Coming out from the hallway completely, Leon wiped his hands on a dish towel and asked his daughter about this development.
"Really? What happened? I thought you liked him?" Her dad asked.
Dad was Liona's go to person for all her relationship advice. Then again, he was home more often than her mother in her formative years and he was close to all of her siblings as well as her.
"Oh, he was playing tonsil hockey with Brenda after school today. It's okay though, I was only dating him to see if things would work out. He really isn't my type after all. I don't date cheaters after all." Liona grinned. Her dad was awesome, he always listened with an open mind.
"That's good. You just let me know if I need to go and talk to him or his parents. Or any boy for that matter! I'm sure I can straighten out anyone who thinks they can take advantage of you."
Liona nearly bust a gut laughing. Her dad was the best. He subtly was implying that he would march over to Jeffery's house and flex as the head of the EEA's Northwest branch.
"That's okay, Dad. He's not worth your time. Save it for any real asshole that needs a stern reminder about manners." Liona was going to head upstairs but was stopped with a word from her dad.
"Liona, aren't you forgetting something?" Leon called out.
Liona winced; she was hoping that her dad wouldn't call her on it. "What would that be, Daddy?" She tried the sweetheart approach.
"Nice try, Liona. Homework?" He knew his daughter and her attempts to sweet talk her way out of things. He would admit that he had on occasion fallen for it and gave into those sweet words of being called daddy, but he knew that she was using them to get her way by distracting him.
"Oh, right! Yeah, uhm, I'll get right on it…"
"Liona, I will only remind you once more. If you get a detention for demerits or your grades slip below passing, your mother and I will seriously reconsider your birthday party. Your invitations have already come back from the print shop and were delivered today. There's still time for us to cancel…"
Liona didn't want to miss out on her 18th birthday, that was the last thing she wanted. "But Daddy I'm not good at studying like my siblings! I try my hardest and I still only get bad grades!"
"And what have we told you?"
Liona sighed with a little pout. "Ask for help when I need it and I can always find an alternative means to retain what I study. I only need to ask." She had been told this all her life, yet when she did get help, she couldn't remember what she studied, and her mind would go blank when it came time for tests.
"Right. You know that you can always ask your mom or I for help with your studies. We only want you to pass. We aren't asking you to get straight A's. We also aren't trying to force you into a mold. How you approach your schoolwork is your choice, but you at least need to understand what you are learning in class."
Liona sighed once more. "I do understand it for the most part. Most of it is so boring though! And when it comes time to do those stupid tests, I feel like I can't remember what I studied!"
"Have you told your teachers about this? Maybe there is an alternative way of testing they can administer. Remember the whole purpose of you attending this school is so that you can learn at your own pace. However, you're a senior this year and you only have another semester left in the year. We want to see you graduate while you hold your head high, knowing that you did your best. We don't want to see you get held back for the summer. I know you had a big trip planned with Allison and Chloe to celebrate your freedom from school. However, you also know that we won't fund that trip if you get held back for summer school." Leon laid down the conditions again for his daughter.
She was a lot like him with his unwillingness to study, but she was also the only one of their children that was completely average when it came to her studies. Oftentimes he and Vivian were at a loss as to how to help her. They had tried being firm and understanding at the same time, but she still struggled with her studies. It honestly worried them how she was going to make it in this world without an understanding of how the world really is. At this rate she wasn't even interested in going to college, and they weren't pushing for her to. It was her choice whether she attends or not. They only wanted her to succeed in her life, whatever it was that she chose. But first she needed to graduate from school or at the very least get her General Education Diploma.
After talking to her dad, Liona dragged her feet up the stairs to her room, dreading the homework she had to force herself to do. Her room overlooked the front yard of their house and if it had been earlier in the day, the afternoon sun would have been streaming in the windows. At least this room was calming and relaxing. Her nest was here so she always felt like she could relax and destress. Her brothers shared a room across the hall while her sisters shared a room downstairs. She found it a little funny that this was exactly the order of rooms that her mom and her uncles and aunt had when they had grown up in this house. This was technically her mom's childhood home that she had inherited when grandma and grandpa Hendrix retired alongside grandma and grandpa Bartley. In fact, they had retired to her great-great grandparents' ranch and lived there most of the year.
Sighing once more, she wished yet again that she could have been smart like the rest of her family as she dug out her books from her school bag. She hated to study so this was like torture. She felt like a failure when she wasn't doing well in school, and she knew that she was a big disappointment to her mom and dad who were both very smart people. She didn't know how to be better at these things and asking for help got her nowhere when she couldn't put that help to use in any helpful way. At this rate her dad was right, and she wasn't going to be able to travel overseas with her two BFF's after graduation cause she wasn't going to graduate alongside them.
Her parents gave her a generous allowance for doing things like chores and studying, but she rarely completed her studies on time to their satisfaction which always stung. It wasn't as if she didn't try, it was just hard to keep up on all that she was supposed to learn and keep it in her head when she stared at all those stupid little bubbles that mocked her. They had so many trick questions when the answer was B in one instance, but then they went and changed the answer for the same question later in the test so that it was bubble C. It was confusing and difficult when they all blended together after staring at the stupid answer sheet she had to fill out for all those tests.
Working on her homework, Liona did the assigned reading for her Aunt Emma's class first, since it was at least somewhat interesting being her Grandpa Ash's book on mythology. Once she finished with the chapter she was supposed to read, she tried to focus really hard on putting what she just read into words for her assignment. After that headache was over, she focused on the math. Math made absolutely no sense to her, and it was her most hated subject. When math started mixing the alphabet into it, it ceased to be fun and interesting. After feeling like she was going cross-eyed figuring out how to solve a stupid question over a train and a car leaving from opposite directions and asking how many oranges the conductor could get in the time the car and train met, she wanted to just cry. Why was this stuff considered necessary?!
Frustrated, Liona shut her math book and was going to head to bed, but she remembered her gym bag had her wet uniform in it. Digging it out along with the sweater she borrowed from Allison, she headed to the bathroom and used the laundry chute to deliver the wet clothing to the basement. The maid would be here tomorrow to clean so she would have to use her backup uniform until her primary uniform was washed.
Looking at the tub, she decided that maybe a hot soak and a bath bomb was in order. It would get the stink of lake water out of her skin, and she could relax in the tub jets. She still thought that her mom was amazing for asking for this bathroom for her 18th birthday. That was so long ago, it was hard to imagine her as a young woman. But she had been a stunning beauty in her youth, she couldn't deny that.