Return to Eden (26 page)

I tried to ignore the rundown strip malls and apartment buildings of Slate Park. When we crossed the town line into Cambridge, the scenery changed drastically. Tree-lined streets of shops and cafes led to my three-story, red brick high school. 

I stepped discreetly off the bus; most people drove to school and I would rather not be seen with my awesome mode of transportation. I slipped into the crowd and let it push me through the halls. Every day passed pretty much the same. Paste it on—the plastic smile. Yes ma’am, yes sir. My, isn’t she a polite girl. What a good attitude. She’ll go far. And good for her, she deserves it. She’s such a hard worker.

Today was a day for something new. Energy crackled around me when I walked into Journalism.

“Hey, Ari, did you finish your Calc homework?” asked a deep, velvety voice from across the room. A chill slipped down my spine as I listened to my name roll off his tongue. Mmm, delicious.

“Of course!” I tried to keep a doofy smile from forming on my face.

“Did you have any trouble with number twelve?” His long legs nearly touched my short ones across the aisle.

I pulled my notebook out of my bag. “Nope. But you can look at it if you want.”

“Thanks!  Did I ever tell you that you’re my favorite?” He shook his head, tossing his dark hair out of his bright green eyes.

“Your favorite what?”

“Oh, Ari, my favorite everything.” He taunted me with his cute dimples.

He was such a flirt. I was pretty sure he couldn’t tell I was blushing though. That was one benefit of having brown skin. That and all the leathery blond chicks hated me because I had the ‘perfect’ tan. 

And for some reason I was feeling lucky today. James Bartlett was not only the hottest guy in school—he was also the nicest. He always made a point to compliment me in some way everyday. And I was totally in love with him, not that it mattered, of course.  For the last two years he dated the head cheerleader, Naomi Standish. Oh, and did I leave out the fact that she was my best friend? And no, she didn’t know that I loved her man from afar.

Besides, he and Naomi were the perfect couple. They’d probably date through college, get married and be successful at whatever they did and have a million extremely attractive babies.

“So what’s new?” I asked James.

Our Journalism teacher, Ms. Simmons, searched frantically through her materials at the front of the class. 

“You didn’t talk to Naomi last night?” He leaned closer to me and I caught a light scent, soap or cologne, it didn’t matter.

“Nope. After practice I had a ton of homework, so I turned my phone off.  I must have forgotten to turn it back on.”

 “Ohhh,” he said as he raised his eyebrows. “So you don’t know?” His eyes searched my face.

“Know what?”

“Naomi and I broke up.”

Thud. That was the sound of my jaw hitting the floor. I shut it quickly, hoping I wasn’t gaping at him like looky-lous at a car accident on the expressway.

“What?!” I said in disbelief. I fished my cell phone out of my backpack and pressed the power button. I scrolled through the messages and found one with Naomi’s name at the top. She was going to kill me.

As he opened his mouth to answer, Ms. Simmons finally got her stuff together and started talking to us about some project she was going to have us work on. I usually only listened to half of what she said anyway. One of the joys of being brilliant meant I didn’t have to pay attention all the time.  I shoved the phone into the pocket of my backpack before I could read Naomi’s message. I just hoped Ms. Simmons hadn’t seen it or she’d take it away.

I whipped out my notebook and wrote furiously as she droned on.

What happened?

I passed it discreetly. It didn’t matter. Ms. Simmons was so involved in what she was saying that she barely paid any attention to us.

I don’t know. We just weren’t going anywhere.

What does that mean. We’re in high school. Where is it supposed to go?

I don’t know, we just weren’t getting along and we needed a break.

So does that mean you might get back together?

I don’t think so.

Is she really upset?

No, she seemed okay really.

“Ms. Pisa and Mr. Bartlett, I do hope you are paying attention up here.” Ms. Simmons burst my bubble and broke our conversation. A few heads in front of us turned around, and I detected some snickers.

“Yes ma’am,” I responded, attempting to look like I had been taking meticulous notes.

James gave me a sideways glance and smiled, his dimples showing again. I could pitch a tent in those things. 

“You are such a kiss-ass,” he whispered.

