12 - Life Without Eva

     Much to my surprise, Baddo was waiting for me as I returned home. Even further, he didn’t yell at me for leaving without notifying him. Instead, Baddo embraced me and told me he understood why I did what I did. I still got scolded afterwards, but that moment of empathy was what I focused on. Even as I returned to my room, Mara was waiting as I had asked, disguised as me. It was almost like I had never even left.

     “How did it go?” Mara asked gently, returning to her own form. She sat on the side of my bed and gestured for me to join her. We talked through the night, and Mara encouraged me to stay as busy as possible so I won’t notice the change. I tried to keep that in mind, as weird as both she and my Baddo were acting.

     Weirder still, Seraphina joined me and Arthur during lunch at school the next day. Arthur brought Mr. Zippers again, and Sera kept making small talk as we ate. There was a bit of a stink when Silas came and found his former girlfriend sitting at my table, but thankfully he didn’t make a scene in the middle of the cafeteria.

     Unfortunately, Silas apparently still wanted to fill that hunger for bullying after school ended for the day.

     “Stay away from my girl!” He exclaimed, pressing me face first into the iron woven fence. “You’ll regret it!”

     “I’m already regretting trying to see the good in you,” I mutter back. The fence recoiled as he pulled me back, turned me around and punched me back into it. Guess he heard me.

     “Didn’t you two break up?” I asked playfully. . “Seems awfully creepy to call her ‘your girl’ if there isn’t anything going on right now.”

     He didn’t like that. Silas continued his assault, throwing me to the floor and beating me senseless. It felt like he was throwing punches and kicks at inhuman speeds. I belatedly realized Silas had to have been using lightning magyk to increase his response time, hitting me in exactly the same way as when he had hurt Sera in that alleyway.

     And it hurt. A lot. As much as I wanted to kick Silas’ face in for hurting her and now me, I couldn’t match his speed. So I took it. And I hoped it wouldn’t take much longer.

     Thankfully, I wasn’t alone. Before Silas could try to redecorate my face with his foot some more, he was pulled back by none other than the twins.

     “Leave him alone, you son of a bitch,” Avena growled into his face. “If you don’t, we’ll make sure you regret it.” She punched him in the gut and threw him to the ground.

     Silas coughed up blood, coloring the ground with splotches of red. “Dammit Adan,” He cursed, chuckling darkly. “Siccing your weirdo siblings on me now?”

     “Beating up someone for trying to help is low,” Armani retorted as he and his three clones helped me up from the ground. Actually that might be a concussion. All four fused into a single whole as my focus cleared; definitely a concussion. “I’m this close to getting the constable involved.”

     “As if you Carick’s don’t already run this town,” Silas spat towards us. “Nobody does anything in this dunghill without your permission.”

     It wasn’t the first accusation that was leveled against my family. But it was definitely the one that irritated us the most. Silas looked like he still wanted to throw down, prompting Armani and Avena to pull out a bouquet of mystic dawn. The multicolored flowers hummed with energy, making the very air above them refract in response. Silas’ eyes widened in alarm and fear at the bundle of flowers that could ruin any magyk user’s day.

     “You use lightning magyk to augment your reflexes,” Armani replied coolly. He almost sounded sinister with how nonchalantly he said it.

     “I wonder how shot your reflexes will be if we shove these flowers down your throat.” Avena continued, just as icily. She sounded like she absolutely would go through with it, and would enjoy every moment leading up to and after.

     Honestly, as much as I would have liked to see that, the twin’s threat scared even me.

     “This will be your last warning,” Avena continued.

     “There won’t be another.” Armani finished.

     Like a dog with his tail between his legs, Silas ran off, leaving me alone with the twins.

     “You okay?” my brother asked.

     “Could be better," I confessed. The twins were looking at me with an odd degree of worry. Sure, Silas had kicked the crap out of me, but he bullies everyone. This was practically a regular thing.

