* RUN ON FOR A LONG TIME, [sandra]

It was around two in the afternoon, and Sandra had just woken up. It was a Saturday, and school had been in session at the Academy for about a week or so already, but apparently she was still operating in holiday mode. That made sense, of course, especially since even during schooltime she slept way more than she should anyway, but that was kind of the way it was. Matthew came and got her on weekdays, and occasionally he did on weekends too, but usually she was glad that she was allowed to sleep in when she had no plans or school or anything like that... and Matt wasn't even home right now, though she didn't know exactly where he actually was. Still, perhaps it wasn't such a good idea, because when she slept in so much she felt tired for the rest of the day -- Vitamin D deficiency or something, if her science education thus far had taught her anything. She hadn't bothered changing out of her pyjamas, but she had at least gotten up, brushed her teeth and hair and what-not, grabbed Roosevelt the teddy bear off of his perch on her desk, and walked into the living room, where she plopped onto the couch and didn't move. She could have probably slept away the whole day here, too... but instead she reached for the remote and turned the TV onto the latest episode of a teen drama she'd never seen before. This one guy looked familiar, though. She'd probably seen him on some girl's locker or plastered on a binder or something like that.

The girl on TV was having what seemed like a pretty intense conversation (or argument) with what looked like her parents. Sandra blinked slowly and tried not to fall asleep. Said girl now stormed out of her family's penthouse apartment and was heading for what looked like the house of her best friend. Sandra rubbed at her eyes blearily. Now there was that familiar-looking guy on TV instead, calling the home number of the penthouse that aforementioned girl had just left. He looked pretty worried. Sandra rolled over so that she wasn't even looking at the TV anymore. They went to a commercial break, and she fell asleep completely. It was probably a bad idea to go ahead and take a nap again when she'd just woken up and it was afternoon as it was, but she'd never claimed to be an excellent decision-maker. In her dreams, she was on a date with the same guy from TV, whose name she still didn't know, but for some reason she was calling him Michael. Well, that was as good a name as any! It was a pretty weird date that they were on, though, honestly -- he was trying to convince her to go skydiving. Sandra was so not about to go skydiving, whether in her dream world or in real life, not that she could tell the two apart when she was sleeping. She stormed away from the guy and next thing she knew, her dream self was also asleep, though in her bed. She was woken up by someone's knocking, and her first instinct was to tell Matt to go away and let her sleep for five more minutes, but then she realized that she was awake and no, she wasn't even in bed at all, but on their couch, and the closing theme to that show from earlier was now on.

Also, perhaps most importantly, that knocking had been coming from the front door. Huh. She didn't really know who that could be, unless Matthew had forgotten his keys or something, but that didn't seem likely. She couldn't think of any reason burglars would want to come rob their house, either, or why said burglars would knock or show up in the middle of the day, but she picked up Roosevelt for protection anyway, just in case. When she looked out the little peephole, though, she was relieved to see that it was Nell, though of course with that type of thing it was kind of distorted. Still, she recognized her friend and so she smiled as she opened the door. Her eyes then widened as she got a proper look at the other girl. "N-Nell? Oh my god, are you okay?" she asked, squeaking a little in her uncertainty, as she stepped aside to let Nell in. She looked like she had been roughed up a little bit -- most pressing was her black eye. "What happened?!"

Well... actually, truth be told, despite going to the Academy where violence wasn't always uncommon, Sandra wasn't all that accustomed to seeing people hurt. On the whole she avoided that kind of thing, not because she was a pacifist or anything necessarily, but probably more because she was physically weak and honestly, the thought of getting hurt or hurting anybody else was... painful, and not in the literal way. Of course, if she did get hurt then it would be painful in the literal way, but luckily she'd kept out of harm's way for hte most part. That wasn't always easy or even possible, though. Sometimes people just liked to start things. "O...okay," she said slowly, not sure whether she should just take this story at face value. "Wait, why... Like, did he just decide to jump you randomly or something?" Did people usually get jumped for no reason? She had no idea, honestly. It wasn't like she knew her way around this type of thing. She didn't even know what to do to help, damn it. She just let Nell in, watching as Nell wandered into the kitchen and then poking her head outside into the hallway as if somebody would be waiting there to jump both of them or something. No, that was unlikely. Why would he follow Nell into here, whoever he was?

