After Eden

by Helen Douglas

  For Jack and Eden

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Prologue

  Perran, England—June 2012

  She was dancing with somebody else.

  She looked different. Her auburn hair had been pinned up so that the waves that usually fell below her shoulders fell just below her chin. The beads on her green dress swayed as she moved across the floor. She caught his eye and smiled.

  Flicking his hair out of his eyes, he pushed through the crowd toward her without thinking, without allowing the fear to stop him.

  “Will you dance with me?” he asked.

  She grinned. “Thought you’d never ask.”

  She placed one of her hands loosely around his waist, the other one lightly on his shoulder. She was close, but their bodies didn’t touch, not the way Amy and Matt were pulled together so that every inch of them joined. Connor pulled her gently toward him, encouraged her head toward his shoulder. He breathed in the green-apple scent of her hair. The warmth of her skin. The faintest smell of soap or perhaps perfume. All around him was the music, the swirling lights, the mass of people dancing and laughing and shouting over the music. But all he knew was the feel of her warm breath on his neck, the thumping of his own heart, his hand as it moved around her waist and settled on her rear.

  “Connor?” she said quietly.

  He looked down, found her neck with his lips, and began kissing her—small light kisses.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “Something I should have done long ago.”

  He kissed his way up her neck toward her lips. This was it. The moment he had dreamed of for the last two years. The moment when he would finally have the courage to kiss the girl he’d loved forever and tell her how much he loved her.

  “Stop!” she shouted above the music.

  He froze. This was not the way things played out in his daydreams. Out of the corner of his eye he could see some of the couples near him staring, waiting to see what would happen next.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “Connor, you’re my best friend. I don’t feel that way about you.”

  “But you’re my date,” he began.

  “I thought you understood.”

  She had raised her voice loud enough for him to hear it over the music, but it felt like she was broadcasting it to the whole world. Tears tickled the back of his eyes. There was no way he was going to stand there and cry in front of just about everyone he knew.

  He pushed past her and headed out of the room. He would have gone outside, but Mr. Chinn, the science teacher, was between him and the door and the last thing Connor needed was some teacher asking him if he was okay.

  Instead, he went in the other direction.

  Chapter One

  Perran, England—March 2012

  Megan was late. The five-minute bell had rung and everyone else had made their way to assembly. I was standing at the front gate waiting for her.

  It was a frosty March morning with a clear blue sky. High above the school campus, two buzzards were circling counterclockwise, like the hands of a backward-turning clock. As I squinted into the distance, searching for a glimpse of Megan’s purple coat, I saw him for the first time. He emerged from the dazzling whiteness, a tall boy with light-brown hair that glinted silver in the pale winter sun. Striding toward the school gate, he unzipped his leather jacket to reveal his school sweater and white shirt, then draped a school tie around his neck and loosely knotted it, as though avoiding the discomfort for as long as possible.

  He glanced in my direction before heading into the main building. It took about thirty seconds for him to pass through the school gate and into the main entrance. It took considerably less time for me to figure him out: gorgeous, confident, unattainable.

  By the lunch break, it seemed that the entire female population of Year Eleven was talking about the new boy. I heard snippets of conversation all the way from my appointment with the careers adviser to the cafeteria.

  “He’s Canadian.”

  “He’s South African.”

  “Apparently he’s so good at soccer that Mr. Tucker wants him on the team.”

  “He has a tattoo.”

  “He has a really hot blond girlfriend who lives with him.”

  “He drives a silver sports car.”

  “Chloe Mason is going to ask him out.”

  My careers session had run over and the cafeteria was nearly empty by the time I arrived, but there was still a small line at the register. I waited impatiently, running back over the meeting in my head.

  Mrs. Mingle’s office was hidden away upstairs in the admin block, away from the rest of the rooms. She was a middle-aged woman with flamboyant glasses and a frizzy head of red Afro curls. “So, Eden,” she had said enthusiastically, once we were both settled in our armchairs with a plate of chocolate cookies and two mugs of tea balanced on a footstool between us. “Tell me where you see yourself in the future.”

  I hadn’t given much thought to the future. Not the long-term future anyway. I’d thought as far as taking my exams in the summer and then going to the local college in the autumn. I would study hard during the week, and on Saturday nights I’d go to parties. Not the sort of parties that Amy liked—the sort where everyone drank beer out of cheap plastic cups and fumbled in dark corners with boys from school—but the sort where people drank wine from real glasses and talked about books and politics and tried to change the world.

  “Imagine yourself as a ninety-year-old woman,” said Mrs. Mingle, dunking her chocolate cookie into her mug of tea—she held it there so long I expected to see the cookie break away—”and you’re looking back over your life. What sort of story will you have to tell?”

  I tried to imagine myself as an old lady, gray and wrinkled, with my life behind me. And suddenly I knew what I wanted. Not in the details, but the broad sweep of things. I wanted my life to be like one of my favorite books: a big, fat novel, each page filled with small typewritten words as though the only way to cram so much life in was to make the writing really small. I wanted to be brave, take risks, make a difference, fall in love. The characters would be colorful, the landscapes exotic. I wanted my life to be a page-turner.

