Being left on his own was a great blessing for Sasha's personal productivity. By the time Cooper and Ellie returned, he had finished clearing out his parents' garage and even swept the floor.
Cooper kissed the top of his head. "Wow. All done?"
Sasha nodded.
"We got a TV," Ellie told him. "Abra has enlisted himself as someone's personal chef for two weeks, which I must admit freaked her out a little at first because he's an adult male stranger and she's a single mother with young kids. She seemed to be getting into the idea by the time I left, though. Mothers love Abra."
"Everyone loves Abra," Cooper said. "Anyway, we're probably going to hook up the consoles tonight and play some video games if you want to join us, Sash. Or just sit and watch or whatever."
Sasha nodded. "Watching is good."
"Okay. We'd better go and get started on George and Joy's garage."
Sasha still wanted to help, so he went with them, but working on George and Joy's garage was a much more socially demanding experience than working on his parents' had been. George and Joy were there the whole time, micromanaging and telling them about every little thing they came across.
Cooper seemed to love it, and Sasha... well, he liked the intention behind it. The energy? They seemed like nice, safe people, but so much conversation, especially from people he didn't know well, was hard to process. He wanted to just go in, pick something up, and take it to the skip, but every time he went back, they'd be talking about something and he wasn't sure if it was okay to leave again until they were done. Was he even part of the conversation? He didn't do much more than nod from time to time, but they kept glancing at him like they were talking to him, so maybe.
Abra continued to be the deals master, and by lunchtime, they had a sofa and an outdoor dining set that they planned to put on the concrete area in the backyard. After they had carried the sofa in, Sasha snuck back to his room. He felt bad for leaving the rest of the work to the others, but they'd told him it was fine if he'd had enough at least half a dozen times over the last few hours, so he tried to brush those feelings away.
He stayed in his room for the rest of the day, occasionally thinking about how he should eat something but ultimately doing nothing about it. His brain had decided that it was Hiding Time and he mustn't leave.
He heard the others return late in the afternoon, but it was still Hiding Time, so he stayed where he was. He didn't even know what he was afraid of, really. He knew nobody would be mad at him for ditching them, but maybe it was like how he also knew that cockroaches couldn't hurt him and yet, if one flew at him, he wouldn't be okay with it.
Sasha's heart jolted when someone knocked on the door. His anxiety mode brain said he shouldn't raise his voice to call out, so he got up to open it. It was Cooper. He was holding a plate with two toasted cheese sandwiches and a salad on the side.
"Your parents ordered takeout for their dinner today to give Abra a break from cooking, so we made these," Cooper said. "Abra made a deal with someone where they'd give us their toasted sandwich maker and a hundred dollars in exchange for painting their fence."
"Thanks." Sasha took the plate from Cooper and then tugged Cooper's sleeve to guide him into the room.
Sasha sat down on the edge of his bed and took a bite of one of the toasted cheese sandwiches. The cheese tasted a little stronger than he was used to, but not in a bad way.
"How are you doing?" Cooper asked.
Sasha shrugged. He didn't really want to talk.
Cooper nodded. "Okay."
As Sasha ate, he started to feel a little better. The anxiety and the exhaustion receded, and he realised that half the reason he'd felt so bad was that he had been hungry. He rested the side of his head against Cooper's shoulder and kept eating.
Cooper pulled his phone out of his pocket and before long, he had found some more animal videos. Sasha chewed on some salad as a man who talked really fast told them about how ostriches raised by humans could end up sexually attracted to them and may prefer to try to court them over mating with other ostriches.
"Thanks," Sasha said when he was done with his food. "I should have eaten earlier, but I didn't and then I was hungry. But like... brain hungry. It made my brain worse than it already is."
Cooper nodded and said, "I know the feeling. Do you still want to come watch us play video games, or nah?"
"I still want to watch."
They headed out into the living room where Abra and Ellie were setting up the TV. Sasha must have looked tired because Ellie made a sympathetic face at him and handed him a toffee.
They set up a two-player fighting game and took turns playing against one another. Sasha still didn't want to play, but he liked watching and Cooper let him pick which character he should use.
Sometimes life was pretty okay.
