ice cream seemed to be the way to go. She smiled as she locked the apartment door behind them, listening to Trip babble on about what flavor of ice cream he was going to have.
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So, what do you think? Like it, hate it? Think it should be killed with extreme prejudice? Drop a line and let me know!
Side note for everyone who's been reading Unexpected Consequences-I haven't abandoned it, it's just taking some time. Soon as Dana stops trying to kill Fleming, I'll post a new chapter.
