Chapter 511 - A Nomination

The nomination announcement was scheduled for seven in the morning, which meant the kitchen had been awake since six thirty and increasingly opinionated about it. Lily, eight now and treating the distinction like a promotion, wanted the television on early in case they changed the time without telling anyone. Leo wanted to know if losing was allowed to happen to people who deserved to win, a question nobody in the room had a clean answer for. Lexx, two and unbothered by any of it, sat on the floor stacking the remote controls into a tower and knocking it down again, over and over, narrating each collapse with the same single word. Louis sat propped in his high chair, gumming a teething biscuit into a soft gray paste with the single-minded focus of a six-month-old convinced nothing else in the room could possibly matter more.