     "Adan, this might be a bad time," Avena began. "But Baddo thinks it might be in everyone's best interests, yours especially, if tabs are kept on Seraphina and Silas."

     “He was hoping you would be willing,” her twin added.

     The advice struck me cold. “Wow, why don’t you just call Silas back over,” I snapped. “Bring him over to beat me down along with this.” One of those things I could probably do. Sera seemed nice enough. But Silas?

     “Adan–”

     “No.” I cut off my brother. “Silas actively hates everyone and everything in town. How would I even do that without getting my body or patience ripped to shreds?”

     ““With practice, and plenty of time away to recover,”” Armani and Avena said immediately.

     The blunt honesty threw me off, and I only stared at them. The twins shrugged, sheepish. ““A big family can be a lot sometimes.””

     “Okay, all that aside,” I admitted. “I can try to reach out to Sera. But don’t for a second think I will ever look out for that monster of a human being.”

     The twins accepted my decision and let me go.

     Alan told me that Sera wasn’t working today, and gave me directions to her home. It was a lot closer to mine, actually. The Hawthorne residence was just two corner streets away; now that I think about it, it actually was visible from our backyard! My home was on the Eastern part of Havenwood, often called MoneyTown because the more distinguished members of society lived there. The only difference was that Baddo made sure our home was on the very edge of MoneyTown, like he wanted to convey that the wealth he acquired forced him to live in the area, but he still wanted to connect with everyone else in spite of that disparity.

     The front of her house looked swanky enough. I desperately tried to remember what her parents did for a living as I walked up to their door. Wasn’t her mom a nurse and her dad a ship captain? I guess that made them enough money to live on this side of town.

     I didn’t even get a chance to knock when the door flew open, almost as if in anticipation of my visit. A tall hurricane-like force stood within the threshold, lightning sparking all around and freezing my blood. Part of me desperately wanted to leave and go home, but somehow I stood my ground and sheepishly said, “Hi, Mrs. Hawthorne.”

     “Why, hi there Adan! You got so big! Aren’t you just the cutest thing!”

     Sera’s mom was a scary lady. Scary in an evil queen kind of way. Like you weren’t sure if you should be running because her beauty seemed unnatural or because she looked like she mastered the art of killing a fool with just a look. Amazing how powerful a precisely trained resting bitch face can do. It’s obvious Sera got her looks from her mom, but it was even more obvious that Mrs. Hawthorne wore them better than her daughter ever could. While Sera had made green and pink her defining motif with her fashion and makeup, her mom went all in on that deep burgundy. Burgundy eyeshadow, lipstick, clothes, really everything about her was flattering...

     What was I doing here again?

     Oh right!

     “How can we help you?” Mrs. Hawthorne beamed, batting her lashes. If I remember right, she had been even more of a social butterfly than Eva, always being helpful and friendly. In spite of looking like she couldn’t care less, she actually did a great deal.

     It also made it feel like she was flirting with everyone, at least to my socially inept perspective.

     “I just wanted to check on Sera, is she doing okay?”

     “Oh how kind of you! She’s doing wonderful. Sera, baby girl! That handsome man who let you rest in his room is here!”

     There was a distinct crash from above us, followed by the sounds of other smaller impacts and cursing.

     "Oh don't worry, she just got out of the shower," Mrs. Hawthorne assured me. "Probably just slipped and fell on her rear."

     “Mom!” A mortified voice called back from deeper within the home.

     Mrs. Hawthorne smiled at me. “She’ll be down in a minute,” She beckoned me inside. “Come on in!”

     Sera was peeking down a pair of stairs as I stepped in, hair still dripping. The moment she saw that I was her visitor, she whipped back upstairs faster than a starving student at lunchtime. I decided to take a seat in one of the cushy loveseats in the front room.

