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joked, which I didn’t find half as amusing as what he seemed to.
    “How ’bout never,” I warned.
    “Hey?” Aiden said, grabbing my hand, which I reluctantly let him hold.
    “What?” I wondered what else he was going to try to do to me. Aiden’s expression was serious, making me even more nervous.
    “I will never manipulate your feelings like that,” he promised. I hoped he was just referring to the whole making me angry thing, because the calming endorphin thing he did was definitely okay with me. Aiden sent another wave pulsating through my veins, letting me know that yes, I was still getting some of the good ones from him.
    For the remainder of the drive to my place, I tried to get past the calm feeling that consumed my body and tried to make sense of the creepy feeling I had when I heard Chelsea’s voice. I knew there was something important that I was missing, but for the life of me, I hadn’t a clue what that thing was. By the time we arrived, I was still no closer to figuring it out.
    Aiden parked in the driveway. I got out and made a quick dash for the side gate, hoping none of my nosy neighbours were watching me run across my front yard in a T-shirt that barely covered my ass. I half-hoped invisibility was one of my gifts, but by the look on my next-door neighbour, Mrs. Carson’s face, I was in no such luck. She gasped and placed her hand over her heart as if my public display of fleshiness was giving her a heart attack. She was lucky I hadn’t burned a hole through my underwear; otherwise, she would’ve probably ended up in the hospital. A small laugh escaped my lips at the thought of what her doctor’s notes would say, “Patient Diagnosis: Minor heart attack, caused by Jade Sommers’ booty.”
    Thanks to my abrupt departure from school, I had left my bag with my keys in the science lab. I hoped Mum had returned the spare key to our ‘oh so secret, nobody would ever guess’ hiding place, which was actually in plain sight.
    I opened the side gate and barely managed to close it behind me before Tyson came bounding up to greet me with one of his over-the-top kisses. It was really more like a loving mauling of any body part of mine that he could manage to fit between his massive chompers.
    “Hey, boy,” I said as I tried to remove my hand from his mouth. He reluctantly released his loving grip and settled for a rub behind the ears.
    I moved my hand down to the front of his neck and was relieved to find that Mum had returned the key. We figured that if any would-be robber could get the house key from the collar of a fifty-kilo Rottweiler, they deserved to get into the house without having to break a window.
    With Tyson sniffing where he shouldn’t, I quickly opened the back door, jumped inside, and left a sulking, overgrown puppy outside. I loved my dog, even though he was a handful. We had once sent him away to a doggy training camp that claimed to be the best in the business. Four hundred dollars later and they couldn’t even manage to get him to walk beside them for more than a second. Mum of course made them give her money back, even though they wanted to keep some for boarding and feeding him. We weren’t sending Tyson there so we could go off on a holiday, so Mum kindly told them that if they didn’t refund us in full, she would do a story on how incompetent they really were; they were suddenly more than happy to refund us in full.
    I opened the front door and let Aiden inside. He went to grab my hand. “I don’t think you want to do that.” I pulled my hand back and held it to the side. “Dog slobber.” I looked at the glistening goo covering my right hand.
    Aiden stood back as if he was going to catch cooties from the drool. “I’ll just wait in the living room while you go wash that shit off.” It was even funnier to watch his reaction to dog saliva, knowing that he was practically Superman. Yet something so pathetic could turn him into a little girl.
    “You know I’m far