  The problem was, I knew no colorful characters, had never been anywhere exotic, and courage was something I lacked. As I sat there in the armchair in Mrs. Mingle’s office, I had a dawning realization that if I didn’t start to think about my future, my life story would end up like a half-empty notebook, blank page after blank page, interrupted only by an occasional shopping list or note for the window cleaner.

  “What’s that?” said a low, male voice beside me.

  I looked up, startled from my daydream. It was the new boy. He was frowning at the special of the day.

  I shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine. I’m guessing it’s supposed to be curry.”

  “What about that?” he asked, pointing to the pizza. “The round thing with the red stuff.” His accent was difficult to place. Something between American and Australian.

  “Do you mean the pizza?”

  He nodded. “What’s on top?”

  The cafeteria food was often a terrifying mixture of unidentifiable ingredients,
but pizza was a recognizable and generally safe option. I turned to him, looking for a sign that this was a joke of some sort—perhaps a wink or a smile—but he was staring at the pizza slices, a crease between his eyebrows.

  “It’s just normal pizza. Tomato sauce and cheese.” Did he really not know what pizza was?

  “Yeah,” he said, grinning suddenly. “I knew that.”

  I took a baked potato and some sweet corn and an apple. He took exactly the same.

  “That looks nicer,” he said, shrugging one shoulder.

  I paid for my food and strode across to the table where Megan and Connor were sitting. We were an odd bunch. We weren’t part of any of the main tribes at Perran, like the surfer and skater crowd, or the pony-club girls, or the musicians, although we hung around on the periphery of the main groups from time to time. Megan had a beautiful singing voice and mixed well with the other musicians. Connor was learning to surf—although he wasn’t part of the surfing crowd—and he went to astronomy club on Fridays after school without being an official member of the science geeks. As for me, I was part of the crosscountry team but avoided all other sports and everything to do with them. Connor and Megan were sitting with Connor’s neighbor, Matt, and Matt’s girlfriend, Amy.

  Matt was okay. He played guitar and was pretty laid back. Amy was a drama queen, always performing, always reinventing herself, always the center of attention. Her latest look was, in her words, vampire chic. She had dyed her naturally fair hair jet black, which made her pale skin look almost green. It was an improvement on her last persona, when she had bleached her blond hair platinum and affected a Southern Californian vocabulary.

  “I’m thinking, like, a beach party would be totally awesome?” Amy was saying, as I pulled out a chair.

  Megan looked at me and surreptitiously rolled her eyes. Amy had been planning her sixteenth birthday party for weeks. Megan didn’t really like beach parties, but I could already picture the fire burning bright in the inky night, a skyful of stars and, with a little luck, the moon.

  “Amy, it’s the beginning of March. How can you have a beach party in March?” Connor asked. “It’s practically the middle of winter.”

  “Actually, it’s spring,” she said. “Anyway, it’s not going to be bikinis and swim trunks. Have you never partied on the beach outside of summer?”

  “No,” said Connor, shrugging. “Why would anyone do that?”

  “Because there are no parents on the beach. I could have my party at home with Mum and Dad in the next room—I’m sure they’d just love to serve pizza and lemonade—or we can party at the beach with no parents and drink whatever we like.”

  “I get your point,” Connor said. “But it’ll be freezing.”

  “We’ll build a bonfire,” said Amy. “It’s going to be so great.”

  I tuned out and sliced into my potato. Out of the corner of my eye I watched the new boy sit alone at a table in the corner. Three Year-Ten girls at the table next to him giggled, flicked their hair, and upped the volume of their conversation. Something told me he wasn’t going to have any trouble fitting in, even at this late stage in the school year.

  “What do you think, Eden?” Amy was asking.

  “Huh?” I hadn’t been listening. “Sounds great.”

  Amy turned to where I’d been looking. She winked at me. “Checking out the new guy?”

  Connor groaned. “Not you as well.” He nudged me. “Is he dreamy? Does he make your heart flutter?”

  “Get lost, Connor,” I said, nudging him back. “You’re just jealous.” I bit into my apple, embarrassed to have been caught.

  “He’s clever,” said Amy. “He was in my science class this morning.”

  “He’s not that smart,” said Matt. “I had history with him and he’d never heard of Hitler. For God’s sake, who hasn’t heard of Hitler?”

  “Or pizza?” I muttered under my breath, but nobody heard me.

  “It’s not his mind I’m interested in anyway,” said Megan with a giggle.

  “I don’t get it,” Connor said, shaking his head. “What does he have that I don’t?”

  “Muscles,” Megan began. “And great cheekbones. And …”

  Connor groaned again.

  Megan ignored him. “And gorgeous hair.”

  “You have to be kidding,” said Connor. “It sticks up in every direction. Doesn’t he know how to use a comb?”

  “Says the boy who doesn’t even own a comb,” I said, tousling Connor’s shaggy blond mop.