     "It's just awful to hear what happened to Sera!" Mrs. Hawthorne called out to me from across the house. It sounded like she was in the middle of cooking something. “I can’t help but feel embarrassed. I guess setting up my daughter with the son of my crush wasn’t a good idea after all. I’m so glad you were able to help though!” For a moment I wondered what she was talking about, then I realized she was talking about Silas and Sera. I guess Sera hadn’t told her mom what we had found in the carriage house, so she was sticking to some kind of script. If Sera didn’t say anything, I didn’t see any reason why I should, after all, why would I know anything about the horrible blackmail Silas had on half the town?

     “Yeah, awful.”

     “Sera mentioned you tried to help them out. That’s so nice of you,” Sera’s mom continued, and I somehow had the distinct impression she was talking for the sake of it rather than to me specifically. “Your family has been here for a while, right? That’s just wonderful. My parents moved here when I was just a girl, then after graduating I signed up to be a nurse for a cruise ship and spent some time away sailing the countryside with Enrico. Funny thing, I was actually pregnant with Sera when we docked back here–”

     “MOM!!!!” Sera’s voice cried in distress. She manifested from upstairs, fully dressed, but hair still a tinge wet from her shower. “Are you that desperate for visitors, you're just gonna tell anyone how I was born!”

     “Oh, don’t worry sweetie!” Mrs. Hawthorne called back. “I’m saving that for the night of your wedding!”

     “AAAAHHHHH!!!!”

     Seraphina dashed towards me, nearly dislocating my arm as she stormed out of the house away from her mom. It might have been my imagination, but I might have heard Mrs. Hawthorne laughing at the distress she had put her daughter under.

     “I hate when she does that,” Sera declared once we had gotten far enough away from her mother. We continued walking down the street now that it was just the two of us. “I don’t understand why she has to embarrass me like that. Why can’t she just have her own social life instead of trying to mooch off mine?”

     “I take it you’re doing alright then?”

     “Huh? Yeah, I’m peachy. Well, my hair is still a bit wet, but I didn’t want my mom to start sharing any baby pictures of me. I’m embarrassed enough as it is.”

     “I’m sure that would be adorable to see, though.”

     Sera eyed me, like she wasn’t sure what to say to that. She shrugged it off, and we kept walking. “I honestly thought I could help him,” Sera admitted finally. “I guess I just forgot what kind of person he was.”

     “Do you regret dating him?”

     “Pffft, what kind of question is that? Of course! Probably the only enjoyable part was the passion. The spontaneity, the adventure, the memories. I thought I mattered to him.” Sera glanced over at me, an embarrassed blush creeping onto her cheeks. “But it turns out I was just a chew toy he decided was time to throw away.”

     “Ouch. So he hurt you emotionally as well as physically. ”

     “Exactly.”

     Before I knew it, Sera and I found ourselves at the old lighthouse as the sun was setting. Avan’s painting of Mara was still showing on the side of the wall, and to my surprise, was glowing in the fading sunlight. I made a note to ask him how he did that later. We both took a seat at a nearby bench, admiring the horizon. Off in the distance, it looked like something big was breaching the water. As the water fell from its majestic form, a vathlassa leviathan looked over the town, almost like it was trying to decide what to do with our quaint coastal tourist destination. A crowd started to form along the beach, in awe of the creature. After a moment, the Leviathan returned to the depths, deciding we weren’t worth the trouble.

     “Oh that was beautiful!” Sera exclaimed. Her eyes looked like they were ready to burst from her head from the scene.

     “Wonder why it just showed up and left, though.”

     “Might be it just was getting its bearings. But then again, we barely know anything about what’s in the water.”

     Next thing I knew, Sera scooted closer to me. “Hey, Adan,” She casually remarked. “What’s that?”

     Before I could answer, Sera grabbed me by the cheeks and pulled in close. I didn’t even know what to do, and everything just felt like I short circuited through it as she took the lead, kissing me deeply.

     Everything just seemed to fade away during the moment. I don’t even know how I got into this situation.

     “Don’t think too much about it, this was just a thank you.” Sera said after pulling away. “I’ll see you later, okay?”

     She left after that, leaving me on the bench. And my thoughts.

     What just happened?