Carter stood at his sister's door, a gobsmacked look on his face.
"What's wrong with you, are you having a stroke?" his sister asked, clearly annoyed with her brother for just standing in her doorway in awe. She sat on her pink duvet, her phone in her hands, and from the annoyed look on her face, Carter must have interrupted her texting session with someone.
"I can't believe it. Has the sky fallen? Are we all dying?" he exclaimed, taking an overly exaggerated careful step into the room, with his arms out like he was preparing to face danger.
Lara rolled her eyes. "How much speed did you take this morning?"
"That's beside the point," he joked with a wink, taking another step into the room. "It's clean. I can see the floor! Coming into your room is no longer a biochemical hazard!" he exclaimed with wide eyes.
She threw a pillow at him, and Carter laughed as he caught it.
"Stop acting like me cleaning my room is some predictor for the end of the world."
"Are you dying and you never told me?" he asked in an exaggerated tone. "Ohmygosh am I dying and you never told me?"
"Shut up!" she laughed, throwing a second pillow at her brother's face. He caught the second one as well. "If you must know, Jayden is going to be here any second."
"That boy is changing you for the better." Carter smiled as he looked around her room. Everything seemed to be clean and in order, even the make-up on her side table was neatly arranged into lines.
"Go away," she told him as she continued to text on her phone.
He conceded. "Okay, okay, only so I can go tell our mother about this."
Lara rolled her eyes and waved her brother out of the room.
Carter found his mother at the kitchen bench, a large cup of steaming coffee in one hand and a book in the other. He sat down next to her. "Don't freak out, but your daughter's room is clean."
She laughed. "I am aware, I almost had a heart attack when I saw it."
"I'm not surprised." Carter smiled as he sneakily stole a sip of coffee from his mother's cup.
"Hey!" she scowled, pulling the cup away from her son. "While I was recovering from my shock of your sister's clean room, she happened to tell me that you were going on a date tonight."
She had kept her tone casual, but Carter could tell that his mother wasn't too sure about the date, like she was scared that one night out would lead to some ugly break-up which he would never recover from. He didn't blame his mother.
"Yeah, Archer, a new student at school."
"That's great honey," she said, sipping at her coffee.
"Mom?"
"Yes?"
"Is there something you wanted to say? You seem not exactly happy about this?"
His mother shook her head. "I just want to make sure you aren't jumping into a relationship faster than you are ready for."
"It's just dinner, Mom," he told her and his mother seemed to visually relax.
"I know honey, I hope you have a good time." This time she seemed actually happy for him. "Your sister asked me if she was allowed to chaperone your date, since you got to chaperone hers."
Carter groaned. "Please tell me that you slapped that idea out of her."
"Don't worry," she laughed quietly, "I definitely told her no."
"Thanks Mom."
The loud, high pitched ring of the doorbell rang out throughout the house and Carter jumped from his chair to get the door. He opened up the large wooden door to reveal Jayden, who smiled at Carter the moment that he saw him.
"Hey Jayden," he greeted, smiling at the boy, but his smile faded when he realised that as the man of the house he must do the interrogate-the-new-boyfriend routine.
"Hey Carter, is Lara here?" Jayden asked, peering around Carter in search of Lara.
Carter threw on his serious face and stood intimidatingly against the door, blocking his path and eye line into the house. "Now, son," he drew out the word like it was some sort of warning, and Jayden gave him a very confused look, "I am not trying to imply anything but I have been to prison, and I'm not afraid to go back."
"Uh, what?" Jayden asked with a very confused look."I've known you for years and I am quite sure that you are the last person to go to prison."
Carter ignored him, keeping his poker face and hardening his voice. "Do you want to see my guns? I have a huge collection, and my favourite one has a silencer. You know what a silencer is right?"
"What?" Jayden's eyes got impossibly wider in confusion with a hint of fear.
"You know, one day, you should come with us to our cabin in the remote part of the woods."
Carter was going to continue with his intimidating routine but suddenly he was pulled back by his shirt and when he turned his head he saw his mother, who was looking not too pleased with her son.
"Really Carter? Threatening Jayden? You've known him since he was a kid." She shook her head in fond amusement, "Silly boy." She gently slapped him on the back of the head.
"I was just making sure that he knew that I have the ability to murder him if he was to break your daughter's heart," he told his mother with puppy dog eyes.
She shook her head, her son's look doing nothing. "If you tried to kill Jayden, you would probably end up killing yourself by mistake."
Jayden laughed, and Carter crossed his arms across his chest.
"Lara is in her room, have a good time, keep the door open," his mother said in a sweet voice to Jayden as she ushered him inside.
"Mom," Carter rolled his eyes exasperatedly, "this is my job as the man of the house."
"Yeah, yeah, come back to me when you hit puberty." She waved him off casually.
"Mom!" he laughed, and mock angrily stormed off towards his room.
When he reached his room he decided that he should probably do some homework. He had been sitting at his desk, working on math for over an hour, and just as he was figuring out one of the harder equations, his sister burst into his room. He jumped as the wooden door opened unexpectedly and Lara appeared, a worried look on her young face.
