Julian Read Free Page B

had their fear under control, wondering who the men had been and speculating as to why they had come after him. Not once had he suggested calling the cops or asking anyone for help. Aidan remembered thinking the kid had street smarts. As soon as the SUV had veeredto the curb he realized he was in trouble, and he had known what to do.
    Aidan found the boy standing beside the phone, his call completed. “You don’t have to hang around,” the kid said.
    “Well, as long as everything is alright with
you
. What’s your name, anyway?”
    The boy replied by walking out of the restaurant. Aidan followed.
    Outside it was cold, but the boy still held his coat at his waist, hiding the pee stain. Aidan knew the kid was probably acting like a jerk because he had been humiliated, hunted and terrified, chased through people’s yards. With a high school guy right there, witnessing his shame. Aidan was familiar with the feeling.
    “I said you don’t have to wait with me,” the kid repeated. “I can take care of myself.”
    At that moment a dark blue car swept into the parking lot and screeched to a stop. The back door flew open and an Asian in a dark topcoat got out. Aidan tensed and reached for the boy, but the man was holding the car door open and beckoning to the kid, who scrambled inside without a backward glance. The man slid in beside him. The car tore away as soon as the door closed, leaving Aidan alone in the snow.
    Aidan made his way down to Queen Street and took the streetcar to the west end. As the vehicle trundled along the rails, he sat back and watched the crowded, rundown neighbourhoods scroll by the window. So much for an afternoon to himself. His escape from the art field trip to wanderwhere his feet took him, to be alone for a while, had gone up in smoke, leaving only the weakness in his limbs from ebbing adrenaline. He had thought he had taken control, if only for an afternoon; then he had been blindsided by events set in motion by strangers, with nothing to show for it but a bleeding hand. He let out a bitter laugh. He had read somewhere that destiny didn’t make house calls, that you had to go out and make your own fate. Whoever wrote that was full of it.
    Or was he? Maybe destiny wasn’t one thing or another. Maybe he was looking at the problem from the wrong angle. Yes, the attempted kidnapping had come out of the blue and Aidan had been caught up in it, but he had done something about it, hadn’t he? Aidan reminded himself that he had saved the kid from being snatched—maybe killed. Maybe his thoughts when he was in the gallery mulling over Van Gogh and his art had been legitimate after all.
    Be the painter, not the canvas, he had decided. He talked a good game, but could he follow through? How could he manage a change in his life? Waiting for someone or something to alter his direction meant he was the canvas, didn’t it? He had to take some kind of action.
    He had tried it once. A foster kid like him had two choices: he could rebel and run away, or try to go along, to be accepted. He had tried the first strategy back when he was taken in by the Foster-McCallums. Aidan had run off and won exactly four hours of freedom, then the cops had picked him up at the nearest mall and marched him to their cruiser under the noses of curious shoppers. He still remembered the sting of humiliation. After this short-lived rebellious period, when he realized that nothing of benefitever had or would result from rushing into conflicts or win-lose dust-ups where a happy ending was not on the program, he had changed course.
    Charging a brick wall with his head down hadn’t helped, so he had tried to make his foster families like him. He had learned to go along, to agree, to harmonize, to please.
    He held no resentment toward his fosters. He knew they got paid by CAS for letting him live with them, but he didn’t think they did it for the money. They all tried to give him a home and make him part of their families. But he