A Certain Romance || Ashton Irwin

Babies

"Due to recent emails..." Mr. Carter yanked at the collar of his shirt and wiped his bald spot with a handkerchief before continuing. "The senior class will be taking a mandatory health class that will replace your semester credit for whatever elective you're taking."

The auditorium echoed with groans and a few upset students yelling at Mr. Carter, who unfortunately had to take the spot of disciplining us because the head principal wasn't in town.

"Oh my God, they're taking away my dance class" Luke cupped his hand over his mouth.

Luke's dance class and my beloved psychology class! There would not be any way I would show up to a health class I took freshman year, in place of psychology. I argued my way with my counselor to get into psychology this year and I refused to give it up for a class that I could basically find on Google.

"I swear to God, I'm showing up to my web design class either way. I don't give a shit." Michael mumbled.

"Complain all you want, you spawns of the man below." Mr. Carter slammed his fist on the podium, silencing every student in the room. "But since you students have taken it upon yourselves to dance with the devil in bed, this is what must happen." A group of students to my left broke out in laughter because of the sickened look Mr. Carter had when forced to say "devil."

It still baffled me that the school tried to have some say in our sex lives as if they owned us. I recalled the first day of freshman year when purity rings were being pushed on us, and being the naive little shits we were, we were so happy to have that silver ring "guarding" our innocence. Funny enough, 90% of the purity rings had vanished since our sophomore year.

"Seniors will also attend mass first thing Wednesday mornings, once a week instead of once a month." Just keep throwing the punishments at us! We might as well all become nuns and priests with the way things were sounding. "You will each attend confession during your given history classes."

"I'll set this school on fire." Michael angrily shoved his backpack off his lap.

"All those who do not follow will serve a months worth of in school suspension." Mr. Carter concluded with a prayer then allowed us to head to our next class.

"Hopefully this'll put a lead on Mr. Preston's creepy fetishes and get him fired." Michael sighed, walking slowly behind the clutter of people that couldn't walk any faster. That was an upside to this, Cassie Wolfe was greatly under-aged and Mr. Preston was somewhere in his forties. I didn't like to take shits on other people's relationships, but theirs was a little creepy.

-

The great thing about the stupid health class was that I had Michael, Luke, Samantha and Lydia suffering with me. The bad thing: Ashton and Calum were also in the class.

I rubbed my dirt-covered Converse on Luke's trousers, sick of hearing him complaining about the dirt on my shoes that sometimes tracked inside his house. Michael sat at his desk quietly with Samantha sitting nearby. He was doodling randomness in his notebook, trying to find the sanity to get through such a class.

"Didn't know Michael Clifford had it in him to finally shut his mouth." Calum smirked from across the room when the entire place went dead silent.

"Leave him alone, Calum." Samantha shot back.

Michael still acted like his unusual self when he was put near Samantha, but Samantha usually had his back and he had hers if anything ever came up.

"Michael can't speak for himself suddenly?" Calum mused, looking to Ashton for back-up, but Ashton was slouched in his desk chair while he stared at the wooden surface in front of him, twirling around a pencil.

"Shut the fuck up," Luke shot up from his seat, his fists clenched.

I stood, grabbing Luke's hand. "Luke, just leave it." Luke would either embarrass himself in a situation like this or really embarrass himself. Really, there wasn't a positive outcome to Luke standing up to Calum. That was where I came in and saved my best friend from anything that could harm him.

"Stay out of this Sage." Luke sneered, pulling his hand away.

"Is Luke your personal body guard now, Michael?" Calum pestered on. The clique of too-lame-to-be-popular-but-ride-Calum's-dick-to-no-end's cupped their hands around their mouths as multiple out of sync 'ooooo's' filled the room. "Figured. You've always been a pussy."

"Calum, you have one chance to shut up and mind your own business." Luke threatened. His index finger attempting to add terror to his highly empty take on an intimidation.

"Hello kids!" Mrs. McLane, the astronomy teacher, walked in holding a plastic container and a map of constellations on top of that. Anyone getting ready for a fight backed down and shuffled back to their desks.

If this ended up being Mrs. McLane teaching astronomy to the students who did show up, I would walk out of this class and never look back. She pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose and smiled at everyone. "To start off this unprompted class, we'll be learning what it's like to be parents!" Mrs. McLane was a teacher working way past her retirement age, I felt bad that she willingly chose to put up with us. People her age should only be dealing with grandchildren our age and not us. This year's senior class was a pain in anyone's ass.

The first school mass service we attended, Calum dropped the wine all over Father Jacob and set fire to his clothed arm, which ended with mass ending early and Father Jacob being rushed to the hospital because he was positive he had second degree burns. He stopped, dropped, and rolled before his arm burnt off. Father Jacob was similarly dramatic to Luke.

I was yet to determine whether Calum purposely did both things or not.

Mrs. McLane lifted the top of the container and held up a doll. "You'll pair up and each group will get one of these."

Like any class that heard "pair up" we immediately clutched to the nearest friend. I grabbed Luke's forearm. Luke would treat the baby as a real one and it would be an quick A for me because Luke would want to do all the work.

"I have a list of all the pairs." She smirked, waving a sheet of paper in the air. It never failed. "I'll put this up on the projector and you can find your partners on your own."

Calum-Lydia
Elissa- Luke
Samantha-Michael
Sage-Ashton

"Once you meet your partner, you can come up and get a baby."

-

Ashton was beyond quiet when I tried to talk to him today. I didn't even get eye contact. I guess I was in trouble. Michael ran out of class when he saw his partner and he appeared absent for the rest of the day until practice. Luke almost cried because he was paired up with someone he didn't even know and Liz always told him not to talk to strangers. He was just worried about ending up with an awful grade.

At the end of the school day I ended up with the baby because Ashton couldn't take it to football practice.

"Why is Michael still so awkward around me?" Samantha questioned as we sat at the bleachers, watching football practice with our babies on our laps.

Elizabeth was still upset and disagreeing to any opinions Veronica pitched in, so cheer practice wasn't happening and it might not happen for a very long time.

"Don't know." I shrugged, re-swaddling the baby. Apparently these things could react to a temperature that they didn't like and I didn't want the baby to start screaming its head off because it was cold. "If you don't mind me asking, why did you guys break up? He's never told Luke and I."

"It was nothing." She insisted, shaking her head.

"Well, it was surely something because I think it still bothers him."

"Only three people know about this," Samantha turned to me. "I need you to promise you won't judge me when I tell you, okay? You have to promise you won't see me differently." She rambled on, her leg bouncing up and down.

"Come on, Sammy. It can't be that bad." Making light of everything to make her stop bouncing her leg because the bleachers were dangerously shaking, I laughed.

"I cheated on Michael with Calum."

ever y thing is starting????////// to make sens??e now?