Tremble

Kade, it’s time to wake up. You have to get up and get ready. You’ve already wasted five minutes of shower time.

“I don’t want to wake up, though.” The petite girl curled around her pillow, the chestnut hair fanned out in waves as she sighed with content, her eyes scrunching closed to block the sun from forcing her to welcome the day.

A soft chuckle was heard over her, and even though the sound was one of her favorites, her face pushed deeper into the pillow. She hated Thursdays. They were like one giant tease. The weekend was one more day away, but that was one day too much. A hand shook her right shoulder, pushing it into the bed and then releasing it slowly only to repeat the movement again. She groaned as Callum tried to wake her up. He must have caught her parents before they left for work, welcoming the boy inside hurriedly as they jogged to their cars.

“I’m going to throw you into the shower like you are if you don’t get up and get ready.” Callum whispered slowly into her ear, dragging his whisper to come off twice as threatening.

She flipped onto her side, putting her back to his body as she curled up into a ball, hugging the pillow into her body and inclining her head to rest it against the downy sack. She was almost positive that he wouldn’t be good to his word, and if he was, she’d beat him with her pillow.

That was until his hands started to scoop her up. She screamed and thrashed her way out of his grip and jumped up to stand on the bed, hovering over him with her pillow ready. His laugh resounded through the quiet house as he took a few steps back. From the short distance away, the girl’s petite arms wouldn’t be able to swing the pillow and hit him at the same time. “Okay. I’m awake now.”

Callum smiled as a wavy blonde lock fell over his bronze eye. A nod moved against the boy’s head as he moved toward her and kissed her side. “Good. Now, get dressed and come downstairs, baby.”

Once Callum pulled the door shut for privacy, Kade jumped down and went to her dresser. She smiled over her shoulder at the mental image of her boyfriend bouncing his way down the stairs and making a sharp left to walk through the dining room and into the kitchen. She pulled the dressers open, one by one, as she grabbed a tank top, a T-shirt, and jeans. Once she was dressed, she slipped on her moccasins and rubbed her eyes. She didn’t feel like getting all dolled up today, only to express her growing hate of Thursdays.

Once she descended the stairs and made the same sharp left, she saw Callum with his legs crossed, one hand holding up the current novel he was reading, the other holding a steaming mug full of coffee. As Kaden moved to the pantry to grab the cereal box and the milk from the fridge, a pop sounded. Callum scraped his chair back, lazy footsteps moving to the counter to collect his bagels and spread strawberry cream cheese onto them before he moved back to the table. Kaden joined him with her bowl of cereal and her cup of chocolate milk.

They did this every morning, like they were playing the imaginative game of House once her parents were gone. They pretended to be married and would go about so the way they saw between their own parents as well as what they saw on television.

A comfortable silence sat in the house as Kade’s cereal crunched between her teeth and the crack of the first bite into Callum’s bagel mixed between that. She gulped, “Late shift tonight, dear?”

Callum thumbed the next page and looked up at Kade, his teeth crunching another piece of bagel up before he replied. “Ugh, that man rides me like a bull, so more or less, darling. What are you feeding the children tonight?”

Her face became innocent, full and through as she gulped down another mouth full of cereal. “Well, dear, I was thinking of torturing them tonight. Chopped liver seasoned with pepper alongside white rice and Brussels sprouts. I’ll make the two of us grilled chicken breasts with wild rice and a veggie mix. Is that okay with you?”

He looked Kaden over as a film of silence filled between the two of them. “Why, would you make them eat until it was gone?”

“Of course, dear, would you have it any other way?” Kaden asked with subtle outrage, her hand pressing to her chest for dramatic emphasis.

Callum nodded, his eyes looking back at the pages of the worn-out book as he mumbled with finality, “Well, darling, that sounds fantastic. I’ll see to it myself that they eat every last bite of your wonderful cooking.”

She smiled and leaned over as he pressed a loving and enthusiastic kiss against her cheek. They finished eating their breakfast and moved to the bathroom to brush their teeth. Once the tedious routine was done with, Kaden ran to her bedroom to grab her shoulder bag and hopped the last step, grabbing Callum’s hand in the same second.

