Eden (8 page)

The rest of the group couldn’t argue with Drake, the woman was beautiful, but there seemed to be an underlying feeling of malice that surrounded her; her gaze was cold and calculating like that of a snake. At the moment that gaze was focused upon our small group for some unknown reason.

“I think she’s checking you out,” Kyle nudged Drake, who was still drooling over the woman.

“You think so?” Drake asked with an almost child-like look of wonder on his face.

“Go over and talk to her,” Matt prodded, “Think of the props you’d get if you score with a college chick.”

“Ok,” Drake agreed almost reluctantly, getting up from his chair.

He slowly made his way over to the woman that was still staring over at us. Her gaze was making me nervous and I focused my attention elsewhere, deciding to ignore her altogether.

Glancing over at her booth, I could see Drake trying to start up a conversation with her. She looked at him with such anger that Drake took a step back, fear evident on his face. She said something to him that must’ve been a threat because I could see all the color drain from Drake’s face and he took another step back towards our table.

As Drake retreated back to our booth, the young blonde got up with a disgusted look on her face; whether she was disgusted with Drake or herself, was not apparent. Without so much as a sound, she turned and seemed to glide out of the restaurant.

“What happened?” I asked when Drake returned to his seat, a stunned look on his face.

“She practically growled at me,” he stuttered in disbelief.

“What do you mean?” Matt asked.

“I walked over to her table,” Drake started, the color beginning to return to his face, “and asked her what’s up and she looked up at me with such an angry expression. I’ve never seen anything like it before.” A tremor seemed to wrack his body at the memory.

After composing himself he continued, “She cursed under her breath, not at me, it was like she had gotten caught doing something.”

“Well she couldn’t have made it more obvious that she was staring at you,” Kyle mused.

“Maybe she was embarrassed that she got caught checking out a minor,” Matt offered.

“Dude, did you see her?” Drake asked, “She was anything but embarrassed. I thought she was going to rip my face off.”

“It might have been an improvement,” Matt joked.

Before Drake could open his mouth, his reply was cut off by the arrival of two large Meat Lover’s pizzas. Everything that had occurred in the last few minutes was totally forgotten as we all feasted our eyes upon the delectable pies that were placed before us.

“Enjoy,” was all that the young waitress said, placing the two pans on our table.

We just nodded our heads and grunted in response, eyes glued to the pizzas.

“I’m telling you guys something about that girl wasn’t right,” Drake muttered under his breath.

“The only thing I could find wrong with her was her taste in guys,” Matt jeered.

“I swear it was like staring into the eyes of a reptile or something,” Drake tried to explain; “There was no feeling in them at all; no warmth.”

We spent the rest of the evening in a haze of pizza passion. Between the four of us we completely slaughtered the two large pies. Finally, stuffed and satisfied we leaned back, basking in the warm after-glow.

“That was better than sex,” Kyle finally said with a sigh.

“How would you know?” Drake jabbed.

“Dude, at least I don’t run from girls like a little boy,” Kyle returned.

“You didn’t see her face, man…,” Drake replied mumbling into silence.

For once it seemed that Drake had nothing to say.

As we got ready to leave, I quickly scanned the area for any sign of that creepy guy’s car or the young blonde; I didn’t see either of them in the wide parking lot. It seemed unlikely that two complete strangers seemed to be drawn to our little group in the same night; the two of them had to be connected somehow. I didn’t know exactly how, but I was somehow sure it had to do with Eden.

9

I barely got any sleep that night; my mind had been full of questions all concerning Eden. Over and over my mind replayed the events of the night before, trying to make sense of everything. Using my imagination, I could understand why that shady man had been looking for information on Eden; but how did the blonde figure in? She could have just been some random lady that had taken a liking to Drake, but her reaction didn’t make that very likely. There had to be another reason that she had been observing us, but I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what that could be.

Getting ready for school, I seemed to be on auto-pilot. Not getting enough sleep last night left my mind in a foggy daze; I could barely concentrate. Stumbling down stairs, I decided that maybe some breakfast and a Red Bull might perk me up.

After downing two bowls of way-too-sugary-sweet cereal and an energy drink, I felt halfway normal; or at least normal enough to face the day.

“What’s wrong with you?” my mother observed.

“I couldn’t sleep well last night,” I explained, “too much on my mind, I guess.”

“Aw, that’s sweet,” my mother replied with a smile.

“What part of ‘dead on my feet’ is sweet?” I asked in astonishment.

