SOAR - Book One: DEAD HEROES

1

a GIRL, a SHADOW, AND a BOY

The sirens blazed and flashed a wild red light. The shouts of guards and their heavy footsteps echoed throughout the near empty building of Beaslie’s Home for Inordinate Children. All of the kids had been evacuated, all of them, except for one. A young teenaged girl was lying on her bed, forgotten by the rest of the world. She didn’t care though, because she was used to it. As far as she could recall, she had lived her entire life in her lonely room at Beaslie’s, it was her world. Her messed up, solitary world.

The room was white, the bed sheets were white, and her clothes were white. Everything was white. That is apart from the mysterious black shadow that had appeared on her wall hours earlier. When that shadow appeared, everything had begun; the sirens, the shouting, and the evacuation. The young girl was not stupid; she realized that the most likely scenario was that the shadow, somehow and in some un-worldly way, was at the center of the problem.

She stared at the shadow curiously. It made her want to die inside, it made her want to scream and yell with fear, and it made her want to run.

But she didn’t.

As a matter of fact, she couldn’t.

The room was locked from the outside, and only the high ranking guards were able to release her from her prison-like room. She hopped off her bed and landed on the floor, soundlessly. She inched towards the shadow and reached out a cautious hand, stuck in an inner debate upon whether or not to touch the mysterious shadow.

“What exactly are you?” She asked the shadow, though she knew that she wouldn’t receive a response. But living a life of solitude meant that talking to inanimate objects became the norm. She was only inches away from the spot when the click of the lock caught her attention. She quickly retracted her arm and faced the door, expecting to see a guard who finally remembered she was there and was going to lump her in with the other children.

She couldn’t have been more wrong.

Standing in the doorway was a young man, about her age, with wild and ruffled blue hair, dressed in a black button up shirt with a white tie tied loosely around his neck, and a mischievous grin plastered onto his face.

“Hello!” His cheery voice proclaimed. It was as if he was completely ignorant of the chaos going on around him. He hopped into the room with a laugh and strolled casually towards the spot on the wall. He stopped and pointed at it and then looked at the young girl who was staring at him with a puzzled look on her face.

“What do you think of this?” He asked happily, waving his hand in front of the spot. The girl looked at him and shrugged her shoulders, her normal answer.

The boy rolled his eyes and sighed, “Really? You are a horribly stereotypical example of a teenager!” He straightened his back and laughed again, “Never mind! My name’s Flynn and I’m here to get rid of that spot on the wall!”

The girl quirked an eyebrow and the boy looked at her expectantly. “So... What’s your name?” He asked, as if he was explaining something to a stupid child.

The girl didn’t enjoy being spoken to as if she was stupid, something she definitely was not, so she replied, “My name is Iris Jasper Raine and I could bet you anything that I am smarter than you.”

Flynn clicked his tongue and Iris thought she heard him mutter, “You really shouldn’t waste your money.”

Flynn turned away from her to look at the spot on the wall, “Well then, Raine, what do you think of that spot?”