Once she'd ensured that they were indeed not being watched by any suspicious figures in the hallway, she locked the door and followed her friend. Nell was here pretty often, actually, so it wasn't weird that she knew her way around the small apartment. "S'okay, even if we were you know where the key is." She'd occasionally walked in to find Nell just there, sitting around or waiting or stealing their food. (Usually, it was a combination of all three but mostly the lats one.) It didn't really bother her anymore -- when there were comic books it meant Nell was waiting for Matthew, when there were girly things or something it was probably Sandra. Then again, she did wonder about the things Nell got her brother to do sometimes, so hey, no hate on Sandra's part. She wasn't bothered, either, at the use of the frozen vegetables. Of course, she did wonder about the whole thing in general, but this... this wasn't the time to worry. This was probably the time to just make sure that Nell was okay, first of all."It's cool, I hate carrots," she said, laughing. "Though I'm sure we have a real ice pack in here somewhere..." She didn't often see injuries like black eyes, things that tended to only get there because of an actual physical fight with someone, but lord knew how commonly she hurt herself by accident. Things like ice packs were vital. "Aha!" It'd been hidden behind a box of Hot Pockets. She wrapped a clean dishrag around it and handed it over to Nell. "Unless you prefer the vegetables, in which case that's cool too 'cause then we can't eat them tonight." She liked veggies just fine -- just not carrots, and that bag, though assorted, was chock full of carrots.

She stayed in the kitchen, peeking into the fridge this time even as she heard Nell leaving. It wasn't like she would get lost or anything -- she'd certainly been here enough times -- so Sandra didn't really feel the need to tag along, especially not when they could hear each other perfectly fine as it was. Hm... Food. There was actually quite a bit of food; they'd bought groceries just yesterday. "Huh? Oh... I was watching something on MuchMusic, I think," she answered, glancing over, but she couldn't actually see the TV from the fridge (a tragic flaw of this apartment). "Not sure what it was! But it was one of those drama shows, you know, with that teen actor guy with the Bieber hair that everyone likes so much." Sandra, personally, had no idea who he was, but her taste was bizarre as it was. Every other teenage girl at this point seemed to like him, though, and she had to admit that he was kind of cute. That said, she was the one having weird dreams about him, so what the heck. "Though yeah... mostly I was just asleep," she called in conclusion, grinning a bit at herself. She let the fridge swing shut (waste of cold air otherwise and what-not) and then walked over to the doorway of the living room, leaning against the frame once she got there. "Have you eaten anything yet?" It was well past lunchtime, even, but having basically just woken up she hadn't even yet had breakfast. Sandra was starting to feel the hunger.

"You have a brother?" This was the first thing to come out of Sandra's mouth, and it wasn't until afterward that she wondered whether she should have known that. She didn't know Nell terribly well, but she'd known her for a few years at this point, and she thought that she should probably know when people had siblings. Had she just forgotten? Sandra didn't even know at this point. Her forehead wrinkled a little bit as her eyebrows knitted together in mild confusion, though. Still, she figured after that this was probably the worst of her problems. Her friend was hurt! Nell was acting pretty tough about it, and Sandra was actually kind of impressed with this because she, personally, would probably be bawling and freaking out. "But what kind of drama? Why did he have to deal with it? Why you?" she asked, pretty much all at once, perhaps a little bit frantically, but in fact she was calmer than she would usually be. It was probably because Nell was so... put-together right now. It had kind of a calming effect, just a little. At least, she wasn't panicking just yet, and that was something in and of itself. Admittedly though, she didn't really know how people are, but... well. That wasn't really pressing information. She was way more concerned with her friend right now, with Nell's safety and well-being and... whatever drama this was. Sandra herself lived a pretty boring, undramatic life. She didn't know much of what Nell got up to herself, much about her life in fact, but... well, something. She didn't even know anymore. Sandra bit her lip nervously as she watched Nell, still feeling a little buggy and weird. It wasn't every day that someone turned up with a black eye or something.

