Flare.

I'm just trying to get me brain into gear. I just spent my saturday trying to understand chemistry. Yummy. I haven't written in a while and I thought it might be good to write something off the top of my head just for the hell of it, this was the result. The first ever Wee!Lauren oneshot. Exciting, exciting.

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Lauren held her books tightly within the safety of her hands, trembling fingers playing with the soft pages that told stories of knights, queens and monsters. She waited patiently, short legs swinging under the creaky bench that she had found herself sitting on 45 minutes ago, back when her father was meant to pick her up from the library. Now it was dark, and it was getting cold.

She hummed an unfamiliar tune she had heard on the radio in her Mother’s car that morning, the sound didn’t make it very far in the night’s air, a gust of wind blew it back in her face. When that failed, she began counting the number of lampposts lighting the street.

Mrs. Kowalski had already locked the place up, and made her way over to the car with one last glance over her shoulder towards her workplace, unaware of the young girl sat patiently on the bench, drenched in shadows.

Lauren sighed, her mother was going to kill her and would be sure to make it painful the longer she waited. With that thought, the growl of an old car inched toward the library. Lauren smiled, thankful for her Father’s usual motto of, “Better late than never”. The car stopped by the pavement, a door swinging open.

“I’m so sorry, Lauren. Why didn’t you tell Mrs. Kowalski to keep the place open for a while? Have you been waiting long? I got caught up at work. Did I tell you yesterday I graded a kid full marks in their paper? Pretty rare. Anyway, how was your day? Read anything good?”

Lauren climbed into the passenger seat, shutting the door with an unusual calm for a young girl left in the cold for 45 minutes. “It was okay. They got rid of the sofas. They have some new books coming in though. Mrs Kowalski said she’d tell me when they arrived. I’ve heard they’re very good.”

“You’re kidding! Hey, did I tell you there’s a kid in my class called Teddy Roosevelt? His parents must have had a good sense of humour, huh?”

Lauren smiled quietly and nodded, rubbing her hands furiously together to generate enough heat to prevent them from falling off. As much as she appreciated his ramblings  about work in awkward situations, she was too busy trying to stop herself from falling asleep. After a moment of silence, her father drove out of the car park, and joined the now practically empty roads. They were icy, and normally those in St. Louis had the sense to stay indoors with a hot cup of cocoa. Unfortunately the Murrays had a young daughter with a vivacious love for books, and not enough in her own room to satisfy the need. This resulted in multiple visits to the library every week; rain, snow or sun. Occasionally, Paul Murray would have a slip in judgement and for a moment it would slip his mind- which was already full to the brim with equations and laws- that he had to pick her up.

“Let’s not tell your Mom you had to wait. You know how she worries. Did you do your homework earlier? It’s absolutely freezing. What’s your favourite animal that lives in cold climates?” He gave her one of his smiles, the one that seemed to make all situations better. She snuggled into her warm coat.

“The polar bear.” Lauren answered with clarity. “Homework was easy. Miss. Dunlop says if I worked hard enough I could get straight As. She says I could be a mathlete in high school.” Her Father nodded as she spoke, proud eyes occasionally glancing down towards her. “I thought that would be cool.”

“I used to be a mathlete—” He paused, “Get out of the way!”

Their car screeched to a halt, Lauren quickly adjusted her position to look out of the front window to see what had caused the delay. Someone, a man that Lauren guessed to be in his early twenties, had walked straight out in front of them. Paul blared his horn, gesturing for the man to move out of the way. “I could have killed him. Idiot! Get out of the way!”  The young man, with a shrug towards the car, continued walking. “That was close.”

Lauren couldn’t respond. For the briefest of seconds, as her Father’s headlights caught the man’s eyes, she could have sworn they had flared yellow. 

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Wahay! Written in like 30 minutes, so I'm sorry if it sucks :(

Have a Paul and Lauren thingy! 

xox - Robyn