Review: The Society Series by Aaron Crabill

1. Title:  The Society: Proof
   
   
   Author:  Aaron Crabill
   Series: The Society (#1)
   Genre: Young Adult, Paranormal, Adventure
   Publisher:  Self Published
   Release Date:  Jan 28 2011
   Edition/Formats Available In: E~Book & Print
   Synopsis:
   Keely Allison has spent years trying to prove that her home town of Pembleton Arizona is haunted. She’s let her grades slip, upset her mother by avoiding anything remotely close to the normal high school experience, and utterly ignored a love life. She’s the leader of two person paranormal society, along with her polar opposite Tad Buckley. Tad’s an honors student, the apple of his folks’ eyes and totally in love with Keely (he has been for years and he really, really, really thinks this will be the year he finally tells her just that). When Sean Cage moves to town everyone’s life gets thrown into a violent upheaval. He joins the society, challenges their methods, becomes the first crush of Keely’s life, and forces Tad into a put up or shut up position with his feelings for Keely. As the three find their paranormal and romantic lives suddenly in fast forward, they too find the already well documented spookiness of Pembleton Arizona doing the same. Sean finds sleep nearly impossible as he’s taunted by a monstrous black mass at the foot of his bed. Tad is forced to choose between sneaking out the back door like the rest of the honors kids or going out the front and potentially facing hazing at the hands of a demon possessed jock-bully. As for Keely she just may find the proof she’s always wanted so badly to find, the question is will she believe it when it’s standing right in front of her?

   The Society: Proof 

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   Chapter 3

   
   
   Things went a lot differently for Tad that day.  He wasn’t meeting any new mysterious students.  He was reconnecting with the same crew he had run with last year.  Nate and Wendy were both there.  Ryan was sitting in the corner with his fingers in his ears reading from a leather bound book.  Tad felt like the big man on campus what with not being a freshman and all anymore.
   “Nate, my man, how are things going?” he asked walking into his first honors class of the day.
   “Not good,” Nate said hanging his head.  Nate was tall and skinny.  He had a penchant for wearing green polo shirts and never combing his hair.  He had thick Coke bottle glasses and a pocket protector.
   “What’s up?” Tad asked concerned.
   “My mom says if I don’t keep my 4.0 this year she’s going to ban me from playing World of Warcraft I started this summer…I’m already level 80.  She thinks it’s going to interfere with my studies,” Nate said shaking his head.
   “That’s so lame,” Tad said.
   “I know, right?” Nate asked looking up.  “I’ve never gotten anything lower than a 98%.”
   “No I meant you playing that stupid game all summer,” Tad said with a smirk.  “There’s real life out there to experience, things to investigate and dig into you know?”
   “What like ghost hunting?” Nate shot back.
   “Well,” Tad started then trailed off.
   “You’ve told me yourself that guy…Schneider.”
   “Doctor Schneider,” Tad corrected.
   “Fine that guy Dr. Schneider debunks almost everything you bring him.  I’ve lived here my whole life and I’ve heard the stories and stuff, but I have never seen, heard or felt anything that I would ever claim to be paranormal.”
   “First, it’s just a matter of time before Keely and I find something major that proves the existence of the paranormal.  Second, you may not be receptive to paranormal activity…as a matter of fact someone who’s as dulled to the world around him by extensive on line game play as yourself,  may not be able to connect with the ‘normal’ let alone the paranormal.”
   “Yeah, when I think of people who are connected to reality I always think of you first,” Nate said twisting his face into as sarcastic an expression as he could muster.
   “What does that mean?” Tad asked indignantly.
   Before Nate could even open his mouth to begin what was no doubt going to be a classic Nate rant on the topic, the first period bell rang.  “To be continued,” Nate said with a smile.
   The first half of Tad’s day was pretty basic.  The teachers ran through what to expect this year in each of his honors classes.  Between classes he kept his eyes out for a chance encounter with Keely but didn’t see her.  Nate didn’t get around to finishing off his thoughts on Tad until lunch.
   Tad walked to the table where the other honor students had already congregated.  He looked around for Keely but deduced she must have second lunch this semester.  Tad sat down across from Nate.
   “So,” Tad said almost glumly.
   “So?” Nate asked back.
   “So weren’t you going to go off on me about something from this morning?” Tad reminded, “My inability to connect with reality?”
   “Oh yeah,” Nate remembered with a smile.  “The thing about you and Keely and your little and I do stress little paranormal society is that you’re not really in it because you believe in ghosts or any of the garbage that goes along with them.  You’re in it because you’ve had a crush on Keely since you guys were in grade school.”
   Tad felt the blood rush to his head.  He didn’t like being embarrassed and usually responded by doing everything short of curling up in a fetal position and sucking his thumb.  This time he managed to keep it together.
   “Where do you even get that idea?” Tad asked taking a bite of the Sloppy Joe on his lunch tray.
   “We all read your blog on Tumblr,” Nate said matter-of-factly.
   Tad felt his stomach start to tighten.  “What are you talking about?  You’re crazy.”
   The other honor students at the table started looking around the table at one another and snickering.  Tad’s head snapped back and forth like a tennis ball at Wimbledon.  “I don’t even have a Tumblr account.”
   “Give us some credit,” Drew “Sneeze” Steichen said.  “We all know you’re Para Hunter.”
   Tad’s fist pounded down on the table.  Instead of his normal retreat response to this type of humiliation, he was losing his grip on his temper.  Two of the girls at the end of the table popped up in surprise at the sudden impact.  “You guys are just making things up now.”
   “Oh of course we are,” Nate said with a sly grin, “This is your year big guy.  You’re going to come out of your shell.  I hear you are even going to try and venture out the front door.  You might even tell your secret crush that you like her.”
   Tad fumed unable to speak as the horror that they actually had found him out hit home.
   “Hello.  You and I shared a lap top last year in Econ.  I went through the history and found your page,” Sneeze finally revealed with a proud smile.  “We’ve been reading up on you since last year.”
   Tad was mortified.  He wanted to scream and act out.  But he held it down.  Right now he was more worried that Keely knew, that she had known, that one of these guys told her, and for the last year she’d been spending weekends with him praying he wouldn’t try and put the moves on her.  “I’ll say this,” Tad said after a few beats, “Keely is a special girl.  She’s my best friend.  But she’s not the person I was talking about in that blog.  And back to your main point here Nate, I spend my time investigating the paranormal because I’m hell bent on finding real tangible, definitive, concrete, indisputable evidence.”
   “You’d have better luck getting a date with Keely,” Nate laughed.
   Tad stood up, thought it over, and left the table.
   “Hey,” Nate called after him as the other kids laughed. “You really should think again about going out those front doors.  This year’s seniors are just as bad as last years.”
   “We’re not freshmen anymore, Nate.  No one’s going to haze us,” Tad shouted back without turning to look at him.
   
