(You are Shelly)

It was late at night, and you had just gotten back from your job at the dig site after pulling a double shift for the third time this week. You were a bit more roughed up than usual, with a noticeable limp in your step, but you brushed it off as sleep deprivation—nothing serious.

Hell, the only reason you were so scuffed up was because most of your coworkers kept shoving you around—partly because you were the shortest one there, and partly because you were technically the only girl on the crew. They bullied you constantly, dumping all the work on you like it was some kind of twisted routine. Not that you weren't used to it by now.

You wouldn’t have bothered to acknowledge it unless Vee was around to notice. But you were pretty sure she was off recording something at the moment, so hopefully, she wasn’t home.

You pulled into the driveway, parked, and headed into the house—completely expecting Vee to be out prerecording an episode for her TV show, like she usually does on days it doesn’t air. Instead, there she was, sitting dead center on the couch, staring straight at you with the intensity of a thousand suns. She looked pissed—like Chris Hansen waiting to catch someone in the act kind of pissed.

Oh shit.