“It’s sweet that you missed Eden so much that you couldn’t sleep,” she concluded, “You should have brought her with you, then you would have slept peacefully last night.”

I almost laughed out loud. It was true that thoughts of Eden were the cause of my present condition; just not in the way that my mother suspected.

“Are you seeing her tonight?” she continued.

I didn’t know how to respond. I didn’t want to tell her that I wasn’t going to see Eden anymore because my nosey mother might decide to play match-maker and try to patch things up between us and the last thing I wanted was for my mother to be found with Eden when either one of those scary people from last night caught up to her.

“Probably,” I told her, “I’ll let you know for sure when I get home from school.”

“Ok,” she agreed quickly.

I could always just go to Kyle’s house, I thought to myself, and tell my mother that I was going out with Eden. Playing video games all night sounded appealing to me; I was actually looking forward to it. Waving good-bye to my mother, I grabbed my backpack and headed out the front door.

Meeting Kyle and the others at the bus stop, I solidified my plans for tonight. Kyle said that I could eat dinner over at his house and we could play Next-Box all night; provided we finish all our homework first.

“Trouble in Paradise?” Drake asked when we were done.

“What do you mean?” I returned confused.

“This’ll make two nights in a row that you two love birds aren’t seeing each other,” he stated, referring to Eden and me, “Is something wrong?”

“Dude, I see her all day in school and she lives right next door to me,” I pointed out, “it’s not like we don’t spend enough time together.”

“True dat,” Drake conceded, “you don’t want her to get sick of you or anything.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” I said acidly, “but I figure if I haven’t gotten sick of your company yet, I’m pretty safe with Eden.”

I was saved from the fury of his rebuttal by the timely arrival of the school bus.

“Morning Howie,” I greeted as I aboard the bus.

“Good morning, Thomas,” he replied.

I took my usual seat in towards the back and settled in for the short ride to school. I wasn’t sure how I would deal with Eden today; maybe I should start putting a little distance between us. I would give it my best try, but it wouldn’t be easy brushing off a girl as beautiful as her.

Arriving at school, I said good-bye to my friends and headed for my locker. If I timed it correctly, maybe I could make it to homeroom just as the bell rings so that Eden and I wouldn’t have time to talk before class. I, also, purposefully left the books for my first period class in my locker; this will give me a good excuse to keep from talking to her between classes. I hated to have to do things like this, but I couldn’t think of any other way to avoid her.

Grabbing some random books from my locker, I prepared to make the journey back to my class when a figure blocked my way; it was Staggert and his thugs.

“Hey, Cream Puff,” he said with a smile, “in a hurry?”

“What is it?” I asked clearly irritated.

“I just heard you have a girlfriend,” he said as if it was a joke.

“Yeah,” I confirmed, “so what?”

“I hear that she is hot,” he said leering, “I want a piece of that. How about you let me hit it once? For old times sake.”

Anger overcame me as I heard the thugs behind Staggert chuckle amongst themselves. I couldn’t allow him to get away with talking about Eden like that and before I could stop myself, I decided to answer Staggert not with words, but with my fists.

He seemed as surprised as I was when my fist collided with his jaw. A communal gasp of surprise erupted around us as Staggert tumbled to the floor, taking me with him. In the time it took for us to hit the ground, the thugs had grabbed me and hoisted me up and off of their leader. One of them punched me in the gut while my arms were being held behind my back and I slumped to the floor, gasping for breath.

“Damn, Cream Puff,” Staggert said getting to his feet and wiping blood from his mouth, “I didn’t know you had that in you.”

“Don’t talk about my girl like that,” I wheezed, trying my best to sound tough.

“My bad,” Staggert apologized, getting into my face, “The only reason I’m not beating your ass right now is because you were defending your girl. You didn’t punk out and I have to respect that. Next time you won’t be so lucky.”

With that, he stepped back and the thugs released their hold on me and I fell to the ground, still regaining my breath. As they walked away, I heard the bell for homeroom ring. I didn’t have to worry about arriving to class early after all.

The morning passed just like I had planned, I was successful in dodging Eden until lunch. There would be no way to avoid conversation with her then.

“You’re having a busy day today,” Eden said with a smile as we sat across from each other.

“Yeah,” I agreed, I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“What are you doing tonight?” she asked. She didn’t waste anytime, did she?

“Tonight is family night,” I made up on the fly, “my mom is really stubborn about it.”

“That sounds nice,” she said, “What do you usually do?”

