Walking Among the Shadows: Awakening: Revised Edition (15 page)

Those words felt like daggers
penetrating my ears and skull.

“He dropped the pass”?

By now my anger was on full
tilt and I snatched my helmet off because I found it increasingly hard to
breathe now with it on. But it wasn’t the helmet that was keeping me from
taking in air. It was my blood sizzling anger; all I could think about was
smashing my helmet across the face of the cheating referee.

After hearing the referee a
few more times claim I dropped the pass, I couldn’t take it anymore and rushed
over towards him. The referee must have seen the look in my eyes because he
quickly turned and fled towards the stands. Coach was too busy arguing with the
other refs, so he didn’t see me give chase after the ref. Brian did, and he immediately
began to pursue me.

“Aiden, no,” Brian warned me
while trying to chase me down.

I could hear Brian behind me
but I was too engulfed in my anger to give his warning a second thought.

“I didn’t drop that pass and
you know it! You’re a liar and a cheat! I’ll break your neck!” I yelled as I
chased the ref.

By now the referee was frantically
climbing the stairs towards the stands, thinking that maybe the crowd would
offer him some form of protection. In my mind no one in that crowd or any other
crowd he may try and flee to would be able to protect him from my wrath. He
deserved to die and I was going to give him his just due.

I started making my way up the
stands, gritting my teeth all the way, thinking about all the damage I was
going to do to that lying head of the ref, but before I could get halfway up
the stands I was intercepted by four suits that surrounded me. I recognized one
of the suits from the visit they made at my house. He smiled, leaned towards
me, and spoke in my ear.

“What is it with you young
people today? So quick to turn to violence to work out your problems. Now why
are you chasing this man? What are your intentions once you’ve caught him? Are
you planning on doing to him what you did to Steve?”

The question caused my body to
freeze in place.

“I may not be able to prove it
currently but I know you had something to do with Steve’s death, and I won’t
stop until I have you in custody, young man. Now, if I were you I would turn my
ass around and go about your business while you still have the freedom to do
so, because soon you will be the property of the Federal Government and
then…well, I’m sure you’ve heard the rumors.”

I looked at the agent and without
thinking smiled and responded,

“That’s a lot coming from a
person too afraid to look me in the eyes when he throws down a challenge.”

The agent chuckled at my
comment and said, “Don’t worry, you will see my eyes soon enough, but you won’t
be in a football uniform but something less fashionable.

“Well, make sure you get me
the right-sized Agent Smith…I know how you guys hate things not fitting the
description.”

What was I doing?

It was like I was standing
there watching myself challenge and stare down a federal agent with no care or
fear for what he could do to me. I was outnumbered, and saying the wrong thing
could land me in a holding cell. But with all the things that could go wrong
with me running my mouth, I had no reservations in going back and forth with
this agent. A man who does this for a living, who catches high- profile
criminals as part of his monthly quota, this is the kind of person I decided to
throw down the gauntlet with. I had officially lost my mind.

By this time, the ref noticed
I’d been stopped by the suits, so he came down the stands and looked at me and
said,

“Young man, you are reckless
and I am ejecting you from this game, and I will also recommend you be
suspended for the remainder of the season for threatening an official.”

The agents began to move away
from me but not before the lead agent made a gesture that he was watching me.

Douche bag

“Now, step aside, young man,”
demanded the referee, “otherwise I will have those men arrest you and I
will
press charges.”

I slowly moved out of the
ref’s way without taking my enraged eyes off him. By then Brian had caught up
with me in time to hear the ref’s decision to eject me and the possible season
suspension. Brian held his head down and started walking back on to the field
to prepare for overtime play. As he walked past me the referee bumped my
shoulder and said,

“In what world did you think
you lived in that would allow you to believe you would beat this team? You lost
this game before you even stepped on the field and I’m just here to make sure
you understand what world you really live in.”

His admission to cheating was
more than I could bear, but with the agents watching there was nothing I could
do, even though I was so mad I was considering breaking his neck anyway.

“Now I want you off this field
immediately! Otherwise, you will be arrested.”

I waited in the locker room
for the game to be over. I could hear the crowd’s groans as the game began to
slip away from our team into the hands of the opposition as overtime came to a
close. As I predicted, we lost the game by three points and I was facing a
season-long suspension in a couple of days. The atmosphere in the locker room
was tragic and the coach was in disbelief at my actions towards the referee. In
his office he informed me of the referee’s intentions to not only get me
suspended for the entire season but also ban me from playing any high school
competitive sports in the state indefinitely. This ref was really trying to
ruin my life and due to my hot-headedness, I’d placed my future right in his
hands.

I decided not to tell Coach
what the referee said to me up in the stands; I mean, what’s the point, right?
How could I prove anything? It wasn’t like someone was recording our exchange,
so to me it didn’t need to be repeated. The coach was very concerned about my
most recent display of aggressive behavior, something no one has ever seen from
me. I just told him I’d been trying to deal with the new reality of playing
football and I would get it under control. The coach assured me he would fight
the ref’s recommendation for the suspension and ban, but he had very little
pull in these matters. Still, he would do all he could to help me.