She tossed the bag of vegetables back into the freezer, way at the back in the hopes that maybe Matthew would never see them and suggest they eat them soon or anything. Ew. Carrots. She liked other vegetables, though... "Well, I doubt they'll actually save my life or something. Unless I'm dying from Vitamin A deficiency... then maybe," she said, laughing. She had no idea if veggies were even the ones with Vitamin A, actually. These things weren't really Sandra's concern, and neither were most of those teen drama shows. She did watch a bit of TV, though. Gossip Girl was one show she'd watched for maybe about half a season before she'd lost interest, so she was pretty sure that definitely wasn't the one that had beeno n this morning. "Nah, don't think it was Gossip Girl. It might have been that Secret Life show? Dunno." She shrugged even though Nell was facing the screen and therefore couldn't see her. She did perk up a little bit when she heard the word "infomercials", though. "Oh, oh, is it a food infomercial?" Sandra didn't have money and therefore didn't really bother watching most of those infomercials at all, but she'd sat through entire infomercials before only because they featured food that looked yummy or things like that. She practically had the Magic Bullet and Flavour Wave commercials committed to memory. "Oh, just a vacuum cleaner... Buy it, though!" She giggled, wondering if this fancy vacuum thing was actually better than a regular one. Her parents had pretty much taught her never to trust things like this, but Sandra didn't always make the best decisions. She walked over and flopped down next to Nell on the couch, putting Roosevelt down next to her when she realized that she was still holding him. "I was just going to make breakfast, I just woke up so..." She grinned sheepishly, then put on a more serious face and cocked her head to the side as she looked at Nell. "You sure you're okay?"

Just met him? It must have been weird to have siblings -- half-siblings, step-siblings, adopted siblings, plain old regular siblings, whatever -- and yet not know about them... or perhaps know about them, yeah, but not meet them for years and years. She assumed that this half-brother of Nell's, whom she'd just learnt about, wasn't just a kid either, if he was going around starting drama. He must have been around their age, or something like that. It was hard to tell. "Oh," was all she said for a second, mulling this over for a second. A bad guy. That always seemed to be the kinds of things in movies and stuff, or things that Sandra's parents would have warned her about but that she'd never had to come across and deal with in her lifetime. She'd met jerks and idiots and overall assholes, sure, but somehow this seemed much more serious than that. She kept silent and let Nell go on. "Is your friend okay?" she asked first, deciding this was the most concerning thing apart from Nell's safety itself. "But oh... ohhh." That was what she'd meant by a bad guy, then. She wondered if that was the extent of it. "He does kind of seem like a bad guy. Not really 'kind of', actually. But it is a big deal! If people are getting hurt." "People" was Nell and this other friend of hers. The idea kind of scared her, made her worry -- already her imagination was running on overtime imagining all the crazy possibilities, even when she knew nothing about this shady half-brother character, not his name or what he looked like or what his motives were or anything at all.

Did thugs even eat vegetables? Well, she was sure they couldn't avoid them all the time or anything, but somehow the thought of thugs sitting around eating a healthy green salad or something was hilarious. She wondered what they did eat. What kinds of thugs were they talking, even? "Must be some pretty interesting thugs," she said, mostly thinking aloud. "Like a gang whose main goal is to hoarde and deal back out all the vegetables in the hood." Man, that would be a pretty weird scenario, like a scene from a kids' cartoon or something, the kind that she'd never understand as a joke about drug dealing until far later. "But I guess you're right! Wouldn't want Matt to be held hostage by the Veggie Gang." A bunch of pregnant teenagers sounded pretty accurate on The Secret Life of the blah blah, but Sandra only knew this from advertisements. Hey, for all she knew, it was a totally legit show... She doubted it, though. She had her guilty pleasures too, but that wasn't one of them. "Yep, sounds about right! Though ew... don't bother if it's not even food-related," she said, sighing and shaking her head a little. Nell and Sandra tended to agree on food -- that it was the best thing in the world, pretty much.

"You should have bought it anyway. I'm sure he would have appreciated it once he saw it in action," she said, nodding, before she hopped up off the couch, offering Nell a hand. Well, she wouldn't mind leaving her there, but it would be nice to have company while she made breakfast. Sandra was alright in the kitchen but not anything great. "Sweet deal, breakfast at... what, three PM it is! I don't think we have pancake mix, unless you know how to make it from scratch... but we should have everything else!" She led the way back to the kitchen, hopping along, happiness coming effortlessly to her though she was still pretty worried about Nell. "That's good... you should stay a while then, too," she suggested as she pulled a carton of eggs out of the fridge. "Matt can probably give you a ride back home or something when he gets back later." She normally felt kind of bad taking advantage of her brother for rides and that kind of thing, but this was slightly different -- she didn't want Nell walking back home if the dude was still creeping around, and she assumed that the girl had walked here alone considering someone had managed to jump her on the way.