Callum pulled Kaden’s door open and closed it once she was situated, moving around the hood of his truck and hopping into the cab. As they drove, Callum claimed one of Kaden’s hands and held it on the counsel, his eyes staying focused on the road before them, but his thumb rubbed swirls into her skin.

They got out and closed the door at the same time. They had ten minutes to get to their class, which was well more than enough time, but still they scurried off as if they were going to be late. They had Adult Living first hour, and lab tables as desks. It sat two people, but unfortunately, Callum sat at the front of the class and Kaden sat at the last table on the opposite side. With the distance, they used the few minutes before class to sit close together before they’d spend the hour in the same room with no hope of actually being able to converse with each other.

They sat down at her table and Kaden stretched out her arms and pushed her stomach outward to crack the out-of-line bones back into place. Callum moved his tongue repeatedly behind his lips. This was a silent habit of his to swirl the ball of his tongue ring against the roof of his mouth and tap it against the backs of his teeth.

“So, do you really have work today?” Kade asked as she held his hands between hers, her forehead pressing against his temple as her hazelnut eyes looked through his golden bronze ones.

“Unfortunately so, I do. I can come over once I’m out, if it’s not too late.” He said with assuredness and a nod as he turned his head and pressed a kiss against the top of her head. Turning his head back to look towards the front of the class, her head fell against his temple once more.

She released a sigh and grumbled and groaned as her response to the fact that he’d have to work today. Her reasons for hating Thursdays just kept adding up, it seemed to become a never-ending list. “I’m going to be so bored, what am I going to do?”

Callum laughed, his head shaking slowly as his hands gave hers gentle squeezes to fix her gloom. “You act like you don’t have friends, you dork. Might you remember that your best friend lives a couple houses over?”

“Who, Lena? Yeah, I know she does. She probably has work today, too. You know why? Ask me why.” Kaden whined through a frustrated whimper.

Clicking his tongue off the roof of his mouth, Callum turned toward Kaden fully so he could look down into her face. “Okay. Why?”

“Because Thursdays suck, that’s why.”

Callum picked up one of his arms and threw it about her shoulders, dragging the girl into his chest to console her with loose arms. “You’re so melodramatic sometimes, lighten up, babe.”

She rolled her eyes, pulling out of the embrace slightly as the warning bell rang shrilly throughout the cluttered halls and deserted classrooms. She turned toward Callum quickly and pressed a loving kiss to his lips before the load of people started to file into the classroom, the once quiet room now buzzing with countless conversations. She glanced around the room, noticing that there was something different, something more rigid about the early morning class that she couldn’t pinpoint.

Her eyes scaled all of the familiar classmates, all of them buzzing with different stories and different topics until she rested her eyes on a boy slumped over a sketchbook. His eyes would snap up and look around briefly before turning back down to the image he was working on. With rutted brows, Kade kept her eyes intent on the unfamiliar boy. His hair had a slight wave at the ends of his long, cheekbone-curling locks, his hair a perfect ebony with a sleek shine on it from the fluorescence. When he would drag his eyes away to momentarily study the increasing classmates, she could tell that his eyes were a dark grey, shadowy and without color. His eyes would narrow and he would hunch his back over the book to keep it covered from wandering eyes. She finally figured out that he was tall, perhaps lanky, even.

The bell rang and she gasped under her breath, her eyes staring at the front of the class as Callum pressed a kiss to the corner of her mouth and walked to his seat all the way on the opposite front side of the room. They stood for the morning Pledge and sat back down once they all finished repeating it with the announcements. For the next seven minutes, they talked on the intercom about upcoming events, the pep rally tomorrow, other athletic happenings as well as musical happenings and finally signed off with something quick and quirky.

Kaden’s eyes swept away from the boy once more as she noticed he didn’t repeat the Pledge, but did stand up with his hand lamely on his chest, to look forward at her teacher. Mrs. Brigham was a young petite teacher with blonde bouncy hair and russet brown lowlights. Her fashion sense was intact since she was the Fashion and Design teacher as well. She needed to ease up on her eyeliner though, and maybe purchase different eye-shadow, Kaden examined. Her voice was smooth and flowing, like she might have been a singer when she was younger, or perhaps a very patient mother.

