Across Acheron

Session 24

We didn’t get to see Aaron until that following Saturday.

Believe me when I say that I was set to meet him after my little encounter with James. I had this elaborate plan to go straight into the school and ask for him by claiming to be his second cousin or something. Keenan voted against it, of course. James isn’t a thinker, but Aaron is. I wouldn’t risk it. That’s what he told me, but I wasn’t really listening, to be honest. He was ruining my vibe.

Anyway, back to that Saturday. Keenan and I were sitting out on the porch, waiting for Lorna to talk to the housemothers about our departure. With the knowledge that she couldn’t tell a blatant lie, we settled for the ‘we’re off to meet a good friend’ excuse.

With a little bit of magic, of course.

Keenan and I didn’t talk much. In the home there were few chats, scarce teasing, and he never smiled the way he did back at Cillian’s. He wasn’t ever sour, though. There were times when he’d come into my room while Finn wasn’t there, absently staring out the window as I read.

Even now when I sit in my room reading, I always end up putting my book down to try to find him there looking out the window or something. He’s never there, of course. I guess old habits really do die hard.

Lorna came out several minutes later, looking more irritated than she was going in. She pulled out her keys from her coat—which was hellishly fancy, by the way—and unlocked the car door, allowing Keenan and I to enter.

“The boy is way different from his friend,” Lorna said as she turned the car on. The engine had this soft purr unlike the roar of Cillian's old van. “He’s so introverted that I couldn’t get much information on him about his personality or past dealings. You’ll have to find that out on your own.”

“It’s a good thing I came then,” muttered Keenan, who had his eyes trapped on the window. There was space for him to sit at the front, but he chose to stay at the backseat with me. I didn’t mention anything about it, though, since I didn’t feel like embarrassing him.

I had to be real careful about things like that. If you don’t know this already, cautiousness around people like him is key. You know, the ones who seem all nice at first but they turn into something else in a matter of seconds. Switchblades is what I like to call them. They can stick your head right in the gutter if you don’t take care.

“He’ll most likely be hostile towards the two of you,” Lorna continued, acting as if Keenan hadn’t said a word. “You’ll probably have to use some kind of method to get him talking.”

“Or force,” Keenan said, allowing a slow grin to settle on his face. “Nothing works better than force.”

I could see Lorna’s displeased frown through the rear view mirror. I didn’t know if she took a liking to anything. “Do what you will. This isn’t my problem.”

The car fell into an unnerving hush at that point. The silence weighed down on our shoulders, but no one dared to say anything against it. It wasn’t that we didn’t like each other; it was more of the fact that we all had nothing else to say.

It took a few minutes for us to reach where we needed to go. Lorna parked the car at the side of some street filled with beautiful houses, each one different from the other. Every lot seemed to have an obnoxious tree or a fantastic looking garden. At first I thought we were in the wrong place or something, but my assumptions were killed as soon as Lorna shut off the engine.

“On the school reports, I’ve seen that he has permission to leave the premises now and then to go home. It isn’t every weekend, but there’s always a pattern. Today is probably one of those days, and his house should be along this street.”