Jayden & Astrid [On Hold]

CHAPTER THREE - PRISTINE AND PERFECT

It was already dark when Jayden pulled into the driveway. He hated the dark. Not that he was afraid of it. It was more that he was annoyed and inconvenienced by it. As far as he was concerned, it was just the part of the earth's rotation where humans struggled to see because they got the short end of the evolution stick. It had been a busy day for him, with Astrid's arrival and Evelyn's phone call, and as much as he just wanted to crawl up in bed and push the day's events out of his mind, he knew he wouldn't. He couldn't sleep peacefully until he had overanalyzed the day's events - from his brief visit to Astrid's house to his longer encounter with Evelyn after she called about her accident.

He was heading to his room when a rustling sound made him stop. Concerned that a raccoon had found its way into the house again, he approached the direction from which the sound was coming carefully, only to find his father who had spread out a newly opened box of Lucky Charms and was sorting through the cereal for just the marshmallow bits. "You're home late." His father, Caspian stated, looking up from his loot and pretending what he was doing was perfectly normal and acceptable.

Jayden faltered. He didn't know how to respond to his dad's statement. Or was it an accusation? It hadn't sounded like he was being accused, but he couldn't be sure. He could probably count on one hand the number of times he had been home this late in the night, so he wasn't quite sure how to respond. "Uh yeah. Sorry about that. I was with Evelyn. She said she was in an accident."

Caspian paused, a purple horseshoe-shaped marshmallow suspended in mid-air just a couple of inches from his mouth. "Is she okay?"

"Yeah. She'll be fine." He slid down to sit opposite his dad.

"Did you inform Liam and Astrid that you wouldn't be able to make it?" Caspian asked, resuming his marshmallow munching.

"No. It wasn't necessary. Evelyn called a couple of minutes after I got to Astrid's." Jayden explained.

"How is Astrid?" He asked, offering his son a tricolor rainbow marshmallow.

Jayden accepted the tiny snack without hesitation. He only realized what he had done after he put it into his mouth. Accepting it gave his dad the power to name him as an accomplice when the lack of marshmallows in the cereal box was called into question. "I can't exactly say for sure. We didn't talk much. Just a couple of sentences before Evelyn's call came in. But she seemed okay from what I could tell. She was severely tired, possibly because of the distance she had to travel, but she seemed fine. And she's so much taller now. Almost as tall as I am. And I don't quite understand it. She used to be so little." He blurted out. His perception of Astrid was a mixture of pictures, his own memories, and stories from other people, but he had always known her to be tinier than normal. She had been born a lot earlier than expected. Meeting her taller than the national height statistics had momentarily thrown him off course. He had been expecting the accent but not the height.

"Her dad is tall. Her mum is..." He paused. It had been a while, but like many others, he had yet to get used to the fact that Nalani Johnson was dead. "Was. Her mum was tall. It's simple biology. It took some time, but she's gotten there now." He mused. "When will she be here?"

"Tomorrow or maybe the day after." Jayden answered, stifling a yawn. The probability of her arriving tomorrow was higher than that of her arriving the day after that. He had informed Liam that school was due to begin in two days and knew that Astrid would only come on resumption day if it couldn't be helped. Or never if something terrible happened. But he mustn't think that way.

He yawned again.

"You should get some sleep." Caspian advised.

"So should you." Jayden countered. Caspian's response was to shrug and wave him goodnight, then he turned to focus on the cereal spread before him, the marshmallows slowly depleting in number. Sighing to prevent himself from yawning, Jayden got up and mumbled a warning about staying up too late, then headed for his room.