Later that afternoon, the sweet scent of baking cookies wafted through the door of Val’s bedroom. The home phone rang, but it must have been nothing since her mother let it go to voicemail.

Shortly after, her mother called out to her. “Val?”

Immediately, Val dashed out of her room, sliding on her socks to join her mother in the kitchen. The cookies must be done! Once she had skidded to a stop, Val asked in her most innocent voice, “Yes?”

Her mother stood in a rigid line. The expression on her face took Val in with strict observation, cluing her in that she might just be in trouble from the earlier events of today. “Can you tell me what this is about?” Her mother hit the replay button on the home phone’s answering machine.

The mechanical voice of an automated message played. “This is Silver Hope High School calling to let you know that your daughter, Valentine, has been marked with six unexcused absences today on Monday, October 2nd.”

Her mother stared at Val, hands on her hips to accentuate her unamusement. “Did you skip school again?”

“What do you mean?” Val asked. She tossed her arms up in a dramatic display of innocence, but she could feel herself turning a little red in the face. “I did not have any unexcused classes today. A teacher must have marked me absent by mistake!”

“Ah, yes. Did all six of them make the same mistake?” With a big sigh, her mother murmured, “I wish that you could just be honest with me.” Louder, she cried out, “Val, you tried to call yourself in sick by impersonating me again, didn’t you?”

“What? I would never do that—” Val began, voice laden heavy with sarcasm.

Her head hung low from the weight of her mother’s disappointed gaze. She hated lying through her teeth, trying to deceive her own mother like this. Most of all, Val felt disappointed in herself. “I’m sorry, Mom. I did try to do that again.”

“The secretary knows my voice apart from yours by now, you know.”

“Yeah, I know. I had her tricked for a while, though!” Val said. To think, she had spent all of that time on a better impression of her mother’s voice, yet Val had failed to trick the secretary, not even once.

“Val, you have had too many sick absences, and your unexcused absences have already gotten way out of hand,” her mother continued to chide. “Do you realize how important it is for you to attend school?”

“Yep,” Val said with a roll of her eyes.

An ugly fine, a misdemeanor, and some kind of useless parent reeducation classes could all be leveled against her mother for Val being the one who refused to attend school. It did not even matter that she had turned eighteen. Officially, Val needed to attend school unless she went through the process of dropping out.

“This is such a load of….” Val paused, but she had no other word to express how she felt. “This is such a load of shit!”

“Watch your language!” her mother snapped.

To phrase ‘shit’ in a more proper way, Val said, “These are some unnecessarily dumb hoops to jump through. I am eighteen years old, and a high school education will not serve any real purpose for me.” In Val’s case, she intended to use her divine blood to go to the Summit of Ascension, a place where no diploma would matter, anyway. A basic high school education would not save her life whereas her abilities might just do that. “I am so mad! Why can’t you just let me drop out of school already?”

Even after turning eighteen in September, Val had gained little additional control over her life. The Brillion City Schools required parental permission for students to drop out of school, regardless if she herself was an adult. For Val to declare herself an independent student, that again, would require parental permission and meetings with administration for confirmation.

Val sat there seething, glaring at her mother for putting her into this situation in the first place.

“I don’t care if you have divine blood or not!” her mother said. “You still need to graduate high school. Is that so much to ask? I am not even asking for you to get good grades, just to graduate. You only have this one last year to attend.”

“Mom,” Val said in a low voice, “I have already told you that I plan to leave for the Summit of Ascension. I will be careful, come back to visit you sometime, all of that. In order to do that, though, I need to develop a useful set of abilities. Otherwise, an outsider like me could end up dead as soon as I arrive on the Summit. In order to survive in that world, I need to spend my time training my abilities, not learning in school.”

Her mother closed her eyes. Her fingers rubbed at her stressed brow, all knitted together. “Average people like us do not even know where the Summit of Ascension even is. Why can’t you just stay here and live your life like a mortal?”

“I am a demigoddess. My destiny calls me,” Val insisted. In a whisper, she added, “Even if I have no idea where I am going, I will leave here just like Ross did.”

Pointedly, she had chosen to say the name that they always avoided these days just to cut deeper at her mother.

“Stop threatening me!” she cried, more emotional than anything else. “I am your mother.”

“I know,” Val stated plainly, “and I am not threatening you. I am only telling you my intentions so that you do not feel so shocked when I do leave. I am going to leave, one of these days.”

“For the sake of... Suvier,” her mother whispered, choking over her words. “We need to come to some kind of agreement. What can I do to convince you to attend school?”

The aroma of the cookies imposed on Val’s nose. Her mother had already tried doing everything that a mortal woman could do to keep her daughter with divine blood content in this house. She had already exhausted the typical punishments and rewards that a parent could give a child. Now, they had devolved to negotiations. Could her mother even offer her anything that she wanted?

Val thought carefully with pouted lips. She felt bad for her mother. Truly, she did. If Val were a better person, she might swallow her own dreams to stay in her mother’s life. After all, Val was the only family that she had left.

Her father, the man who Val and Ross had inherited their divine blood from, had left before Val was even born. His abandonment of them also meant his estrangement, causing Val to never see a picture of him nor so much as hear a whisper of his name. He could be a random, deadbeat demigod or one of the most powerful gods in the world. She had no idea either way.

Val had simply existed without ever having a father, not ever wanting a father. Her mother and Ross made for everything that Val could have ever wanted in a family. These past four months without Ross had been harder than eighteen years without her father.

Even still Val worked hard every day for the time that she would leave too. It seemed that her mother would lose her entire family, all because she had believed that she could actually start a loving family with an immortal man of divine blood. As the last family member that remained, Val had the added pressure to put the final nail in her mother’s proverbial coffin. To assuage some of that guilt, what if she could expand the family before leaving it?

Val lifted her eyes to meet her mother’s sad, desperate gaze. “Mom, I want a dog. If I can have a dog in the house, I will attend school every day for the rest of the year.”

The look of stress across her mother’s face loosened up. All at once, she burst out laughing. “Is this all that you wanted? I would have gotten you a dog forever ago, if I only knew that it would be this easy! You may have divine blood, but you are a typical child, daughter of mine.”

As silly as the terms to this agreement were, Val had to grin too. Her mother could associate the dog with her. Then, when she ultimately left for the Summit of Ascension, hopefully her mother would not feel so lonely.

“You have to attend school for the rest of this month, though, before we can get a dog,” her mother added.

“Fair enough.” Val reached out her hand to shake on the terms of their deal.

Afterwards, she enjoyed the freshly baked cookies with her mother. Val ate the cookies guilt-free now that her mother had already discovered her truancy today and they had resolved their differences.

Starting tomorrow, she would have a full month ahead of her to suffer through school. Inevitably, this meant that she would also have to put up with Gina.

Val did not look forward to her day at school tomorrow.