Cosima was still smiling when she walked into her house. She almost felt like humming, which was not like Cosima at all. She skipped into the kitchen and hopped up onto the counter, almost beginning to hum 'Dead,' before a ringing cellphone interrupted her. Pulling it out of her pocket, she was surprised to find Scott on the other end.

"Hey, Scott!" she said, tucking her phone between her ear and her shoulder and opening up a cabinet.

"Cos! Where've you been? I was looking for you." Scott sounded about as nervous as he had the first time they'd met, when he was convinced that she was going to stuff him into the toilet like all the other kids had been doing.

"Hm? What do you mean?" She fumbled around in the cabinet for a while before finding a bottle of what looked like oregano. "Where were you looking for me?" She stuck her hand down a crack in the counter and brought up a ripped piece of paper. Pouring some of the contents of the oregano bottle onto the paper and rolling it into a cylinder, she brought it up to her mouth and pulled out a lighter.

"Well, uh, you weren't at my house last night? Remember, we were planning to work on the science project later today…"

"Shit, I totally forgot! But you'll totally laugh when I tell you what actually happened last night, kay? You ready?"

Cosima heard Scott sigh on the other end as she brought the lighter up to the joint. "Yeah, sure. What happened?"

"Okay, so last night I went over to crash on your couch and apparently you have this super hot neighbour, right? She just moved in, do you know her?"

"The blonde girl?"

"Yeah! That one." Cosima hopped off the counter and started walking around her living room.

Scott whistled. "Oh yeah, I definitely know her."

"So anyway, last night I accidentally snuck into her house and not yours, wait, you're still allergic to cats, right?"

"Yeah… what does that have to do with-"

"So I went in, yeah? And she made me breakfast and drove me home and gave me her number and goddamn, she is cute, just – woah. And have you seen her eyes? Or her hair? Dude, she's insanely attractive."

Cosima heard Scott sigh again. "That's great Cos, but you're coming over, right?"

"Oh, right! Uh, let me finish my joint and get ready first, okay?"

Scott started groaning on the other end. "Fine, but if you aren't over in an hour I'm starting without you."

"Cool, I'll be there." Cosima almost hung up before adding, "but, uh, make it an hour and half instead. You know I'm always late."

"I know. Bye."

"See you then." Cosima pressed 'end call' on her phone and shoved it back in her pocket, reaching for the remote. She pressed the power button and sank down onto the couch, closing her eyes and listening absently to the news.

By the time Cosima had finished her joint, she felt wonderfully calm. Her head was finally clear of all the thoughts and ideas bouncing around, and she could relax. The only problem was that she was hungry. Really hungry, actually. Starving.

She forced herself off the couch and over to the pantry to find something deliciously unhealthy to eat. Eventually, she settled on Cheetos and a box of Twinkies, feeling violently American. The only thing that could make her more stereotypical was to go out and start protesting gay marriage, firing shotguns into the woods, and making a deep-fried bacon/donut hamburger. She shuddered at the thought.

Plopping herself back down on the couch, she turned up the volume on the TV and opened up the packages on her lap. She threw Cheetos in her mouth as the reporter on the news rambled on about some dumbass teenagers who started a fire in Texas, and that dickwad Aldous Leekie fucking more shit up with his experiments.

Aldous Leekie was the king of fucking up, in Cosima's mind. So much so that Cosima and her dad even had a running joke about how they would rather have Lord Voldemort running the country than him. Right now the reporter was talking about how one of his partners had allegedly died in a lab fire the other day because of an exploded experiment. Something Duncan? Cosima couldn't hear over the crunching of her chips.

When she had finished the bag of Cheetos, she moved on to the box of Twinkies and started sucking out the cream filling. This continued until she had eaten half the box, and she was starting to feel guilty. Her mom loved Twinkies, and Cosima was fairly sure the box had been bought the previous day. She made a mental note to herself to buy another box on her way home from Scott's.

Shit! She had to be at Scott's house in twenty minutes! Cosima sunk back into the couch and groaned. Scott was going to be so pissed.

She pushed herself off the couch and up the stairs into her room. It was a mess, as always, and clothes were strewn everywhere. Cosima even saw a black tank top hanging off her ceiling fan. Climbing up onto a chair, Cosima pulled the top off her fan and sniffed it. It seemed fairly clean, and there were no stains on it, so she thought that would be good enough. She pulled off her weed-scented My Chemical Romance tee that she'd gotten at a concert a few years back and pulled on the tank top. She dropped to the floor to find a pair of jeans that didn't have mud on the cuffs, and searched for a good two minutes before finding one. She squeezed herself into a pair and headed to her bathroom.