“We usually just all watch a movie together,” I said as if I would have rather spent the night with her, “My mother says that it is important for families to spend at least one night together. I think she heard that on Oprah, or something.”

“Your mother is right,” Eden said, “family is very important.”

That had gone much easier than I had thought it would, but I couldn’t keep coming up with excuses not to spend time with her like this. Sooner or later, I would have to find out the truth about Eden, but now that I knew that I had an out for tonight, I didn’t mind spending time with her. I really did like her and being seen with her in school, surrounded by hundreds of other teenagers, wasn’t the same as being caught alone in her house with her; I didn’t think I was in any immediate danger.

We spent the rest of the day as normal, talking and flirting together. After our last class, I headed back to my locker to dump the books I wouldn’t need for homework tonight. As I closed my locker door, I looked up to see Eden standing beside me. I was surprised that I hadn’t even heard her footstep echo in the empty hall.

“What’s up?” I asked after I recovered.

“I just wanted to say good night,” she said and leaned in to kiss me.

It was a full passionate kiss; our lips locking together, tongues probing. It was the most earth-shattering kiss I had ever experienced. When she withdrew I was more out of breath than when I had gotten punched in the stomach this morning.

“I’ll see you tomorrow?” she asked, like it was a question.

“What?” was all that I could manage to say.

The shock on my face must’ve been evident because a knowing smile crossed her lips.

“Have fun,” she said as she made her way to the door.

By the time I had regained full use of my vocal chords, she was gone. All of a sudden spending the night playing video games with Kyle seemed like a stupid idea.

When Howie dropped us off at the bus stop, I decided to head directly to Kyle’s house. I didn’t want to take the chance of Eden spotting me leaving my house and finding out that my whole ‘family night’ story had been a lie. I didn’t have to stop at home for anything anyway; I had all of the books I needed for homework and I was eating over at Kyle’s, so I was good.

“Hi, Tom,” Mrs. Lafferty greeted when I entered the house, “Kyle told me that you were coming for dinner tonight.”

“Thanks for having me,” I said.

“No problem, I hope that you don’t mind that we are having spaghetti tonight,” she said.

“No problem here,” I promised, “I love spaghetti.”

“I’ll call you boys when dinner is ready,” she announced both to Kyle and me, “Until then, please start on your homework before playing any video games.”

Groaning we lugged our backpacks to Kyle’s room and began the tedious task. We didn’t have much, but due to the fact that Kyle and I had different classes and teachers, we weren’t able to swap notes and speed up the process.

We had just finished up our homework when Mrs. Lafferty called from the kitchen, “Dinner’s ready!”

Placing our books back into our backpacks, we proceeded to the kitchen, following the fragrant smell of warm tomato sauce. When we entered the dining area, Mrs. Lafferty was already setting the glasses and silverware. Kyle and I took our seats.

“It smells really good, Mrs. Lafferty,” I said honestly.

“Thanks, Thomas,” she said with a smile, placing a steaming plate of spaghetti covered in her homemade sauce.

The food was delicious. Mrs. Lafferty’s sauce was the best. Quickly, both our plates were practically licked clean. Thanking his mother, we both left for Kyle’s room again, this time to play some Next-Box.

“Get any new games?” I asked as we sat on his bed and he unwound the cords of the controllers, handing one to me.

“I got this new fighting game called ‘Battle Match 2000’. It’s supposed to be bloody as hell,” he told me with unconcealed glee, “I also got this game called ‘20 to Life’ where you run around cities stealing cars and committing crimes.”

“Sound like good old-fashioned fun for the whole family,” I agreed.

“Which do you want to play?” he asked, holding up both game cases.

“Let’s try ‘20 to Life’ that sounds like fun,” I said, “Is it a two-player game?”

“It can be,” Kyle explained, “If two people play, one can be a driver and the other can shoot from the passenger’s window.”

He waited a moment for the information to seep in.

“Can you say ‘drive-by’?” I asked with a smile.

“I think I can,” he answered, returning my smile.

We spent the night sniping innocent people and fleeing from the police. It was the most fun I’ve had in a long time. I wanted to stay later, but it was already ten o’clock and I had to get up for school in the morning. I didn’t want my mother calling Eden’s house looking for me, since that was where I was supposed to be.

Saying good night to Kyle and Mrs. Lafferty, I left and made my way back home. Making my way down my block, I was relieved to see that there were no lights on at Eden’s house. That must mean that she had gone to bed.

My relief quickly turned to horror when I made out the silhouette seated on the front steps of my house; it was Eden and as her face came into view, she didn’t look happy.