Fly With Me | ✓

13

Everleigh wanted to be done with school. It was the thought she had consistently after the first month of the semester where she wanted to drop out and, in theory, drop dead as well. As much fun as she'd had joking with Jun about math: Everleigh had reached that point. And it didn't stop there.

Her Los Angeles hotel room was strewn with pages of homework—tossed aside when she realized what the phone call was for. Phone pressed to her ear so harshly, Everleigh thought it might break her skull and penetrate her brain. Maybe if she let it, she'd be out of the conversation she'd been having with a counsellor.

"What does that mean?" Everleigh finally asked, fighting angry tears. Two o'clock in the fucking morning and she had already had enough of the day. "Specifically."

"I need you in my classes this semester. Or I will not pass you."

"No, no, no," Everleigh said. "I joined this program because it was online."

"There are clinical portions to this class," her tech professor said. "Times when I need you doing work in person. The class is mainly asynchronous, but some parts are synchronous. You've already missed two of my classes."

"I've done the work." Everleigh fought the urge to beg her professor for forgiveness or plead to a god she wasn't sure if she believed in to take her away from whatever the hell this nightmare was. "I've participated—I'm halfway across the world right now and I won't be back until next month. At least. That's not something I can control at the moment."

"It'll have to turn into something you can control, miss Meadowlark." The professor said her name like she should feel blessed to even be on the call in the first place. Like this professor taking time out of their day to shit on her dreams was something Everleigh should be thankful for. "None of the other students have protested being present in clinical."

"Are all of them from London?"

"You're from London as well," the professor said. "Your address on file says so."

"That's information you didn't need access to."

"I'm sorry, but there are hands-on aspects of this class."

"How many classes can I miss before it's a drop?"

"You can miss two more," her professor answered, "but I wouldn't recommend it."

"It might take that long to sort out. I'll have to find coverage—" Everleigh started. She was going to have to get flights to Borneo, New Zealand, France, and Portugal covered if she was meant to be in clinical as soon as she landed in London. Fuck.

"Do what you must," the professor said. "But I need you here."

"Can I do clinical in Los Angeles for the next couple days?" Everleigh asked. "Keep a pedometer and timesheet and get a supervisor to email you with my work or something while I try to sort things out?"

"I'll let you attend two clinical sessions in LA. But that's me being nice."

Everleigh bit back a few too many words that were nicer than her professor was being. She swallowed down anything that wasn't, "Thank you."

"I suggest you sort this out quickly," her professor said. "You're a brilliant student, miss Meadowlark, falling behind shouldn't be in your deck."

Ah, yes. Because Everleigh's first thought about university was to fall behind so she could spend more time in pencil skirts and heels. Of course. That was in her deck from the beginning—tuition was simply money she had to spare after letting it burn a hole in her pocket when she paid for textbooks.