He was Almost Absorbed by the System

Chapter Ten - Touched by A Snowflake

The weeks slowly passed into months and the season changed. The trees were no longer adorned in array of earthy colours, their leaves had abandoned them to stand bare in rapidly cooling temperatures. The sky was a steely grey more often than not and what little of the suns rays peeked through the winter clouds was slightly less each day.

Before the schools closed briefly over winter, an inauguration of a Student Body President occurred. The popular if somewhat I.Q. deficient girl by the name of Cameron Lacey greeted her school mates with an infectious, cheerful spirit when she thanked them for their votes and it became hard to dislike or ridicule her. With perhaps a flash of brilliance that may or may not have been influenced by an outside source, she invited Anthony Marshall Junior to become her vice-president. In the near future, the bubbly girl would find herself the figurehead of the school council, while her V.P. became the true head of their select group of council members. This worked brilliantly well for the council and the school. They invited Katy Daniels onto the council also, but she chose to graciously decline.

Aidan did not wonder how he managed to complete the mission with such ease in the end. It seemed as if after offering anonymously a few more suggestions to Cameron to improve her campaign and lazily sabotaging Katy by removing her posters, the latter had simply given up. Well, whatever worked!

In another school, the new kid had settled in, although he was quiet and introvert, he did not find himself a victim of bullying. This was partially due to the fact that it was the final year of school and the thought of exams were becoming increasingly moved to the forefront of their minds. The known bullies already had their claim of victims and didn't see the need for fresh blood. But the boy knew too well how things could change, so spent lunchtimes in study sessions and in the library and away from club rooms and the roof.

Aidan and Warren had slowly grown closer through trips to the movies, tennis courts and a impulsive fling with the idea of ice skating, which saw them freezing their backsides on the smooth ice every few seconds and laughing until their ribs ached for the remainder of their session. They'd planned to help each other out, this weekend, with shopping for presents for the Winter Festivals. Neither really were looking forward to the experience of trudging through shop and shop looking for that perfect gift, but they figured doing it together might ease their suffering a tad.

*PING* Aidan tutted under his breath as he knocked on Warren's front door, before glancing at the message on his phone. Mission; Intercept the incoming message on Warren's mobile phone. Code 5293. Aidan frowned slightly as the door opened and he was greeted by Warren's father.

"Hello there Aidan," he smiled, jovially, ushering the boy in from the cold.

"Hey Mr Taylor," he said back, with a slight smile of his own. Warren's mother glanced into the hallway from the door of their kitchen.

"Hello, Aidan," she greeted. "What are you two planning this week?"

"Shopping," Aidan told her.

"Mum, is that Aidan?" A voice called from upstairs. Mrs Taylor confirmed it was. "I'll be down in a minute. Just looking for my wallet and my phone."

"Your wallet found it's way into the laundry, so I put it on your desk in your room,"Mrs Taylor told him. "Your phone is in the living room. Gees that boy would lose his head if it wasn't screwed on." Warren's father chuckled.

"I'll get his phone," Aidan offered and quickly made his way to the living room.

"Thank you, dear," the woman said. "It's on the fireplace mantle." Aidan quickly spied the phone and went to claim it, unlocking it just as the expected message was received. It was from an unknown number. Mission; walk into the road at the crossing between the cinema and the Tollgate shopping centre as the 'Stop Pedestrian' sign appears at precisely 4pm.

Aidan felt the blood rush from his face, his mind in turmoil. The fact that the message was in the form of a mission registered, barely, but the sick text was pretty much telling Warren to get run over and make it look like an accident. He swallowed the bile that leapt from his stomach to his throat. He deleted the message without a second thought, blocked the mysterious number then locked the phone.

"Ready to go?" Warren asked from behind him.

"Yeah," Aidan agreed, forcing the many questions to the back of his mind. "Here's your phone by the way."

"Thanks."

Mission successful; message intercepted. Well done!

As they traipsed and often played immaturely between and in several different shops, Aidan's laidback nature saw the questions slowly fade from his mind into blankness to be replaced by feelings of contentment. Their arms were filling with gifts and bags, their legs were beginning to ache and the air was growing colder, but the boy's laughter didn't cease. They didn't see Katy Daniels crossing the road as she came out of the cinema, because Shaun was talking to them in the street, before he was grabbed by several of his friends and dragged away.

"Did you get it?" Aidan asked as Warren exited a gift store. He nodded, opening up the bag with the boxed musical box inside to show him. Just as they were about to call it a day, a small flake of white drifted between them, followed by another and another.

"It's snowing," Warren murmured, his eyes staring wide at the sky and sparkling with a touch of awe. Aidan felt an internal pause, before a realisation washed over him. Infrequently he had wondered why the smaller boy had stirred his usual still emotions, though he never delved too deeply into his own thoughts to answer himself. But watching those pale eyes as they followed the path of individual snowflakes with a look of pure joy upon his smiling face, he suddenly knew.

"Warren," he began, almost gruffly at the same moment the other boy spoke;

"Oh, I almost forgot to tell you!" They chuckled for a moment, before Aidan encouraged him to speak first. "I have a girlfriend! She asked me out the other day and well... I've never had a chance to date before..." Not properly in all those lifetimes...

"That's... great!" Aidan looked towards the steel grey sky as his heart began to hurt.

"Yeah," Warren agreed, softly. There was a moment of silence as they began the journey home. "Oh, what were you going to say?"

"Nothing," Aidan replied. "Don't worry, it wasn't important." He gave Warren a reassuring smile as the smaller boy looked at him curiously for a moment, but let the matter drop. If Aidan needed to tell him, he would do, he was sure.