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(unedited bc i am a lazy ho)

The drive to school was more tense than usual. Luke's eyes didn't leave the road, and while Ciara chatted to fill in the space that had seemed to grow between them practically overnight, Luke simply smiled and nodded. Something was bothering him.

After they arrived in the parking lot of their high school, Luke got out of his car, closing the door rather harshly and then turned to get both of their backpacks from the trunk. Ciara furrowed her brow as she got out, walking over to Luke hesitantly. He handed her backpack to her, "I think I'm going to hang out with the guys today before school starts. If you want to come with, that's fine."

As he turned around to walk away, Ciara put a hand on his shoulder gently; she was sort of afraid to ask what was wrong. She knew it had something to do with the events of last night. But she didn't know exactly why he was mad, or what specifically he was mad at, "Luke," she spoke, her voice slightly shaky. She hated confrontation, "Are you... mad at me?"

Almost instantaneously, Luke's entire demeanor changed, eyebrows pulling toward each other, "Oh, god, Ciara, no. I'm not mad at you. I could never be mad at you. It's just," he looked around the parking lot, making sure that there was no one else present, "Last night... that was weird. And, this morning," his cheeks turned pink, and Ciara giggled, "Well. Uh. No comment, I suppose," he gave a joking wink, and Ciara snorted.

Ciara softly punched his shoulder, and they turned to walk toward the band room, where they knew the rest of the guys would be congregating, the rest of the guys being Calum and Ashton.

Their friends were, to put it quite bluntly, loud. And there was nothing wrong with that; as far as she was concerned, they could scream at the top of their lungs, as long as they were her friends, she was fine with it. Besides, it was quite amusing to watch them get in trouble for not using their "inside voices". With Calum and Ashton, there were no such things as "inside voices". They had one volume setting; loud and proud.

"You guys are kinda late today, hmm?" Ashton remarked as Ciara and Luke approached. She simply shrugged and sat down next to Calum on the floor next to the door of the band room. The raucous sounds of early-morning band rehearsals drifted through the immaculate halls of the fine arts building, brass and woodwinds melding and floating about their heads in the form of an upbeat, happy tune.

Ciara was never particularly gifted in playing an instrument- the most she did was plunk out "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" on the piano every once in a while.

Her real talent, though she hesitated to call it such, was in logic. Not just numbers, either, although numbers played a big part in it. When she said that she was logically talented, she meant that she was good at thinking on her toes; it was a blessing, bestowed upon her on account of the fact that she was a mischievous child. She had to think on her toes when she'd stolen cookies from the cookie jar, or when she made her younger cousins cry. If she didn't, she'd end up in trouble.

Naturally, she'd ended up in trouble quite a bit, but the number of times she got away with bad things outweighed the times that she hadn't. As a result, she was now both a skilled liar and a quick thinker. Unless it came to her mother.

"Hey, Ciara. Did you do the Calc homework?" Calum asked curiously, and she shook her head; while she was specially gifted in matters of the mind, that didn't mean she actually did homework.

"I did it, Cal," Ashton stated as he pulled out a paper from his backpack, "And by that, I mean that I copied off of my lovely lover, since she got this worksheet the day before yesterday."

After a few minutes of furious scribbling in near-silence, Calum handed the paper back to Ashton. "Thanks, man," he muttered as he stuffed the paper back in his backpack and checked the time on his phone. "About five minutes until class starts. You guys wanna start walking?"

― s t a r c h i l d ― (michael clifford a.u.)Where stories live. Discover now