The Eden Series: The Complete Collection (3 page)

The town they had moved to was a small place called Glen Williams. It was close to other larger cities, but the town itself was small. There was one park, one little convenience store near his house, and a few smaller shops, but that was it. The house itself was nice, the backyard backing onto the Credit River, but he missed the city life. Not only was there nothing to do here, but he also didn’t have any of his friends around. On his first day of grade nine he had met Ethan, who had immediately become his best friend in the new school. Besides him, however, he had no one. His parents always seemed to be concerned by this. They assured him it was only because they were still new to the area, and eventually he’d start making more friends. He had doubted it when they first arrived, and now—almost two years later—he still doubted it.

The house itself was a beautifully restored Victorian house from the eighteen hundreds. The red brick was classic, and the dark black door and shutters stood out against it. The inside had been renovated by the previous owner. When you walked in, there was a large living room on your right, where a magnificent dark mahogany fireplace sat in the middle of the outside wall. The living room furniture sat around the fireplace, with a grand piano in the far corner. To your right was the dining room, which currently sat empty, due to the fact that Aiden’s parents couldn’t decide on a nice enough set to fill it. The main entrance had the large staircase in the middle that led up to the second floor.

Farther down the front hall was the kitchen, which had been updated the most. There was a huge island, which had copper pots hanging decoratively above it. The countertop was a beautiful green granite, and the cupboards were off-white. Off the kitchen was their family room. It was filled with big comfy sofas, and a fifty-two-inch flat-screen television that hung on the wall. Even though, in Aiden’s eyes, the location sucked, the house itself was much nicer than anything they had lived in before.

As he entered the house, he could hear Eddie crying in the kitchen. His mother was singing “Barney” to try to cheer her up, but from the sound of it, it wasn’t working.

“Hello,” he greeted them as he walked down the hall.

“Aiden?” his mom called out, confused. “What are you doing home so early?”

“Our teacher let us out, so I came home,” he lied. “Hi, Eddie.” He smiled at his baby sister. She returned his smile, her tears stopping immediately.

“Of course.” His mother sighed at his magic ability to instantly make the baby happy. He pulled up a chair beside her and started tickling her tiny feet. She laughed in response, reaching out with her food-covered hands to grab his face.

After entertaining her for a bit, Aiden said he was going to do some homework and climbed the stairs to his bedroom. Luckily, he was given the room in the attic. The family that had lived there before had made the rather large attic into a fourth bedroom, which he now occupied. It had low vaulted ceilings in some parts, but all in all it was the best room in the house. What made it the most convenient was the distance from his parents’ room. It was painted a medium shade of blue, and held his queen-size bed, a dresser, and a small desk. It was a rather boring room, he admitted, just like him. Taking off his sweater, he lay down in bed and started to doze off. It wasn’t long before he fell into a deep sleep.

“Aiden, dinner!” his dad yelled up the stairs. Aiden sat up in a daze, not realizing how long he had been sleeping . His clock showed that it was already six in the evening.
Damn it
, he thought. Now he was never going to be able to fall asleep later.

“Coming,” he called back, putting a halt to his father’s often inevitable search for his son.

Slowly walking into the kitchen, he could tell something was off about his parents the moment he sat down.

“I received a call from your school while you were getting your beauty sleep,” his mother said through pursed lips. “Want to tell me again, about how your teacher let you out early?”

His father sat silently with his face in the newspaper.
Great
, Aiden thought.
Here comes a lecture.

“I just didn’t feel like going, okay?” he replied, pushing his hair back. This was a habit of his, which resulted in his hair looking like a complete mess all the time.

“Okay? Sure, why wouldn’t that be okay?” his mother replied sarcastically. Her tone wasn’t lost on him. “Of course that’s not okay, Aiden!” she continued. “Why would you skip school?”

“What is the big deal? It was a supply teacher, so we wouldn’t be doing anything important.”

“You still need to go. Michael, back me up!”

“Your mother is right,” his father added absently.

“Thanks …”

“What? What do you want me to say?” his father asked, lowering the newspaper. “Like we didn’t skip classes once in a while.” If looks could kill, his father would have been dead at that moment. His mother’s eyes burned.

