Outcasts and Aliens

Chapter 1 - New Town

Wyman surveyed the world around him. "Trees. Trees. More trees." He stared through the window of the rental truck, deliberately avoiding his mother's eyes. "You're right. This is going to be awesome."

In the driver's seat, Dawn pursed her lips unsure of what to say next. She knew Wyman didn't want to move house, hated her even, but she wouldn't let him ruin everything before it started.

The road ran straight for several kilometers, the woodland continued with it as it had done for the past hour of silence. She sighed and turned to look at him. He was sketching again. She couldn't help the pride she felt at his talent but there was a twinge of sadness too. She recognized the image, Wyman had a photograph of it in his room. His Lacrosse team at the championship last year. Each face detailed and recognizable. Boys he'd led to victory, whom he'd known for years and whom he'd had to leave behind. She knew it as a deliberate choice. Was she a terrible mother?

The whole journey westwards had been uncomfortable. Five days in a cramped rental van with Wyman barely speaking for the first three. She'd tried to break the tension repeatedly, to brighten the mood but Wyman had an ability to crush the atmosphere in a room when he was miserable, just as he could lift it when he was happy. She wondered when he'd been happy last.

It was a strange relationship they'd developed, effectively raising Wyman as a single mom, though her husband was still technically in their lives. Karl worked as a surveyor, his job taking him far and wide for unpredictable lengths of time. Poor Wyman had bumped about so many homes and through so many schools she'd worried he'd never know a stable life. Ironic, given that she'd not experienced that in her youth, yet she desperately wanted it for her son. Eventually they had stopped in New York where Karl's work had kept him busy for long enough for them to feel settled. There they had put Wyman in Barden Prep School hoping to let him catch up on missed work.

She needn't have worried there. The teachers at Barden were very complimentary; Wyman was gifted, pushing ahead of his peers in sports and academically. She wasn't sure if it was just the first time they'd spent long enough for staff to get to know him and to speak with her or whether the high fees guaranteed extra attention. Either way Barden had become a point of stability for her son for the last three years while Karl's projects took him increasingly further afield. Currently he'd been working in Dupin, a nowheresville with nothing to recommend it, for over five months and indicated it might take another year. She'd made the decision unilaterally to move them to Dupin until the project finished. Family stability was more important than the false security of one location. So she'd thought.

Wyman had been outraged. She ought to have predicted it. But delaying by a few months until the end of a school year felt too artificial. Qualifications didn't reflect a person's soul, Wyman understood what he'd learned and more importantly understood how to think. Some meaningless assessment at the end of the academic year wasn't going to tell them anything they didn't already know. So she'd ended the lease, contacted the school and used an agent to find a house in Dupin. She already had a place for Wyman to go to in the new town. In theory there was no problem. In practice it hadn't worked that way.

Karl was furious. She'd been writing to him about the changes but he only had a post office box and wasn't picking up his mail so mostly it had all been arranged before he'd known about it. He'd had to drive out of town to find reception to call her back and argue against the move. Dawn wasn't planning on spending a year without her husband or without her two men seeing each other. Whilst she could be the sweetest spirit at times, accommodating whatever the universe threw at her, she could also dig her heels in and face down any opposition if she felt it was right. A by-product of her own upbringing she was sure.

Wyman was furious too. One school was not the same as any other as far as he was concerned. Dawn had been home-schooled for the main part so had been sure he was exaggerating. She knew Barden's had a lot to offer over and above the average public school but the purpose and principle of all educational establishments was identical in her mind. The externals of their provision was not as significant as the core of their heart. Wyman would thrive, she was sure, and it would be good to remind him of what privilege was by removing it every so often.