#
For the next three days, all Cooper did was do small jobs in the neighbourhood and then, when he was done, go back to Abra and ask for another one. His brain was broken in such a way that it allowed him to perform tasks as long as none of the thinking or organisation around those tasks was his responsibility.
Abra was sitting in the kitchen, doing something on his laptop when Cooper returned from scooping leaves out of a neighbour's pool.
"Anything else need to be done?" Cooper asked.
"Always, but we're on top of things if you need a break," Abra replied.
"I'm fine."
"Misha called. She's been trying to reach you."
Cooper looked away uncomfortably. "Ah..."
"You're allowed to take time off, you know. I put in for a couple of weeks myself, and that was fine. Nobody will be mad."
"Well, they probably wouldn't have been, but now I've been annoying and difficult about it. I'm sure Misha's not happy with me."
"I told her we just moved and you were probably a bit stressed out. She wasn't angry. She sounded quite sympathetic, actually."
"Sometimes I forget people can just be nice and not secretly resent me. Even people who are nice to me literally all of the time."
Abra gave him a reassuring head pat. "I know."
"I'm sorry I've kind of been offloading getting everything organised onto you. Mowing a lawn is easy, but I just can't keep track of more than one simple task in front of me right now. Or, you know, quite a bit of the time in general."
"Organisational work is work and I'm good at it, so I'll gladly take credit for that. But look at this." Abra pulled up a spreadsheet with a list of jobs with the names of the people they were for and their addresses. He circled the far column with his cursor where their own names were written next to many of the tasks. "This is who completed each task. You're not the only one working, but Cooper, you've done as much as me and Ellie combined. How do you manage to convince yourself you're some useless burden while simultaneously being the most productive person in this house?"
Cooper gave a self-conscious shrug. "We both know I can't keep it up consistently."
"I do know that, and when it happens, me and Ellie are ready to pick up the slack. That's not what's happening right now, though. You're doing so much good, but you can only see the bad."
Cooper nodded. His throat felt a little tight. "How has cooking for Melissa been?"
Abra accepted the change of topic without resistance. "Great, actually. Ben can be a little tricky around food, and he doesn't talk which makes it harder to figure out what the problem is, but we're getting there and building trust. Melissa's started dancing around the idea of maybe having me help out sometimes after our two weeks are up, which would be good. Sasha and Ellie are going to come with me this evening to help out with dinner so that I can help the kids with their homework for a bit."
"Can I come?" Cooper asked. "I'm useless in every way, but I don't want to be left out."
"You're not useless. Ben really liked you, actually. You can come and help Sasha in the kitchen or tidy up or something."
"Or play with toy cars."
Abra shot him a smile. "Or that."
"Okay, give me another job to do until then. I have forgotten what I did with my life before this and so I must work."
Abra laughed. "There's a family down the road with some garden beds badly in need of some weeding."
"I'm on it."
#
By the time the evening rolled around, Cooper was in a much better mood. Nothing cheered him up more than doing things with his friends, and now that Sasha was included in that, it was even better.
When they arrived, Abra took care of all the niceties while Cooper was immediately greeted by Ben showing him cars. This time he seemed to just want Cooper to look at all of them, so while Abra took Sasha to the kitchen to get dinner started, Cooper sat on the floor and made commentary about each toy car he was handed. He knew nothing about actual cars, but he could still admire the pretty colours and interesting shapes the toys came in.
Luca had shown up to do jumping jacks and aimlessly shout despite his mother's encouragement to settle down, and Eli looked close to tears as he whined to her about not wanting to do his homework. Cooper could relate. He'd always put his off as long as possible and then taken three times as long as it should have to finish it as his mum had grown increasingly frustrated with him.
When Abra and Ellie came back out of the kitchen, Eli sat down at the table in the living room looking sulky and Luca decided he was going to run around the room, refusing to sit down. Melissa kept apologising, but Ellie waved her off and tossed a toffee across the table to Eli.
Luca immediately ran up to Ellie. "Can I have one?"
Ellie pulled out the chair next to her. "If you sit down."
Luca contemplated his options. Luca sat.
"You going to join us, Ben?" Ellie asked.
"He does his homework on his own," Melissa explained.
"Good boy," Ellie said, tossing a toffee at him. It hit him in the side of the head. Ellie's eyes widened as she sank down in her seat.
