Jayden & Astrid [On Hold]

CHAPTER FOUR - YOU WALK TOO FAST

Not for the first time that day, Jayden's alarm rang. Also, not for the first time that day, he rolled over and pressed the snooze button.

He rolled back over and would have gone back to sleep had his hand not found a sock-clad foot.

"Sup." Astrid greeted with a small upward nod. Staring wide-eyed at him and already dressed for the day, she had probably been up for ages. She was seated with one foot tucked beneath her and the other in Jayden's grasp. Her hair fell around her, like a long voluminous cape, which for some reason was less purple than it was the previous day. She had a notebook and an eraser in her hands.

He surprised himself and her by not being visibly startled and rolling off the bed in shock.

"I feel like I should remind you that yesterday, you said I could come to meet you if I needed anything. I did need something this morning. I would have knocked but the door was half open and I could see you were still asleep, so I just walked right in." She stated when all he did was stare blankly at her.

It took a couple of seconds for the words to sink in. Then another couple of seconds for a response to form. "What did you need?" Maybe he should have led with something else like What are you doing in my bed? or For how long have you been in my bed? But at the moment, that was all his brain could form.

"A sharpener." Astrid declared proudly, flashing the stationery she had had to hunt for almost 30 minutes to find. Then she redirected her attention to her notebook as if he wasn't there.

"What time is it?" Jayden asked, suppressing a yawn.

Astrid looked up from what she was working on. "Seven forty-five."

"What?!" He paled. He moved to the curtain and pulled them apart. His eyes were bombarded with a stream of sunlight.

"Well, actually it's seven forty-three. I just said seven forty-five because it irks me when a number isn't divisible by five."

Jayden chose not to respond to her last statement because there was really no way to respond to that sort of statement. Instead, he focused on the statement she made before that. "Why didn't you tell me that it was that late?" He asked turning round to face Astrid. She was staring intently at a framed photograph by his bed. It had been taken in front of what looked like a school so there were many people in it but the camera's focus seemed to be on three grinning children spotting matching grins.

She pulled her eyes away from the picture. "I'm telling you now."

"Why didn't you wake me?"

She scoffed and gestured to the alarm clock. "You clearly refused to wake up when the alarm went off multiple times. What was I to do? Stick my finger in your nose? Poke you in the ribs?" All things that she had done to people before and had no problem repeating.

"No. At least you look ready for school. Please tell me you're ready for school."

She twisted a strand of her hair around her finger. "Sort of. I still have to do my hair though."

"How long is that going to take?"

She grimaced. "You're not going to like the answer." She put the sharpener back in his backpack where she had found it. "But I'll try to speed up the process. What time do we have to get to school?"

"The first class starts at eight o'clock. But since it's the first day and you're new, as long as we get there before the end of the first period we'd probably be fine. If we hurry, we should be ready by eight, but then we still have thirty minutes separating us from school." He paused, suddenly aware that Astrid didn't seem to be paying attention to what he was saying. "What are you doing?"