The new school year was just right around the corner and Marinette had managed to convince her parents to transfer her out of Mrs. Bustier's class and into Ms. Mendeleiv's. It was a hard and tough decision for Marinette to make, but she decided that the change would be necessary for her to move on from everything that has been troubling her.

     She has still been attending weekly therapy sessions with Ms. Gardner, and Marinette has slowly grown to realize that her crush on Adrien....wasn't exactly ideal to begin with. It was an obsession and a very bad one at that. Why on earth did her friends influence this type of behavior is beyond Marinettes understanding.

Taking down and deleting everything Adrien related off of her devices (except for a few photos that included the derby hat she designed and group photos) and replaced them with pictures of herself and her family, Marinette took a step back and admired the work she had done. This school year will be the start of a new chapter in her life, one without obsession and having to constantly worry about Lila turning people against her.

Marinette was quite sad that she had to leave her friends behind, but Tikki reassured her that she can always go hangout with them at lunch or events. Unfortunately for Marinette though, her friends seem to think otherwise..

Reading texts upon texts and calls from the few weeks she was grounded, Marinette had noticed that the messages and voice calls have gone from concerned to aggressive real quick. Clicking on the last message Alya had send her, Marinette had slowly caught on as to why all this negativity was coming her way....Lila spreaded yet another false lie about her, and this time it was revolving around her not wanting to be friends with them anymore...

Immediately notifying her parents of what's going on, Marinette handed her phone over to her mom and was questioning on why Lila would go this far to ruin her life? Admittedly Marinette did add fuel to the fire when she transformed as Ladybug and made a fool out of her in front of Adrien, so maybe that could be a reason as to why Lila is out for her head...or well Ladybugs..

Tom and Sabine looked at each other with a concern look in their eyes before sending Marinette upstairs into her room to have a private one on one discussion. Taking a deep breath and sitting down on her bed, Marinette realized starting over was going to take a lot more work now that Lila was off spreading fabricated lies again..And just when she was about to message her friends the real reason as to why she was absent too....

To say Marinette was a hot mess would be a complete understatement....She was a total wreck! Perhaps this would be a great topic to talk about with her therapist tomorrow....yeah....Marinette thinks she'll do exactly that...

—

"Alright Marinette, what is it you would like to discuss with me today?" Mary-Jane asked her as she got out her clipboard, "Anything school related? Adrien? Or is this something completely different?"

"Well technically it could be considered school related. You remember Lila, right?" Marinette asked her.

Mary-Jane nodded, "The pathological liar who seems to have it out for you?"

"Mhm, apparently she spreaded yet another fabricated lie revolving around why I haven't messaged my friends lately. She said that I didn't want to be their friends anymore and that's why I ignored them, when in reality I got grounded for the whole Adrien situation we discussed last week," Marinette explained in a calm tone, "My parents right now are planning on filing charges against Lila for defamation and harassment, based off of previous incidents before all of this. So far I've managed to record a few of our conversations, took pictures of some of the texts she sent me through an anonymous number, and not to mention the messages and voice calls sent from my classmates."

"It seems you've been quite busy lately," Mary-Jane said as she wrote the new information down.

"Yeah, but I've grown sick and tired of walking on eggshells around her while pointing out her lies. I tried to warn my friends..or well ex-friends now, I really did, but it seems I have no choice but to accept defeat," Marinette sighed as she leaned back into the chair, "Can we talk about something else now?"

Mary-Jane nodded, "Of course! I heard from your mom that you redecorated your room."

"We'll all I did was take a bunch of pictures down and had a friend (Tikki) help me pick out a few of my designs to replace them with. My parents plan on taking me shopping sometime this week so that I can buy some new fabric to start up on my new back to school wardrobe! Oh and I also got yet another upcoming commission for Jagged Stone that I need to meet up with him for so I can jot down his preferences," Marinette excitedly said as she pulled out her sketchbook from her bag and showed her, "He prefers to go 'big' and 'bold' when it comes to his costumes."

Mary-Jane smiled warmly, "Well I'm glad you're having fun and progressing in your career. Your designs are always so breathtaking to look at."

Marinette chuckled, "Do you perhaps got any colored pencils on hand?"

"Mhm, they're in the second drawer on the right. I always keep some on hand for my younger patients," Mary-Jane said as Marinette handed her the sketchbook, "Chromotherapy is very effective for them, even some of my older patients enjoy doodling on a piece of paper with either those or my (not so secret) stash of crayons."

Marinette pulled out the package of colored pencils and sat back down to start working on some new designs, "Really?"

"I've been in this field for roughly around three years now, I picked up on a few tricks when it comes to different forms of therapy and what works best on people," Mary-Jane said as she looked at the overalls Marinette was sketching, "Oh that looks pretty good!"

Marinette smiled, "Thank you! I was thinking about adding a mixture of ladybugs and black paw prints on the right side, you know symbolizing Ladybug and Chat Noir?"

"Hm...and maybe a green shirt to go with it? You know since Chat Noir's eyes are green?" Mary-Jane awkwardly said as she jotted down some notes.

"Mhm, that would look good! Maybe I should turn the pants into shorts....no, that wouldn't look good," Marinette muttered under her breath as she worked on finalizing the outline.

Mary-Jane smiled, "Well our time is almost up. Is there anything else you would like to discuss while we're here?"

"Well my dad came up with this delicious macaroon recipe the other day and asked me to come down and try it. Honestly I think it's probably my new favorite pastry he came up with!" Marinette said before signing, "Also I'm a bit nervous about the upcoming school year...I have a feeling Lila or Chloé is going to try and pull some big stunt on me, especially in the locker room."

"Perhaps you should put a lock on your locker?" Mary-Jane suggested.

