A Town Called Prairie: Chapter Seven

Chapter Seven:

Edward’s Secrets

Sometimes I’m confused.

Why am I trying out for this play? Why can’t I just stay my old self? Why does it matter to me what others think? Who gives half a mind to all the effort I’m putting into this?

It’s been getting to me a lot lately, why exactly I’m putting myself through to audition for a play that won’t give me anything besides acting experience and something interesting to write on a college application. I almost want to just drop all of it and leave it for someone else to pick up.

I was walking home from school with Edward one particularly chilly autumn afternoon when it all clicked into place.

“My family moved here from Oregon ten years ago. I was four and an only child at the time. My parents sent me to the school in George’s Creek when I was younger, but transferred me to Hillside instead after a few years. My dad had just finished building our house when we got out here, it took him half a year away from us to build the thing, but it was worth it I think. He got a good job at a place called Venin Logistics over in George’s Creek when he first got here and was CEO until a little while ago actually. He wouldn’t tell me what happened, but he had to stop working there. Now he’s a part time author and a journalist for the newspaper in George’s Creek. My mom stays at home and does a lot of quilting and sewing. My dad moved us here because he visited George’s Creek when he was a little kid and he always wanted to come back.”

“Did you say Venin Logistics?” I asked, stunned.

“Yeah, why?”

It’s the company; his dad is the one who fired my mom from the job she held so dear to her heart?

“Just wondering.” We kept walking. Edward went on.

“Both of my parents are from Utah, their parents were good friends and my parents, as kids, got along well. Long story short, they got married and moved to New York, Oregon, then here. Someday, when my little siblings and I grow up, they said they want to move back to Alta in Utah”

“Why did they move so much?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know, they moved to New York for jobs, but hated it because of all the smog and virtually no wilderness, Oregon was better until my dad remembered this town and some friend he met here way back when, he told me secretly, it was a girl named Marie Stella Victoria. He said she was the most beautiful girl he ever met, she had a thing for tipping cows…” he kept blabbering on about all the descriptions on Marie.

He didn’t have to tell me, I already knew who Marie was.

“Mom, did you know someone named Isaac Cade?” I asked my mom as soon as she walked through the door into the house. She looked exhausted, her hair was tousled about and frazzled, and she had dark lines under her eyes.

“I don’t know, maybe.”

“he came to George’s Creek when you started working for the company,” I didn’t know what else to say, all I had was a name and some secret a boy heard from his dad when they went on a camping trip out of state over the summer.

“I don’t know-” she stopped “Isaac Cade?”

“Yeah.”

“Where’d you hear about him from?”

“Edward.”

“That annoying kid?”

“Yeah, he’s Isaac’s son.”

My mom’s face had a shocked look spread across it. “Don’t go anywhere near their house, if you do, you’ll be grounded.”

“why-?” I began.

“Don’t do it Florentine, I mean it.” She marched away.

Hmm. Well this is something worth investigating…

“You mean to say that your dad said my mom was hot?” I asked during lunch the next day.

Edward nodded. “Yeah, he said she was unlike anyone he had ever met. She was smart, a rebel-”

“A rebel?” I asked.

“That whole cow-tipping thing…”

Oh I’m so bad, I tip cows on Friday nights for fun, I’m so sly, I’m such a rebel I should be arrested!

“Yeah,”

“He said she was also the most eligible bachelorette in town. Every guy wanted to date her. My dad said he almost got jumped from some football players because he talked to her a bit. But he told them he was in college…”

“College?”

“Yeah, he went to Arizona State. Anyway, the football players left him alone after that. By the time he had to leave, he said Marie was going to come with him, but she still had to finish high school. He told her to stay, but she really wanted to go. He said it was terrible but he had to leave without her because he knew it would be horrible for her not to have a complete college education. I think it was the right thing to do.”