"Carter?" Lara got his attention as she took a few steps into the room, and towards her brother.
"Yeah? What's up?"
She bit at her lip. "Uh, Jayden is upset about something and he won't talk to me, can you come talk to him?"
Carter furrowed his eyebrows in confusion. "What happened?"
She nervously tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "His Mom called him and when he got off the phone he just got really upset and stormed off."
"Where is he?" Carter asked, standing up from his desk chair.
She shook her head slightly. "I don't know, he went outside somewhere."
"Why don't you hang in here for a little bit, okay?" She nodded nervously. He caught the drift that she was pretty worried about her friend, or boyfriend, whatever they were. "He will be fine, I'm sure."
She nodded again.
He left her sitting on the bed, and headed down stairs. He went out the back, and looked over the back yard, which was quite bare except for some hedges around the edges and a couple of trees down towards the fence line.
As he peered towards the trees he noticed a shoulder sticking out from behind one of the tree's, like someone was sitting on the ground, leaning against the tall trunk of the tree.
"Hey, can I join you?" Carter called out when he was a few steps away from the tree.
"Yeah," came a soft reply from behind the thick trunk.
Carter walked up to him, and slid down the tree so that he was sitting next to Jayden. The boy looked like he had been crying, his eyes were red and puffy.
"What's going on?" Carter asked softly, hoping that Jayden would open up to him.
"Nothing," Jayden replied, with a sniffle.
"I promise that anything you say with stay between us, okay?" he told Jayden, who nodded hesitantly. "You can trust me."
Jayden brought his gaze down to his hands as he intertwined them with each other and fidgeted with his fingers. "My mom just called, and she said that Alex is going to live with his father in Italy."
"Oh," Carter knew about this, it hadn't even crossed his mind that Alex hadn't told his family yet when he had told Carter the other night at their dinner. "Alex told me about that, and he said it was just going to be for a few months."
Jayden shook his head. "Mom said he was going to move there, like permanently."
"Oh."
"I don't want him to go. It feels like I have already lost him, but what if he never comes back? What if he likes it better over there with his Dad and never comes home?"
Carter sighed, what could he say to a kid who thought that he was losing his brother? If Lara hopped on a plane, unsure of when she would return, Carter would have been heartbroken. The thought of losing his sister was much more than he could ever handle, and that was exactly what Jayden was fearing he would have to go through.
Carter stayed silent, hoping that just knowing that he was there for him would help Jayden in the slightest. After a few minutes, Jayden turned his wide, innocent eyes to Carter. "What's going on with Alex? Why is he acting like this?"
Carter felt a surge of anger rise up in his chest at Alex. Alex had not only abandoned him, but now he was abandoning his family. His mother who had stood by him, and taken care of him, the same mother who had accepted his sexuality with open arms and used to invite Carter to family dinners. His little brother, the brother he taught to play soccer, and used to help with his homework, the brother that looked up at Alex like his own personal hero. Carter felt like he owed it to Alex's mother and Jayden to figure out what was going on with Alex, and do whatever he could to stop this downward spiral that the boy seemed to be going down.
"I don't know Jayden, but I am sure as hell going to find out."
By the doubtful look on Jayden's face, he didn't seem to believe him. "How? He doesn't talk to anyone."
Carter thought of asking Alex directly, but he had already tried that and he could imagine how it would go if he asked again. Alex wouldn't tell him, Carter would get upset, and they would both go their separate ways, gaining no more information than they had started with. Asking Jake would be no help, Jake was a giant douche bag, and he was usually so high off his ass that if Carter asked a serious question, the boy would probably give him some nonsense answer that had no relevance to the question. He could call up Alex's father, but he had never met the man, and he doubted that he cared enough about his son to notice what was going on in his life, even if he was staying at the same house.
Carter suddenly got an idea, it hit him in the face like a truck, and he cursed himself for not thinking of it earlier. That first day, when Archer and Cole had arrived at the school, Alex had already seemed to not like them, Alex had hated them even, Alex had tried to stop Carter from even being friends with him. That must have meant that Alex knew them, or knew something about them before they had even come to the school. Archer and Cole were from Italy. Something happened with Alex in Italy. It could be nothing, it could be a bunch of coincidences, but what if it wasn't? What if they were all connected?
"I think I know a way."
Archer. They were meeting up for dinner in a matter of hours, and that's when he could find out for sure what was going on. Maybe Archer would have nothing to say, or just maybe, he could be the key to what was going on with Alex.
"You do?"
"Yeah, I do." Carter nodded. "Why don't you just leave your brother to me, and go hang out with Lara? She was pretty worried about you."
Jayden nodded before lowering his eyes and speaking shyly. "Thanks for talking with me, It's good to know that I still have you, even if you and Alex aren't together."
"Hey," Carter got Jayden's attention, and waited for him to bring his gaze up, "you will always have me, don't ever doubt that."
Jayden smiled, and walked off towards the house, leaving Carter sitting alone against the tree.
How are they connected? What does Archer know? He thought to himself.