I rolled my eyes and shot him a dirty look. But really I wanted to jump across the aisle into his arms and confess my undying love to him. Although upon further review, I decided that this might be a bit extreme. I mean, they did just break up AND Naomi was my best friend. I really should be concerned with how she was doing instead of developing elaborate plans on how to snap up her newly-single man. Wasn’t I such a good friend? She had to get over it sometime, right? And I’d be waiting when she did.

Excerpt: Loramendi’s Story

By Angela Carlie

Some think that space is the final frontier or something like that. Believe me, space has got nothing on what lives here on Earth. If people, the human type, could see what I’ve seen, they wouldn’t be so afraid of aliens or the unknown of space anymore. Aliens are a walk in the park compared to the creatures biding their time to destroy—

Oh, wait. I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s start from the beginning.

Things started getting weird a few months ago when my best friend, Jess, arrived home from her trip to San Francisco. We lived in the same small town where I’ve always lived in the Columbia River Gorge—White Salmon, Washington. Windsurfing territory.

We hadn’t been friends for very long. She had just moved to White Salmon about two years prior, but we immediately clicked like soul friends.

It was a late summer mid-afternoon when Jess’ car squeaked into the driveway. The sound ran over the bird songs and wind chime music. Two dragonflies buzzed over my head before I darted from the brown grass and skipped over to the little red Honda, anticipating a big hug to leap from the vehicle.

The driver didn’t look like my best friend, but on further examination, Jess sat behind the wheel with stranger hair.

“Oh my stars!” My jaw dropped. “What did you do?” I stepped closer and a smile crept onto my lips.

Resentment scribbled all over Jess’ face. She opened the door and took her time crawling out of the car. “What?” Malice dissolved into a smirk with attitude. “You don’t like my new look?”

“I don’t know. Turn around. Let me see the whole thing.”

She strutted, as if on a catwalk, and pivoted a quarter turn for my approval. She pushed one hip out with her hand on the other, puckering her lips in a serious pout. Her once long golden brown hair was now a short, pixie cut, dyed purplish red.

“You pierced your eyebrow!” Pink skin puckered around a silver barbell penetrating the outer edge of her right brow.

Jess poked her tongue out to reveal a stud straight through it as well. I gasped.

“You better close your mouth, Lora. Lots of bugs out.” Jess pointed to the invisible bugs flying in the air.

I snapped my jaw shut.

Jess grabbed the bottom of her t-shirt and then laughed quietly to herself. “You like
that
? Well then, you will
love
these!” She winked and lifted her t-shirt for the world to see her creamy white boobs. Well, not the whole world, just me and possibly Old Man Franklin, the neighborhood snoop across the street.

I leaped two steps, yanked her shirt down, and made sure the old man wasn’t having a heart attack in his front window. For once, he must have had better things to do.

“Your nipples too?” I whispered. This was not my best friend who left in June. The girl standing before me was a stranger who only resembled my best friend. “Why’d you do that?”

Jess didn’t answer me with words, but only shrugged her shoulders as if to say she didn’t know. She stuffed her hands into the pockets of her worn cut-off jeans. I twisted a long blade of grass between my toes. Words stuttered through my mind but they wouldn’t form a sentence in my mouth.
Why isn’t she talking? What happened to my best friend?

“Do you want to sit down or what?” The way the question sliced through my mouth shocked me.

Jess shrugged again, her eyes never leaving the ground. “Sure.”

I stomped toward the house and leaned against the handrail attached to the worn front porch. “So, are you going to tell me how your summer went or am I going to have to read your mind?”

Jess plopped onto the peeling white painted stairs. “I just hung out with my cousins a lot. We went to clubs on the weekends.” She grinned. “No one ever asked for my ID. It was pretty cool and I met a lot of people. It’s kinda weird coming back to this boring, lame town.”

“I bet.” My turn to roll eyes, but Jess wasn’t even looking at me. She gazed up at the tree instead.

“I think I want to move there next year after we graduate,” Jess said matter-of-fact like. “Maybe go to art school and live with my cousins.”