Sandra didn't understand why people stayed in abusive relationships. She'd never even tried. She didn't think it was without reason or anything, no, definitely not. Still, she tried to avoid thinking about it as much as she could, and maybe that was a little bit selfish on her part, because she'd never had to deal with that kind of thing personally or with her friends or anything of the sort. It was probably because of that, that she now had no idea what to say that could possibly make this any better. It made her feel kind of awful. "But that's not fair! To herself. She can do better," Sandra said, even though it wasn't like Nell could do anything about it either, and even though she... didn't even really know the girl. Ugh. She did know that everyone could do better than someone who was violent like that, though, even when she didn't know the details. Nell wouldn't make something like this up, wouldn't exaggerate. Sandra didn't think so, anyway. She couldn't imagine why she would make up that kind of excuse for a black eye. It wasn't a very serious injury, but it was a pretty obvious one. "But how?" she asked, struggling to understand still. "How are you dealing with it, I mean. Are you okay?" She didn't like when her friends were upset, and honestly, Sandra was no good at fixing problems. She didn't know what to do here! The best she could hope to do was to cuddle up to Nell and tell her that everything would be okay and hope that it was true, but for once, Sandra wanted to be a little more proactive than that. It turned out she wasn't very good at it, though. "If you ever need anything or anywhere to stay or anything, just come here," she said instead, firmly and surely. She didn't say anything about making sure that she or Matt were home first, either. Nell knew how to let herself in here.

She laughed a little bit too hard at this image in her mind. She had seen something similar on Family channel once before, on one of those newer Disney shows, where a bully picked on kids for their lunches but complained if it wasn't healthy enough. "So they run the veggie operation in the hood, and grocery stores go out of business," she said. "Pretty sad stuff. Poor grocery store owners." She lived quite a way away from anything resembling gangs and drug deals, though, at least as a significant presence. Sandra's world was sort of a bubble. "Oooooh, Triple D!" she said once Nell changed the channel to the Food Network. "Oh my god that looks so good..." It was just a plain old mac and cheese, but hey, judging by Guy Fiyeri's expression, it was some pretty darn good stuff. She started tossing a few other things (lightly, though!) onto the counter -- bacon and sausages, and she was pretty sure they had cereal somewhere too, but that was mainly for when she was feeling lazy, and food was one of the few things she wasn't lazy about. "Alright! What do you need for pancakes? Eggs, I figure?" She handed the carton over to Nell, and started poking around in the cupboards. "And flour... and I don't know what else?" She was quickly excited by Nell's suggestion, though, and her face brightened considerably, not that she hadn't been happy before. "Hey, yeah, we can!" She giggled. "I can totally lend you pyjamas and stuff, and we have a bunch of new spare toothbrushes somewhere." She giggled. Sleepovers were always fun!

Sandra wasn't exactly an expert on the ways of love, or at least certainly not romantic love. She knew that her parents loved her despite the occasional (or, okay, frequent) nagging and lecturing, and she knew that she and Matt loved each other in that weird sibling way that meant that of course they'd never admit it and of course they'd go around trolling each other all the time. She knew that she loved her friends a heck of a lot and that this was something totally irreplaceable... but Sandra didn't really get this whole relationship nonsense. "Oh," she said again, thinking this over, this idea of loving someone anyway. The girl wasn't so sure about this whole young love thing anyway, if only she didn't see such prime examples all the time, like Nell and Josh. She'd guess that not everyone got that kind of... fairy tale or something, though. "Sometimes love is sad." She said this kind of sadly, not really thinking about the words, but it was a little bit like disillusionment. What did Sandra know about the way things like that really worked? She pretty much knew nothing. She snuggled in next to Nell on the couch instead of trying to say anything intelligent. "Good. You're tough. You got this!" Nell really was tough. "And seriously, any time. You know where the key is and you can even stay here whenever you want and just..." She wrapped an arm around her friend worriedly. Sandra wasn't much of a protector, wasn't anybody's champion, but she'd be damned if she wouldn't try her best when her friends were in trouble somehow.

