The Last Rose: a romance novel

| January 10, 1994 |

Emi

Eminence; meaning, superiority within a specific realm or profession.

Well, she didn't have a profession, so she couldn't identify with that. As for the realm, if being superior at overthinking defined eminence, then maybe the name did suit her. Or maybe her parents just tried a little too hard to be original with the baby names.

It's probably the latter.

Eminence, Persuasion, and Melancholy.

It was like a freakin poem. Although, the name wasn't so bad. Most people just called her Emi, which was honestly what she preferred. Her full name made her sound too mature.

Eminence Maylin Desolt.

Absolutely not.

"Emi, wake up!"

Emi flipped onto her right side, groaning as her brain slowly started to fill with consciousness. She knew it. She knew it all.The fact that her brother was yelling at her to wake up and that winter break was over. She had deliberately been ignoring the sound of her alarm clock for around five minutes, figuring the longer she stuck it out, the more the sound would shift into a muffled sigh of sorts. It would perfectly resemble her dying soul. Of course, Sway had to ruin it all.

Calamity was sure to ensue.

And maybe that was just her being dramatic, but school meant stress. Chaos. Boys. Girls. Girls talking about boys. Girls talking about girls.

School was a calamity, and that was a cold, dead, unshakable fact.

Emi begrudgingly lagged in her efforts to turn off her alarm, almost falling off the mattress so she could reach the far end of her bedside table. Usually, she would get up to turn it off, but today she was tired. Life wasn't perfect, so neither was her behavior. Iflife was perfect, school wouldn't exist, and instead, she could spend all day watching mindless television and eating and sleeping.

Sleeping was the only perfect thing about life. It was peace.

Fingers finally reaching her alarm, Emi heard her brother call for her once more, vocalizing only half her name and stopping once he realized the beeping had dissipated. For some reason, that annoyed her.

This entire day already annoyed her, but what could she do about that?

Emi used the few atoms of energy in her body to dreadfully and slowly, get out of bed. She knew she was already late – and yes, she had only been listening to her alarm go off for about five minutes. However, the night before she had set it to 7:30.

School started at 7:25.

"Emi," her brother Persuasion or rather 'Sway,' scolded as he knocked from the other side of her bedroom door. "We're late."

She smirked, balancing her weight on her wooden nightstand. "Yeah, I know."

"Mom's not driving us; we have to walk."

She furrowed her eyebrows, pushing off the surface and woefully making her way to her closet to throw on some clothes. Crisp air exuded from her window, frothing her wooden floor in a painful cold. Her toes burned at the contact, almost retaliating with each attentive step. "Why?" she asked.

"She has an appointment, and you took too long," Sway replied.

She huffed, sorting through her closet in a hurried attempt to pull warmth onto her frame. She quickly found her favorite brown leather jacket, a black long sleeve, and some jeans. Throwing them on her floor, she shifted to grab a bra and some underwear, noting the strange silence from her brother. "Hello," she called.