“Go away.”<\/p>\n
Ameiko stopped under the trees that stood between Cliff Street and the bluffs\u00a0for which it was named. Kali was sitting in the tall grass a short distance from the drop-off, staring out over the water. Gulls rode the currents along the ridge, rising overhead to hover briefly before dropping down and vanishing over the edge.<\/p>\n
A long silence passed before Kali spoke.<\/p>\n
“If you’re here to yell at me, too, don’t bother. I don’t care. So just leave.”<\/p>\n
Ameiko stepped over to her and sat down without saying anything. Kali turned away, putting her back to Ameiko as she sat.<\/p>\n
Ameiko said softly, “I’m not here to yell at you.”<\/p>\n
The onshore breeze picked up, lifting the gulls high above. Kali watched a half dozen of them hang in the air, wings outstretched. An even longer silence passed before Kali spoke, her voice breaking slightly.<\/p>\n
“I hate them.”<\/p>\n
“They’re jerks. Just ignore them.”<\/p>\n
“I can’t<\/em>. They won’t leave me alone.”<\/p>\n “Getting angry will just make it worse.”<\/p>\n Kali knew she was right. She knew<\/em> it. But that didn’t mean it was easy to let it go. It all started when she was eight: names, some jokes behind her back, hushed giggles and laughs. Two years on, it had turned to this.<\/p>\n “Ana isn’t one of them. Neither am I,” Ameiko added.<\/p>\n Kali knew she needed to apologize to Ana, but she didn’t want to. To make matters worse, her parents had found out about it because everyone<\/em> in Sandpoint hears about everything<\/em>, eventually. She had never seen her father get that angry before and it actually scared her. It also made her want to apologize even less.<\/p>\n “Taking it out on your friends isn’t going to help.”<\/p>\n Kali also knew that Ameiko was right about that<\/em>, too. Ameiko was always<\/em> right. But Kali didn’t want “right”, and she most certainly didn’t want to be reminded of it. What she wanted<\/em> was to be mad.<\/p>\n So she stood up abruptly and stormed away.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u00a7<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Early Fall, 4700 “Go away.” Ameiko stopped under the trees that stood between Cliff Street and the bluffs\u00a0for which it was named. Kali was sitting in the tall grass a short distance from the drop-off, staring out over the water. Gulls rode the currents along the ridge, rising overhead to hover briefly before dropping down […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[32],"class_list":["post-1051","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-vignettes","tag-kali"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1051","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1051"}],"version-history":[{"count":30,"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1051\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2877,"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1051\/revisions\/2877"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}