"Dad-wait-"

All Hugh was trying to do was leave the house, briefcase and coffee in hand and he kept talking long, fast steps to do so, knowing the short ten year old would have trouble keeping up.

"Tick-tock, Jeffery. You see the briefcase?" He asked the boy but was cut off by his wife at the door, sporting her new minke coat.

"It's Jimmie." She corrected taking a moment from hee cellphone calls to receive a passing moment of affection from her husband before the days seperated them all.

"And it's too early to bother your father, dear. Do it after work."

"I just wanted to know if I could have friends over-"

"You wasted my time for that?" Hugh scolded, but was already half out the door and going farther as the limo pulled up and he headed down the manors marble stairs.

"What friends?" Judy took a few seconds to fain an interest. But she looked at her phone rather than the boy who sported his new haircut from Hilgo who said it wss too "long".

"Carl and Sheen-I was thinking we could go down to the sug-"

"You know I don't like you interacting with those...children..in public, it's so dirty most of the time."

"Well, Mama, that's why I wanted to know first if they could come here..."

"And touch our things?!"

"Just my things I swear!" He followed as his mother started to walk away with her ringing phone.

"You have lessons." She said as if it was a better reason, before she rang the bell for Hilgo. Jimmy would never understand how such a large woman could just appear, as if from air. But he waa picked up like normal and carried to the library in defeat. His day only got worse when he was left in his normal chair with a boring teacher of Arthurian lore and he noticed at a far table sat Dimitri: a few uears older than Jimmy, the teenager would sit in the library popping his chewing gum and listening to music as his mother worked. The two never spokw but it reminded Jimmy of a thing he thought was wonderful: a day off from education. Like Dimitri's school got. He didn't even get Sundays off and had to work inventing around each lesson and assignment. He tried ways to do this before, a robot that exploding in his seat, a patch that let him fake an illness. But Hilgo peeled it off like a bandaide and he was still grounded for that. But he knew their had to be a way to get a day off, he just had to apply his big brain.