(Avoidance of) Soulmates

1st day

Today would be rough, Drew decided. Why you might ask? Well, to start, her phone didn't charge, her curling iron burnt her ear, and they were out of poppyseed muffins. To add insult to injury, her siblings were still asleep, and they only had five minutes to get out the door! Drew frantically stuffed laptops into backpacks and yelled once again down the stairs towards her quadruplets. "Jack, Avery, Parker... if you don't come up here this instant, so help me, you'll just have to walk!"

Being the only morning person of the four of them (not to mention her other six siblings--they were a big family) was quite the burden, and today it weighed heavier on Drew than it would generally. It was the first day of school; she yearned to make a good impression. Not that she and the others associated much outside their little group--more on that later--but Drew cared about appearances. This frustrated both her and those around her to no end, but she couldn't help it.

As Avery and Parker raced up the stairs with Jack close behind, shirts untucked and hair askew, Drew tucked her own carefully constructed dark golden waves behind one ear and tugged down the hem of her midi-length jean skirt. Avery wouldn't be caught dead in anything that feminine, but Drew had always been the oddball of the four.

With food held in mouths and backpacks in hand, the gang made their way out to the car. Jack drove: Avery and Parker being semi-comatose in the backseat and Drew in the front seat. She wasn't much of a fan of driving, and besides, Jack could see over the steering wheel of their baby blue VW bug.

Drew was the short one and the only one with hazel-colored eyes and brown-gold hair (naturally brown, but it always sun-lightened prettily). Jack was the tallest, made up of lean muscles and fluffy brown hair. Avery was naturally gorgeous (though it was wasted on her, Drew privately felt) with strawberry blonde hair and eyes that weren't quite blue or gray but were some shade of beautiful. Parker fell somewhere in between Jack and Avery. He was tall, though not so tall as Jack, and had dirty blonde hair he liked to keep short and out of the way.

Their activities as they drove the twenty minutes to their school were true to character. Jack kept silent for the most part, though he'd occasionally sing along to the music Drew played as she tried to charge her phone, drink a homemade smoothie, read a book, and finish her mascara at the same time. Parker slept (out cold), and Avery laid on top of him. There wasn't enough space in the tiny car, but they were used to it.

The sky was still dark and starry outside upon their arrival at the school building. Classes didn't start for another hour and a half, but Parker and Jack had swim practice, and the girls didn't have another car, or other friends, to drive with. Once school got going, they would use this time to catch up on homework (in Avery's case) and study (in Drew's). For today they chatted about schedules and complained about how few classes they were able to get together.

"At least we have homeroom together," Drew consoled. "And lunch and Spanish."

Avery sighed. "Good thing we all have lunch together this year. Last year was rough."

Drew nodded in agreement. The year before, she'd had a different lunch than the rest of her quadruplets, and it had been awful to sit alone.

At this point, you may be asking the very relevant question of "Why didn't she sit with someone else? Making new friends isn't that hard." My dear reader: that is a very valid argument. But Drew and her siblings, while fully capable of talking to and connecting to their peers, avoided all contact with outsiders for one reason. They feared they'd find their soulmate (or -mates).

This sounds ridiculous to some, but it made perfect sense for them. As you might have guessed by the dissimilarity in appearances, the four of them did not have the same parent. Some families get messy when multiple soulmate bonds occur, and their family was perhaps more complicated than most. They and their siblings had all ended up living with their grandmother (who was only blood-related to Avery and Bree, one of the younger ones), and later when she passed on, their oldest sister was placed in charge of the lot. Elise attended college. She tried to make sure her siblings were doing okay, but Elise juggled a part-time job (as well as her university classes), so she sometimes struggled. Two years ago Elise had found her soulmate and occasional struggles turned into little to no recognition of her family. Any free time she had, she spent with her soulmate. He was a nice guy, went by the name of Calvin. Still, the gang hated him on principle.