Word count : 4970
One month before East Highland
The Vaughn house was quiet when they pulled into the driveway, which was normal. It was always quiet. Mara would have freaked the fuck out if it hadn't been.
Mara trudged up the stairs behind Jules, her body finally starting to register the fact that she'd beaten the shit out of a serial killer about three hours ago. The adrenaline crash was hitting now — that heavy, cotton-stuffed feeling behind her eyes that meant she'd sleep like the dead tonight. If Jules let her sleep, anyway.
Their shared room was exactly how they'd left it — Jules's side a controlled explosion of clothes and makeup and half-finished art projects, Mara's side almost aggressively neat. Two personalities, one room. It worked, somehow. It had always worked.
Mara flopped onto her bed, face-first into her pillow. Maybe if she just lay here long enough, Jules would forget to—
"So."
Fuck.
"Why were you at the motel?"
Mara didn't lift her face from the pillow. "Mmrph."
"In English, please."
She turned her head just enough to breathe. "You know. Stuff."
"Stuff." Jules's voice was flat. Dangerously flat.
"Yeah. Stuff." Mara attempted a casual shrug, which was difficult to pull off while lying face-down. "General... stuff."
Jules walked toward her. Mara heard the footsteps getting closer, felt the mattress dip as Jules leaned over her, and then suddenly she was flipped onto her back like a rolly polly, Jules's face an inch from hers — upside-down and deeply unimpressed.
"Did you," Jules said slowly, "go to that motel to fuck that guy?"
Mara's brain short-circuited. She could feel sweat prickling at her hairline, which was ridiculous — she'd just stared down a serial killer without breaking a sweat, but Jules's disappointed face was apparently where she drew the line.
She shook her head. Vigorously. Like a wet dog trying to dry off.
"Show me your phone."
"What? No." Mara sat up so fast she almost headbutted Jules. "Why would I show you my phone? You show me your phone."
Jules stared at her. Just... stared. That dead-eyed look she'd perfected over years of dealing with Mara's bullshit.
"Okay, okay, fine." Mara threw her hands up. "I went to the motel because I had a date. But you do the same thing all the time, so why are you being so anal about it?"
Jules's expression flickered. Surprise, then guilt, then back to neutral. "What do you mean, I do the same thing?"
"I mean I know about the apps, Jules. The hookups. The whole thing."
"How do you—"
"I followed you." Mara said it fast, like ripping off a bandaid. "Like, a year ago. I wanted to know what you were doing, so I followed you. And then I went through your phone."
"You what?"
"And I saw how you found the guys, so I downloaded a similar app, and then started doing it too, and now here we are." She spread her hands a huge smile on her face. "The circle of life. Like sister like sister."
Jules's mouth opened. Closed. Opened again. She looked like a fish that had just been told it was adopted.
"I don't even know what to say," she finally managed. "How many times have you... how many guys have you..."
"You know." Mara examined her fingernails finding them suddenly very interesting. "Like, thirty-eight."
"THIRTY-EIGHT?"
"Give or take."
"YOU SLUT!"
"DON'T CALL ME A SLUT, YOU WHORE!"
"DON'T CURSE AT YOUR SISTER!"
"YOU CALLED ME A SLUT FIRST!"
"UUUUUUGGGHHHH." Jules collapsed backward onto her own bed as if someone had cut her strings. She lay there, staring at the ceiling, looking as if she was contemplating the heat death of the universe. "I spoiled you. I'm such a bad sister. I corrupted my baby sister."
"What do you mean, spoiled?" Mara tilted her head. "I don't know about all of them, but about eighty percent of them were able to make me—"
"SHUT. UP."
"—cum, soooooooooooo.. really it's been a pretty positive experience overall—"
A pillow hit her directly in the face with the force of a small meteor. Mara went down like a sack of potatoes, sprawling across her bed with a dramatic death rattle that would have made a soap opera actress proud.
"You bitch," Jules groaned from her bed. "You absolute fucking gremlin. Why are you like this?"
Mara peeled the pillow off her face. "Why are you so distressed? I'm the one who almost got murdered tonight. I should be getting sympathy, not assault."
"Please." Jules pressed her hands over her eyes. "Just... please don't tell anyone about the apps. About any of it."