Cosima walked into the bathroom, cringing at her hair in the mirror. Sometimes she thought of changing it. Shaving it off? Dreadlocks? She had no idea. Cosima grabbed her hairbrush off the counter and began brushing her hair, wincing every time she hit a knot. When she had pulled out at least half her hair, she decided to just give up and put it in a ponytail.

Cosima sighed. "Well that was taxing." She stomped down the stairs to the kitchen, opening up the fridge and looking through. Milk, cheese, jelly, ketchup… ugh, don't we have anything to eat? She closed the fridge, disappointed. Turning around to look at the pantry, she heard the lock on her door click.

Fuck, she thought, running over to the couch. Who the fuck is that?

"Scott? Is that you?"

No reply.

"Fuck!" Cosima ducked under the couch, hidden from the sight of anyone who would walk through that door. She looked around frantically for something to defend herself with, finding only the TV remote on the ground and her mom's favourite mug lying on the coffee table. She grabbed the mug and crouched behind the couch in silence, waiting for another sound.

Cosima could faintly make out two people talking in hushed tones, though she couldn't imagine what about. Clutching the remote, she crawled further behind the couch and prepared to spring out at whoever was at her door.

The lock clicked again and Cosima braced herself to seriously injure this person. With a groan, the door opened and Cosima popped out from behind the couch, screaming and running to the door, mug in hand.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAH!"

The woman at the door threw her hands up and screamed back at Cosima. "AAAAAAAAAAH!"

Cosima skidded on the floor, confused. "MOM?"

Cosima's mother clutched at her neck and stopped screaming. "Cosima?"

Shit. Mom. Not a murderer. Cosima lowered the mug from above her head and looked at her mother. "What are you doing back so early?"

"Goddammit, Cosima!" her mother said, looking thoroughly terrified. "I need to sit down." Cosima's mother walked over to the couch and plopped herself down, breathing heavily. "What in god's name possessed you to do that?"

"Uh, I kind of thought you were a murderer?"

"Why the hell would you think that?" she asked, looking at Cosima like she had tried to kill her – which, to be fair, she kind of had, but still.

Cosima looked at her mother. Small, slim, and gaining on fifty years old, her mom hardly fit the murder-y description.

"Well I didn't think you'd be back until tomorrow… Didn't you say Sunday?"

"Well, yes, we did, but something came up."

"Something?"

"Yes, that's actually what we meant to speak to you about."

"Speak to me?" Cosima was starting to get suspicious. The last time her parents 'spoke to her about something' they gave her the talk, and she was traumatised for life.

"Michael! Get in here," Cosima's mom yelled. Cosima heard her dad mumble something from outside, but she couldn't have cared less what he had said.

"What? I'm busy unloading the car for the party, Karen," he replied as he walked through the door.

Cosima looked at her mom. "Party? That's all you wanted to tell me? That you guys are going to a party sometime soon?"

Cosima could practically see the daggers that her mom was shooting at her dad before she turned to her daughter. "Well, you see, you know how I got promoted the other day?"

"Yeah, now you're some bigwig at the company, right?"

"That's right. Well, one of my bosses invited us all to a company party tomorrow night. Won't that be fun?"

Cosima saw her dad shift his weight and look at her helplessly. "It could be," she began. "Depends on who else is invited. What aren't you telling me?"

Cosima's mom turned to give a look to her dad, prompting him to take over the conversation.

"Well," he began, "see, uh, it's not someone we particularly like."

Cosima smirked. "What, you're not going to tell me it's that Leekie guy, right?"

Her parents exchanged glances.

"Oh my god, it's Leekie! We have to go to a party with Leekie? You're kidding me, right? Honestly?" She glanced back and forth between her parents. "Dad, you can't honestly approve of this, can you? Leekie? The guy we both hate?"

Her mother tried to amend. "Well, see honey, it's not that bad, it's only one night and-"

"But we hate him! How can you just blindly follow along with this? Are you forgetting how much he's screwed up in the past couple years?"

"Sweetie, it's not his fault, honestly he's just been trying to do the best he can-"

"Mom, people have died because of him! Lab explosions, cancer-"

"ENOUGH!"

Cosima quieted. Her mom never yelled.

"Now you listen here and you listen good," her mom said, a quiet rage in her voice. "You are going to come to this party and be polite, whether you like it or not. The minute we leave you can have your opinions and express them, that's fine by me, but from seven to eleven at night, you are going to have nothing but good things to say about Aldous Leekie. Is that understood?"

"Yeah."

"Good."

Cosima stared down at her feet. "I'm going to Scott's to work on a project. Bye." She headed towards the door.

"Cosima, wait," her dad said, trying to stop her from leaving angry.

"I got to go. Bye."

The echo of a slamming door rang throughout the neighbourhood.