The Avery Shaw Experiment - By Kelly Oram Page 0,55
for weeks, but there was no use denying it anymore.
“You . . .” Aiden’s face paled, and I don’t think it was from blood loss.
I shrugged helplessly. “She’s depressed right now because of you. It started the night you busted in on her birthday. I tried for weeks to cheer her up. I tried everything I could think of, but nothing I did helped. She didn’t want me. She never has.”
My head hurt too bad to deal with this anymore. “I’m going back to bed.”
Avery
I knew as part of the grieving process I would get here eventually, but I hadn’t meant to fall apart so badly. Depression runs in my family. I’d had problems with it before, and so I told myself I wouldn’t let it overwhelm me. But that’s the thing with depression. Sometimes there is no controlling it. Sometimes it sneaks up on you.
Obviously I’d known it was coming. I even realized when I said no to going to the dance with Grayson that I was starting to feel it, but suddenly I was so deep in it I didn’t know which way was up anymore. In fact it was so bad I wondered if maybe I hadn’t been feeling a bit depressed all along.
It was mid-March now. Over a month had already slipped by since my birthday. I’d barely noticed. I’d been too busy being sad to realize exactly how depressed I was until my mom woke me up one Saturday morning and forced me to go see someone.
After my counseling session—and after my mom filled the prescription of anti-depressants the doctor had prescribed for me—I wasn’t in the mood to talk to my mother anymore. I went straight to my room and stayed there.
It was two in the afternoon when the weight of someone sitting down on my bed woke me.
“Avery?”
His quiet voice was so timid, but it was still one of my favorite sounds in the whole world. It was a voice I knew as well as my own.
“Aiden?” I sat up and almost screamed when I saw his face. “What happened to you?”
Aiden shrugged like it was no big deal. “I pissed off Grayson.”
“Grayson did that to you? You’re disfigured!”
Aiden winced. “I really pissed him off.”
I hated to be so startled, but Aiden looked awful. Half his face was black and blue and his nose was swollen to twice its normal size. I couldn’t believe Grayson had hit him.
“Is your nose broken?”
“Not badly. Doctor said it would heal on its own.”
Once the subject of his bruises was out of the way, I wasn’t sure what else to say. I didn’t know what he was doing in my room, and I wasn’t sure if I wanted him there. Things got awkward, fast.
Outside, a dog barked, snapping us both from the thick silence that had settled between us. Aiden pulled his thoughts together and said, “Come with me to the Natural History Museum. My parents got me an annual pass for my birthday. I haven’t used it yet.”
It figured. “My mom got me a pass too.”
“I know. They thought we’d like to be able to go together.”
I couldn’t make sense of my emotions. I was feeling a whole spectrum of them. In that moment bitterness won out. “Must have bought them a long time ago.”
Aiden stood up and started pacing my small bedroom at the foot of my bed. “Actually, I suggested them for both of us a week before our birthdays,” he explained. “When my parents gave me mine that afternoon, I was going to come see if you would go with me, just the two of us.”
I’m not sure why that was so painful to know, but I had to close my eyes and push back tears. Then I figured something out. “That’s when your parents told you I’d gone up to the condo with Grayson.”
Aiden obviously didn’t want to go there. He stopped pacing and caught my eyes in an unyielding stare. “Come to the museum with me.”
I wanted to go with him. As much as I was mad at him, I could never hate him. He must have known that, or he wouldn’t be here. I missed him so much, but I was scared of him now, so I chickened out. “I don’t feel like going to the museum today.”
“I know you don’t feel like it. You haven’t felt like doing anything for weeks. I’m asking you to come anyway. I’ll beg if I have to.”
“No.”
“Why?” Aiden demanded. “Because you’re depressed? Because