"I mean, David was at the police station." Mara sat up, brushing her hair out of her face. "He's definitely going to ask me what I was doing at a motel. And you know I'm going to tell him I was there with the intent to fuck what turned out to be a serial killer."
"Can you please be serious for one second?"
"But where's the fun in that?" Mara grinned. "Besides, I didn't even want to go tonight. I was bored. And horny. And you're being kind of a square about this whole thing."
"Who the fuck are you calling a square?"
"See, grandma? Even your hearing's going." Mara cackled. "Should we get you one of those little ear trumpet things? A nice rocking chair? Maybe a—"
Jules launched herself across the gap between their beds like a heat-seeking missile. Mara barely had time to squeak before Jules was on top of her, fingers finding her ribs with terrifying accuracy.
"Jules—" Mara gasped, already dissolving into helpless laughter. "Jules, you know I'm— HA— ticklish, you can't—"
"Oh, I know." Jules's grin was pure evil. "That's the point."
"I give!" Mara wheezed, tears streaming down her face. "I give, I give, I'm sorry, I'm sorry—"
"You better be." Jules finally released her, flopping down beside her on Mara's bed. They lay there together, both breathing hard, staring up at the ceiling with its glow-in-the-dark stars that Mara had stuck up there when she was twelve and never bothered to take down.
The silence settled over them like a blanket. Comfortable. Familiar.
"I won't miss LA," Mara said eventually.
"I will," Jules replied.
"Why? There's so much... everything." Mara waved a hand vaguely. "Everywhere you turn, there's people. You can't even go to the grocery store without someone trying to give you a demo of their mixtape or recruit you into a pyramid scheme or ask if you've accepted Jesus Christ as your personal lord and savior. It's exhausting."
Jules laughed, soft and tired. "Yeah. Maybe you're right. But still. I'll miss it."
There was something in her voice that Mara couldn't quite identify.
She didn't ask though. Sometimes not asking was the right decision.
"GIIIIIIIIIIIIIRLS! DINNER'S READY!"
David's voice echoed up the stairs. Mara sprang up immediately, her body responding to the promise of food with Pavlovian enthusiasm.
"Last one down is a rotten egg."
"You little—" Jules scrambled after her, but Mara was already out the door, taking the stairs two at a time with recklessness which showed the utter lack of worry about falling.
She hit the kitchen first, skidding to a stop in front of the table where David had set out—
"Lasagna?" Mara's eyes went wide. "What's the occasion?"
"None." David shrugged, setting down the last plate as Jules appeared in the doorway, slightly out of breath. "Just thought you might like it after... everything."
He didn't say after you beat up a serial killer. He didn't have to.
"You're getting better, Davy." Mara pulled out her chair and sat down. "I'm impressed."
Jules smacked her on the back of the head as she passed. Not hard, but enough to make a point.
"OW. What the fuck?"
"Be a little respectful to your father."
Mara stuck her tongue out at her. Jules shook her head and sat down.
They ate in relative peace for about five minutes. The lasagna was good — David had been taking cooking classes, trying to be a Better Dad or whatever, and it was actually starting to pay off. Mara was on her third bite when David cleared his throat.
"So." He speared a piece of pasta with his fork, not quite looking at her. "What exactly were you doing at that motel?"
Jules froze mid-chew. Fuck, her expression said. Here we go.
"Oh." Mara swallowed her bite. "I was there to fuck the guy."
She said it fast, casual, like she was commenting on the weather. Jules's hand shot across the table and clamped over her mouth about half a second too late.
"WHAT?" David's fork clattered against his plate.
"Mmrrph hrrph mrrrph," Mara said helpfully into Jules's palm. Then she licked it.
"EW." Jules yanked her hand back, wiping it on her jeans. "You're disgusting."
"I said I was there to fuck the guy." Mara took another bite of lasagna. "This is really good, by the way. Is that fresh basil?"
Jules's head hit the table with a soft thunk. She stayed there, forehead pressed against the wood, making a sound like a deflating balloon.
"WHAT?" David repeated, his voice climbing an octave.
"Jules, I think David might be going deaf." Mara cupped her hands around her mouth. "I. WAS. THERE. TO. FUCK—"
"I HEARD YOU THE FIRST TIME!"
"Then why did you ask again? That seems inefficient."
David's face changed a mile a minute. Several emotions were fighting for dominance — horror, disbelief, the exhaustion that only parents of teenage girls knew — and none of them were winning.
