A Season of Eden (2 page)

Tanner sat back with a sigh. His blonde waves almost covered his surf-blue eyes.

“Until college,” Josh piped. “Man, am I really sure I want to do all of this again? I’m, like, five months away from being done.”

“Yeah, with high school,” Tanner said.

“How could you not want to further your education?”

I asked. I, for one, couldn’t wait to get off the hill and out into the world.

“Hey, I have no qualms living off family money for a while. My sister went abroad for six months after she graduated. What a party that would be.”

I rolled my eyes.

“My dad would have killed me if I hadn’t gotten into Long Beach State.” Brielle sighed, twisting one of her auburn curls around her finger. I knew she really wanted to go into hair design, but her family considered that profession beneath them.

“At least you’ll be in L. A.” Josh took a bite of his ham wrap and readjusted his red PV baseball cap so it was backwards.

Brielle didn’t say anything. I saw her eyes pinch behind her sunglasses. She couldn’t care less about leaving the hill.

She wanted to stay at home. Her dream was to have her own beauty shop here in the plaza.

Matt came back with our drinks. He handed mine to me and sat down.

“So, my parents left yesterday for Fiji.”

“Excellent.” Josh slapped Matt’s palm. Tanner did the same.

“Tonight the party begins.”

Brielle fidgeted in the seat next to me, her bare legs crossing. “Cool. I just love your house. It’s the best party house—next to yours, Eden.”

I shrugged.

“Yeah, but we can’t ever
get
into the museum,” Matt joked. “Eden’s dad’s too busy hooking up with Stacey.”

Everyone laughed. I did too, but it hurt in that place deep inside of me that was wide and hollow. The place left empty since my mom’s death ten years earlier. “Only if he can get her home from shopping,” I sneered. Any picture of my Dad with Stacey, the blonde bimbo—his trophy wife— was not one I cared to have in my head so I changed the subject. “Um, Josh, so much for our easy A in Concert Choir.”

Josh cringed. “I hate to sing.”

“Why’d you take the class, dude?” Matt asked.

“Wanted an easy A, like Eden. It was either that or ceramics, and I don’t do ceramics.”

His answer got under my skin like an angry itch. It seemed so stupid, a decision without thought. Yet I, too, had signed up for that same reason. But something about young, enthusiastic Mr. Christian and his love of his very first teaching job made me feel guilty that I wasn’t in class for the right reason. I liked singing well enough, though I wouldn’t consider myself a singer. At least I could enjoy looking at Mr. Christian. What would Josh do but waste an hour.

“I hear he’s a hottie,” Brielle said.

“The old guy?” Josh asked in the middle of chewing.

“He is not old,” I said, and shifted in my chair.

“He’s a teacher. That automatically makes him old.”

“He couldn’t be much older than twenty-five,” I said.

“Who are we talking about?” Matt set his drink aside.

“Mr. Christian, the new choral teacher.” I drank from my empty cup to hide the smile forming on my lips. I pictured him in my mind then, Mr. Christian, with his elbow-patched coat.

The nearly empty halls of PVPS echoed with laughter and the piped pop music leaking out of Senior Park. I had no idea where Mr. Christian would choose to eat his lunch, but after I got back from the plaza, I took a casual walk by the teacher’s lounge.

The door was wide open and I peered in, scanning the bored, prunified faces of staff too old to venture away from the comfort of the stuffy lounge. Not seeing Mr. Christian there pleased me. He was way too vibrant for that stale place.

“Hello, Eden.” Mr. Jones was my English teacher two years ago. What few strands of hair he still had, he combed from one ear to the other. But he was the nicest man and always stopped to talk. He joined me at the door.

“Hi, Mr. Jones.”

“You looking for somebody?”

“Just stopping by to say, hi.”

His smile grew huge. “Well, that’s nice of you. You have a good lunch now.”

Then I started off down the hall. I flipped my hair over my shoulder as I sent him another angle of my smile. “Have a good day.”

He stayed in the doorway, watching me. I headed in the direction of the music room.

Mr. Christian’s door was shut and, for a moment, I was disappointed. Then I heard it. At first only the piano, light trickling notes that danced on the fringe of heaven.

Then the voice. The sound stopped me. Pleasant, calm.

Urgent. Male. Mr. Christian’s singing voice carried the same comforting tone in song it did in speech. As if he smiled when he sung.

I opened the door without knocking.

He sat at the piano, his back to me. He’d ditched his elbow-patched coat. His blue shirtsleeves were shoved carelessly up to his elbows. His body moved to the music as he played, his head dipped, lifted and turned.

I eased the door closed so as to not alert him I was there.

I’d never heard the song he was playing. It was classical, with light, tinkling octaves that trembled over the notes in unanimous harmonies.

When his voice joined the music again, my whole body filled with the melody. Soft words floated in the air.

Weeping words of love torn, an anguished heart. My heart started to thump as his fingers swept the keys, taking my pulse and blending it with the melody.

I knew the song was coming to an end, and I was frozen in disappointment. The tune slowed, each key played in aching effort. His voice quieted suddenly and there was silence.

Before I could stop myself, I clapped.

He jerked around, shock on his face, then an appealing shade of red crept into his features. He stood.

“Hey.” He ran one of his hands through his tousled waves. “I thought the doors locked automatically when they shut.”