She was happy in the kind of relieved way to see that Nell was laughing and joking around as usual, because that moment had been entirely too intense and heavy for her. Sandra was willing to lend help, she always was, but she was the greatest help when it came to laughing about nothing and being silly. She wasn't really all that great at giving advice or anything. "The fuzz," she repeated, giggling. "It really is tragic. I mean, who knows how many store owners have gone out of business because of the veggie gang? Poor Mr. and Mrs. Greene." She shook her head as if these people had been her neighbours and had been forced to relocate because of the veggie gang or something. She'd just made up the name, though, but for somewhat obvious reasons the name Greene always made her think of grocers. "Shhh, Nell's stomach, you get food soon... Probably not as good as Triple D food, but still food." She was hating on her own cooking skills more than she was Nell's, of course. Nell was probably far handier in a kitchen. "Okay, let's see here... Salt, milk, baking soda, butter." She fetched all these things from their respective spaces in the cupboards and fridge, putting them on the counter in front of Nell for her to use. "You're the boss! I have no idea how to make pancakes... but ew, work, what's that?" She made a face and then laughed before continuing, "Did you bring it or would you have to go back home for it? 'Cause if so... too much trouble, yo." She passed over a couple of pans, letting Nell choose one for the pancakes -- eggs and bacon she could whip up in just about anything, so that wasn't really a problem. "Not bad! Same as usual. Homework load sucks but I don't really do it," she replied nonchalantly. "What about you?" She grabbed some oil for the pans. Breakfast would be good right about now.

Sandra wasn't a very judgmental person, in all honesty. She saw the best of most anyone, or at least she always tried to, because the way Sandra saw it, there was no point in going around judging the heck out of everyone and deciding to hate them for these things. It wasn't only that, either -- she just genuinely believed that everyone was innately good, unless they did something to prove that she was wrong. Plus, she knew that there were situations that people couldn't control, and this seemed like one of them. It was fine for her to sit there and think that this friend of Nell's needed to drop her boyfriend like a rock, but she'd never been in a situation like that, so it wasn't like she could talk exactly. She couldn't judge Nell for this, either. Nell wasn't even at fault here -- it was true, nobody could pick family, and Sandra had just gotten lucky to be honest, but obviously not everybody could be. None of this was Nell's fault, at least as far as Sandra knew, and that was always good enough for her. She trusted her friend. "No... I guess not all the time," she said, smiling a little bit. Nell and Josh had something much less... destructive. "And sure. I mean it too, you know," she said, not that she thought it needed to be said, but sometimes it was better to have that kind of reassurance, and she figured that this was one of those times.

She giggled a little bit at this comparison. While she'd never been responsible for really taking care of babies, except for a few minutes or possibly a couple of short hours at a time while their parents had been busy for whatever reasons, she knew that it was no easy task. They were difficult to manage! Stomachs were pretty much the same, but maybe not for everyone... Sandra's and Nell's seemed to be pretty high-maintenance, though. "Yeah, except if you get hungry at four in the morning it's probably a bad sign." She was usually out cold at that time, though. She did still have a school schedule and everything, and while she did stay up fairly late over holidays and such... well, 4AM was seriously just a little too late. "It's all about the money, money, money," she sang, changing one (probably most key) word of the song to fit. "And dude, I would love a dog! I don't think we have the time to look after a dog, though," she said, pouting a little bit. Matthew had a pretty hectic schedule, but while Sandra didn't really, she was still gone half the day at school and then possibly out with friends for a couple more. Well... maybe she could do it, but definitely not a puppy that needed training or anything. "But yep, s'why I never do it!" Well, it wasn't why, but close enough. She had been fetching the olive oil for them to start frying up bacon or eggs or whatever, and then she heard Nell's "whoops" and saw the cap sent flying out of the corner of her eye, and she turned with wide eyes to see what had happened. "Nell!" she exclaimed, in a bit of a shrill voice, but it was more because she was laughing than actually angry. "What did you do?" she asked between giggles.