"You're sixteen."
"And?"
"And you can't just— you can't— there are laws, Mara!"
"Pretty sure the laws are about the guys, not me." She pointed at him with her fork. "I'm the minor here. I'm the victim, if anything. Which, by the way, I literally was tonight, so really you should be comforting me instead of yelling."
"You're not— that's not— that's not how this—"
"She's got a point," Jules mumbled into the table.
"Don't help her!" shouted David at Jules.
"I'm not helping her, I'm just saying—"
" YOU." David rounded on Jules, who reluctantly lifted her head. "Did you know about this?"
Jules's expression went carefully blank. "I mean... define 'know.'"
"Jules."
"I maybe... suspected? A little bit? Recently?"
"RECENTLY?" Mara snorted. "You literally just called me a slut upstairs."
"MARA!"
"What? It's true. She also threw a pillow at my face. I could have died."
"You 'could not' have died from a pillow." said Jules making exasperated air quotes.
"You don't know that. I'm very delicate."
David pressed both hands against his eyes and breathed deeply. In through the nose. Out through the mouth. Deliberate and measured breathing that suggested he was trying very hard not to commit a felony.
"We're going to talk about this," he said finally, his voice strained. "We're going to have a long conversation about boundaries, safety and appropriate behavior for a sixteen-year-old child—"
"Ugh. Can we at least finish dinner first?" Mara shoveled another bite into her mouth. "The lasagna's getting cold and you worked really hard on it."
"I— that's not— you can't just—" David sputtered.
"She's right though," Jules said. "It is really good lasagna."
"Thank you." David's automatic response. Then: "Wait. No. Stop derailing the conversation."
"I'm not derailing anything. I'm just saying." Mara gestured with her fork. "You made a nice dinner. We should appreciate it. Family bonding and all that. Isn't that what you're always going on about?"
"This is NOT—"
"And anyway, I almost died tonight. Literally. That guy was going to murder me and do weird stuff with my fingernails. Don't I deserve a nice, peaceful dinner before we get into the whole 'Mara, your life choices are concerning' speech? Which, by the way, I have memorized at this point. I could probably give it better than you."
David opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.
Jules was watching him with something like sympathy. She knew that look on his face — he looked like a man who had long ago accepted that his younger daughter operated on a different wavelength than the rest of humanity, and that fighting it was about as useful as yelling at the ocean.
"Fine." He picked up his fork. His hand was shaking slightly. "Fine. We'll finish dinner. And then we're talking."
"Deal." Mara beamed at him. "Pass the parmesan?"
He passed the parmesan.
The rest of dinner was quiet, punctuated only by the scrape of forks against plates and the occasional heavy sigh from David. Jules kept shooting Mara looks across the table — half exasperated, half impressed — and Mara kept pretending not to notice.
When they finished, David stood up and started collecting plates. His movements were deliberate, controlled. The calm before the storm.
"Living room," he said. "Both of you. Five minutes."
He disappeared into the kitchen with the plates. Mara and Jules exchanged a look.
"You're so fucked," Jules said.
"Yeah, probably." Mara stretched, her joints popping. "But hey. At least the lasagna was good."
-x-
The lecture lasted approximately seventeen thousand years.
Or maybe forty-five minutes. Hard to tell. Time moved glacial when David was in Full Dad Mode, pacing back and forth across the living room like a general addressing troops who had deeply disappointed him.
"—and I understand that you're going through changes, and hormones are a thing, but that doesn't mean—"
Mara's eyes had glazed over somewhere around minute twelve. She was physically present on the couch, nodding at what she hoped were appropriate intervals, but mentally she had checked out and was currently replaying the fight with the Plier in slow motion, analyzing her footwork.
"—not saying you can't have feelings, I'm saying there are appropriate ways to—"
Jules sat beside her, equally hollow-eyed. At some point during minute twenty-three, she'd started fantasizing about time travel. Specifically, about going back to before she was born and staying in the womb for an extra year. Just long enough to find baby Mara in there and strangle her before any of this could happen. Would that be murder or a very late-term abortion? Unclear. Didn't matter. Worth it.
"—and I know I haven't always been the most present father, but that's no excuse for—"
Mara scoffed at that and David glared at her leading to her looking away. Mara caught Jules's eye. They shared a look of pure, transcendent suffering. Sisters in misery. Bound together by blood and boredom and the endless drone of parental disappointment.