   
   The end of the day couldn’t come fast enough for Tad.  After the embarrassing lunch break all he wanted to do was get this first day, which he’d at one point been looking so very much forward to, over.  The day seemed to drag on and his thoughts wandered to what Dr. Schneider would say about their evidence.  Deep in his heart Tad didn’t think Schneider would find it any more viable than the other evidence they had brought him.  But Keely seemed so sure and that made Tad surer.
   The final bell sounded and Tad stopped by his locker to load up all his text books to take home and start reading.  He marched down the stairs.  His fellow honors class mates continued straight ahead toward the back exit, while he turned hard right and made for the front door.
   As he walked through two of the four glass doors into the lobby, he saw lines of freshmen on the floor doing pushups while guys in purple and white letterman’s jackets stood over them.  Tad tried not to make eye contact.  He wasn’t a freshman, that much was true, but he was still not going to do anything stupid like look a senior in the eye.  It struck him just how incredibly evil it was for the school to not only allow this kind of behavior but to actually suspend the fall sports practices on the first day of school just to facilitate it.  He shifted his mind back to tonight’s planned meeting with Dr. Schneider.
   “Hey there Winston,” someone barked behind him.  Tad kept walking thinking nothing of it. 
   “Hey Winston Zeddmore from the Ghostbusters, I’m talking to you,” came the same voice from behind a second time.
   Tad turned and saw Randolph Adams standing there with his arms crossed.  “Why don’t you get over here and fall in?  Give me about twenty pushups to get started.”
   “I am not a freshman Randy,” Tad said feeling a surge of adrenaline.
   “You might as well be.  You never got initiated last year.  This guy here,” Randy said turning to his fellow jock seniors, “snuck out the back door with the rest of the honor weenies.”
   The other jocks mocked him and Tad felt his stomach roll over.  He looked around for Keely but didn’t see her.  He was frozen and unable to move or even think of what to do.
   “I’m not playing around here,” Randy said raising his voice just a bit.  “You never got initiated last year.  It’s time you paid your dues.  Besides that Goth girlfriend of yours pissed me off today.  Get over here tons of fun, fall in line, and give me twenty.”
   Tad managed to say this, “No,” and then he managed to turn on his heels and run.  Randy shouted to his jock friends to let him have him.  He took off bolting through the doors after Tad.  Tad managed to get to the bottom of the four steps that were just outside the main doors when Randy caught him by the shoulder and spun him around a corner and shoved him hard back first into a wall.
   “Are you hard of hearing there, Ghostbuster?” Randy barked at him.
   “I’m not a freshman,” Tad stated with some bass in his voice.
   “You think I care?  You’re weird, your girlfriend is weird, and you never paid your dues last year!”  Randy barked.
   “She’s not my girlfriend,” Tad said feeling his emotions take over,
   
   
   
   
   
   This was really different kind of read for me..but definitely enjoyable and I can't wait for book .  Suspense lovers..what out for the read read!!  Excellent book!