Finding Eden
By Camilla Beavers
Copyright
© 2012 Camilla Beavers. All rights reserved.
ISBN 978-1-300-11551-9
Epilogue
My eyes scan the living room. The coasters are all tucked away in their holder, the pillows on the couch thoughtfully disorganized. My eyes scan the walls, and reflected back at me are the years of my life. The years of pigtails and crooked teeth; long hair and braces turned bobbed and perfect smiles. My eyes scan the photos, my eyes never stopping for more than a few seconds. Then my eyes come across one photo; one of me and dad, all the while my fingers trace the scar right above my heart.
Dad has told me I look a lot like my mom, with my red hair and all, but I have dad’s eyes. The color looks normal with his dark hair, framed by his dark brows, but on me, the bright green is almost a little too vivid. Over the years I've grown accustomed to people asking me if I wear contacts. I tell them no.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve always been able to see the colors. Over the years, though, they’ve gotten worse, grown brighter with each passing moment. In the past they used to only brighten when I would concentrate on them, but now they are so bright I have to squint to see past them to people’s faces. The sunglasses help though, but wearing them makes people make fun of me and makes my teachers think I’ve grown up under bad parenting.
Now, dad is what some might call distant. He’s hardly ever around and when he is, he gives me these weird looks, I suspect it's because I look so much like my mom. It's the same look he gets when someone mentions when I was only a few weeks old, and my little baby heart almost gave out.
Some people call him aloof, distant, almost non-caring, but that’s not true. He’s just in pain; so much pain it’s crippled him. It’s almost as if my mother was his soul and he died along with her. And that's why, when I look around the living room, there are no pictures of her. Only pictures of me. He will look at me sometimes, his eyes will see the tip of the scar, and he looks sad. He doesn't want to lose me too.
My mother died when I was very, very young. She died in a car accident weeks after I was born. It was a drunk driver that ultimately took her life. He had lost control, swerved out of his lane and back into it, clipping my mother’s back bumper in the process. The small car she was driving turned sharply and she ended up getting t-boned. I don’t remember her, and the only reason why I know what she looks like is because of the picture that was in the newspaper. And whenever I see the colors floating around him, I know he's thinking of the moment when he got the call that almost ended his reason for living. And this is one of the reasons why, for my 16th birthday, he bought me one of the safest cars on the road. A range rover. The same type of car the pope is driven in.
I clearly remember the first time I received a negative reaction from saying something about the colors. Even though I was young, kindergarten maybe, I remember the moment as if it happened yesterday.
The classroom was quiet; all I could hear were the sounds of safety scissors cutting paper. I'm bored. I like art, but this was something I'd done before, and my teacher watched me carefully from her desk. I kept tabs on her and I was completely aware of her as she walked over to my table.
My teacher sat down next to me and placed her hand over mine, stopping me from making my next cut.
“Now, Eden,” she said, trying to sound nice, “if you continue to cut the paper with your left hand, you might make a mistake and use too much paper. Then there won't be enough for everyone else.”
She smiled at me. I never liked her.
“How much does the paper cost?” I asked.
“What?”
I repeated the question, but she didn't answer.
“If it doesn't cost a lot then it should be easy to replace. Right?”
“That's not the point I'm trying to make, Eden,” she put her hand on her hips.
“Then what point are you trying to make?” I finally looked up at her.
She was mad at me; I could see the red around her body. There's a frown on her face. She began to walk away.
“That color red doesn't look good on you,” I said.
“Excuse me?”
She walked back with her hands on her hips again.
“That color red,” I said, “It’s not a good color on you.”
I don't know if my back talk or the odd color comment caused it, but the next day I had to sit outside the classroom while my nanny had a meeting with my teacher. Then my nanny relayed the meeting to my dad. The next thing I know I've my head in a CAT scan, an MRI is being done on my heart and the ophthalmologist is checking my eyes. Sad thing about that is that my nanny was the one who ordered the tests, not my dad.
Needless to say, I did not enjoy that experience. So at the age of ten I decided to try and keep my mouth shut about any and all out of the ordinary colors. My first year of high school, though, I let myself slip. I couldn't help it. At all of my schools I had been the quiet one. It was my turn to speak up.
“Oh my god,” the queen bee said, “would you stop making fun of him?”
That's how high school was there. You were either loved or hated, with no gray area. At that very moment, with her air of superiority hanging over her, and the smug look on her face, I wanted her to be hated.
“Why do you do that?” I asked.
“Do what?”
“Defend him like that,” I said, “you really think he's going to believe that you really care about him?”
I looked at the boy in question and he looked away embarrassed. Then I looked back at her and glared.
“He has a name. Do you know what it is?” I didn't leave room for her to answer, “I didn't think so. His name is Brad, and you know what? He's a person, and contrary to what you or others may think, he has feelings too.”
If looks could kill, I would have been dead at that very moment. It was worth it though, to see the smile on his face as I walked away and sat by myself for the next couple of weeks. I was the quiet girl who finally spoke up; they didn't like that very much. It didn't matter, though, because a few weeks later dad told me we were moving to our current house in San Diego.
