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A blue pen flew across the room, a wave of flashcards following suit. As the pieces tumbled towards the ground, a brown hand reached out and angrily stuffed the flashcards into an envelope. The girl threw the envelope at her laptop, which lightened up to show seventeen unread Emails.
The soft lo-fi music from her speaker stopped, and Tina looked at her phone. Clutching a stuffed dolphin to her chest, she disregarded her studies on her desk and climbed into her bed.
It was eleven in the morning and she had been working on her class project all morning long. It was about a topic she was not really interested in, and on top of that, her schoolwork had been less... qualitative the past few days.
The rehearsals, venue booking, mailing back and forth with Brie and organising new equipment as well as meeting up with her extracurricular courses, homework, chores at home and practising piano had taken up a big part of her time and she felt herself slacking.
"Mierda, odio aquí," Tina cursed and kicked her legs like a frustrated child. "So much pressure," she muttered tiredly as her mother's words from the night before rang in her ears.
"Tina, mi amor, you've been hanging with your friends so much and look, even your room is messy," the woman had said and raised her brow at Tina's messy room.
"Yeah, sorry, mamá, I'll clean later, okay?"
"Tina, are you neglecting schoolwork?"
"No, I'm not, I promise," Tina had reassured her mother.
Afterwards, when she was cleaning her room, she'd cussed her mum out for having such high expectations. It wasn't that she didn't love her mum, and she appreciated that her parents were always considerate and asked whether she was fine.
Tina wanted to do all those things, loved doing them, it was just that sometimes, it got a little much and she felt like going in circles with no goal.
Her phone rang and she picked up after looking at Allen's profile picture for three solid seconds.
"Hello?"
"Hi, Tina," the boy greeted happily, "You got time today?"
"Not really... "
"Why not? Winnie and I wanted to go shopping and have lunch together."
"I have schoolwork," Tina sighed.
"Aw, come on," Allen tried to persuade her, "It's Saturday! You can finish up tomorrow."
"Allen, I'd love to, but... "
"No buts," Winnie chimed in and there was a shuffling sound on the other side of the line.
