FenceStriking Distance - Sarah Rees Brennan Page 0,8
Aiden’s mood and the gift apocalypse occurring in his room. He went into the hall to get a breath of air. Once he did, a basic strategy formed in his mind.
It was pretty clear what Harvard’s next step should be. He took out his phone and called the person he knew would help, no matter what his problem was.
He smiled as soon as he heard her voice on the other end of the line. “Hey, Mom. Just called to say I love you. And, uh… do any of your friends have a daughter my age? Who might be interested in going on a date? With me?”
3: AIDEN
I believe you should start as you mean to go on, so I was born gorgeous, Aiden wrote.
So what if it was a lie? Aiden was literally being blackmailed to write this. Two wrongs gave Aiden the right to do anything he chose.
He looked distractedly about the room—it seemed as though there was more stuff in here than usual—in search of inspiration for his great work of fiction. Their shadowed bedroom floor stretched on like gray desert until it met the forbidding mahogany door Harvard had closed behind him. Aiden wanted to crawl under the beds he and Harvard had pushed together in the center of the room and hide there.
Actually, Aiden hadn’t been a prepossessing child. He was born premature, so his first baby pictures were of him looking like a shriveled hairless hamster in a plastic cage in the NICU. Even when he was out of the hospital, Aiden stayed shrimpy and spindly.
I had an oppressive childhood in many ways. “Stop doting on me, Mother, I have things to do,” I would be forced to tell her. “Go to the country club; those charity galas won’t organize themselves.”
Maybe if he’d been a cuter baby, his mother would’ve stuck around. She was a model; she was always poised for the next great photo op. But by the time Aiden was cute, he’d looked too old to be a good accessory, and she didn’t want the world identifying her as the mother of a teenager. She’d had other kids later—adorable, curly-haired tots with some soccer player in Spain—and taken glossy photographs with them. He’d seen them smiling perfect-family smiles at him from a magazine.
When Aiden was younger, he’d told himself he remembered his mother leaving, the sounds of shouts and thrown gifts and the screech of a sports car in the driveway. The truth is, Aiden was too young when she’d left. He couldn’t possibly remember her leaving. He was remembering other women leaving, long after his mother.
His dad hadn’t had any other kids. When he had Aiden, he’d discovered he didn’t find fatherhood amusing. What his dad did find entertaining, and worth collecting, was women. Kids were boring because you had to keep them, but you could always find a brand-new shiny romance if you had enough money to pay for it.
It didn’t really matter that Aiden couldn’t actually recall his mother leaving. They all left in a similar way. His dad’s women were all the same.
Aiden had believed one of them was different. Once. A long time ago.
When he was five, his father had taken up with a Brazilian singer foolish enough to believe faking a maternal instinct would please his dad. Aiden used to follow his father’s girlfriends around the house, allured by the glitter of their jewelry and the scent of their perfume and the sense that something exciting and glamorous was happening. The Brazilian one used to take his hand when he chased after her, slow her step, and tell him stories as she did her eye makeup. She used to hug him and say, “Aiden, you’re so cute.” (Total lie. But he was a little kid back then, so what did he know?) When she and his father got engaged, she showed him the ring, told him they were going to be a family, and asked if she could adopt him. She told him she wanted to be his mother, and could she? Aiden said yes with all his heart.
His dad had married eight women so far. He didn’t marry that one. She left more quietly than most, but she left. There was no screaming, no screech of a car in the driveway, only her engagement ring left gleaming in the shadows of their big cold house. She didn’t even bother to say goodbye.
Whatever. She was only one of many. Aiden didn’t even remember her name now, and