"—which is why I've decided that for the foreseeable future—"
Please let this end, Mara thought. I will never seek instant gratification again. I will become a nun. I will move to Tibet and live in a monastery. Just please, please let this—
"—and that's final."
Silence.
Mara blinked. Was it... was it over?
"Now go to your room." David's voice was hoarse from talking for so long. "You're both grounded."
"Why me?" Jules sat up, suddenly alert. "I didn't do anything! She's the one who—"
David gave her a look. Just a look. But it was a look that contained multitudes — specifically, the multitude of ways Jules had enabled, ignored, or otherwise failed to prevent Mara's descent into chaos.
Jules got the message.
They trudged up the stairs like the walking dead, their bodies heavy with the weight of consequences. By the time they reached the second-floor landing, Mara had recovered enough to extend her arms in front of her and start shuffling forward with a blank expression.
"Braaaaaains," she moaned. "Jules... I will eat your braaaaaaains..."
Jules turned to look at her. The expression on her face existed somewhere on an infinite spectrum between murderous rage and bone-deep exhaustion.
Mara got the message.
She mimed zipping her lips shut, then locking them, then throwing away the key, then — for good measure — catching the imaginary key mid-air, swallowing it whole, and patting her stomach.
Jules just dragged herself into their room and collapsed face-first onto her bed like a marionette with cut strings.
Mara followed suit, flopping onto her own mattress with a soft whump.
They were both asleep within ten minutes.
-x-
6:30 AM
Mara's eyes snapped open exactly thirty seconds before her alarm was set to go off. She reached over and turned it off before it could make a sound — no need to wake Jules and face the wrath of a morning-hating sister.
Gym time.
She rolled out of bed with the fluid grace of someone who had trained their body to be ready for anything at any hour. Jules was still a lump under her covers, one arm dangling off the bed, completely dead to the world. Perfect.
Mara dressed quickly: white compression shorts that barely qualified as shorts, more like aggressive suggestions of shorts; a violet bandeau top that left her midriff completely bare. She checked herself in the mirror, cocked her hip, and shot her reflection a flirty smile.
"God, I'm sexy," she whispered to herself. "Like, objectively."
Her reflection agreed.
She grabbed her gym bag — towel, waist belt, water bottle, the essentials — and crept downstairs with the stealth of a cat burglar. She was almost to the front door when—
"Where are you going?"
Mara froze. David was in the living room. Of course he was. The man had apparently evolved past the need for sleep, powered entirely by parental anxiety and disappointment.
He looked at her outfit. Looked at it again, like he was hoping it would change if he blinked hard enough. It did not.
"Did you forget the rest of your clothes?"
"Ummmm..." Mara gestured vaguely at herself. "You know. Gym. And these are all the clothes I need for the gym, David. Don't be such a prude."
She expected the lecture. The sigh. The Mara, we talked about this.
Instead, David just looked at her. Really looked. And there was something in his eyes that wasn't disappointment or frustration — it was worry. Pure, undiluted parental worry.
"Please be back by nine," he said quietly.
Mara opened her mouth to retort — she had several excellent retorts prepared, actually — but that look made the words die in her throat.
"Yeah," she said instead. "Okay."
She left before the moment could get any more uncomfortable.
-x-
The morning air was crisp against her bare skin as she stepped outside, the LA summer heat not yet risen to its full oppressive glory. She pulled out her headphones, settled them over her ears, and scrolled to her workout playlist.
Believer by Imagine Dragons. Perfect.
The opening drums hit and she started moving immediately, her body responding to the beat like it was hardwired into her nervous system. She danced as she walked, hips swaying, feet finding rhythms in the pavement cracks. She didn't care who was watching. She never cared who was watching.
She sang along under her breath — the parts about pain being a believer, about broken becoming something stronger. It was dramatic as fuck and she loved it. The song made you feel like you were the main character in an action movie montage, like you were about to punch through a wall or climb a mountain or, you know, go do leg day. Same energy, really.
A guy jogging in the opposite direction was so busy staring at her that he ran directly into a light pole.
Like, directly. Face-first. Full contact. The collision made a TWACK sound.
Mara kept walking, a satisfied smile spreading across her face. She didn't look back. She didn't need to.