When I was younger I thought it was a normal part of life, that everyone could do it. But then as I grew older I learned that it’s not a normal part of life, and not everyone can see what I see. I learned to keep my mouth shut when the colors surrounding someone changed to a nasty shade of puke green when their boyfriend would eye me up and down, then change to a smug purple when the boyfriend recoils as he realizes who I am. What they think I am, I’m not quite sure, but I’ve heard the whisperings of the word “freak” as I walk past them in the hallways of my high school, and because of this, I don’t have very many friends.
The friends that I do have are also those labeled as freaks, but only because of the way they dress, not because they wear sunglasses in crowds to avoid the swirling mass of colors and manage to say the worst thing possible when they speak. Even in a magnet school a math whiz is still ostracized and that emo goth chick who plays the oboe and wears thick plastic horn-rimmed glasses, no matter where she is, is still made fun of.
So then the three of us found each other. There’s the boy who wears clean white shirts every day, wishing he were cool, and the girl who carries her oboe around like a security blanket, who wears her uniform plaid skirt with black tights and blocky clog like shoes. Then there’s me, the quiet 5’2” redhead who could be popular if not branded a freak.
I shouldn’t be surprised though, since I’ve never been popular, no matter how many different schools I attend. I’ve always been labeled as “off” in some way. I thought that finally being enrolled in a private Magnet school I could finally avoid the ridicule, but I was
wrong.
Public school had always been hard simply because dad is a high profile lawyer and earns a lot of money. An odd rich kid isn’t all too welcome in public school. Now that I was in the private school it wasn’t any better. At first they accepted me, but when they began to notice that I wore sunglasses all the time, said odd things whenever I did speak, wasn't allowed to participate in school sports, they quickly changed their minds. I went from being accepted by them to being shunned to the back corner of the cafeteria along with Brock and Evaughn in just a few weeks. Somehow even the teachers dislike me, except for my art teacher, Miss Brody, who doesn’t give me disgusted looks when I wear my sunglasses in her class.
I was so happy to learn that we were moving, not because it would be a different school, but that it would be a private school, and I got my hopes up, thinking dad’s money wouldn’t automatically make me popular or unpopular. Unfortunately it didn’t matter, money or no money, good looks or not, I was still the odd man out due to my “light sensitivity”, my constant sunglasses and my lack of school activities.
My life is a pile of odd things, but I deal with them as they come and try not to let them get to me. I live my life as best I can, I just hope I can keep up with anything else that decides to blindside me.
Chapter One
“Eden,” Evaughn pokes me in the side, trying to get my attention because I am concentrating more on my watering eyes than I am on the conversation.
“Hmm,” I look over at her, able to make out the shape of her oboe case held securely to her chest, “what is it?”
“Are you going to be there tonight?” She asks, “At my recital I mean.”
“Oh,” I say, “of course I’m going to be there. I said I was, didn’t I?”
“Yeah, I was just double checking. My mom has to work tonight, so she won’t be able to make it. Do you think you’d be able to record it for me so she can watch it later?”
“That shouldn’t be a problem,” I say.
Evaughn, other than her looks, is shunned because she’s a scholarship student. Her family has no money. She had applied and was accepted due to her ability to play the oboe so well. Everyone at the school was able to do something well. You had to or else you weren’t accepted. I was accepted because I was able to paint and draw well.
“I swear to god if they don’t stop trying to copy off me every single day I'm going to go insane,” a boy with short black hair said as he sat down next to us.
“They’re just mad because they're going to flunk out and you're not,” I say as he shakes his head and began pushing his food around with his fork.
“You could always make sure you write down the wrong answers and hope the teacher notices,” Evaughn said as she glances at him.
“I don't know if that'd work. I'd probably get in trouble while they get a better grade,” he hangs his head.
The cafeteria starts to fill as classes get out. Pretty soon the colors become too much and I find myself reaching for my sunglasses, even though, at the moment, the lighting is low. I stop myself before anyone can see what I was actually thinking about doing and stuffed the sunglasses in my bag instead of on my face. I squint around the room, my eyes watering slightly.
“You look bored,” Brock says, taking a bite of food, “come to think of it, you always look bored.”
“Maybe because I always am,” I say jokingly as I stick my tongue out at him.
Brock rolls his eyes at and goes back to his food. Several years ago I had received that same comment from the housemaid at the time.
“It’s because your mother isn’t here,” she had clucked at me as she arranged and rearranged the pillows on the couch. I simply shrugged and continued watching television and drinking my soda. Thinking back on it made me realize that no one had ever realized when I was joking. I would have to change that.
The bell rings and I’m excited. I can’t help it. My next class is art, and it’s also my final class. I pick my things up (which include my book bag and a tackle box full of paints and brushes) and walk to class.
Miss Brody greets me at the door. She’s another reason why I like the class so much. She has so much fun and enjoys her job so much that you can help but enjoy her class. I walk over to my easel and set my things down. I take a deep breath and yank the cover off my painting.
