Eden-South (3 page)

He pulled the cord, and the bus came to a
halt not far down the street from his house. He walked up the stone
path to the large, black, wooden front door. His parents had just
bought the place the summer before high school started. He had
grown up in Toronto, close to all that the city had to offer, and
surrounded by all his friends. Then one day his parents decided
they wanted to move outside of the city to a smaller town, where it
would be ideal to raise a small child. His mother, now thirty-six,
had found out she was expecting again, something no one had
foreseen. Eddie had been a complete surprise to them all, and was
the real reason his life had been turned upside down. There was
always a slight feeling of bitterness when he reflected on his
life, but he couldn’t really blame the little thing. She was too
cute for him to really blame her. She was about a year and a half
now, and already a walking, drooling, sticky monster.

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.”