She got on her bike and pedaled toward the gym, about four kilometers away. The playlist shuffled as she rode, and by the time she was halfway there, Believer had faded into something completely different — A Traveling Spirit by Daniel Kadawatha.
♩ ♪ I'm a travelling spirit, I've seen many shores♫ From the west Pacific to the island of Caño♪ ♩ They treat me like a son anywhere I go ♫ And even though no one can tell, I still feel that I'm alone ♩ ♪.
This one was softer. Instrumental, sweeping, the kind of music that made you feel like you were in a movie about your own life. Haunting and beautiful and somehow both sad and hopeful at the same time. She hummed along, letting the notes carry her through the streets of LA, weaving between cars and pedestrians with the easy confidence of a local who had been biking these roads since she was twelve.
♩ ♪ I'm alone, I'm alone, I'm alone ♫ Leave me stranded, I know how ♪ ♩ To handle it all on my own ♫ On my own, ooh ♩ ♪.
The song built toward its crescendo right as she turned onto the street where Iron House Fitness sat, and she timed her arrival perfectly — coasting through the parking lot as the final notes swelled, hopping off her bike with a little spin that made her bag swing out behind her.
Dramatic? Yes. Did she care? Absolutely not.
"Morning, Ray!"
The guy at the reception desk — mid-twenties, perpetually tired, deeply fond of Mara entirely platonic and slightly exasperated — looked up and immediately started laughing.
"There she is. Couldn't hear the music from the parking lot this time?"
"The acoustics were off." She shot him finger guns as she passed. "Catch you on the flip side."
"Please stop saying that."
"Never!"
The gym loved her. That wasn't ego — it was just fact. She was a regular, she worked hard, and she had the kind of energy that made other people smile even when they were on their third set of deadlifts and wanted to die. Plus, she didn't take herself seriously, which was rare in a place full of people who very much took themselves seriously.
Today was leg day.
Her gym partner was already at the squat rack — Marcus, six-foot-four, two hundred and fifty pounds of muscle, tattoos running up both arms, the kind of guy who looked like he could crush a watermelon between his biceps. Which he could. Mara had seen him do it at the gym's Fourth of July party.
"Yo!" She bounded over, clapping him on the back. "Ready to get absolutely destroyed?"
Marcus grinned down at her. "You're literally half my size."
"And yet I'm gonna outlift you. Percentage-wise. Proportionally. You know what I mean."
"I really don't."
"Don't worry about it. Spot me."
They worked through the routine together — squats, lunges, leg press, the whole brutal circuit. Mara matched his energy rep for rep, trash-talking between sets with the confidence of someone who had genuinely never experienced shame.
"Bro, your form's slipping."
"My form is perfect."
"That's what she said."
"That doesn't even make sense in this context."
"It's provocative. It gets the people going."
Marcus shook his head, but he was laughing. Everyone was always laughing around Mara. It was a talent, maybe. Or a survival mechanism. Hard to tell.
After they finished, Mara stretched languidly and then started wandering toward the men's bathroom with the casual confidence of someone who belonged there.
Marcus's hand caught her shoulder. "Nope."
"Awww, come on."
"First grow up, kid." He steered her firmly toward the women's side. "You're jailbait. And I don't want to go to jail."
"Working out makes me horny," she complained, with exactly zero shame.
"I don't care."
"You're such a stick in the mud."
"And you're sixteen." He released her shoulder, shaking his head. "Kids these days. No sense of appropriate boundaries."
"That's what makes me fun!"
"Go shower. You smell."
"You love my smell."
"Goodbye, Mara."
She went, giggling, into the women's locker room.
The shower was long and hot and exactly what she needed. She wasn't lying about the working-out-makes-her-horny thing — her body was still humming with post-exercise energy, all that blood flow and endorphins doing their thing. She took care of it quickly, efficiently, with the practiced ease of someone who knew exactly what she liked. Then she rinsed off, toweled dry, and changed into fresh clothes — similar outfit, but with an oversized hoodie thrown on top.
She wasn't a fool. She knew how she looked, and she knew that the walk home was different from the walk to the gym.
-x-
8:50 AM
Mara stood on the front porch of her house, bag slung over her shoulder, checking her phone.
8:51.
8:52.
8:53.
She could have gone in at any point. The door was right there. But David had said nine, and Mara was, if nothing else, a woman of her word.
