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Catherine wasn't the brightest child, and she was aware of that.
She was aware crayons should never be inserted into one's nose and, at dinner time, one must abstain from feeding Mr. Crayfish—the family dog—bits and pieces of unwanted vegetables. Catherine knew sand did not help build a resistance to germs because it causes more harm than good. But she also knew Einstein, at first, wasn't the brightest amongst his peers, either.
David, conversely, was a child beyond the simple adjective "bright"—the boy was radiating.
At the tender age of twelve, David emersed himself in the works of ancient and modern mathematicians like Archimedes, Ptolemy, and Nikola Tesla, awaiting to follow in his father's footsteps. It was silly—turning to the past when one should concentrate squarely on the future. But David had never been an unscholarly type of person, and he believed the only sensible method to trample impediments and breeze through so-called "challenges" was by growing up well-informed.
"Too bad not everything can be taught through books..." David looked on, gawking at a rambunctious kid stuffing her face with granular material.
He was hanging upside-down from the playground's monkey bars awaiting his friends' arrival with an exceptionally black water gun—bossing people around happened to be another field David enjoyed, being the son of a wealthy tech lord whose bidding no one ever refused—when he suddenly felt compelled to advise the foolish girl.
"You shouldn't ingest that shit!" David swung upright, yelling at the top of his lungs. His following words were, in his opinion, a relevant approach to communicating with a muddy-faced, snot-nosed, panting toddler. However, when every child nearby uniformly began ogling the scene, "My mother says it clogs up your digestive tract, and one dies swiftly from it," David lowered his voice considerably.
"What? My mommy says it helps build a ra-sis-tanse to germs!"
"Have you ever stopped to consider calling C.P.S?"
Catherine's mouth drooped, some earth spilling out of the crevice of her mouth.
"At all?"
"No!" she answered confidently, perturbing the rightfully concerned good samaritan, whose sienna brown complexion turned surly.
By the time his friends had returned with an "exceptionally black water gun," David was petrified, lacking any colour in his countenance. His curly, sable hair lost its spring and volume as if drenched by a lone, cartoonish rain cloud. And his shoulders slumped, dangling aimlessly by his sides atop their intentional positioning.
"Ey. What's up, boss?" One useless minion asked, spritzing a bit of water on David's face from below. "We've got your water gun," he grinned. "Had to sneak it past Missus Lacey, the stupid bitch. But now we can finally head out to the field. C'mon! Let's go already!"
"First off, piss off." David leaped to the ground, shoving past minions number one, two, and three as he marched indignantly towards an unsuspecting Catherine Rose who was still enjoying her hearty feast of "meat pebbles," "fish sticks," and "rice sand," smacking her hard against the spine.
"OW!"
"You may not need C.P.S," David struck again—powerful this time, causing Catherine to release uncontrollable and painful gags. "But you'll sure-as-hell die without A.M.B!"
"David Marquis!" Lacey Fisher began toward the juvenile delinquent, swinging an orange signalling baton in front of her like it were a murderous sword. Yelling more warnings, seeing as her weaponization tactic didn't yield any solid result, "Stop that this instance, young man!" the woman tripped on a misplaced soccer ball and fumbled her way down some stairs that led to the playground—which led to an outdoor field, where even more eyes took in the abnormal spectacle.
"Eurk!"
"Throw up already!"
"David Marquis!"
"Stop it, would you!" Catherine gathered some strength, turned, and shoved her attacker away before scooching into a corner of the sandbox.
"Yes. But before that, you'd have to—"
Suddenly, "Bleeeeeerrrg!" a sludge of biohazardous material pooled into a pre-dug hole (made by some random student), and David threw his fist into the air, rejoicing in his medical breakthrough.
"Yes!"
"Good God..." Lacey Fisher scooped Catherine up in her arms.
"Yes! Yes! Yes!" A crowd erupted, hailing the young Mr.'s leap into action.
