After the weekend was over, Liona dreaded going to school on Monday morning. It was officially finals week and next week was her birthday. She just had to make it through today and the rest of the week and hope that she scraped by enough so that her grades were passing. The study session Saturday afternoon had felt like a lifetime ago and honestly she couldn't really remember what the girls had helped her with. She had been too distracted by the fact that the cute boy was working at their favorite hangout spot for lunch. He had barely said anything to her, and she had tried her hardest to respect that he was there working this time instead of repeating the badgering she had done that morning when she and the girls had grabbed coffee for the day.
As Liona got dressed in her school uniform, she couldn't help but look forward to seeing the last of the blasted thing. It was so uncute and extremely dated. All the blog sites that touted the latest uniforms for schools all tended to lean toward the retro plaid pants and culottes from 40 plus years ago when they were popular. Even some schools were re-adopting the ever-classic retro sailor fuku in some areas of the world. The sailor fuku was super cute and she remembered seeing a few celebrities sporting them recently as everyday wear.
Sighing as she finished dressing, and selected her favorite jewelry, some of which had been her great-grandma Ashina's, and headed downstairs, she was greeted by her brothers as they sleepily emerged from their room, still rumpled from sleep.
"Hey you two, hurry up and get ready for the day. Just because Dad isn't here to hurry you up, doesn't mean that you can laze around. If you want an actual breakfast this morning, I suggest you wake up the girls too." Liona nagged as she headed for the kitchen.
All she heard from behind her, were grumbles about her being a mean sister. She had to smile, there was no bite to the grumbling as her brothers' pheromones were just light and airy. Nolan had a sea breeze scent to him and Noah had a fresh mountain air for his scent. Unlike genetics for eye or hair color, pheromone scents were completely random, but on occasion there would be similar scents found in families. Her brothers' pheromones both resembled two of their family members who had similar scents to them. Their great-grandma Ashina had ocean scented pheromones and their grandpa Kaito had misty rain pheromones.
Their little sisters both had flowery scents that were completely different from anyone in their family. Ariel's were lilac scented, and Aurora's were lavender scented. As for herself? She had a rose scent that she hated. She'd had more than one person try to compare her to a delicate flower and that pissed her off. She wasn't a fragile rose; she was a thorny abomination of cursed genetics and scents. Her parents were required to like her pheromones, and so too were her grandparents so they humored her of course, but she knew that her pheromones didn't suit her.
While Liona cooked breakfast, she heard the sounds of her siblings coming down the stairs as they chatted with one another about their spring break plans. Her siblings were pretty popular, more so than she was. Sure, she had lots of friends, but they weren't the kind of friends that she hung out with outside of school, unlike Alli and Chloe, who were her two bff's and did all kinds of fun things together. Once upon a time, Chloe's older brother, Chadwick or Chad Jr. was also one of her bff's but they had stopped having as much in common as they got older. Now he was more like an older brother figure to her than a friend ever since he started college a few years ago.
After she cooked breakfast for her siblings and everyone was out the door and on their way to school, Liona took one last look at her scrambled notes on today's finals that she had to take. Today was only two of the six that she was required to take, the rest of her classes would likely stream a movie or have free study sessions for the rest of the day. She sighed once more, giving herself a pep talk, before she exited her car. As she got out, she heard the voice of her ex-boyfriend call out to her.
"Hey, Liona, can we talk?" Jeffery called out to her.
"I don't have anything to talk about with a cheating bastard like you, Jefferey. Go and suck face with your new girlfriend, Brenda." Liona brushed past him.
"Hey! She's not my girlfriend!"
"So? How is that my problem? Anyway, go find someone else to cheat on. I'm not interested in talking." Liona left Jefferey in the parking lot and hurried inside the high school building.
She really could care less about Jeffery. Usually when she broke up with a boy it was mutual and there were no hard feelings involved. This may have been her only relationship that she had been cheated on with, but she wasn't really upset over it. She had already been contemplating breaking up with him before she caught him in a lip lock with Brenda.
Speaking of Brenda, she was glaring at her in the hall near her locker.
"No matter how much you beg, Jeffery won't take you back." She taunted.
"Why would I take him back? You can have him…" Liona said dismissively as she opened her locker.
"What?! Why?! You should be crying at his feet to get him back!" Brenda exclaimed.
"Did you forget that I caught him cheating on me with you and I'm the one that broke up with him? Really, if anyone should be begging, it should be him. And for the record, I don't want him back. You're welcome to put your claws all over him, he's a free man after all." Liona closed her locker after putting her schoolbooks away.
Brenda wasn't the smartest, but Liona expected her to at least remember that she had been the one that Jeffery had cheated on her with. As she slowly trudged to class, another sigh escaped her lips. This was going to be a long day.
"Liona! Hey! You got this! Positive thoughts! You can do it!" Alli roused her from her depressing thoughts.
"Oh, Hey Alli." Liona said with another sigh.
"Don't let Chloe catch you sighing like that. You know she'll get on your case about moping before we even take our finals!" Alli encouraged.
"Yeah, I know, but still, I can't help but dread the tests, today are my two worst subjects! And I don't even have you and Chloe in the same class as me this year. Mom thought I was getting too distracted by you two and not studying, so she requested that we be separated. Sometimes I wonder if Mom even realized that you two were helping me by being in the same class." Liona frowned.
Her mom had good intentions and she discussed her reasoning, but it still rankled her a little bit that after being in the same class since their kindergarten days, it would be their senior year that they would be finally separated. They grew up together and did everything together, it was just like her mom and Aunt Jeanie that had spent their entire high school and college days together.
"Hey, your mom totally explained why she talked to the school. In all honesty she was right, and we did distract you as much as helped you though, so it was done with good intentions. What's done is done. Anyway, there's Chloe, so try to think positive and remember to take a deep breath before you spiral out of control and miss the entire test period again." Alli encouraged before she waved Chloe over.
After talking with her best friends, Liona steeled herself and gave herself a mental pep talk again before heading to her classroom. Sitting in her seat with plenty of time to spare, she waited for the start of class and the first test of the day.
When the bell rang, Liona was relieved to get out of the stifling classroom as soon as possible. She felt like any longer spent in that room, and she would throw up. Her test anxiety was worse than ever since she had so much riding on this particular year. She wanted her birthday to go off without a hitch, which meant not shaming her parents with her horrible grades to get that party as well as the need to pass her classes so that she could graduate on time. Her next few classes were thankfully just a movie being played, so she could decompress some before her final test during her last class of the day.
When her final test was over, Liona didn't know how she felt about how she did on the test and honestly didn't want to think about it. She would find out how she did soon enough. Her parents of course would be the first to know, but they would sit down and discuss her grades together once they got her report card. With the school day over, she decided that she wanted to be alone and drove to her favorite thinking spot. It was at that park that she had met Erik for the first time. Just the thought of possibly running into him again, made her smile.