She was ignoring everyone and she didn't know how to stop.
Homework and school had her all worked up, and it wasn't even her fault.
It was Lawrence's.
To make a long story short, her parents got a call the evening prior, which said, "Your daughter, Dalia Glees, missed 3/7 classes yesterday, May 12th. This is the fourth occurrence of multiple unexcused absences. If absences continue, disciplinary actions will be taken." That was all it took to drive Joelle Glees insane.
Dalia walked in her house that afternoon with new clothes on. That was her first mistake.
Joelle was there waiting for her; John was nowhere to be found.
That was peculiar. The house was usually empty when Dalia came home, even if that was 7 o'clock in the evening. She'd learned to memorize her parents' schedules and habits as to not have to face the very situation she found herself in. In her opinion, it wasn't sneaky; it was smart. She definitely wasn't making any bonehead teenager decisions. That was for the weak.
All she was doing was skipping school, once or twice. It was actually four times, but who was counting?
She had just left Lawrence's Thunderbird after they planned their next adventure. She'd walked in the house with a dopey smile on her face. That was, until she saw the look on her mother's.
"Oh boy," Dalia said.
She still had her Mary Janes on, because Lawrence liked them. The rest of her clothes were in her hands, clear as day. She held them to her body as she waited for the confrontation.
Joelle had half a mind to look out of the door that Dalia had left ajar, and she spotted Lawrence's red Thunderbird leaving their lot. It was a long driveway; Joelle had enough time to get a good look. The wrinkles in her forehead deepened.
"That's not Wendy's car."
Shit.
"Yeah, it's a friend's."
"Since when do you have those?"
That was all Dalia needed to hear.
"Oh."
Dalia balled her clothes up in her fists before she pushed past her mother and tried walking up the stairs. Joelle, determined to make her point, rush-walked up to the stairs herself.
"Your school called earlier today."
Dalia froze in her tracks. There was silence, all throughout the house.
"So you're skipping now?"
Dalia couldn't think of a good lie, so she reached for her only lifeline remaining.
"Where's my dad?"
He'd be able to get her out that mess. Or, at the very least, he could calm Joelle down.
"At work. And he will be hearing about this. He's on his way."
Dalia was trembling in her seat, trying not to make too much noise clicking her pen. She felt on edge. She'd almost made it throughout the year without a curriculum-induced panic attack.
She took a big gulp of air and tried to be present where she was. It wasn't working. The board kept moving out of her focus. She discreetly unbuttoned the top button on her blouse. That was strictly against the rules, but her problems breathing didn't care about the rules.
At the time of the incident, she'd thought that Joelle telling John would be a good idea, but that went to shit. It went to shit quickly.
Joelle had forced Dalia to sit at the kitchen table until John came home from work. The lighting in there was just as bad as it was in the dining room. Her mother clearly had no eye for interior design.
She sat parallel to Dalia, but they both refused to make eye contact.
Why is she even here? She's never here. Tanesia still had to be picked up from daycare. That would give her the chance to escape. According to her studies, her mother got Tanesia on Tuesdays and Fridays. Those were always the slow days at the law firm. Dalia twiddled the charm on her bracelet.
It was no surprise that Joelle found a way to be home when the school called the Glees residence. She probably had their number saved.
Dalia thought Joelle's priorities were all out of wack. If Dalia herself had called, she probably would have had to wait a while just to get a response. Yet, she was in the kitchen, being badgered.
If she'd known that delinquency would get her mother to come home and give a fuck, she would have done it a long time ago; she actually cared back then.
How badly Dalia had always wanted to cuss the woman out. She was distant and cold, everything a mother should not have been. Dalia's movie setlist raised her more than Joelle ever would.
At that point, Dalia was nearly a grown woman. She didn't need another grown woman telling her how to conduct herself; especially one who didn't know how to do it the right way.
Even though her dad wasn't the best, he definitely wasn't the worst. Joelle was the worst.
She had been passive-aggressive about Dalia's grades for a while, so Dalia wasn't expecting their chat to yield any fruits. She thought it would be like any other day in their bare and soulless kitchen. Her posture even said so. All she was doing was waiting until Joelle finished talking so she could go upstairs and take a shower.
After a long, angry silence, the front door opened up and John came stepping through it. To Dalia's distaste, Tanesia was in her carrier, hanging from his chest. Dalia thought she was too big for that mess, but she let him parent the way he wanted to. She ended up okay, right?
His messenger bag hung in the space between his hip and her baby sister, and despite the weight of the current situation, Dalia was reminded of Lawrence. His messenger bags always matched his shirts.