“Okay, guys. We’ve got a newcomer hoping on the roster today. Asher Bishop?” She looked up and around the room until the boy Kaden had been admiring and examining snapped his head up to stare at Mrs. Brigham. “Why don’t you come down to the front of the class for a moment?”

Asher’s stool scraped back against the ground and his footfalls echoed through the room, Kaden couldn’t keep her eyes off him. It was like her mind was being pulled and trapped against her will, it scared her for a moment. Her eyes took in his black form-fitting V-neck T-shirt and the dark jeans that were tight but low-riding. He had a string bracelet that was black and tied tight enough that it didn’t slip from around his wrist. He walked tall, like he was someone important, someone you were meant to go silent for as they passed you. With him away from the book, Kaden quickly glanced back toward it, but she couldn’t make any of the images stand out, the book too far away from her to see.

Her head snapped back up to look at him, his eyes scaling over her frame slowly and without shame. Her eyes peered to the side to see Callum look over his shoulder at her and then look back at Asher, who continued to stare at the girl, a curling smile hitting the edges of his mouth as he glanced at the teacher.

Mrs. Brigham dragged all three eyes away from their stares as her voice sounded through the classroom with a certain enthusiasm. “So, Asher, since you weren’t here three weeks ago when school actually started, you can just do the warm-up everyone else did. First of all, where are you from?”

Asher’s shadowy grey eyes looked at Mrs. Brigham before they turned back to Kade, who casted her eyes to the black tabletop, examining her fingers with most of her attention, but listening to his voice fall out with chills. “Australia.”

“Wow! What was that like?” the teacher asked with a bit too much enthusiasm, Kaden thought.

Shoving his thumbs into his pockets, Asher leaned back against the wall and moved his eyes over the class and its equipment. “This time of year? Hot. Much like it usually tends to be during the summer months, don’t you think?”

Mrs. Brigham cleared her throat, her hand smoothing over the skin of her throat for a moment before she spoke again. “Okay. So, are you familiar with the game ‘two truths and a lie’?”

Asher turned his eyes toward his teacher, his dark hues scaling from the hair on her head to the shoes she wore. It was painfully obvious to Asher that she was growing uncomfortable as he stared at her, maybe because she found her student attractive and didn’t know how to react, or maybe because of the intention bounding off his gaze, it didn’t matter. “Yes.” He finally answered.

Asher’s foot moved against the wall as his tongue dragged across his slightly chapped lips, flushed from the lack of moisture. “I’m extremely excited to be here, my parents couldn’t handle me so they kicked me to America to live with my aunt of whom I’ve never met before, and I was just drawing what this class would look like if it were in Hell. It didn’t look very different, to tell you the truth.”

Mrs. Brigham’s eyes were wide, her hand pressing to her chest softly as she nodded slowly. “Well, you’ll be sitting back by Kaden. Kaden, dear, raise your hand.”

Kaden looked around the room, silently hoping that there was another Kaden that she didn’t know about, but the young teacher’s eyes stared straight through the brown haired girl. Slowly, her hand went up and her eyes connected with Asher’s for the briefest moment before she casted them down to the tabletop once more.

Asher’s lazy footsteps moved through the room as he went to the table he sat at previously to gather and close up his belongings and move over to the open aisle seat waiting for him. Mrs. Brigham cleared her throat and called lightly, “Which one was a lie, Asher?”

He answered immediately, as if he was going to tell her either way, “How excited I am to be in this class.”

With a smile forming around his lips, Asher pulled the seat out with his foot and spun around and down onto the stool. His sketchbook fell open to his recent page and Kade’s eyes snapped to it. She saw the gracious strokes of his pencil that created the high flames and the teacher had turned into a big-breasted she-devil with sexy, dark lingerie barely casing her intimates. There were heads on sticks, one of them, she noted, was Callum’s and orgies happening in corners. Kaden’s eyes found her picture, a skimpy skirt and an unbuttoned shirt as she lay on her table. Her head turned with lips parted, one leg dangling off the tall lab table and the other propped up, her hand palming against her breast. Just beyond her table, leaning against the wall closest to her was Asher with his long arms draped across his chest and his shirt and pants unbuttoned. The expression on his drawn face in the picture was the same when Kaden’s eyes dragged up his features. A curling wicked smile and his eyes slightly narrowed in on her.