Work Text:
Yessika worked under-the-table with a moving company on Sundays. It was pretty easy work and the guy in charge was sympathetic in his gruff, silent way about being tight on money. Some of the guys good-naturedly teased her, the “young lady” of the group, but there was an established rule that Yessika was allowed to stop anything that went too far however she saw fit. It was good, tiring work, and by the time she returned home, she usually went straight to sleep.
On Monday, Yessika helped open the store before school for her parents because one of their part-time workers quit. Then she trudged through her seven hours, turning in as much of the homework she could that she was supposed to have finished last week. Afterwards, she tutored with the local library’s program until she went home for dinner. She finished a little bit of homework if she was lucky, and if not, spent the evening wrangling her siblings.
This continued into the next morning when she made breakfast for them, at least the youngest ones, and her parents opened the store. School, and then chauffeuring because Ravael had a project to work on with a classmate and Rieta had to be picked up from her after-school program, and then also picking up Ravael.
Wednesday she didn’t sleep much because she had to sneak out in the morning, make her rounds of the neighborhood to make sure the monsters she’d been seeing around recently hadn’t gotten any closer, beating a couple off if they had, and then washing the sticky blood off before school. She was usually late on Wednesdays. Then she had tutoring again.
Thursdays she usually left straight from school to her parents’ shop and stayed until closing, scowling at the other teenagers filtering in and out. Fortunately, she had enough of a reputation that there usually weren’t problems. Sometimes the reputation worked against her, but even if someone thought they were rather tough in a place where she couldn’t brawl, that was corrected the next day.
She did her best to collect her missing work on Fridays in the hopeful attempt that she might complete it over the weekend. Some teachers were more forgiving than others. Such was life. She tried not to schedule anything for after school because her siblings usually wanted to go somewhere and her parents were busy, but that meant that she could catch a few hours of sleep in between the interruptions.
Because after dropping everyone home, Yessika patrolled more thoroughly into Saturday morning. She varied where she hunted for monsters, careful not to get into any habits. She could be a little more persistent when she didn’t have school to worry about, really make sure it was taken care of rather than just chased off. Left the carcasses around the perimeter of what she considered hers. Then she carefully crept back home to sleep for a few hours before helping cook.
Saturday night limped closer and finally dropped itself at her feet in her room. After Solvina passed, Yessika had the attic to herself - a luxury in a house with six children and another on the way. By now, her muscles were tense and her mind was scattered. Her temper, which had the most forgiveness for her family, was running low, which was why Yessika, just for a few hours, could justify dragging her pile of books closer.