can't believe i actually deleted this!!! :S sorry for anyone who was missing the first chapter!! anyway, here it is, please view it lots so i can gain the views that i lost from my stupidity! thanks!! xx If you get a chance, PLEASE check out hushhush's books, they're really great :) xx
NEWSFLASH READERS! If you are reading this between Jan 1st 2013 and Jan 31st 2013 and you've enjoyed it...PLEASE go vote for it in the Watty Awards! You can find it under undiscovered thrillers :) it would mean the world to me if I won!
_______________________________________________________________________________
A stifling mist was slowly encroaching, spreading throughout every space, smothering every part of my body. It was grabbing out for me, clamping it’s ugly hands around my throat, suffocating. I gasped for breath, desperate to escape it’s grasp, as the darkness became increasingly closer, winding it’s way around me tighter than before. It was like a living being, the darkness, feeding on my fear and my weakened heartbeat, squeezing any last piece of hope from my fragile body. I tried to speak, to scream but not a sound escaped my lips, it was as if my lungs had no more air to give. This was it, this was the end.
Then, out of the fog emerged a pair of dark, menacing eyes, gleaming with a madness I knew all too much about. They were jet black, deep pools you could fall easily into, bottomless pits of love and heartbreak and despair and fear, all the things I had not known of these eyes at first. They were misleading, because of their softness; they were oddly trustworthy.
And then everything turned red.
I sat up from my bed, my breathing labored, as my chest began to heave. I tried to slow down my heart rate and wipe the sweat from my brow, reminding myself that this was the reality, not the one I had just woken up from. I pulled open my curtain a crack, peering out, seeing the Los Angeles sunshine, engulfing everything in a golden glow.
My alarm clock began to wail, unceasingly, and I couldn’t help but groan, covering my face with my trembling hands before slamming my fist down against it; the room fell silent. I lay back down and tucked my knees up to my chest, wishing more than anything that I could get at least an hours decent sleep before this day began, today of all days. I couldn’t quite believe that this was what it had come to, that my situation had become so bad that I’d had to move continents.
I had to admit, it was a relief not to have to lock myself in my bedroom, have the curtains blacked out so the reporters couldn’t get a look at my face. I felt safe, a freedom that I had not experienced for a long time. I could walk out this house and know that no-one was going to hurt me.
My mother’s shrill voice was reverberating around the house, as she ranted at my father downstairs. There was a clutter of bags, keys and phones, and then, finally, the slam of the front door. I threw the duvet from on top of me and sat up, brushing my fingers through my scruffy, black hair and rubbing sleep from my eyes. The first day was always the worst, that’s what I had to keep telling myself. If I could get through this first day then maybe I could last a semester, a year even.
I found the strength to stand from the bed and yank my new school uniform from my wardrobe, slipping on the tartan skirt and white, polo top over my body. I crossed the room to my bathroom and lent against the sink, my clammy hands gripping to the cold porcelain and watching my reflection with disinterest. My eyes were bloodshot and there were purplish bruises forming beneath my eyes. A sudden glare of light through the bathroom window made me squint. I found my navy blue blazer, hung neatly on the back of my chair by my mother, and shrugged it on hurriedly, finding my shoes and bag before leaving the house and braving out into the warm Californian air.
I had missed it, that summer breeze.
The high school was only a couple of blocks away, rising up out of the suburbs, it’s tall, stone spires pointing up to the heavens. However, like a lot of things around here, it was a phony, a fraud. Unlike the ancient institutes back home, that had stood there for centuries, this building had obviously been built to give the illusion of grandeur, of tradition and history. It didn’t have me fooled for a second.
“Hey there,” I heard a voice, a guy, from somewhere behind me, breaking me out of my daydream, my inner monologue. My heart jumped, as if I would turn around and see him standing there, but I spun around regardless. “Hi,” he said again, giving me a meek wave. I didn’t say anything at first, a little shocked that someone had started a conversation with me. “You look a bit dazed, are you lost?” A lopsided smile spread over his lips.
“Oh right, no, I’m fine,” I said quickly, “I know my way around here pretty well.”
I started walking again, towards the school, but I could feel him following close behind, each footstep of mine echoed by one of his. The feeling of being watched didn’t settle well with me, so I turned around again, looking at him over my shoulder.