8:54.
8:55.
8:56.
She bounced on her heels, humming under her breath.
8:57.
8:58.
8:59.
She rang the doorbell.
David opened it almost immediately. He looked at her. Looked at his watch. Looked at her again.
"I saw you standing outside for ten minutes," he said flatly. "From the window."
"I was on time."
"Just... come in." He stepped aside, resignation radiating from every pore. "Breakfast is on the table."
Jules was at the kitchen table, hunched over a cup of coffee that was probably more sugar than actual coffee. She was still in her pajamas, hair a disaster, eyes barely open. When she saw Mara walk in — fresh-faced, energized, practically glowing with post-workout endorphins — her expression curdled into pure disgust.
"I hate you," she said.
"Good morning to you too, sunshine."
"It's not even nine. Why are you like this."
Mara made herself breakfast — overnight oats with protein powder, because she was nothing if not committed to the gains — and sat down next to Jules.
"So," she said, spooning oats into her mouth, "this guy on the way to the gym today ran into a pole."
Jules looked at her blankly. "What?"
"A pole. Like a light pole. He was jogging, and he was staring at me, and he just—" Mara made a splat motion with her hand. "Full contact. Face-first. I heard the impact."
Jules stared at her for a long moment. Then she started laughing — that helpless, coffee-almost-coming-out-her-nose kind of laugh that meant she was picturing it.
"Oh my god—"
"I didn't even look back. I just kept walking."
"You're evil—"
"I'm iconic."
"Speak after you're done eating," David said from somewhere behind them, his voice tired.
They ignored him.
"Oh, by the way," Jules said, once she'd recovered enough to form sentences again. "I'm supposed to hang out with TC today. We were gonna go to—"
"You're grounded."
David's voice cut through the kitchen like a knife. Jules's face fell.
"But—"
"Both of you. Grounded. Remember?"
Jules had, in fact, forgotten. The realization dawned on her face in slow motion — confusion, then memory, then horror, then a slow pivot toward Mara with murder in her eyes.
This was her fault. This was all her fault.
Mara suddenly became very interested in her oats.
"Dad, come on." Jules turned back to their father, switching tactics. "It's just TC. We were just gonna hang out. It's not like—"
"You're grounded."
"But I didn't even do anything—"
"You knew about the app. You didn't tell me."
"I didn't know know—"
"Grounded."
"For how long?"
"We'll see."
"That's not an answer!"
"It's the answer you're getting."
Jules slumped in her chair, defeated. Then she straightened up again, turned to face Mara, and began boring holes into the back of her head with sheer force of will.
Mara could feel it. She didn't turn around.
They trudged upstairs after breakfast, the weight of their imprisonment settling over them like a physical thing. Jules walked behind Mara the whole way, and Mara could still feel the glare on the back of her skull. If looks could kill, she would be liquid by now. Just a Mara-shaped puddle on the carpet.
They entered their room. Jules closed the door.
The silence was deafening.
"So," Mara said carefully, "what do you wanna—"
"Don't talk to me."
"Okay but—"
"Don't."
Jules threw herself onto her bed and pulled out her phone, aggressively texting someone — TC, probably, explaining why she was now a prisoner in her own home. Her thumbs moved with the furious energy of the deeply wronged.
Mara, wisely, retreated to her corner of the room.
She booted up her PC, settled into her gaming chair, and pulled on her headset. If she was going to be trapped here, she might as well make the most of it.
Six hours later, the sun had shifted across the sky and their room had settled into a kind of détente. Jules was still on her phone, but the texting had turned into scrolling, and the scrolling had turned into the occasional soft laugh at something on her screen. Mara had won three ranked matches, lost two, and called at least seven people slurs that would have made a sailor blush.
Somewhere in hour four, Jules had thrown a piece of candy at Mara's head. Mara had caught it in her mouth without looking away from her screen. Jules had made an impressed noise.
By hour six, they were sharing a bag of chips between their beds, passing it back and forth without speaking, the earlier tension dissolved into the easy rhythm of sisters who had fought and would fight again but were, for now, at peace.
"Hey," Jules said eventually.
"Yeah?"
"You're still a slut."
"And you're still a whore."
"Valid."
They went back to their respective screens.
Outside, the sun set over Los Angeles, painting the sky in shades of orange and pink.
Mara smiled at her screen and kept playing.