TRAIN [FIRST DRAFT]

Chapter 21: Drawing the Lines

Miserably, the next day was Monday – a school day – and through to Friday, there were many times when Aimee and Emma would cross paths, stare awkwardly at each another, with Stefan trapped between them as misplaced as a needle in a haystack. Stefan and Aimee avoided the cafeteria at recess because being there was too unnerving. Instead, they picnicked under a tree behind the assembly hall.

They went to GINM each day after school. They both trained in the Ranking Room, lifting weights with Dominick, and Finn sometimes showed them how to do backflips and cartwheels and all the acrobatic things that made them look like pompom-less cheerleaders. Aimee had continued to face the Cerebral Simulator, even though it was the one thing that always freaked Stefan out the most. Maybe it was because it was the only part of her training where he could not be with her. It was almost scarier to watch her sit in that chair than to sit in it himself.

Stefan always had memories and scenarios that involved his parents:  there was one where he had to race through a maze to save Janet from a pit of fire that she was suspended above with an old rope that threatened to give out. In another, Buckley was being mind-controlled – he assumed this based on the fact that this Buckley was silent, unlike his real father, and robotic in the way he moved and rarely blinked – and they had to fight each other to the death.

Then came the sessions in The Arena, where Stefan and Aimee forced themselves to grow less hesitant when they had to kill the bodies that resembled their friends and family, but at the same time looked nothing like them. Later, Stefan even taught her how to climb trees and choose other places – caves or ruins or in the foliage on a lakeside, depending on the Arena – for optimum stealth and camouflage.

They ended every day at the shooting range. By then, Aimee's parents had gone home, and Gavin was elsewhere. Aimee figured it was for the best; they had not seen him since he blew up on Stefan for the second time, and he would not reply to any of his texts, except the one in which Stefan apologised and admitted that Gavin was right. His reply was a simple Thanks.

Saturday came around and it was always different, more enjoyable somehow. That afternoon, Stefan drove Aimee to his house, once they had endured the training and exhaustion that GINM had to offer and after using the shower facilities there. They drove in through the automatic security gate and parked in the driveway, before the two-door garage. Stefan climbed out swiftly to open Aimee's door. As he reached for the handle, his keys escaped his grasp, yet he opened her door casually as though nothing had happened, and although Aimee would have liked to play along, she could not contain the laugh bubbling inside her.

She climbed out, and retrieved his keys for him, and he thanked her with a blush on his cheeks.

"You're welcome," she said, still recovering from her laughter.

Aimee turned to the Summers' house, swiftly deciding that it was by far the most stunning house that she had ever seen. They had a mahogany double door, Victorian or something, and the grandest windows all along the walls on the front of the house. Stefan aided her onto their low porch, which hadn't any stairs, and then unlocked the door and held it open for her.

When she walked in, her jaw slackened instantly, her eyes fixed on the grand staircase in front of her and the long tanzanite rug that ran down its chest. The outsized foyer that she stood in had an oval-shaped glass table, a coatless coat rack and a watered bonsai in a large hourglass shaped pot, which stood against one of the buttery beige painted walls of the quadrilateral room. There were tall double doors to their left and right.

"Welcome to my abode," uttered Stefan.

Aimee glanced at him, "You have this entire castle to yourself?"