Giddy girls surrounded him, abandoning boys who competed for their attention to lie in his wake. Adults who happened to be passing by paused. Even David's affronted minions, who he would mistreat more-than-often, acquiesced and wiped the frowns off their faces, cheering the loudest amongst many impressed fans and onlookers.
"No! No! No, Mr. Marquis!" Lacey chided. "You cannot go about performing unscientific medical acts—needless to say, without adult supervision!"
"Unscientific?" David's thick brows creased, accentuating his already hooded eyelids. "I'd beg to differ."
"Save it!" She grasped his shoulders, leading him towards the school building while bouncing and cooing a traumatized Catherine within her other. "I'll have a mountain-worth of papers to fill. No thanks to you!"
"How is that fool's misadventure my fault?" Fisher shoved him on a cube stool and settled Catherine gently onto a medical bed in the nurse's office. "Were I to stay out, there would be no other outcomes. Just death and death!"
"You ever practice contacting a responsible adult?" She offered Catherine a cup of water to rinse her mouth out but was tempted to sew up David's. Seeing as a needle and some tread was not so far off—just a shelf away, which also happened to be a foot away—the idea was very doable.
"The adult wouldn't be you, would it?"
"You cheeky little—"
"Missus Fisher?"
"What is it now? Should I hit her again?"
"Ignore him."
Both heads turned, startled to witness fat blobs of water streaming off the little girl's rosy-pink cheeks, her aqua eyes beautifully hidden behind her curly blonde lashes. David looked on with astonishment, trying to articulate why she had been so grateful for his contribution—albeit, a life-saving contribution. Even so, gratitude was indisputably what Catherine Rose felt.
It had to be...
Else, the alternative possibility would be a very unwelcomed realization on David's part.
"No way!" His sienna cheeks promptly stained maroon, and his shoulders squared. "Miss Fisher, may I leave now?"
David crossed his little hands, growing irritated by the teacher's lack of a response—and especially by Rose's bails, rising in intensity, outright suffusing the tiny space. Her hiccups tarnished the atmosphere, and so did her breath. But Lacey Fisher seemed unaffected by it because she was too focused on getting Rose to say anything other than unintelligible gibberish.
Just as he was about walking out the door, "M-missus F-Fisher, I-I'm p-pregnant now because o-of him!" Catherine sends a heavy blow David's way, halting all activity in the room.
"Catherine?" The woman gasped. "What makes you say that?"
"When mommy and daddy are alone, there's always a loud noise, like on the playground!" The girl's mouth puckered, eying David's deep-red flush. "And their faces always turn out like his!"
"Now that's just insulting!"
"There! That's the colour, Missus Fisher!"
Gripping the older woman's shirt passionately, "Afterwards, mom starts throwing up, just like I did!" Catherine lit up, confident in her assessment. However, regarding her teacher's smiley expression and David's disturbed one, she wasn't sure what to believe anymore.
"I know what I'm saying. I'm pregnant; you can't change my mind!" Catherine persisted, believing that her observations were supreme because of her family's recent suprise addition. But David opted to destroy the foundation of her belief with facts and logic by providing Catherine with an early start to sexual education.
"See here! For a member of the Homosapien species to reproduce, a male must insert his reproductive organ into the female's reproductive organ, past their disgusting flabs called vulva—"
"David, this is not a conversation either of us can have," Lacey Fisher interrupted, whisking him out the door a few minutes before his supposed wedlock partner, who came out with disappointment etched into her features.
He wasn't sure why he had lingered in the hall, awaiting her appearance. But when she finally turned a corner and met David's face, Cathrine was anything but pleased, her moss-green eyes unnerving his usual supercilious disposition.
"I-I have a preposition." When they weren't enchanting, they were deadly.
"What is it?"
"For the sack of removing myself from this situation, what say you if I assume the paternal role of this silly relationship?"
"For the sake of leaving me the hell alone," Catherine drew nearer and extended her hand, "I um-bly accept your kind pe-po-zi-zion."
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