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The last time Sam had a day this bad, he’d at least had damn good sex with a demon before having the shit beat out of him by the Slayer.
First, he had slept through his alarm, making him fifteen minutes late for work (for the first time ever), and had to have a one-on-one with Principal Wood about “the responsibilities of a role model.” Since he didn’t have time to pack a lunch, he braved the school’s cafeteria. Those burritos ranked high on the list of most evil things Sam had encountered in Sunnydale. To top it off, some little dick wad pulled the fire alarm to get out of taking a test, leaving the entire school baking in the sun while Sam longed for a bathroom.
When he finally arrived home, he discovered Dean had kindly already made dinner – burritos.
They spent the rest of the night out hunting vampires with the entire Scooby gang.
Despite it being well after midnight when he got home, Sam felt too restless to sleep. He flipped through the book on his nightstand, but didn’t feel like reading about mob wars. Slipping into a pair of jeans and a t-shirt, he headed up to the roof to watch the moon. Several weeks prior, he and Dean had dragged a couple lawn chairs and their old green cooler up there, effectively creating a “back yard.”
A slender figure in pink pajamas was already curled up in one of the chairs.
“Hey, Jada.”
“Oh goodness!” she exclaimed, trying to cover her face and scarf-covered hair at the same time. “I should have realized this was your stuff, and here I am just taking over! I’ll go.”
Between the gaps in her fingers, Sam could see her eyes were glistening from tears. “Please stay! I can’t sleep and being up alone is, well, lonely.”
Wiping her eyes and patting her head, she said, “My makeup’s off. My hair’s all wrapped. I am in no manner decent.”
“And here I am in my fanciest t-shirt,” he joked. “Please don’t let me chase you away from your roof. If you just want to sit quietly, we can do that. Besides, you look good.”
“Flatterer,” she said with a radiant smile. “How was your day?”
“Pretty good. People cooked for me.”
“You can’t cook?” Her voice carried a slight tinge of horror.
“Oh, I can, but I don’t enjoy it as much as Dean.”
“Dean cooks?” she asked, not bothering to hold in her surprise.
“Yeah. Pretty good at it too. Hey, would you like a beer?“
"No, thank you. I never drink beer.”
“Tissue?”
“Am I that obvious?”
She wasn’t. Even with the tears only visible in the bright moonlight, Jada had turned on the charm with her thousand watt smile as soon as Sam had arrived, a buffering armor of pleasantries.
The chair squeaked as Sam leaned on the arm, trying to get that much closer to her. “I pick up on things. Bad day?”
“I’m fine,” she said with a smile and a wave.
“Boyfriend troubles?”
“Ha! Sam, I haven’t been on a date in almost a year.”
“That’s a shame.”
“Are you flirting with me?”
Maybe he had been – she was undeniably sweet and pretty. He cleared his throat and asked, “How’s your aunt?”
For the first time since he’d met her, Jada’s smile disappeared. She turned her head up to the sky and exhaled. “I came up here to pray. Do you believe in the Devil, Sam?”
He hoped she couldn’t see his hands white-knuckling the lawn chair. “You mean the horns, tail, pitchfork package? Sounds like a tall tale.”
She snorted, a laugh aborted. “No, that’s ridiculous. Dementia is the devil. It takes everything that is true and replaces it with lies. Sure, some of the lies are initially happier than reality, but that just makes it that much harder for everyone. Is there anything more evil than denying a person their memories?”
Since moving in a month before, Sam had more than one run in with Dottie, including her accusing he and Dean of being thieves and yelling at the Summerses to stay out of the coffins. “What happened?”
“Auntie spent the day convinced we needed to pick her husband up at the airport. She did this yesterday too. I kept telling her Uncle Jim passed away decades ago, but that made her cry.” Jada rubbed her forehead as if she could massage the tears away. “Today, I drove her to LAX where we waited all day for a plane that wouldn’t be arriving from Vietnam. She was so embarrassed. ‘I must have gotten the days confused,’ she said. 'James is coming home tomorrow.’ So tomorrow, she will want me to drive her to the airport again.”
“I’m so sorry.“ The words felt like bailing the Titanic with his hands. "Are you going to take her?”
“I can’t even think about it right now. I don’t know what I was thinking coming here. I’m not a nurse. She’s so much worse than I’d imagined.”
What had she expected? Jada was young and pretty. Though she was reserved, Sam couldn’t imagine her life in San Francisco was anything like the nightmare of baby-sitting someone separated from their reason, a task so stressful, she’d stolen to the roof for a few minutes of tearful respite.
“What if I come over? Distract her from that train of thought?” Sam offered.
She considered his offer, her eyes darting over his face. Slowly, her smile grew back. “Now why would you want to do a sweet thing like that, Sam?”
He grinned. “I wanna stick it to the devil.”