Head Over Heels ✓

13 / the last straw

march, age fourteen

There was only a week left before the Easter holidays began and Lucas couldn't wait for the break, the past five weeks seeming to have dragged by painfully slowly. He was more than ready for a couple of weeks off school when he could relax with his family and have a chance of seeing Asher without Adler hanging off his arm. At school, it was virtually impossible to get away from her except for during geography lessons and Lucas was slowly coming to dread going to school each day when that meant seeing Adler. Seeing her face annoyed him; hearing her name turned his stomach; catching a glimpse of her with Asher made his brain ache and his heart clench.

Easter would be a good time to get away from it all, and Audrie would be coming home from university. Although she was only a couple of hours away, her schedule was tight and she was a meticulous worker who hadn't been home since the Christmas holidays. Lucas video chatted with her a few times a week but it just wasn't the same as seeing her in person, which he hadn't for ten weeks. He looked forward to her coming home at last for her month-long Easter break, when he could fill her in on everything she had missed without worrying that she had a class to get to or an assignment to submit.

As Friday wound itself to an end, Lucas hauled himself up the never ending flight of stairs to his form room to drop off the days books and pick up his homework from his locker with Mika at his side. She bounded up the steps, her ponytail bouncing, as though it was nothing at all. When she reached the top, she turned around to beam at Lucas, holding her bright yellow backpack off one shoulder.

"Come on, slow coach," she said, jogging on the spot.

"It's the end of the week," Lucas said. "I've used up all my energy."

Far too much of it had been wasted just trying to get through each day without letting Adler's snide looks get to him too much.

"It's the weekend now!" Mika said with all the energy of a toddler hopped up on sugar. She could always find a reason to smile, even in the midst of exams and tests and essays. "All the more reason to be happy. Home time - no school for two whole days."

That was a good point, Lucas thought, using it to propel himself to the top of the stairs and into the classroom. Dropping his bag to the table with a sigh, he emptied it of the physics textbooks he wouldn't need over the weekend, replacing them with the book he was reading for his English literature course. As much as he loved reading, he hated being forced to read books he never ordinarily would have picked off the shelf. He was still eons ahead of some of his classmates, but he didn't like it.

"Where are you this weekend?" Mika asked, arranging her books neatly in her locker. Unlike the others in the form, the two of them had the most immaculate lockers in the whole school: their books were arranged vertically in size order, rather than the teetering pile most of the students suffered with each day.

"My dad's house," Lucas said, gently pushing the spine of his history textbook so it lined up with the others. As he grew older, he hadn't stuck to the same schedule he'd had as a child - he tended to drift between his parents however he wanted to, sometimes spending a whole week at his father's house if he felt the need to get away from the chaos of home. Isabella and Matilda were just that much older, a little more receptive if he asked them to quieten down. They were just happy to get to see their big brother.

"Doing anything?" Mika asked. He shook his head.

"Just work. You?"

"Nothing much," she said, brushing a few stray hairs behind her ear. Tom's coming over tomorrow and I think we're going to see Saori on Sunday, in her new house."