Today would be rough, Drew decided. Why you might ask? Well, to start, her phone didn't charge, her curling iron burnt her ear, and they were out of poppyseed muffins. To add insult to injury, her siblings were still asleep, and they only had five minutes to get out the door! Drew frantically stuffed laptops into backpacks and yelled once again down the stairs towards her quadruplets. "Jack, Avery, Parker... if you don't come up here this instant, so help me, you'll just have to walk!"

Being the only morning person of the four of them (not to mention her other six siblings--they were a big family) was quite the burden, and today it weighed heavier on Drew than it would generally. It was the first day of school; she yearned to make a good impression. Not that she and the others associated much outside their little group--more on that later--but Drew cared about appearances. This frustrated both her and those around her to no end, but she couldn't help it.

As Avery and Parker raced up the stairs with Jack close behind, shirts untucked and hair askew, Drew tucked her own carefully constructed dark golden waves behind one ear and tugged down the hem of her midi-length jean skirt. Avery wouldn't be caught dead in anything that feminine, but Drew had always been the oddball of the four.

With food held in mouths and backpacks in hand, the gang made their way out to the car. Jack drove: Avery and Parker being semi-comatose in the backseat and Drew in the front seat. She wasn't much of a fan of driving, and besides, Jack could see over the steering wheel of their baby blue VW bug.

Drew was the short one and the only one with hazel-colored eyes and brown-gold hair (naturally brown, but it always sun-lightened prettily). Jack was the tallest, made up of lean muscles and fluffy brown hair. Avery was naturally gorgeous (though it was wasted on her, Drew privately felt) with strawberry blonde hair and eyes that weren't quite blue or gray but were some shade of beautiful. Parker fell somewhere in between Jack and Avery. He was tall, though not so tall as Jack, and had dirty blonde hair he liked to keep short and out of the way.

Their activities as they drove the twenty minutes to their school were true to character. Jack kept silent for the most part, though he'd occasionally sing along to the music Drew played as she tried to charge her phone, drink a homemade smoothie, read a book, and finish her mascara at the same time. Parker slept (out cold), and Avery laid on top of him. There wasn't enough space in the tiny car, but they were used to it.

The sky was still dark and starry outside upon their arrival at the school building. Classes didn't start for another hour and a half, but Parker and Jack had swim practice, and the girls didn't have another car, or other friends, to drive with. Once school got going, they would use this time to catch up on homework (in Avery's case) and study (in Drew's). For today they chatted about schedules and complained about how few classes they were able to get together.

"At least we have homeroom together," Drew consoled. "And lunch and Spanish."

Avery sighed. "Good thing we all have lunch together this year. Last year was rough."

Drew nodded in agreement. The year before, she'd had a different lunch than the rest of her quadruplets, and it had been awful to sit alone.

At this point, you may be asking the very relevant question of "Why didn't she sit with someone else? Making new friends isn't that hard." My dear reader: that is a very valid argument. But Drew and her siblings, while fully capable of talking to and connecting to their peers, avoided all contact with outsiders for one reason. They feared they'd find their soulmate (or -mates).

This sounds ridiculous to some, but it made perfect sense for them. As you might have guessed by the dissimilarity in appearances, the four of them did not have the same parent. Some families get messy when multiple soulmate bonds occur, and their family was perhaps more complicated than most. They and their siblings had all ended up living with their grandmother (who was only blood-related to Avery and Bree, one of the younger ones), and later when she passed on, their oldest sister was placed in charge of the lot. Elise attended college. She tried to make sure her siblings were doing okay, but Elise juggled a part-time job (as well as her university classes), so she sometimes struggled. Two years ago Elise had found her soulmate and occasional struggles turned into little to no recognition of her family. Any free time she had, she spent with her soulmate. He was a nice guy, went by the name of Calvin. Still, the gang hated him on principle.

After a month of that, the quadruplets had made a pact. No soulmates. Family first. They had slowly separated from all but each other's company, and that was that.

Their other siblings were caught up in their own lives and never noticed that the older four had no friends. Avery and Drew had discussed on many occasions how lucky they were that nobody had asked too many questions.

