The assistant was busy pleading “Sir, please. Don’t send me away, I don’t want to lose my job!”“Oh, you should be sure that you would lose it alright. If you would be punished further by having to pay for those flowers or be locked up till your people have enough money would be another issue, you idiot” Butler Shawn said absentmindedly as he picked the scissors up. Recognition showed on his face and turned to Damien “This looks familiar and it is something that should have been anywhere near here. What is this doing here?”For the first time in Damien’s existence, he felt a strange feeling he never thought he would feel; guilt; as he said “It was used to cut the flowers”The Butler’s eyes narrowed on Damien’s face and it took all his willpower not to look away when the man asked “You mean this was what he, a gardener, used to cut a flower?”The word came a bit easier this time around “Yes,” Damien said, averting his gaze from the assistant who was busy yelling “Liar! He is a liar! I
“Err, what?” Damien was momentarily confused as to why she was back with such fury and why she had even heard him at all. He had been angry but he did not speak up and she was already leaving when he said what he said.“You will throw who into an abyss?” she said as she moved closer to him and pushed him on his chest with her two fingers, tapping him as she asked “You will what? Who do you think you are? You are just a common gardener and a liar too. You have not even set a foot in the main house yet, whereas I live in the staff house and you think you can talk to me like that? Who will you throw?”Damien was confused by a lot of things going on at the same time. Surely he had been touched by these humans before but they had been men. Sky was so used to grabbing him when he wanted to share something with him or teach him about something or whenever he was just fooling around. He had been touched by Michael before even Mathew and at least one or two of the elders.The girl’s touch was
Damien heaved a deep sigh after escaping the Head Gardener’s presence.The man was so surprised when Damien repeated what had happened to him. Andrea’s version anyway. “He did what?” Head Gardener Salem said as he looked sharply behind Damien as if he was expecting the assistant to jump out to tell him that it was a prank.“How did you become friends with miss Andrea?” he asked and Damien blamed himself for adding that information. He had initially intended not to say anything to the man but after he told him about what happened at the gardens, HG Salem was just looking at him as if he couldn’t comprehend what he was being told. Damien blurted out that last part in his nervousness. He regretted it immediately but the deed had been done.“She was passing by,” Damien said after a pause. “Passing by?” HG Salem asked in disbelief and Damien nodded in reply.“You reply to my questions when I am talking to you, boy!” the man bellowed and Damien quickly responded.The man gave him a disbel
“Do you want to kill me?” she shouted at him as she held her hand to her bruised forehead.“I am so sorry,” Damien said in a panic as he tried to rush to help her to rub her forehead. He belatedly remembered what happened when the other girl touched him and he stopped just as she was also saying “Don’t touch me!”His relieved sigh was palpable as he stepped back already and she peered at him from beneath the hand she held her forehead with “You are weird”“I am…”“I don’t want to hear it!” she snapped with her hands raised “Will that heal my head? Believe me, mum is going to kill you if I tell her that you caused this for me!”“I am…I did not know that was you. I thought…” Damien trailed off as he realised how dumb his statement would have been. What he thought was bloodied hair was only the red hair of his self-acclaimed friend, Andrea Macmillan.The girl was clad from neck to toe in a black jumpsuit with a black pair of sneakers and he wondered where such a kid was going by that ti
Damien smiled and she narrowed her eyes at him “Are you making fun of me even though you were the one that lied?” “No, I mean…I am about to start attending and since you asked I felt I should just tell you that name since I will be attending soon anyway” then he remembered that he had not even had the right time to ask yet. “If I can” he added. “What do you mean by that?” Andrea asked Damien answered absentmindedly “I don’t think the Head Gardener would approve,” he said then looked back at the girl as he wondered how easy it was for him to talk to a girl whose life was but a blip on what he had used. He suddenly realised that the girl was likeable even though she had made him lie earlier and he might still… “You will go,” Andrea said suddenly with a glint in her eyes. “Go?” Damien asked, clueless before he realised the only thing she could be referring to. “I doubted if Head Gardener would allow it” “Oh, he will allow it,” she said with such assurance that Damien felt tempted t
“So you think you can do whatever you want now just because you managed to get yourself a backer in a small girl?”“Sir, I…”“Get out of here. I will allow you to attend your so-called school. Just know that you will be gone the instant I see that you are slacking off on your job here!”“Yes, sir”And that was all it took for Damien to be allowed to attend Maryland High School by the Head Gardener. Despite the girl’s assurance the night before, Damien still thought that he might meet up with disapproval from the man about his school.So, with apprehension in his heart after speaking to Michael on phone the following day, he approached the man in the gardener’s office. HG Salem gave him a cutting glare even as he knocked on the door which made him feel like going back instantly.After explaining what he wanted to seek permission for though, the man granted it without much ado. Apart from the glare he had pinned on Damien throughout his talk, the HG did not show any other form of disple
Sky had to ask for a favour from one of his friends so that Damien could change in his car before they head to class. The guy gave Damien a derogatory look as he asked where Sky knew such a loser from.“Just stuff it and let me know if you would let him change in your car or not, Cade” sky said in anger and the other guys that were hitching a ride to school with Cade laughed at Damien the way they had done earlier when Sky brought out the school uniform; a white shirt with Maryland badge to the left, blue long trousers and a checkered blue and white tie; Damien exclaimed in excitement about how the uniform reminded him of a robin egg.Some of them who had not even set their eyes on the egg before wondered what the loser with the strange accent was talking about and they all laughed out loud at his dishevelled look.Damien couldn’t explain to them of course that he almost missed the time they agreed on to meet before HG Salem choose that morning to tell Damien to get him bags of mulch.
Just like a phoenix rising out of the ashes of the unremarkable buildings close to it, Maryland High School stood magnificent and different from most buildings that Damien had seen so far. Not even the shopping center he had seen the other looked this magnificent. The land was so expanse that Damien couldn’t see its end from where he stood, openly gaping at the white-walled six-story building. Uniformed security men stood at attention at the entrance enclosed with a marble-walled fence and two giant, black wrought iron gates that opened up to the magnificent grounds of the school that had a uniquely designed driveway that veered to different sections in the school compound. After greeting the guards at the gate, who gave Damien a questioning look; Sky took the lane that led up to the main door of the school main door. Different cars were going in and out of the building, each of them dropping off impeccably dressed students. Some of them did not pay Damien any attention as they lif