  “Maybe that’s how they wear their hair in America or wherever it is he’s from,” said Megan.

  Amy frowned. “I don’t think he’s American. I think he sounds Australian.”

  “Definitely not Australian,” Megan argued back. “There’s a hint of a twang there. Maybe he’s Canadian.”

  “Or South African,” said Amy. “Their accents sound similar to Australian.”

  “Why don’t you just ask him?” said Connor, a hint of irritation in his voice. “He’s coming this way. I’m sure he’ll put you out of your misery.”

  Sure enough, he had finished his meal and had to walk past our table. I studied my apple, hoping Connor wouldn’t do or say something embarrassing.

  Connor stood up, just as the boy approached, blocking his exit. “Excuse me. I wonder if you would mind settling a discussion.”

  The boy smiled warily. “If I can.”

  “The girls here were just trying to place your accent. We’ve got Australia, Canada, and South Africa.”

  The boy smiled a little more. “Close,” he said. “America.”

  “America. Now that’s settled. Thank you so much for your assistance.”

  The boy raised an eyebrow. “You’re welcome.”

  The bell rang for fifth period and I sighed. Double art with Mrs. Link.

  “What class do you have next?” Connor asked the boy. “I’ll point you in the right direction.”

  In his hand the new boy was holding a map of the school, which he had clearly folded and refolded several times already that morning. “Art. Mrs. Link.”

  “Eden has art with Mrs. Link,” Megan said, winking at me.

  I cringed. Why did Megan have to be so blunt? I swallowed the piece of apple I was chewing and picked up my tray. “You can walk with me.”

  “Eden. That’s a beautiful name,” he said as we walked toward the Godrevy Building. “Is it popular in England?”

  “No. I don’t know anyone else with my name.”

  “Is that so?”

  I didn’t reply. I couldn’t think of a thing to say. I glanced at him from the corner of my eye. He was looking at me with an amused smile. The warmth on my face told me that I was blushing. I have reddish-brown hair and the palest skin that blushes fiercely, all the way from my chest to my forehead.

  “What brings you to Cornwall?” I asked eventually, as I held open the door.

  He hesitated. “Work. My dad’s work.”

  “It must be tough arriving halfway through the school year. With exams and stuff.”

  “It’s not so bad. Everyone is so friendly.”

  Mrs. Link was in the classroom, meeting and greeting and watching us swipe our IDs to sign in. As usual she was wearing a caftan that accentuated her enormous hips. And she reeked of the hazelnut coffee that she always drank.

  “You must be Ryan Westland,” she said, shaking his hand vigorously and beaming. “Now, where are we going to put you? Eden here doesn’t have a partner. You can sit with her.”

  I sat down in my usual seat and looked away while Ryan sat next to me. I heard the scrape of stools and whispers as several of the girls angled themselves for a better look.

  “So you’re from America?” I said after a while.

  “Yeah.”

  “My aunt’s boyfriend is from America. His accent is way different from yours.”

  “It’s a big country.”

  “Which part are you from?”

  “You ask a lot of questions, don
’t you?”

  I got the hint so I took out my sketch pad and flicked through the last few pieces we had worked on. Hands, feet, eyes. All embarrassingly badly drawn. I closed the pad with a snap, afraid that Ryan would see.

  “I’m from New Hampshire,” Ryan said softly. He was smiling. “A small town in the countryside.”

  “Take out your sketch pads,” Mrs. Link interrupted, handing a blank one to Ryan. “Today we will be sketching portraits. Face and upper torso.”

  I felt my stomach clench. This was awful. I was going to have to sketch Ryan’s face. I was terrible at art in general, but I was particularly bad at drawing people. Mrs. Link chose a boy from the front of the room as her partner and then modeled how to approach the task.

  “Thirty minutes each,” she told us.

  “Do you want to model first or draw first?” Ryan asked.

  Both options sounded bad. I figured that if I sketched last, I might not have to show him my effort. “I’ll model.”

  I didn’t know where to look. I looked out the window. I looked at the art on the wall and then at the door.

  “Do you think you could keep still?” Ryan asked.

  “I’m sorry. I find it hard not to fidget.”

  “Maybe you could find something to look at.”

  I shrugged and looked around the room, trying to find something interesting. “What would you like me to look at?”

  “You could just look at me.” He must have spotted the look of horror on my face. It would be impossible for me to maintain eye contact with him without blushing brightly. “Or you could look out that window.”

  I chose the window. There wasn’t a lot to focus on—just a palm tree swaying slightly and a cinderblock wall. Mrs. Link put on some slow jazz that was clearly designed to be relaxing. Piano and trumpet. I tried to think myself somewhere else. I thought about the beach party that Amy was planning. I thought about my aunt Miranda and her boyfriend, Travis, who she was crazy about. And then I thought about the good-looking boy opposite me who was intently sketching my image. I could feel the color still burning my cheeks.

  “Why don’t you take off your sweater?” Ryan said after a few minutes.