"You look great"
"I guess even a Rat can clean up nice"

After watching my mother obsess about how I'll be the prettiest girl at the dance I finally come clean; I don't want to go.
"What do you mean you don't want to go?" Mother says, giving me that 'oh however could you break my heart like that' look.
"I don't want to go to a dance looking all fancy all alone," I say.
"There's plenty of time before the dance to make friends, maybe even find a boy you want to go with," mother shoulders my side and winks.
I panicked as to her suggestion of a boy. Date-? You'd be ok with that-?
I think about home.
I already know who I want to go to a dance with but that's obviously not happening I tell myself. But just to make my mother happy I tell her maybe with a nod.

I step off the step ladder after finish pinning up the last poster in my room, high enough that it looks like the flames are about to eat them up and spit out their blackened remains.
"Perfect," I step back to admire them.
There's five posters, four in a row on this wall and one on my door. The one on my door is my favorite; a dolphin that says "keep on swimming" in big pink letters. It doesn't match anything else in my room but its special to me. My favorite teacher at my old school gave it to me when I won a gumball guessing contest. I got that along with the obnoxious amount of gumballs.
The posters on the wall are a Hamilton poster, a Hades poster- not the disney version, a Warriors poster of Ashfur and the fire, and a My Hero Academia poster- which also doesn't match all that well.
I look to my bed, made nice and neat. That wouldn't last long. I flop down onto it and pull out my phone, sitting up against the cold metal of the headboard as I do.

Me: You know what's going to suck?

I wait for a response.

Zack: What
Me: I'm going to have to start over at a new school in a month. Less than that. 22 days.
Ella: RIP
Ash: Come homeeee
Me: I want tooooo

"Lana!" My mother calls, "we're going to drive around the area and find somewhere to have dinner!"
"Ok!" I call back.
I type a quick goodbye to my friends before sliding my phone back into my pocket.

We get into the rental car and start our drive. My mother sits in the passenger seat looking up places on her phone.
Eventually we choose a little taco place to have dinner.
We sit at the table and fill up on chips and salsa as we wait.
"Don't eat too much of those," my mother says, glaring to my father as he slowly puts another one into his mouth, "you're still going to eat your dinner."
I let out a small laugh and eat a couple more chips before my taco arrives.

After dinner we come home and I head straight to my room and collapse on my bed. Before Before ge to comfortable I decide I should probably change into pajamas of some form before I do go to sleep.