Erik tried his best to adapt to this rapidly changing turn of events. He felt trapped in a tornado with no choice but to pretend that he was okay with all this. It wasn't himself that he was worried about; it was his mother and his siblings. Specifically, what would happen when his father came sniffing around again. His mother would have no choice but to leave all of this behind and run to some far corner of the states to escape. This charity was a glass house just waiting to come crashing down. Yet, he held his tongue because, for the first time in his life, his mother and his sisters seemed happy.
The one thing he was happy about, though, was that he could see Liona every single day. And so a week passed as he adjusted to his new room and went back and forth from his family's new accommodations, helping them set up the house the way they wanted it. Before he realized it, he was soon adapted to having a full stomach all day long. Each meal he was eating at Liona's house was slowly increasing in amount, and it always tasted divine if his mate was the one cooking that day. It didn't matter who cooked in this house, everyone's cooking was delicious though, and even if it wasn't, he would never complain.
The day of graduation dawned, and this early Saturday was going to be bustling with activity. Liona woke up early and donned her uniform for the very last time. She hurried down the stairs to start breakfast before anyone else woke up. However, again, Erik was awake and puttering around again. He had this bad habit of cleaning where nothing needed cleaning. He kept saying that he needed to earn his keep while he was here and it was just depressing to her. She and the whole family always cleaned up after themselves and they had a weekly maid come in for the rest of the cleaning that needed to be done. There was literally nothing to clean.
"Er, it's okay. You don't need to clean anything. There's nothing to clean up, and the maid takes care of everything else." Liona gently reminded her love. Although she wanted to hug him intimately and just flood him with soothing pheromones, she had to keep herself in check. She hadn't been alone in the house with Erik all week, so she kept her interactions with him friendly and extremely chaste in the off chance that her parents walked into the room at the wrong moment. Friendly hugs were as intimate as she got and she kept them few and far between for this reason.
"Liona, I need to do something to help out. I don't want to give your parents any reason to kick me out or stop helping my mom and siblings."
"That won't happen. If my parents say they are going to do something, they do it. They always keep their word. Trust me? Please?" Liona felt like she had to beg him to stop this behavior. He was their guest and was here to recuperate and get all his necessary medical and school testing done.
Erik still felt antsy about this situation. It was so odd to have a comfortable place to sleep without having to share a room. The room itself felt too luxurious, too large, and his mattress was like sleeping on a cloud. It was all too soft, there were no springs digging into his backside, nor was there the soft sound of his sisters sleeping to lull him to sleep each night in the huge room.
Liona didn't get much of a chance to talk with Erik that morning since her parents also had woken up early and decided that brunch out was going to be the plan for the day since the ceremony was to take place early afternoon today. This meant that her grounding was officially over with but her graduation trip had been canceled. She unfortunately had not passed half of her finals, so she had to attend summer school. That was the condition for the graduation trip, was passing all of her classes.
But she was no longer upset about missing out on this overseas trip. If she were to go on this trip, she would miss Erik too much. A month without seeing him had been like torture, so a summer trip overseas was now unthinkable. It wasn't like she could take him with her, the logistics of that would have been a nightmare. Plus he didn't turn eighteen until halfway through the trip, so she would have had to get written permission from his mom and get him a passport as well as go through a bunch of other hoops to take him with her.
Brunch out with the Bartleys wasn't bad, but Erik still wasn't quite comfortable around them. Today's graduation ceremony was for Lia while he had his graduation ceremony yesterday. He didn't want to bother to attend because he wasn't graduating because of his missing records regarding his school credits, so he was to attend summer school to earn them along with all this other testing this family wanted him to take.
After brunch, it was finally time for Liona to get ready to walk with her peers. She wasn't graduating, but instead just walking and receiving an empty placeholder diploma until she actually did graduate after summer school. She wasn't looking forward to more schooling after she should be done with school, but it didn't seem as bad now that she had Erik living with her and as a fellow student joining her in summer school.
As her school headmaster called out names, Liona in her cap and gown of Emerald and Sapphire waited in the wings of the auditorium while her family was seated in the audience with Erik. Soon enough it was her turn to walk across the stage, smile big and pretend that she was happily receiving her diploma as she shook hands with the headmaster and assistant principal handed her the empty diploma book. The audience clapped politely and she walked off the stage to join her family.
Erik watched as Liona received the fake diploma. It made him glad his mom nor the Bartleys had made him attend his own graduation ceremony to fake the gladness and all that. It looked ridiculous to pretend to be nice and happy receiving nothing. When Liona was done, she came back and joined him and her family in the audience. Her siblings, of which he was slowly getting used to their quirks, each teased her about her performance before being shushed by their parents when Lia's friends walked across the stage. They stayed until the end of the ceremony before leaving to tour the campus.
Lia's school wasn't super large, but it was fancy. Erik had only been to two buildings on the campus so when he was walking around the school with The Bartleys he marveled at how nice everything looked. The landscaping was more than the occasional bush and lawn like his school. Instead there were beds of flowers, bushes, shrubs and a multitude of trees everywhere. Even on a day like this, with kids graduating, it seemed that there were groups of students just lounging around sitting areas or in grassy sections, enjoying the sunshine. There were even a few that looked to be tending to the landscaping in some areas, instead of professionals. It puzzled him why kids were the ones working especially since it should be summer vacation.
"Erik, This school teaches more than just rote learning. We focus on more than just test scores. Here we encourage hands-on learning for all kinds of fields of study. Whether it be science or mechanics, we teach it all here." Mr. Bartley continued to explain all of the programs students could choose, including that of environmental learning by studying plants and their biology.
This school sounded like an amazing place to learn, but to Erik's eyes, this was just another thing that was available to the rich and was not wholly accessible to the poor. Thinking about all the opportunities he and his siblings had missed out on over the years as they shuffled from one subpar school to another. It felt like none of the schools they had attended, except for the high school that he and Nikki had most recently been at, had only cared that they memorize things from outdated textbooks that sometimes had been more than twenty-years-old.
Taking a chance, Erik asked, "Mr. Bartley, what does one have to do to attend a school like this? I mean the price of attending seems like it would be astronomical…" He kind of jumbled up what he was trying to say.
Instead of Mr. Bartley answering, Liona did in his stead. "Erik. The cost of this school isn't as bad as you might think. It's actually a little more affordable, especially if you apply through one of the many scholarship opportunities or apply via a payment deferment or work program. Some students or their parents can work here or at one of the businesses associated with the school. There are also some that attend here on full charity each year. The school is quite accessible to those that wish to attend. Just because it's a private school, doesn't mean it has to be out of reach to those wishing for a better education."