“That sounds cool. There’s one problem with that, though.” I crossed my arms. “What about our plans to go to Seattle? I’m sure Seattle has just as many clubs if that’s what you’re concerned about.” I turned away so she wouldn’t see the sting in my eyes betray me, because Jess didn’t seem to care or remember the plans we had made before she left.

Jess snorted. “I always thought you only agreed to go with me to make me happy.”

“No, stupid!” I forced a laugh and sighed with relief. “I wouldn’t do
anything
just to make
you
happy. Who else would I want to escape this town with? There are absolutely zero cool people here other than us—oh and maybe Johnnie too.”

Jess scrunched up her nose. “Did Johnnie find himself a girlfriend over the summer or am I gonna have to keep breaking his heart?”

“What do you think? He’s still madly in love with the one and the only Jess!” My hands flew up in the air with dramatic sarcasm.

The wall between us crumbled a bit.

“Great.” Her face vomited disgust.

“He’s a fun guy. I don’t see why you don’t give him a chance.”

She picked a brown and red leaf off the ground that had just fallen from the maple tree and ripped the flesh away from the spine, pretty much telling me that she was done talking about Johnnie.

I leaned closer to her, near her face, but she wouldn’t look at me, flinch, or anything. “There were a ton of tourists and surfers in town this summer, more than usual anyway.”

“Uggh…surfers.” Jess never liked surfers. She claimed they were dirty and didn’t have homes.

Dirty and homeless appealed to me, along with riling Jess up whenever she fell into these moods, which wasn’t often.

“Quite a few hot ones too, I might add,” I said.

A windsurfer didn’t actually have to
be
hot to be dubbed as hot. All windsurfers were hot in my book. I didn’t know why, but it had to do with the fact that they mastered a skill that scared the crap out of me. If only I could swim, then maybe I’d learn to windsurf.

Jess stared at a squirrel scurrying up the tree. It stopped at the lowest branch and twitched its tail several times before climbing higher. It disappeared into the abundance of leaves.

Behind Jess, a hairy spider strung webbing between two rose bushes in the garden to catch his dinner.

I tossed a small twig to get her attention. “We still going to the Bloody Pulp concert next week?”

“Why wouldn’t we be?” she asked with heat in her voice.

I exhaled and figured she must be tired from the long trip home or something. She needed to chill with the attitude, though. “You want to go shopping before? I don’t have anything to wear.”

“I guess,” she said.

“Sweet. I’ll drive. We can go tomorrow if you’re free…” I sprang to my feet. “Oh! I almost forgot something. Stay there a sec.” The screen door snapped shut on rusty hinges behind me as I ran into the house and then thumped down the hall.

Jess loved photography. So much that I talked her into entering one of her photos at the state fair while she was away. It won second place.

I grabbed the red silk ribbon from my dresser. It flapped in my hand while I ran back down the hall. A car door slammed shut and an engine roared to life.

The little red Honda squeaked backwards, out of the driveway, and then sputtered down the road.

I stood at the door. Jess no longer sat on the stairs.

The maple tree continued to sway, shedding leaves onto the dry grass below it. Wind chimes sang once again in the distance. Across the street, in the large bay window of a small house, Old Man Franklin’s face appeared—pale and shriveled, as always. He nodded toward me. I waved.

I began to turn away and then stopped, as did my heart. A shiver skipped across my arms. Jess’ second place ribbon fell from my hand.

The light must have hit the glass pane in the door just right because at that moment a reflection of a face peered back at me, and it wasn’t Old Man Franklin’s.

And it wasn’t mine.

Excerpt: How To Date An Alien

by Megan Vernon

If someone told me at the beginning of that summer that I would come face-to-face with death because of a Romeo and Juliet romance, I would never have believed it. But it wasn't like that summer went at all like I planned in the first place.

The Columbia recruiter sat across from me, her dark bushy eyebrows rising as high as they could go while she stared down at my application. "So, Alex, I see that you don't have any extracurricular activities."

I shrugged. I was sitting in one of those uncomfortable orange plastic chairs at the guidance counselor's office, wishing I could just disappear. I was the first student in all of Winnebago High School's history to have a recruiter from an Ivy League school visit. By the way she looked at our tiny school with its ancient, chipped walls and rusted lockers, I could see why nobody had wanted to visit in the past.