Afraid // Calum Hood

Chapter 6 // Bouquets

Adelaide's Point of View

I've always been terrible at crafts.

In the first grade, we had to make one of those turkey hand drawings, where all you needed to do was trace the outline of your hand onto a piece of construction paper, and I somehow messed that up. When I brought it home, my parents didn't even fathom the idea of pretending it was beautiful, instead they chuckled at it so much that tears were rolling down their cheeks. I couldn't deny that it was revolting, so I joined them in poking fun at my artwork.

But yet here I am in the back room, struggling to create a flawless bouqet like Lucy had just set the precedent for. For basic bouqets it was simple, just four of the same flower and two of another kind to spice it up. The flowers had to be trimmed to the exact same length of their stems, no exceptions, and then sprayed with heavy duty water. Clinging the layers of plastic film and ribbon around them was the most challenging part, besides making custom orders. The custom orders you had to find each flower, which was quite a task when I had no idea what any of them were called, and then proceed with making the bouquet based on the client's requirements. It was tedious, and I was having trouble.

"Addy that one looks much better!" Lucy exclaimed, patting my back in praise. My fingers were already sore after only making five, whereas Lucy had met twenty three in the same amount of time. "Don't fret, it's only your first day of this. You'll be a pro in no time."

I giggled, holding up my bouquet in the light to observe how incredibly ugly it looked. "I don't know about that, Luce."

"If it makes you feel any better," She whispered, leaning in closer to me. "Yours are better than Michael's."

A hearty laugh escaped my lips as the boy with brightly colored hair furred his eyebrows together in confusion. He was sitting directly across from us, an apple in his hand, and convinced his mother to let him supervise us, which basically translated to sitting on his butt for an hour.

"So how are you liking it here?" Lucy pondered, ripping the correct amount of velvety purple ribbon to tie around the base of the bouqet.

I shrugged. "It's pretty nice. I'm still getting settled. Painting my room definitely made me feel more at ease though. I went grocery shopping for the first time yesterday and I really like the supermarket. Plus, I'm surprisingly liking this job more than I expected, but maybe that's because of you guys."

"Aww you're too cute," Michael cooed. "I saw you at the grocery store yesterday actually. You were leaving though so I didn't have time to say hello. Were you with Mali-Koa Hood?"

"Yes," I answered as I continued to follow Lucy's examples. "She is my neighbor as well and I don't have a car, so she offered to drive me."

"Well she is harmless," Lucy spoke up from next to me. "One of the nicest girls I've ever met. I don't know what happened for Calum to turn out the way he did. How do your children go from a future peace keeper to a monster?"

I chewed on my gloss covered lips. The topic of Calum always made me weary. They didn't seem to know him the way I did. "I still don't think you should be hanging out with either of them," Michael stated. "Mali is much better than Calum, yes, but I'm just worried for you. You haven't hungout with Calum in the past few days, right?"