“They don’t,” I said, stepping his direction. I’d never heard anything so beautiful, and now I saw him surrounded by an ethereal light of perfection. “That was amazing.”

He smiled, and ran a hand along the old, beat up instrument in a gentle caress. “She’s been neglected.”

I took another step, awe drawing me closer to him.

“You play her perfectly.”

He laughed and looked at me. Then he settled back against the piano, anchoring himself. He crossed his arms over his chest. “Eden, right?”

“You remembered?”

“How could I forget a name like that?”

“That’s why Mom named me that…she said I was unforgettable.” Our gazes held in silence. A trembling shiver raced down my spine. “So, how long have you sung?”

I asked. His voice still echoed in my head.

“Forever. My mother was a voice teacher. She says I sung before I spoke.”

“You’re so good.” I took another step. “Why aren’t you singing? Or doing something else? I mean, isn’t teaching lame?”

“Not when you love it. You’re in Concert Choir, right?

Don’t you like to sing?”

“On a good day.”

He let out a full laugh. He seemed to notice that I was closer then, and uncrossed his arms, angling them behind on the body of the baby grand piano. The smile on his face, in his eyes, slowly vanished.

He cleared his throat. “So why did you sign up for choir then? Easy A?”

At first I was startled that he’d asked. Then I nodded.

He looked at me as if considering my honest answer, then crossed his arms over his chest again.

“I’m a senior,” I admitted. “I wanted something easy, something fun. You remember how it is.”

“Yeah, I remember.”

“How old are you, Mr. Christian?”

He wet his lips. “Twenty-two.”

Every nerve leapt inside of me. I was eighteen. Four years was nothing. “Young for a teacher,” I said.

“I started taking college classes in high school so I could get to work on a degree.”

I moved to the keys of the piano and lightly touched them with my fingertips. They were cool, smooth and in my mind I heard his tune again. “I wish I’d taken piano lessons.”

The thought came out a whisper.

“Do you have any music background?”

Afraid reality would turn him off, I lied. “A little. We have a grand at home but nobody plays it.” I wouldn’t tell him that Stacey had bought it just because it looked good in the floor-to-ceiling bay window of our living room. “So what other instruments do you play?” I asked.

“Only this beauty.” He patted the piano again. The warm green in his eyes calmed me in a way I had never felt. The quiet air around us grew thick and dense. His gaze stayed locked on my face for what seemed like minutes, but I knew that was just my head playing tricks on me.

The shrill tardy bell startled us both. When he didn’t say anything, the awkwardness remained heavy, but not uncomfortable. I liked that I could stand in the swirling unease and not get lost because deep inside, whatever was driving me closer to him had sunk its teeth into my soul.

I was ready to ask him to play again when the door was flung open and our private silence was bludgeoned with laughter and talking. Sophomores poured in with the finesse of children’s wooden blocks falling on a tile floor.

“I’d better go,” I said.

He moved away from the piano, unrolling his sleeves.

I watched him button the cuffs. “See you tomorrow,” he said.

I was jealous of the sophomores then. They were getting their first taste of Mr. Christian. For the next hour they would hear his voice, look at his face. Hear him talk passionately about what he loved. I had to wait until class the next day.

My house sat on a cliff overlooking the Pacific ocean.

I walked to and from school because the high school was only a block away. It would have been stupid for me to drive.

I was oblivious to the usual serenade of honking horns as I walked home. Friends screamed and shouted to get my attention. I waved to a chosen few, but my eyes were on the vast ocean just beyond the houses on Paseo del Mar.

The view of never ending sea always comforted me when I was uncertain about things, and I was uncertain about Mr. Christian. So what if he was a teacher. I was eighteen.

Graduation was only a few months away. There was nothing wrong with wanting him.

Hearing the idling of a car, I turned. Matt hung out the window of his white convertible Mustang. Josh and Tanner were in the car with him. They had their surf boards propped up on the back seat and their wet suits tossed in the back.

“Party tonight?” Matt asked, grinning.

Normally, I jumped at any opportunity to get out of the house. The need inside of me was different now. “Um, not sure.” I stepped onto our stone driveway and headed to the security post.

Matt followed slowly in his car, stopping at the heavy gates that isolated our house from the rest of the world.

“My place,” he said.

I tapped in the security code before looking at him.

The gates swung open. I shrugged. “I have homework.”

His face twisted. “You never study.”

“Yes I do.” It irritated me that he saw me as some party junkie. But then, that’s what I was. Now, partying didn’t give me a buzz.

“Whatever.” He backed his car out with a disagreeable screech then sped away.

His reaction was so immature, I passed through the gates feeling justified refusing to hang with them.

Home sprawled before me. I looked at the Italian Renaissance-style house my parents had bought some fifteen years earlier and wondered what kind of house Mr. Christian lived in.

Gardeners were hard at work trimming cone and bulb-shaped hedges, pulling weeds and mowing yards and yards of grass. I never acknowledged the workers. They gave me the creeps, the way they stared at me like panting dogs.

At the front door I typed in my security code again and then opened the heavy wood doors. Something with garlic and onions scented the air. Camilla, our cook, was in the kitchen, no doubt whipping up something ethnic. The familiar scents reached my bones with a hug I had come to look forward to each day when I got home from school.

My feet echoed on the tile floor. I stuffed my keys in my bag and left it on the marble table in the entry hall. A quick scan revealed that things were just as they always were when I walked through the door, showroom perfect.