He looked between the two women with an uncomfortable look on his face. Dalia came back to reality as she awaited a response. She definitely wasn't going to be the first to speak. She was still trying to process the fact that her family was all in one room, at one time.
"What's up?" he asked Dalia. "And Joelle... what are you doing home? You mean to tell me you told me to get Tanesia when you could have done it?"
He noticed the bad energy in the room and stopped his interrogation to observe. Dalia still was not speaking.
"Ask your daughter. I would've been at the firm if it wasn't for a call I got from Trent."
That sounded an alarm in John's head. He unstrapped Tanesia from his chest and put her in her beanbag next to the kitchen table before he dove in.
"What did you do?" he asked in an exasperated, tired voice.
Dalia felt the sudden urge to defend herself. "How do you know it wasn't something good? I've been doing excellent in my art class, I'll have you know-"
"Skipping with some kid in a Thunderbird! As if her grades aren't already horrible as is!" Joelle cut in.
Dalia's dad raised his eyebrows.
"Thunderbird?"
"Yes, what's the problem?" Joelle asked with haste.
Dalia clenched her teeth. He definitely knew.
"Why are you running around town with my employees, Dalia?"
Dalia groaned and put her head down into her arms. She wanted nothing to do with class, and everything to do with staring at the surface of her desk. She looked at it intently. It had the tiniest pencil mark on it. She took the pen and clicked it closed before setting it down on the desk, next to her arm.
That evening's rundown kept running through her head. Getting berated by her mother was never good, but it was never so bad.
She didn't even feel bad about letting Joelle down; she felt horrible about letting Lawrence down though.
Their friendship had just begun, and it was falling apart just as quickly.
Her parents had banned her from the photography suite and put her on punishment until she got her grades up to at least high B's.
She was sitting at flat 71's.
There was only a week left of school, but she had to make it happen. Her grades had to recover. It was the only way out.
Dalia's dad said that he didn't want Dalia distracting Lawrence from his work. He agreed with Joelle that, as a collective unit, they didn't want Lawrence distracting Dalia from hers. Dalia knew there was no way for both of those things to happen, so she assumed that her parents just did not want them to associate with each other at all.
It was a shame that she'd actually found her own joy at Joy and Glee after so long only for it to be snatched away from her. The worst part was that she was having a good time. That was why she didn't like taking risks. They always seemed to bite her in the butt. It was coincidental that the one time her parents decided to get on her case was when Lawrence came in the picture.
Maybe he was no good.
And at that point, she had to try and dig herself out of a deep hole in order to gain some respect back from her parents. She literally hated school. Now, the only way for her to regain a sense of normality was to be good at it.
It still amazed her that she was banned from the family business, of all things.
Joelle got extra revved up once she realized that Dalia had skipped with a boy, of all people. Maybe if it was Wendy she would have let it slide. Even John, who was usually cool, threw a fit over Lawrence. What about him was so bad?
Dalia had tried explaining that they were just friends, but her parents weren't having it.
"Friends don't encourage you to make such reckless decisions" was the response she got from Joelle. How badly Dalia wanted to tell them that it was her idea; however, she couldn't muster up the balls. She let them rant while failing to redirect them when they made a false assumption. After they didn't care about her saying Lawrence was just a friend, she gave up.
John was more bent on the fact that Lawrence was his employee. He questioned how long Lawrence and Dalia had been "seeing each other" under his nose. Naive wasn't even the word.
Maybe it would have been okay if she stood up for herself.
Alas, that was not the case, and Dalia was very much so in hot water.
She had still been dodging Wendy and Dean. She told Julia about what had happened but politely asked for her space. After what had transpired, there was no way any of them would be hanging out for at least a week or two. Maybe she could get her grades up and everything would be forgiven.
Then there was Lawrence.
She didn't want to make the same mistake she'd made the first time. She also didn't know if Lawrence had the grace to let her ghost him again.
She hadn't told him what happened the night before. She planned on doing it, but she didn't know exactly how. It was clear that her time was waning, but her brain was too scattered to even realize.
The phone in her lap lit up with a message.
Lawrence: You left your lipgloss in my car
She bit her lip.
Get me another one lol
"Girl, you're so stupid," her voice lowly spoke as she banged her head against her arms.
He messaged her back with a ton of pictures he'd just developed. He said they were from the week before. It was, yet again, another beautiful girl. Then that sinking feeling came in, the way it usually did. She was used to experiencing envy, but jealousy was an entirely new realm. It felt even worse, and it settled to the bottom of her gut like a greasy chicken leg. She didn't even like meat.