I decided to head straight
home after our talk; I needed some time to calm down and figure out what I was
going to do. The agent made himself clear about how he felt about me and my
possible involvement with Steve’s death. So not only did I have this cheating
douche bag of a referee on my ass I also had Agent “Smith” from The Matrix
aiming for me as well. Both situations could turn out extremely bad for me and
I had no answers about what to do. If Tony was around he might have some kind
of advice to give me…but that was no longer an option. On my way home I got a
call from Brian asking me to meet him at his father’s furniture store; some of
the team was over there just hanging out and he wanted me to roll through to
let some steam off. I didn’t feel like being around anyone, but if I was going
to beat the ref’s attacks I needed as many people on my side as possible, so I
agreed. When I got there half of them were already drunk and the other half was
almost there.

Brian’s father’s furniture
store has been a Deerfield cornerstone for over fifty years, and over the years
it has transformed from a traditional furniture store to an upscale store that
included furniture, a café, a bar, and a spa. I didn’t have a clue why anyone
would go get a couch, some bourbon, and then a deep-tissue massage all in the
same location, but they made money so who was I to judge. Brian kept a key, so
even though the store was closed he still had access to the door and the booze.
As I walked into the café, he handed me a glass of something and, at that
point, with the mood I was in, I didn’t really care what was in it, I just
wanted to escape from my current reality.

By the second glass, some of
the cheerleaders started walking in and that’s when things got fuzzy. The last
thing I remembered was me being handed another glass and one of the
cheerleaders saying she wanted me to drink my next shot off her chest and then
that was it…nothing…darkness. I really hated blacking out just before I was
about to get lucky. It was just wrong on so many levels….

I
awoke
the next afternoon in my bed with the sound of sirens and flashing lights
engulfing my bedroom. My mom came bursting in my room with a look of terror in
her eyes.

“Baby, get up and come
downstairs now!”

“Mom?”

“Now, baby…please!”

My mom only called me baby
when she was terrified about something, mostly our safety. I slowly sat up in
bed and looked out the window. From my room’s angle I could make out four
police cars and those all-black SUVs that belonged to FBI agents, aka “The
Matrix rejects.” All parked in front of our house. Had the agent decided to
move ahead and bring me in for questioning? If so, then things were beginning
to move a lot faster and maybe I could get to the bottom of what was happening
to me and why I was changing. This was a terrifying time for me because I
thought I knew what I was capable of, my boundaries, and my principles; but
since the beginning of the new school year all those safe zones had been invaded
and all the walls torn down and what was left was as foreign to me as the
surface of Saturn. I decided to just go downstairs and face whatever they had
in store. It made no sense to prolong the obvious.

When I got downstairs the
scene was even more dramatic. There had to be at least ten regular Deerfield
officers in our living room and six suits. The suits always came in a group of
six. Even at the game, four of them surrounded me and two more were not far
off, just watching and waiting. Agent “Smith” was watching me walk down the
stairs with this arrogant smirk on his face, similar to the smirk I got from
Jasmine when she put me in that dark abyss. I was really beginning to despise
smirks.

“Have a seat, son,” the agent
commanded, pointing towards the armchair directly across from where he was
standing.

“I’m not your son,” I snapped
back.

I looked towards my mom who
was standing by the front door, and the look on her face, hearing me snap at
the agent, was a look of sheer terror. She was looking at me like she didn’t
know who I was.

“Okay, you are correct, you
are not my son, but nonetheless we have some questions for you.”

“We?”

“Yes, me and my associates.”

“Associates…” I chuckled,
rolling my eyes. Okay, shoot…What would you like to know?”

“Where were you last night
around 8:30 p.m.?”

“I was hanging out with
friends.”

“Where?”

“At Brian’s parents’ furniture
store.”

“At 8:30 p.m.?”

“That’s what I said.”

“Well, that’s strange because
they all claim that no one was at the store after 8:00 p.m. and you left around
7:45 p.m.”

“Really?”

“Yes, we corroborated their
stories with their parents and other people who saw them yesterday evening. So
again I ask where were you around 8:30 p.m. last night?”

“I don’t remember.”

“You don’t remember?”

“No, I don’t…is there an echo
in here?”

“Now how could that be?”

“Because I was drunk…”

I heard my mom gasp when those
four words spilled out my mouth. The look on her face spelled doom for me and
my social life until I was forty.

“So is it customary for you to
not remember anything while you are partaking in underage drinking?”

“I don’t know because I don’t
customarily partake in underage drinking, but seeing the day I had yesterday I
figured what the heck. So are you gonna arrest me for drinking?”

“The drinking part is the
least of your worries.”

“Excuse me? How is that the
least of my worries when that’s what this is about, right? The shop being open
with teenagers drinking?”

“No, this is a murder
investigation.”

“What?!”

“Yes, the referee who you so
clearly threatened to break his neck was killed last night.”

“How?”

“Funny you should ask that,
Aiden. Someone broke his neck.”

I began to feel sick to my
stomach and wanted to hurl right there. I was judging the distance between me
and Agent Smith and was hoping that if I did hurl I would cover his entire face
and those smug shades he wore. That would make this day a little brighter.

“Are you okay, Aiden? You look
like you need some water or something.”

I swallowed to prevent myself
from losing it.

“I’m fine.”

“You sure? I can have one of
my associates get you a glass of water or aspirin?”

“No, I’m fine. Your associates
don’t have to get me anything.”

“You seem a little on edge and
annoyed, Aiden.”