“Even if I didn’t, know my way around I mean,” my words still sounded all muddled, rushed, I didn’t want to come off like this on my first day, I really didn’t. I took a deep breath and tried to calm my nerves, “I’m sure it’s not that hard to find a building that looks like Hogwarts,” some of the dry humour my old friends had always picked up on had returned to my voice.
“Hogwarts minus the wizards,” he retorted.
“Speak for yourself,” I smiled and then immediately began to blush shyly, he let out a quiet chuckle.
“So, how do you know your way around?” He caught up to me, walking in step. “I mean, you said before, about knowing your way around,” he added anxiously. “I haven’t seen you around here before.”
“I used to live here,” I sighed, curling a lock of straight dark hair around my index finger.
“You did?” He began to frown and I observed his expression cautiously.
“When I was little, yeah,” I bit my lip thoughtfully, tipping my head back and looking at the tall palm trees that lined the street, “I remember this place, not all of it, but fractions, the house I used to live in, my neighbor had this treehouse,” I began to laugh then, thinking about afternoons spent lazing about in the sun.
“Wait, look at me,” he demanded, grabbing me by the shoulders, looking me straight in the eyes. I hated when people did this, it made me feel so exposed, vulnerable. I wondered if each cell of my irises, each green pigment, told a different story, and if that was apparent now, when he stared so intently. “What’s your name?” His tone of voice was still urgent, but it didn’t sound harsh, and, surprisingly, I didn’t feel intimidated. I was reluctant to tell him, paranoid that he would have heard my name from a friend of a friend, but we were close, and I had made a resolution to try to be less difficult.
“Jia,” I frowned, trying extremely hard not to be drawn into his dark eyes, like deep, velvety pools, that at one glance, would swallow you up completely. A gentle smile played at the edge of his lips, like he knew the greatest secret in the world.
“With a ‘J’, right?” He said knowingly, and my eyes flashed with panic.
“Hey, I don’t know what you’ve heard-” I began defensively.
“-No, stop, hey,” he laughed, continuing to hold me firmly in his clasp. “My name’s Gabriel.”
“Gabriel?” I raised an eyebrow, because he’d said it as if it should mean something to me.
I continued to say it, over and over again in my mind, causing it to become more and more familiar. Although, now that I was focussing on it properly, maybe the name was familiar, and not just because I had made it so. I was thinking about my childhood, here in Beverly Hills, of all the days spent running around with neighborhood kids, before I’d even started preschool.
“No,” I elongated the word, becoming more and more confused.
“I think I am,” Gabriel beamed.
“Your treehouse, it was your treehouse?” I exclaimed, “You were the neighbor?”
“Is my treehouse,” he corrected me, “I still live there.”
“Gabes,” I paused and shook my head in disbelief, “I used to call you Gabes, I can’t believe, I-I-I didn’t remember you when I first saw you, I mean, you still look like him.”
“I would hope so, we share the same genes,” he seemed amused by the whole situation.
“Gabes?”
“That’s what they call me,” he winked, the leaves from the overhead tree causing shadows to fall across his tanned skin, in geometric patterns. I held a hand across my mouth, my mind trying to wrap around all that was happening. “Hey, are you okay? You don’t look so well,” Gabriel put an arm around me as I felt myself turning green.
“Mmm, I’ll be okay,” I responded unsurely.
“I thought you’d never come back for me,” he grinned, that grin which I had completely forgotten about.
“Well, I did,” I smiled weakly, giggling quietly. “I just, I can’t believe this, I really can’t.”
“Well, you better, or we’ll be late for school.”
Suddenly, he wrapped his arms around me, lifting me completely off the ground and swinging me round and round in the middle of the sidewalk. I burst out laughing and he put me back down on the ground, I inspected his face carefully. The last time I had seen him, he had been missing his two front teeth, and I was still wearing my hair in two bunches.
“I’m sorry about that,” he immediately seemed embarrassed, and we continued towards the school. We were quiet for a little while, the only noise was the regular squeak of Gabriel’s converse, catching on the cracks in the sidewalk.
“You are heading up to Summer Hill High?” I checked, linking arms with him because I thought it would make him feel better about hugging me before. It was as if we were still eight years old, playing in his treehouse or in my pool.
“Yeah,” he seemed relieved, and watched me when he didn’t think I would notice. It kind of felt like nothing had ever changed, like neither of us had grown a single day older. It was almost as if I hadn’t been chased out of the country, as if I still wasn’t petrified.