Growing Up and Other Tall Tales

Chapter 66

I clap my hands over my eyes. "Occipital. Parietal. Frontal. Temporal. Er, temporal, and...and..." I frown and my knee starts bouncing restlessly as if it is disparaging my short term memory. "And..." I grip my hair with my eyes shut tightly and obstinately. "Something with a s... the... fuck. Fucking fuck." I open one eye sheepishly at the book lying open on the table before my folded legs. "Sphenoid," I hiss, my eyes closing, and fell back on the bed noisily. "Frontal. Temporal. Sphenoid. That fucking cunt."

A shadow fell over me. I don't open my eyes. It was about damn time my despair is so intense that it substantiates into a personification. I feel despair breathe in my ear.

"I'm not the expert but I'm pretty sure that last one's not part of the skull."

Look who is home.

I twist in the bed to glare up at him, "And what time do you call this?"

"Sorry love, traffic was hell," he says

I prop myself up on my elbows as he pops up the buttons on his sleeves and sits on the edge of the bed.

"Do you know what Miss. Fuckface is making us do?" I begin passionately eager

"No," he says, picking up an orange from my plate. "But I've got a feeling you're about to tell me."

For a moment, I consider scolding Aiden for stealing my fruits, but decided it would interrupt the flow of my rant. "Today she tells us that tomorrow there will be an exam. Today. Tomorrow. And on this exam we will have to name all the parts of the body." I pause waiting for Aiden to join me in the throes of righteous outrage

Aiden, being the difficult fucking bastard that he was, did no such thing. He just raises his eyebrows at me to say,

"So you're going to be too busy studying to watch something with me tonight?"

"On all the parts of the body," I sit up now and repeat excruciatingly slow. "All of them." I wait, and still he didn't react. "All of them, all the bones and muscles and organs and—do you know how many bones there are in the human body? Two hundred and six! And there are six hundred and—"

"That's horrible," Aiden cuts in loudly, stuffing some of the orange in his mouth and I broke off mid-rant, waiting for the rest of his reaction.

Because surely, he would agree with me that my AP Biology teacher had clearly taken leave of her senses and ought to be removed immediately from any and all education systems on the basis of being jolly well insane. I already had to deal with her annoying high-pitched voice—and why they couldn't have found an instructor who spoke with a frequency accessible by the average human and not bats for the class, I had no earthly idea – but her being a complete unreasonable hag on top of it was just too much of me to be expected to deal with. Deranged is where I drew the line.

Speaking of unreasonable and deranged, I look at Aiden expectantly.

"Just one day to study?" he goes on hurriedly noticing my stare, "That's rather ambitious." He sneaks another orange off my plate.

"That's rather crazy is what it is," I snap at him loudly. He winces, "Oh shove it."

"Stop projecting onto me."

It is a mistake, encouraging me. Aiden really should have known better. Did know better, in fact, but if my bad mood isn't an excuse for his temporary lapse in judgment, I didn't know what would be.

Too late. My mouth pursed into a firm line and my chin came up and my brows drew together, I breathed,

"Aiden," I say, "Her way of teaching is the most absurd, antiquated, abhorrent, amoral—"

"That's a lot of words that start with A," he breaks in swiftly probably more than a little worried that I intend to work my way through the whole alphabet.

"She went off on about some shit about separating the wheat from the chaff and seeing which of us truly deserve to become leaders of the future."

"Well, I'm sure you'll do fine," he tries to appease me by handing over half of the orange. "You're wheat if I ever saw it. Or chaff? Which is the better one?" His mouth pursed into a small frown. "I've got no idea what chaff is, but you'd probably want to be wheat because it can make bread. That's God's food, so I'm sure that amounts for something."

"I..." I hesitate, unwilling to admit that I didn't know. I didn't even know what chaff fucking is– what did I look like, a fucking farmer? Besides, at this point I didn't even care to find out. I had no room in my brain for extraneous information.

"Muffins, biscuits, cereal, pasta." he continues, his nose scrunching up as he thought hard and then his eyes widen. "Pasta! It can also make pasta. Hey, do you feel like spaghetti tonight?"

"Spaghetti?" I echo

"Yeah, I think I've got some tomato sauce leftover," Aiden says absently as he turns away and starts for the kitchen, ignoring my suffering and implicitly dismissing all of my very serious problems and stealing my fucking oranges, the bastard. "It won't take long to heat up. And I can make some bread to go with it." He pauses and then snickers to himself. "More wheat," he murmurs.

"Why do I put up with you?" I shout at his retreating back

Aiden slowly turns back to face me, blinking owlishly. "Well, I was under the impression that you rather liked me."

"Well I don't!" Because it was true. I absolutely hated him in that moment, the stupid orange-stealing asshole that he was.

"Huh," Aiden said. "I'm not sure how I got the wrong idea, then. I think it might've been something about us living together, or how I valiantly fought motor traffic to come home to you sooner, or all those cookies you baked me when—"

I threw my book at him and he ducked neatly out of the way, and I curse his quick reflexes, which I only suspect he acquired from being the target of unprecedented attacks in a large family. Belatedly, I realize I still need my textbook for studying and cast a hasty look at his unimpressed stare. The wall clipped Aiden's shoulder as he bent to pick it up.

He groans.

"Good," I tell him, slamming my book down onto the bed. "Now do that for three hours and you might begin to understand me."

"Like the person you are living with is being insufferable and is waltzing on your nerves?" Aiden suggested, rubbing at his shoulder.

"Yes, exactly," I agree absently before it caught up with me what Aiden was really saying. "You! You!" I sputter

"My god, she's scraped the absolute bottom," he murmurs quietly but loudly enough for me to hear. "You sound like Loki."

I throw the book at him again.

But this time, he doesn't return it to me. He picks another orange from my plate rather more forcefully than necessary, but before I could say anything about that, Aiden walks out of the room.

Taking my textbook with him.

For a moment, I sit there stunned. Hadn't Aiden listened to anything I'd just said? I have this ridiculous exam tomorrow and Aiden didn't seem to care that I need to study. Instead he swans in here all calm and happy with his stupid good mood and all his stupid spare time, and then stole my oranges, and then stole my book, the sheer bloody nerve—

I swear, this time I am absolutely going to murder him. This isn't like leaving his shoes in the middle of the living room or taking up half the mirror in the morning when we brush our teeth– and really, who even does that? – or eating the last bit of my brainsnacks cereal without replacing it which was tantamount to pouring it down the drain, in my honest opinion, because it didn't do shit for Aiden's intellectual capacity, or—

"Romanov!" I scream