The Eden Series: The Complete Collection

by Stalder, Janelle

  “Have a nice life, High King.” Callum pulled his hood up over his face and turned his horse to retreat over the bridge. As the others followed, the third man glanced over at Jameson, nodding his head in a salute. The prince realized who he was at the last second—Aziz, the most feared sorcerer from the east. Three men, from three very different parts of Eden. It didn’t make sense. What Jameson did know for certain was that whatever it meant, it could not be good.

  Suddenly the mourning bells began to ring over their heads. It was over.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Fourth period was ending. Aiden knew Ms. Whitiker was absent that day, so he decided on skipping fifth. It had been a long and traumatic day, and an early ending would be fitting. The morning had begun terribly with his arriving late, due to his father’s old rust-covered Ford—that he refused to get rid of—breaking down, and continued with Mr. Beck yelling at him in front of the whole class. Normally, that wouldn’t have bothered him, but Melissa happened to be in that class, making the embarrassment almost unbearable. If he had the courage to turn around and leave again, he would have. Unfortunately, he quickly walked to his seat with his head down, banging his hip on the edge of someone’s desk, almost causing him to fall on his face. Ignoring the snickers, Aiden sat down and tried to make it through first period.

  If that hadn’t been the worst, the rest of the day continued to spiral downward. He had forgotten about a test in chemistry, resulting in a probable fail. Lunch was painful, since the boys from grade twelve suddenly noticed him amongst the crowd, and decided it would be fun to taunt him while he ate. Melissa just happened to be sitting with them. She was dating Bentley—who names their son Bentley? As if he didn’t already think he was better than everyone else, they had to go and name him something like that.

  Fourth period had gone relatively well, although it seemed to drag on, and all Aiden could think of was how much he wanted to climb into his bed and never leave it again. Maybe he could claim he was holding a peace protest and stay in bed for a week. Nah, his parents would never go for that. He could always pretend to be sick, he thought sensibly. The bell suddenly rang, and multiple chairs scraped the floors as the students rushed out to their next period. Aiden slowly got up and dragged his feet to his locker.

  “Aiden!” someone yelled out. He turned to see Ethan speed-walking toward him.

  “What’s up?” he called back in reply.

  “What are you packing your bag for? Aren’t you going to fifth?” Ethan raised his eyebrows in question.

  “Nah, I’m just going to head home. It’s a substitute teacher, so I figured I could miss a day.”

  “Awesome! Where are we going?” He smiled.

  “We?”

  “Well, if you’re not going to class, neither am I. We can go for a walk to get pizza, or head over to the park!”

  “The park?” Aiden slammed his locker shut. “Ethan, you know the park is where all the popular kids go when they’re skipping school. I don’t really think we’d be welcome there.”

  “Aw, come on, Aid. How will we ever get in, if we don’t at least try?” he whined.

  “You can’t just try to get ‘in,’ Ethan,” he replied, applying quotations around the word in with his fingers. “You’re either cool, or you’re not, and unfortunately in our case, we’re not.”

  “You suck. What are you going to do then?”

  “Go home and sleep.” He started to walk down the stairs toward the front foyer. Ethan followed closely behind.

  “Does all this melodramatic behaviour have anything to do with Bentley Ross throwing his pizza in your hair at lunch?”

  Aiden stopped on the last step, causing a small niner to run right into him. He mumbled an apology while the girl rushed around him with a red face. “Where did you hear about that?” he asked angrily.

  “Everyone heard about that, bud,” he replied, looking apologetic. Clenching his teeth, Aiden dropped the subject and continued out the doors to the bus stop. “So is that a yes?”

  “Look, I’m just tired, and I want to go home. I’ll give you a call tomorrow morning when I’m on my way to grab you.”

  Thankfully, Ethan didn’t say another word. Waving goodbye, he turned back and headed toward the portable area. Aiden sat on the bench outside, cursing his life. The bus arrived after five minutes, the doors opening like the doors to heaven. It would take him home, away from the torture that was high school. Life has to get better than it is now, he thought wistfully. High school was only four years of his life, but at this rate it seemed like it would last forever. When the year began, he had thought it would get mildly better. He wasn’t in grade nine anymore, but ten didn’t seem to be improving at all.

  The first hurdle he had to overcome was his voice. Last year it had been in the midst of changing, and every squeak caused him an immense amount of embarrassment. Over the summer it had finally settled down, and now he had a nice smooth voice. He had grown a bit, though he didn’t gain an ounce of weight, even though he had tried all summer long. Against his mother’s instructions, he had tried drinking protein shakes to put on some pounds, but his overactive metabolism refused to be slowed down. Now he was just tall and lanky, which wasn’t very attractive to the girls in his school. His hair was a dark blond, and his eyes were a light shade of green, but were hidden by his thick-rimmed glasses.

  In grade nine he had dated a girl named Alicia, but that didn’t last long, and since then there had been no others. He might be tall, and slightly underweight, but he didn’t think his face was necessarily ugly. He had a strong, square jaw, and a narrow, straight nose. He styled his hair in the way all the other guys did, messy but styled, and yet no one seemed to notice him. That was his problem: he simply blended into the background. There was nothing that made him stand out in a crowd, nothing that made him special. It was aggravating, and increasingly depressing.

  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 t
o 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.