My current painting is giving me more trouble than any other I’ve ever done. I’m attempting to paint a portrait of my mother, which is more problematic than it sounds. Dad has no pictures of my mother hidden anywhere around the house, in his bedroom or even in his wallet (I’ve checked). So all I have to work off of is the picture from the obituaries and the description given to me from a maid who knew my mother when my parents first met.
My mother and I have the same hair color, although hers was longer and wavy whereas mine is kept to just below my chin and it’s straight. I have her bone structure but not my mother’s eyes, which I’ve been told look like liquid sunshine and golden honey. My mother had freckles across her nose and cheeks, and I don’t. I have the same milky soft, pale skin that she did. I have painted all of it, except for her eyes, which I can’t seem to get right. My fingers trace my scar, something I do when I'm thinking
“Eden,” Miss Brody says as she stops a few feet away from me, “not to pressure you or anything. I know you're working hard, and I know the colors will come to you, but this project is due soon.” She knows my frustration and has been encouraging me every step along the way.
“I know,” I say to her, thumping my paintbrush against my knee, “I know the painting is due soon, but it doesn’t seem like the colors are going to come to me.”
Miss Brody smiles at me and walks away. She has never tried to tell me how I should mix my colors, or which brush to use, which has happened at previous schools. She lets me work in a quiet dark corner of the room, away from other people, knowing that I like that.
I stare at my pallet, almost willing the colors to mix themselves into the perfect shade of gold so I can finally paint my mother’s eyes and bring her fully to life. They don’t, and I have to mix them myself.
I watch my hands as they move around, pushing paint together. I don’t do anything else but stare at the colors as I swirl them together with my brush. Then I have nothing but a pile of brown mush and no actual work done.
Suddenly the bell rings and I jump. I look at the clock. Where did the two hours go? I stare back down at my pallet and can’t figure out how I managed to stir a glob of paint for two hours straight. I shrug, throw the sheet back over my painting and walk out of the room, feeling extremely unproductive.
I walk out of the school and into the parking lot to my car. I wave at Brock and Evaughn as they’re about to get into his car, carpooling on the way home. I would carpool as well, but we live on separate sides of town, and it would be a waste more than it would help for me to be in the mix.
I quickly put my sunglasses on, trying to keep up the facade that I was light sensitive, even though when I am out of the school is when I don’t need them. I hop into my car and drive home.
I don’t mind driving by myself. I prefer it actually. It’s better than pretending to be interested in what other people are saying while you’re trying to pay attention to the road. Dad is the same way, though I suppose that’s because of the accident.
I pull into the driveway and sit in my car. I know I will be by myself. My car is the only one in the driveway. We have a housemaid, but she has the day off. I open the door to my car, jump out and go into my house.
Throwing my things on the floor just inside the door, I decide I need a healthy snack to make myself feel better over the lost time. What happened today?
The fridge opens and I peer inside. I see soda and some random things that I'm too lazy at the moment to put together. I pull open the crisper drawer and look in. Apples are waiting patiently to be consumed and I won't make one wait any longer. I pluck it up and take a big bite. I grab a napkin before the juice can run down my
chin and feel better almost immediately. How did I manage to waste so much time?
The clock above the stove reads 4:32, and I know it's time to get to work on my homework before I go to Evaughn's recital. I walk to the stairs and grab my bag on the way. The stairs are silent as I walk up them, no creek or noise; it's something that's unnerving when you're alone in a large house.
My room is on the opposite side of the house from dads. It's large and holds all the things a seventeen year old could ever want. A large flat panel LCD TV, a desktop computer and a laptop, a California king size bed, and random game consoles hooked up to the TV. I don't even know what they are. I don't play video games. The walk-in closet is full of clothes I barely have time to wear anymore since I go to a private school, and I know without looking that Marcia, our housemaid, has all my uniforms hanging on the inner most hanger on the right side.
I am unaware of when math began to have more letters than numbers in it, but I wish that day had never happened. I get to work on my math and soon I'm lost in it. I glance up every once in a while to keep tabs on the time, but that doesn't keep be from losing track of the time and running late.
“Shit,” I close my math book and look at my watch. Evaughn's recital is in a half hour, and still needed to find the digital recorder.
I get up quickly from my chair and almost fall down as my feet tangle with the legs of the chair. I try to scramble away and luckily I manage to regain my footing. I make my way to my closet, hoping like mad that I'd remember where the camera was put.
Rummaging through the closet, two things run through my mind. I'm glad Marcia is there to organize things, but then on the other hand I'm not. I have no idea where she put the camera, and just like every other random thing, when I need it I can never find it.
I'm about on the edge of hysterics when I'm digging through a box and I spot it near the bottom. I dig the thing out and check the battery and see that it's at full. I kick the already looked through boxes out of my way, grab my keys before I walk out of my bedroom door, and hurry to the recital concert hall.
Finding Eden Page 1