Ben didn't seem to mind, though. He unwrapped and ate the toffee, then entertained himself by smoothing out the shiny paper it had been wrapped in.
As Abra helped the boys with their homework, Cooper watched as Ben started sorting all the cars he'd gathered into piles.
After about five minutes, Eli groaned and threw himself down on the table. "This is stupid. Why do I have to learn maths when I can just use a calculator?"
"Video games," Ellie said.
Eli lifted his head off the table. "Huh?"
"You probably play games for little kids right now, but when you're an adult you get to play better games, and you need to know maths."
"Educational games are boring."
"Not educational games. Like..." Ellie tore a page out of a notebook. As she started drawing, Cooper got up to see what she was doing. She spent a few minutes sketching out a skeleton figure on the paper. "This is a skeleton. This skeleton has ten health points. Now draw you or a character you want to play as."
Eli drew a little stick man with curly hair and passed the paper back.
"Good. You have twenty health points. Does anyone have a dice?"
To Cooper's surprise, it was Ben who got up and ran to grab one from a board game box.
Ellie handed Eli the dice. "You roll first."
Eli rolled the dice and read its face. "Five."
"Good! You hit the skeleton for five points of damage, so now we have to subtract that from its health."
"Four!" Luca called out.
"No," Eli said. "It's five."
"Good! Now I roll." Ellie rolled the dice. "Ooh, six. That's gonna hurt. What are our health points at now?"
"Uhh..." Eli counted on his fingers and mouthed numbers for a few seconds. "Thirteen?"
"One more."
"Fourteen."
"Yes! We have fourteen health points left. Roll the dice again."
Eli rolled the dice. "Six!"
"Great! What's five minus six?"
"Um. Well, six is bigger than five, so you can't."
"Negative numbers are a thing, but not when it comes to dead skeletons. Well done, you defeated the skeleton. When it died, its arm fell off, so you pick it up to use as a weapon. It gives you an extra two points of damage, which means you add two to all your rolls."
Luca's attention had also become absorbed in the game, so Abra went back into the kitchen to check on Sasha. A few minutes later, Sasha came out and joined Cooper and Ben where they were sitting on the floor.
Sasha watched as Ben sorted his cars, and then after a few minutes of careful study, he started helping him. Whatever system Ben was using, Sasha had figured it out. After all the cars had been sorted, Ben scooped them all up and tossed them back into one big pile. Sasha picked a few out and started adding them to a pile of his own, and after a short while of watching, Ben started adding his own. The whole time, neither of them looked at one another or said a single word.
Meanwhile, Luca had become a participant in the game, first by drawing items for the loot shop and then by playing as the cat Eli had bought from the shop and flipping a coin to add either one or two points of damage to Eli's rolls.
Cooper wasn't sure the homework actually ended up getting done before dinner was ready and it was time for them to leave, but there had been plenty of maths, so it was probably still a win for education. As they headed for the door, Luca wrapped his arms and legs around Ellie to try to keep her from leaving.
Ellie kept hobbling along despite his weight. "Listen, I have to go before everyone realises nobody actually did their homework, but I can come back another day if you want to keep playing the game."
Luca made a grumbling sound, but when Cooper wrapped his arms around his waist and lifted him up, he let go.
"Did you have fun?" Abra asked everyone as they walked down the street back towards their house.
Sasha nodded.
"Yeah, kids are fun," Cooper said. "I don't know if I'd ever want one of my own, because I feel like I'm exactly the kind of person who'd end up on the news after their kid died from being left in a hot car, but I'll play with other people's' any day."
"It was good," Ellie said. "I invented D&D for babies and tricked children into learning."
"I would say you made learning fun, but I understand you prefer to look at things from a more sinister angle," Abra said. "I had a good time, too. Melissa came into the kitchen and talked with me for a while, and she seemed really happy with how things were going. They've had trouble getting Eli interested in maths, and it's hard for Ben to get as much one-on-one attention as he needs when the way he plays is so different and she has the other two boys to wrangle. There might be some babysitting or tutoring jobs in our future."
"I'll do the tutoring," Ellie said. "Every school subject can be taught through Dungeons and Dragons. Prove me wrong."
Abra shot her a fond smile. "No, I believe in you."
As they entered the house, Cooper wrapped an arm around Sasha and leant his head on his shoulder. This had been a good day.