No Happily Ever After

Eternal Slumber

Chapter 13

Christmas promised to be utterly horrible; Aspen Briar's worst ever.

It was Christmas Eve and things couldn't seem bleaker. Faraway High seemed to be falling apart at the seams. One student had been caught burglarizing local families. Another caught up in a terrible family drama had turned up missing. Yet another classmate was hospitalized for alarming self-mutilation and her foster brother and sister; more friends of Aspen, had either been abducted or runaway. Now that school had dismissed for the winter holiday, students were all kept home under their parents' watchful eye with a sense of mass hysteria brewing. Not that anyone felt like doing anything, anyway. The whole sad business made Aspen wonder what exactly went on behind the closed doors of Faraway. She'd been hearing a myriad of disturbing rumors describing the twisted goings on that absolutely no one had been aware of. It made her grateful she didn't have to worry about such madness from her parents.

Of course, she hated them, nonetheless.

Aspen's own personal life had hit a sudden downward spiral as well, and she firmly and resolutely blamed her parents for it. Just that morning, they'd informed her that they were leaving again. Picking up and moving away from Faraway, midnight, the very day after Christmas. She wasn't allowed to know where they were going, or tell any of her friends goodbye.

She couldn't even accurately recall how many times they'd moved. As far as she'd been told, even as an infant her family had moved around a lot. Her parents' explanation was that they had to move a lot because of her father's job. Which seemed legit for a long time. Until Aspen grew up a little and realized her dad was a tax accountant. And actually, tax accountants usually don't need to move a minimum of twice a year.

The first time Aspen could actually recall moving, she'd been four. She'd gone to sleep in a little bed situated at the foot of her parents' bed in the tiny apartment they'd shared at the time in a small town in Ohio. But, when she woke, she was laying on the backseat of their car, and out the window, she saw trees and mountains looming. Go to sleep one place, wake up some place else. That was basically how Aspen's life went.

Now that she was older, they did sometimes give her a slight heads up that they were leaving, but never much. The thing was, they'd been in Faraway longer than they'd ever stayed someplace else. And Aspen loved it more than she'd ever liked anyplace else they'd stayed. They'd been there long enough that Aspen had actually begun to think perhaps they were home. Perhaps whatever roaming spirit possessed her parents had finally settled down and they would... Just. Stay.

But that morning they had dropped the bomb that she had a little over twenty four hours to pack up whatever might fit in the car.

Aspen lay on her bed, tears sliding down her temples and gathering in her long blonde hair, which splayed out beautifully upon her pillow. She'd argued rather valiantly with her parents, and though they remained patient and calm, they'd sent her to her room. So instead of packing, she lay there thinking back on all the moves before. The day after Christmas would be Aspen's fifteenth birthday. Something told her that the fact they were leaving on her birthday was not coincidental. She was old enough to realize once and for all, her parents were lying. And they were hiding something very serious.

She finally began to suspect that their secret was her.

Her mind kept returning to an incident when she was eight years old. Her parents never spoke of it, and she suspected that they thought she didn't remember it. But she did. And she thought of it often. Especially that particular Christmas Eve when she was so desperate to finally, once and for all, solve the mystery of her secretive, gypsy life.