Marinette nodded, "I'll talk to my parents about that. Thanks for having me here today!"

"You're welcome!" Mary-Jane responded as she got up from her chair, "Make sure to put my color pencils back in the drawer before you leave."

"I will!" Marinette said as she put her sketchbook and pen back into her book bag, "Second drawer on the right?"

Mary-Jane nodded as she watched Marinette put away the color pencils, "Yup!"

"I'm all ready to go! See you next week!" Marinette waved as she exited the room.

Mary-Jame smiled a bit, "I'll see you next week, Ms. Dupain-Cheng."

—

Marinette sat at her desk with her mother and was busy sketching up a few new designs for her to make for the back to school line. The Ladybug-Chat Noir themed overalls didn't seem to fit in well with the whole school theme in Marinette's opinion, but her mom suggested to keep it due to how cute the design was.

"Oh I really do like that blouse!" Sabine pointed at the sketch that was pinned to Marinette's wall with a thumbtack, "That would look pretty good on you along with a pair of black leggings."

Marinette nodded, "The crimson red with the wavy see-through fabric on the sleeves is just a prototype design I came up with on the car ride home. There's nothing special about it."

"Still, the design is something special because you were the one who created it. Perhaps instead of a shirt you could turn it into a dress," Sabine suggested as Marinette looked at her with awe in her eyes.

Ripping the design off the wall, Marinette went right to work modifying the design and turning it into a knee-length dress, still keeping some of the original components of the blouse. Smiling at her latest creation, Marinette went right back to work modifying all of her prototype designs and turning them into something unique.

Sabine looked at her daughter and smiled. She was quite proud of how far Marinette had come in both her therapy sessions and skill sets. Her daughter is a very talented individual, and it's a shame her former friends ditched Marinette for a pathetic liar.

Opening up the hatch and climbing down the steps, Sabine walked down into the bakery and started helping her husband pack up for the night. Perhaps this school year will be different for Marinette. Maybe she'll make some new friends and even potentially get herself a boyfriend when the time comes? Sabine was quite eager to see what would happen next.

And then she heard her daughters phone ring...

—

After a long day of designing and planning on what types of fabric she would need to purchase, Marinette laid down on her bed and looked at Tikki with a tired look on her face. It has been quite a long and exhausting day...with her parents planning on suing Lila to figuring out a whole new line of designs she would create and sell on her website. Needless to say Marinette was quite exhausted and slightly overlooked...perhaps a day at the pool would help her out some....

Suddenly Marinette heard her phone ring from over at her desk. Slowly picking up the phone, Marinette noticed it was Rose calling her. Debating on rather or not she wanted to hang up, Marinette decided to answer and see what her former friend wanted.

"Hello?"

"Oh hey Marinette, I'm actually surprised you answered my call and haven't blocked this number yet. Look, I just wanted to call and apologize for how I acted towards you lately...even if it was just me, Mylene, Juleka, Adrien, Nathaniel, Mark, and Ivan bombarding you with concerned text messages asking you how you've been..."

"Well my parents found out about my obsession with Adrien and grounded me for a couple of weeks as well as take away my phone and internet privileges. I've been attending therapy sessions every Wednesday afternoon since summer break started, so I apologize for not reaching out to any of you guys....even though Lila seemed to have already done that for me."

"That's kind of why I decided to call and check up on you...Lila told me that you didn't want to be my friend anymore over text and I was like 'wait, how do you know this?' and she said that you told her so. Last time I checked, you both hated each others guts."

"And we still do."

"Exactly my point. Thinking back to when she said she was on a diplomat trip to Achu with her mom and that she had met Prince Ali there, I decided to do a little bit of digging and it turns out she was lying about that. I showed the text messages to the others and everything just suddenly clicked!"

"So you guys finally realized that she was lying to you all along?"

"Oh Ivan had a feeling that she was, but he didn't want to say anything until he had concrete proof. Needless to say we ended up getting chased out of the picnic and had to block most of our classmates, asides from you, Adrien, and Nathaniel."

"Nathaniel?"

"Mhm! He left shortly after we did alongside Mark and apologized profusely for our classmates actions and for not speaking up against them. Nathaniel was actually the one who convinced us to contact you and confirm that what Lila said about you not wanting to be our friends is true or not."

"Nope, it's not. I would never do anything like that to you guys, ever."

"Exactly my point! Everyone here knows that you're a nice person, Marinette. It just seems out of character for you to all of a sudden stop responding to our class and messages, then proceed to ditch us and stop being our friend. Heck even Chloé of all people pointed that out to everyone, but they just shrugged it off."

"Chloé may be a bitch and all, but she does make a valid point on how blind everyone is when it comes to Lila and her lies."

"Honestly, I regret not listening to you when you first pointed out that Lila is a liar. Me and the others really would like to make it up to you somehow..."

"Hm...if my parents would allow it I could invite you guys over and we can hang out together! I really do miss having some company around."

"Great! I'll make sure to bring over some snack for us to eat."

"That sounds amazing! I can't wait to see you guys again."

"We can't wait to see you again too! Bye!"

"Bye!"

Marinette ended the call and placed her phone back down at her desk. So she did have some friends left after all...At least it's nice that she wasn't the only one who knew Lila was lying now...what a relief!

Hm...but what exactly would they all do together? Rose always said she wanted to start up a band sometime before the music festival starts...maybe that's what they can do together this summer?

As Marinette excitedly talked about hanging out with her friends again, Sabine listened in and smiled warmly at the thought of her daughter no longer being alone anymore. Of course she'll have to look out for that Lila girl and the others, but Marinettes happiness is her and Tom's top priority, and they sure as hell wasn't about to let anybody ruin it...especially a certain pathological liar who faked a lying disease...