“That is not the point. We don’t want him to be missing classes.”

Sighing, his father turned and finally looked at him. “Aiden, don’t skip again. Got it?”

“Yes, sir,” he replied. They all knew he would, but as parents they had to say something like that. The rest of dinner went by without incident, but the same could not be said for the rest of the night. At around nine, he heard a slight tap on his bedroom door. It creaked open, and his mother’s head peeped around the corner.

“Can I come in?” she asked quietly.

“Sure,” he answered, shrugging. She slowly walked in, taking notice of the piles of laundry that littered the floor. He knew it took a lot of restraint for her not to say anything about it. “What’s up?”

She sat down on the edge of his bed, smiling down at him like she used to do when he was a small kid. “I just wanted to talk.”

“What about?”

“Well, I wanted to see how things are going at school this year.”

“Mom, it’s the middle of the year already—why would you be interested now?”

She shrugged her shoulders indifferently. He could tell she was trying to act casual about the situation. “Because you never skipped classes in your old school, so it makes me wonder why you would do it now.”

“My old school wasn’t high school,” he pointed out. “People don’t skip elementary school.”

“That’s true, I suppose.” She nodded her head. “So everything is okay, then? No one’s giving you a hard time?”

His face felt like it was heating up, so he quickly looked back down at the book he had been reading. Hopefully, she wouldn’t take notice, but it was unlikely. Mothers seem to have a sixth sense about these things when it comes to their children. There had never been a time in his life when his mother hadn’t known something was wrong with him. The case with his school wasn’t something he really wanted to talk about though. It was embarrassing for him to tell his own mother what a loser he was.

“Everything is fine, Mom. No worries.” She sat looking at him for a minute, before taking the hint and getting up to leave.

“All right, well, I’ll leave you to do your work then,” she said, leaning down to kiss him on the head. “Goodnight.”

“’Night,” he replied as she shut the door behind her. Feeling a strong need for some fresh air, Aiden walked over to the small window that was the only source of natural light in his room and opened it up to feel the night breeze. Some days were just worse than others, he told himself. Things would get better—they had to.

It didn’t start to get better the next day. On his way to school, his father’s piece of crap car died, making him late
again
for first period. This time he had the sense enough to skip it altogether and avoid the wrath of his teacher. Thankfully, his mother agreed to call the office and explain his absence. Before second period, someone had spilled milk in the hall, which had made the tile floors just slippery enough to send him flat on his ass as everyone rushed to class. If that wasn’t humiliating enough, it also happened to be right in front of Melissa’s locker. Ethan hurried over to help him up, but it didn’t save him from being the laughing stock of the whole school again.

“Are you okay, Aiden?” Melissa asked, bending down while he still sat on the floor.

“I’m fine,” he mumbled awkwardly, taking Ethan’s hand and hauling himself up. Walking away, he cursed himself for not taking the opportunity to spark up an actual conversation with Melissa. He only had had four conversations with her to date, and all them had been school related. That could have been his chance to have a regular one without answering a question about an assignment, or their homework, but he blew it.
Figures,
he thought crossly.

During lunch, he had the presence of mind to sit himself on the opposite side of the cafeteria from Bentley and his crew of older douche bags. Thankfully, Ethan decided to skip during his lunch and sat with him as company. Aiden suspected he did it on purpose, to save him from any further humiliation, but neither said anything.

“Look how pretty she is when she laughs,” Aiden said, finding himself staring at Melissa from where he sat. She had such a pretty mouth, and always swung her head back when she laughed really hard. Her chestnut hair came down to the middle of her back. She wore the front with a blunt bang along her forehead. She had huge brown eyes that seemed to sparkle.

Ethan looked over his shoulder uninterestedly. “I don’t know what you see in her,” he commented.

Without thinking, Aiden picked up a fry and threw it at Ethan’s face. “What do you mean? She’s gorgeous.”

“Are you defending your woman’s honour with a tossed fry?” Ethan asked with raised eyebrows. “Should I bring in the big guns and start throwing pudding?”

“No!” He held up his hands in defence. “That’s all I need, a food fight started by me.”