So now the four of them were a group of their own, and it was them against the world.

As Jack and Parker came out of their swim practice, Drew squished that annoying voice inside of her that kept wishing things could be different. It isn't worth thinking about, she told herself.

The gang made their way toward homeroom, talking and laughing the whole way. If Drew spoke less than usual, the other three wrote it off as first-day-of-school blues.

The beginning of a new school year is always a shock to the system. Drew privately felt similar to splashing cold water on oneself in the morning--unpleasant and uncomfortable, but it wakes you up. Her homeroom teacher was one she and her siblings knew from the year before, a wizened old man whose creaky voice and old-fashioned word choice made it difficult to prevent giggling whenever he lectured, as he often did in his physics classes.

"Betcha you're glad you aren't in any of his lecture halls this year, huh Drew," Parker joked quietly in-between "Parkinson, Alice" and "Rosabethalizell? Am I saying that right?".

Drew, who'd been staring off into space (or maybe in the direction of a cute girl, but I'm sure she'd deny it if we pointed that out, lovely reader), hurriedly attempted to seem present. "Oh definitely..."

Parker looked her up and down. She didn't look much different than usual, but he knew his sister and this was an uncharacteristic amount of zoning out. "Are you alright?"

She shrugged him off. "Fine. I'm fine. What do you mean?"

Her tone sounded defensive. Parker backed off. "Just checking. We're here for you, remember."

Drew's return smile looked wide and bright--slightly reminiscent of a Las Vegas casino. Flashy, pretty, fools a lot of people... but very fake.

As homeroom drew to a close, the gang separated. They all had different first-period classes in different areas of the school.

"Good luck today! I'll see you at lunch." Drew waved as she walked away. Her shoelace had come untied. Drew noticed, but her first period was a Ballroom dance class. Their school gym was located about as far as one could get from the science hall, and Drew had to hustle to make it within the five-minute window. No time to waste on a shoelace.

Checking her phone for the time as she half walked, half skipped towards Ballroom, Drew invariably tripped on her untied shoelace. A set of arms in front of her caught her fall--but not before an accidental liplock! Drew's first thoughts were what a wasted opportunity. I might lose my soulmate because of this. Her second thoughts were more like oh dear what is this person going to think of me. But third thoughts didn't come, because Drew was overcome with an explosion. A mental explosion, to clarify, and a happy one. A joyful moment of fulfillment and wonder and amazement and--Oh my fudging goodness I'm not supposed to meet my soulmate!

With that final thought, Drew pulled herself away from her unlikely helper/soulmate and dashed down the hall towards the gym. She didn't even get much of a look at her soulmate. He (she didn't know he identified as a he, but we do, dear reader) was tall, muscular, and definitely not someone she'd seen before. Other than that, Drew was clueless. She hoped he was as unaware of her identity as she was of his.

Raven was, in fact, completely unsure what had just happened, let alone who it happened with. As my intelligent reader has likely presumed already, Raven is the fine young man who our dear clumsy Drew managed to get herself kissed by. Also, she's his soulmate (and he hers, but that goes without saying. Or does it?).

He found himself standing in the middle of a rapidly emptying hallway, still overcome by the euphoria of finding his final soulmate. He'd found Corey two years before, and as happy as that had been, Raven had still felt slightly incomplete. The knowledge that he had at least one other soulmate out there had gnawed at him. Now, though, Raven knew he had found both of his soulmates, the male and the female... or at least feminine. He didn't want to assume. A part of him hoped for a female soulmate, but in the end, Raven cared about so many things more than gender. Like his soulmate's name.

Fudgsicles! (to keep this family-friendly, we have inserted replacements for Raven's explicit use of Russian--and the profanity soon to come by other characters. We apologize for the ridiculousness this will add to some dialogue. Unfortunately, some of the more colorful phrases do not translate well and our team is continually forced to improvise.) His ptitsa (little bird) had flown away! Potatoes it all. Raven then went on a particularly long rant involving many rude terms. To sum it up: How am I supposed to find them now? And why were they running?

So Raven was angrily confounded and Drew woefully distraught--not only did she accidentally find a soulmate, she realized she has more.