SO COLD (18+) currently editing

PROLOGUE

CHARACTER VIEWS DO NOT REPRESENT MY OWN. Rewritten: 05/06/17. Original: 2011-2013.

At the clueless age of seven, I never would've seen it coming. It was like a giant red truck, blaring deafeningly on a stretch of black tarmac at a car that on the wrong side of the road. The driver would be killed upon impact. Sometime after midnight where tired eyes squinted and tiredness weighed heavy on consciousness. Maybe. Or maybe not. There would be someone in the passenger seat. A small child who cried too loud or screamed too much, a distraction.

The truck blared. Unable to tear my gaze away from an episode of That's So Raven, with a paper bag of fizzy Coke bottles, I stared at the TV screen, never once imagining the gaping hole that would come from the crash.

It happened when I was at school. I didn't have many friends, just a weird boy no-one seemed to like with a surname that rhymed with bin, and a girl who wasn't entirely sure she actually liked me. I was in the playground by myself, sitting on the wall, watching the boys in my class kick a football about to each other. Tin hadn't come in that day and the girl had ignored me all day, running off with another group of friends.

I didn't notice the teacher striding towards me until she was feet away. Her face was pitying. Sad. She had frizzy burnt-orange hair, a long oval face, glasses, I think. A tall woman with big hands, had a farm, a horse I'm sure. She always talked of him. Her hand reached out, "Shay," her voice was soft. "Come with me."

Befuddled, I furrowed my brow, wondering briefly if I was in trouble. I noticed a few students glance my way, curious. I slid off the wall, feet connecting to the ground. "Miss?" I questioned unsurely.

Her grip on my hand was tight like if she let go she'd fall. I was her support as she marched us back to the building. Her long strides to the Headteacher's office took only a few minutes but felt as if it was seconds. It was a blur of white walls and displays of paintings. She stopped just short of the closed door. I looked at her, dread settling in my stomach. Something was wrong. I knew that by now.

"Oh, sweetheart," she exhaled, bringing me to her chest in a sudden hug. Surprised, I stiffened and didn't return her hug. She let go of me almost immediately. "Go on, go in," she encouraged, attempting to smile, a hand to my back, directing.

My grandfather was in the room with the head of school, Mrs. Earl. The details are fuzzy, but I remember soon finding myself in the front seat of my grandfather's car, buckling in my seatbelt, quiet. Granddad's face was grim. Or at least, that's how I sketched it as. Exhaustion lying in the rich dark brown skin. He seemed to be struggling to hold himself together.

Anxiety fluttered in my chest like trapped butterflies in a ribcage. I watched as -at a traffic stop- a car with a family and loud children in the back swerved across lanes to avoid a truck that had the right of way. The blare of the horn rang in my ears as Granddad said. "There's been an incident. Your mother - she's - she's not coming back. She's in heaven." She wasn't. She was dead.

I stared at him, at his hands gripping the steering wheel, the watery eyes that ached for his daughter and blinked. My chest felt tight, like I couldn't breathe. "I want to see Mum."

"I don't think - "

"Please." I begged. He didn't drive me to the hospital where she had been dead for hours. He drove home, turned on the TV, handed me a bag of sweets and sat in the armchair, silent until Dad came home. I didn't move from my spot on the floor, listening as Granddad rose to comfort my father.

I didn't move even as the sobs came from the men who I had never seen cry before. My gaze remained unwavering and dry as I watched Raven have a vision, staring at the bright colours as Seth, then just a year old, bawled loudly in his cot, unattended to. Minutes later, I climbed to my feet, switched the TV off and walked across the room to where Seth lay. He was red in the face, wrapped in white. He quietened down as I held him to my chest, too clumsy to be careful, too inexperienced to hold him correctly. "Shh. Shh." I hushed in a whisper in his ear, rocking him back and forth, consoling him. "It's OK. It's OK." It wasn't. That was the night that never ended.

It had been a gunshot to the head. Wrong place, wrong time. Mum had visited a neighbourhood where an old childhood friend lived. Two motorbike riders unloaded a clip of bullets on the street, and Mum had died on the way to the hospital in the back of an ambulance. She gurgled blood down the front of her chin. Dad arrived minutes too late, and refusing to believe the doctor's sincerest apology, burst into the room, breaking down. It was the day he changed. He couldn't be consoled.

Weeks after the funeral, he packed our belongings up, putting a For Sale sign in front of the house and brought a place in an entirely different town. He cut contact with Mum's family, refused to speak of her and glowered coldly if any questions about her were raised. I didn't have a goodbye, I was given an abrupt ending and barks to be quiet if I asked for more.

It was hard to adjust. But time heals wounds and lives are forgotten. Mum became a picture in a faded newspaper. We moved on. Finally.

And then, misfortune returns.

Dad goes missing.