Aberrant

Chapter Eight

“Ow,” He says while rubbing the part of his arm where I grabbed. “You have a strong grip.” I cringe at the bright redness that covered his arm.

“I’m sorry, I was just nervous and nerves don’t really work well with me. Like, this one time, I was so nervous that I flipped Jaclyn’s car over and it hit Taylor’s house. Her parents took it surprisingly well…” I trail off when I realize I’m rambling. I look up at Quinton who’s still rubbing his arm. Well that’s a first. I’ve never rambled before.

“About time you shut up.” He mumbles. I narrow my eyes and scoff. He’s the one who insisted that he trains me, he should at least be a little kinder to his fellow student.

“I thought you wanted to train?” I say acidly. He rolls his eyes and starts to walk off. I guess this is the silent suggestion that I follow. I just roll my eyes and trail behind until we reach the old abandoned building that I crossed last night.

“Welcome to my dojo.” He announces with a bored expression. No wonder he was here last night trying (and failing) to kill me. He takes a key out from his pocket and unlocks the master lock attached to the door handles. He opens the doors and motions me to follow him inside. He switches on the lights and I gasp at the sight before me. A plethora of training equipment and exercise machines fill the room. Some of them I’ve never seen before. This is like my very own heaven. I do a cartwheel then a flip on the blue mat that covers the whole building’s floor. I jump on the small landing a few feet above the ground. Then I grab on to the bar that’s in front of me. I flip on it a few times and land on a balance beam perfectly. All in five-point-three seconds.

And I’ve thought I’ve trained before.

I laugh and turn to Quinton, who’s staring at me with a blank expression. He’s probably pissed at me for jumping around his dojo. Or just jealous of my amazing skills.

“This is amazing!” I titter. He just shrugs and walks over to the treadmill. He turns it on and presses a few more buttons on it, making the machine beep loudly.

“I wouldn’t know. I barely use any of this stuff. My father just put whatever he thought would be relevant for Hunter training in here. Now run.” He commands and points to the treadmill. I roll my eyes but I’m still smiling like an idiot.

I hop on the machine and press the start button. For an hour I run at the highest speed on the machine, which is a piece of cake for a treadmill-pro like me, while Quinton reads and writes things down over in the corner. Once the machine beeps to tell me that an hour is up, I hop off and stretch my limbs.

“So what’s next?” I ask while walking over to him. He shrugs without looking at me. “What are you doing?” I sit down next to him. He looks up from his textbook to look at me, finally.

“Spanish homework. Did I say you could sit down, Thunder?” He shoots back with a rude tone. I shoot up from my seat and furrow my eyebrows with anger and confusion.

“What about my training? Aren’t you supposed to have a lesson plan ready, trainer?” I ask, matching his impolite tone. He puts his Spanish homework aside and stands up.

“Not when you can improv as well as I can.” I clench my fist at his sarcastic remark. He just smirks. I wish I could punch the smirk off his cocky face.

“Well improv for me, trainer.”

“I will. Drop down and give me pushups until I’m tired.” He dictates. I roll my eyes again and drop to the floor to do pushups.

After a thousand-six-hundred-and-sixty-four pushups later, four hours have passed when Quinton finally tells me to stop. I’m not even winded. But my muscles ache a bit. I jump up and shake my limbs to rid of aches.