Sleep is for the weak and tired

I never knew where he went or how his afternoons were spent.
He said he had to slay a dragon, kill a giant, fix a wagon.
Wage a war, feed the world, and stamp out sin.
In the daytime he was never in.

Thank you for you input, Jared. Utterly.

Honestly, I almost find it a little amusing how each of us deals with our not wanting to sleep much. I nap. Little cat-naps every so often. Too long and you start to dream too much. Tia, she just keeps going until she utterly crashes. Usually a few days before having to sleep for most of a day, too exhausted to do anything else. Kailin? I actually haven't seen zer sleep much in general. At least not soundly. Jared... I haven't picked up on his patterns yet. Erratic behavior.

Not exactly healthy. We try to get enough rest, though. Enough so that if something happens, we can at least make an attempt at dealing with it.

It's been weird, getting used to having Jared around again. The last time I saw him was on that day in January, six years ago. When he made me promise to look after Marie. By that point, I already thought of her like the little sister I'd never have. And yes, maybe it's cruel of me to blame him for that. Wrong to blame him for being caught up in all of this. For getting me caught up in this.

It's not fair to him.

I know that. He was seventeen at the time. Most people don't exactly have the very best decision-making skills as a teenager. Especially Jared.

We met through Doctor Chavez. Well, at his office. And as I've said, we made friends. Amusingly, yes, there almost was something between us, but well. I was fourteen at the time when we first met. It wasn't long after certain incidents... We would have been bad for each other, and we knew it. So we decided to be friends.

Honestly, we didn't see much of each other in school. Jared... He was the class clown, to fall back on high school archetypes. I was me. Until Tia moved into town, he was one of the few friends I had at school, even if he was more the popular type. Unlike Tia, however, his tactics for helping me usually involved distracting whoever was messing with me at the time. Unless things got too bad.

Unfortunately, we didn't have too many classes together.

The thing that bothers me the most is that his parents  told us that he committed suicide a few days after I spoke with him that day in January. That he'd shot himself. The funeral was closed-casket. But obviously... Obviously he's still alive and kicking.

Why would they cover that up? Heck, how would they cover that up?

I feel sure he knows at least a bit, but I'm not sure if we'll ever know all the details, with his parents and Marie now dead. my fault

As a closing note, with a little help, we've found someone for Tia to see. The kid's got a few connections, apparently. I'm painting still. Also, that girl's back. As are other... oddness. Guess things are getting back to "normal".