Despite her telling Lawrence she'd abide by their terms and conditions, she just couldn't shake it. It felt like she was setting herself up to adore Lawrence while he simply used her to create more art. She'd never asked about his activities or relationships with his clients because she didn't know if she could handle his response or not.
What if he took everyone else around the city? Took pictures of someone else on the train station escalator? There was absolutely no reason for her to believe that she was special.
After she realized she wasn't going to confront him, she resolved to come up with the reality in her head. That was what she'd be going with, too. She wasn't special, and she needed to be, as Julia described, vigilant. Lawrence hadn't even expressed any romantic interest in her. She didn't even know why she was analyzing his actions so deeply.
You like him, stupid.
She didn't mean to shit on her friend or any of her other peers, but she refused to be that teenager.
"Can't simp," she muttered with her head still facing the phone in her lap.
They look good, she replied.
Any other time, her teachers would have let her writhe in peace, but she'd just got done asking her Algebra teacher for assignment redos. As it was the end of the year, she was asking a lot of all her teachers.
"Ms. Glees, please sit your head up and leave your phone alone."
In a daze, Dalia sat up and slouched back into her seat.
"Sorry."
In her head, she sorted out how she would get out of this one. She saw no solutions.
Lawrence: So you weren't going to tell me your dad's pissed at us?
Us? Lol power couple
As serious as the situation was, she couldn't help but notice how that had a ring to it.
Lawrence: It's not the time to be cute Dalia.
Sorry, yeah I was going to tell you but it's kinda a lot... assuming you had work today or something?
Lawrence: That I did. It's not in my best interest for my boss to be mad at me, you know
Dalia left his message on delivered and sat with her phone, in her bed.
Even though her parents had taken away her out-the-house rights, at least she still had her phone.
She tapped it on her palm a couple of times, confused as ever.
With her arms laying on her chest, she thought about just how happy she'd been.
That year was a lot more transformative than she expected it to be. Her friend got over her first heartbreak, attracted the nicest boy at Trent to their lives.
Even after Dean and Wendy disassociated a little bit, there was still Julia Ramirez. She was iconic.
Then there was Lawrence. Lawrence Jake.
He was the coolest kid in the room without even trying. His hair was always immaculate; she found out that he kept a pick on him at all times. His eyelashes were as long as hers; they were just as curly. He was soft. The smell of his cologne always lingered over his cocoa butter, and it never failed to make her stomach do backflips.
He never had to do too much. His presence was calming and invigorating all the same.
Dalia met him nearly a year prior and simply thought of him as photographer dude. He was still that, but he was so much more. He gave her life, and she secretly wished she could get rid of him the same way she got rid of the rest of her interests.
She gagged at the way she was describing him. How did she let a boy convince her that he was hot shit? How did she allow it to occur with such ease?
And why was she so sad that their friendship might have to be cut short?
She couldn't help but think that it might have been okay if Lawrence didn't work at Joy and Glee. If he wasn't tied to her dad and her family in that way. On another hand, Joy and Glee was what brought them together. She couldn't discredit it.
If Dalia knew anything, she knew Lawrence loved his job. He would vouch for Joy and Glee more than Dalia would some days. She never wanted to take that away from him. The look on his face that first day they skipped town, the one he made after she said that she didn't want him taking pictures of her... it was the most heartwrenching thing she'd ever seen.
At that point, she understood exactly what her dad was experiencing.
It was selfish to make people choose one thing over another, especially when it came to what they loved.
Maybe everything that was going down was a sign. Maybe the circumstances were protecting her from getting her heart broken by the ever-inspired photographer dude.
She couldn't make him give up his camera to be her friend. She also couldn't make herself stop latching onto him for much longer. There was no way she'd be content with being his friend for much longer.
Even though Dalia was essentially trapped, she found herself planning another adventure with him. Maybe they could go to the gardens, and Lawrence could take some pictures of her with the butterflies. She'd let Wendy do her makeup--
They hadn't spoken in weeks.
She pulled her phone up to her face and clicked it on. It was time for her to put a stop to all of it. Her thoughts kept contradicting themselves.
Hey, Lawrence. My parents don't want us to be friends. I don't want to jeopardize your job. I'm so sorry, hopefully I get to ttyl.
It seemed like everything was damaged past the point of repair. Dalia hated it.
Everything was going so well. Then it wasn't. The sun was high in the sky, and it was there to stay for the next coming months. It seemed like everything was crumbling all at once.
And there she was, stuck in her four walls, yet again. It was good while it lasted.
-
Rihanna: What Now
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