dedicated to ultralukes bc the book thief and storm kept me up all night reading they're so gr8 go read them nOOWWWWW
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"Okay, well to start, it would probably help to know what we are supposed to be doing,"Gretchen laughed and pulled up the Spanish teacher's website so that they could search for directions. She had invited Calum over to work on their Spanish project that was due at the end of the week.
"So it says here that we are just supposed to interview prepare a short speech in Spanish about something that is important to us," Gretchen explained, slowly inching towards Calum.
"Well, soccer is important to me. And music. Not much else matters though," Calum voiced after several minutes of silence between the two. Gretchen pouted with a gleam in her eye. Her hand trailed up Calum's leg and eventually landed on his cheek.
"What about me?" she innocently inquired. "Don't I matter?"
Calum awkwardly coughed. He was at a loss for words. Isn't this what he wanted? Why did it feel so wrong? Gretchen began to place open mouthed kisses on his collarbone, knowing all the right spots to get him going. Usually this would have worked in an instant, but Calum just felt extremely uncomfortable and wanted her to stop. He quickly stood up off of her bed and scratched the back of his head.
"Uh...I think I'm just going to do this project on my own. I'll email Mr. Santos and tell him that we didn't have enough time to get something together. So...um...I'm just gonna go...," Calum trailed off as he turned out of Gretchen's room and left her house. His mom had dropped him off, so he had to walk home. But he didn't mind. He had some things that he needed to take care of.
Gretchen lived about three miles away from Calum. She also lived about four miles away from Hallie, in the opposite direction. Calum checked his phone for the time: 7:48 pm. That was enough time. He quickly composed a text to his mother telling her not to worry about picking him up and began the trek to Hallie's house.
~*~
After forty minutes in the sweltering Australian heat, Calum began to regret his decision. Even in the late hours of the night, Calum was soaked in his own sweat. He took his shirt off and used it to wipe the sweat off of his forehead.
Calum spotted Hallie's humble abode looming in the distance and realized his smell most likely closely resembled one of a trash dumb. He spotted some flowers and jogged over to them. He plucked some and rubbed them all over his body. He didn't even think flowers smelled like anything. But it was better than nothing.
Shortly after, Calum was standing in front of Hallie's house. There were no cars in the driveway, but he wasn't ready to give up yet. He hurriedly knocked on the front door before his stroke of courage left. He waited for ten minutes before stepping off of the front porch in defeat. He looked around for some rocks to through at the windows to see if anybody was home. There were no rocks, and apparently grass blades don't work very well in that situation.
He walked around to the back of the house to look for some other way to find Hallie. Finally, he spotted a window with black curtains drawn and some soccer decals on the window. That had to be her room. There still weren't any rocks though. He had to improvise.
Calum wandered around searching for something, anything that would help him out. His eyes trailed down to a hose that was coiled up in Hallie's backyard. Shrugging, he made his way to the base of the hose and began to twist the water on. Suddenly, the water violently splashed out of the end, soaking Calum with freezing cold water. He screamed and turned the water off. Breathing heavily, he once again tried the hose, pointing it in the exact opposite direction of him this time. The water sprayed and loudly hit the side of Hallie's house. Calum stumbled backwards with the hose until he could see Hallie's window. He aimed the water at her room and hoped for the best.