“It’s not that I don’t think she’s pretty, but I don’t find her pretty enough to be worshiped, quite like you seem to.”

Aiden shrugged his shoulders in disagreement. “Everyone has their type, I suppose.”

“If you say so.”

The two were eating in silence when suddenly a shadow was cast across their table. They both looked up simultaneously to see Bentley and his minions standing there.

“Well, what do we have here?” he snickered, with his crooked smile.

“Leave them alone, Bentley,” Aiden heard Melissa say from behind him.

“Have we offended you in some way, geek?” he asked, looking straight at Aiden. “Yesterday you’re sitting by us, and today you’re all the way over here? What? Do we smell or something?”

Saliva began to build in Aiden’s mouth. The three boys crowded around them. Ethan sat rigidly across from him, looking to Aiden for some resolve.

“We just decided to sit over here,” Aiden replied hesitantly. “It had nothing to do with you.”

Bentley placed both hands on the table, bending down so his face was level with Aiden’s. “For some reason, I don’t really believe you, four eyes,” he sneered. The two other thugs chuckled beside him. “I take offence that you’ve decided to move away from me, and I don’t like being offended.” Aiden shut his eyes, praying the guy wasn’t going to hit him or something. “You’d better watch yourself, or your next two years here will be hell.” He started to stand back up, and Aiden thanked God it was over. It wasn’t. With one fluid motion of his hand, Bentley flipped the tray of food that lay in front of Aiden, spilling all of it down the front of his clothes. The other kids sitting around them began to laugh.

“Bentley!” Melissa yelled out. “What the hell is wrong with you?” She rushed past him, bringing with her some napkins to help clean Aiden off. “I’m so sorry,” she said quietly. Aiden sat there in shock, partly from what had just happened to him, and also because she had never been as close to him as she was now.

“Don’t help this skinny fool, Mel.” Bentley laughed, disregarding her clear irritation with what he had just done. “Let’s go.” He grabbed her arm, forcing her to stand up.

“Do not,” she said, ripping her arm out of his hand, “grab me like that! I’m not your property, Bentley. You don’t get to tell me when I can or cannot leave a place.”

“Whatever,” he said, turning away from her. As him and his friends began to walk away, Aiden heard him say “bitch” under his breath. That was the last straw. Without thinking, Aiden got up from the table and walked up to Bentley, tapping him on the shoulder. As he turned around, Aiden punched him square in the jaw, sending Bentley staggering backward.

“Yes!” he heard Ethan say from their table.

Both friends of Bentley’sbegan to rush Aiden when all of a sudden Mr. Beck was there, breaking up the three boys. “Aiden, go to the principal’s office. You boys take your friend here to the nurse.”

Aiden grabbed his bag and walked off to the front office, covered in food and pulsing with adrenaline. Just as he was leaving, he watched as Melissa ran over to Bentley to make sure he was okay. His heart fell. He had just punched a guy out for this girl, and already she was running back to him. That was so his life.

“Suspended!” his mother yelled as they drove away from the school. “What is going on with you, Aiden? You just told me last night that nothing was wrong at school, and now I find out that you got in a fight!”

He sunk lower into his seat, wondering when his mother would run out of steam.

“Talk to me!”

“What do you want me to say?”

“Why don’t you begin with telling me why the hell you’re covered with food,” she said, taking a sharp turn.

This was not the conversation he wanted to have with his mother. Taking off his glasses, he rubbed his eyes to try to relieve the headache that was now throbbing in his head. That always happened when he had an adrenalin rush and then came crashing down from it.

“Are you going to tell me what happened, or not?”

“I really don’t want to talk about it,” he replied honestly.

She looked over at him with concern now instead of anger. “Come on, Aiden. I’m your mother. You should be able to tell me everything.” He wondered if parents actually believed that.

Wanting the conversation to end, he said, “Maybe later, okay? Right now, I just want to sit here quietly.” She accepted his lie, and they didn’t talk again for the rest of the ride. He was suspended for three days. That was three days stuck in the house with Eddie and their mom. She wouldn’t let it drop completely, he knew that, but at least he had avoided it for the time being. All he had to do now was figure out what he was going to do at home for three days—besides go crazy.