Fire

Chapter 1

“Amelia! Amelia, wait! You know they don’t mean it! C’mon, girl!”

“No!” I yell, furious that Connor would even bother to talk to me “No one understands! Why doesn’t anyone do what I want them to? Why?”

Connor tries to get to the door before me, but I’ve always been faster than him, despite him being years older than me. I slip into my room and close the door, grateful of the lock installed just a few days ago. I throw myself onto my bed, screaming and crying at the same time. I grab a stuffed toy.

“No one!” I yell, throwing it at the new flat screen TV in the corner. The TV does little other than shudder slightly. For some reason this maddens me, and I start screaming and throwing other things all around my room. The remote control smashes into one of the mirrors on my cupboard. My brand new iPhone smashes the TV screen in, and the matching stereo system flies out of the window. Then I throw myself onto my bed, sobbing into the soft silk covers.

A hissing sound comes into my hearing. At first, it seems like nothing, but then it slowly takes over all other sounds, and is as loud as Bieber fans in a Justin Bieber concert. I cover my ears, but the sound seems to come from everything. As I try to scream again, the sound abruptly stops, leaving me in the sound of my own screams.  

Leave me alone, I think. Whatever you’re trying to do isn’t working. I want to die! More tears stream down my face like miniscule rivers, but instead of their normal heat, they feel like they’ve been taken from a mountain stream. As I feel some of the tears freeze onto my skin, I lose all will to fight against whatever is trying to exhaust me.

Let me die. I hate this world. I am hated in this world.

These thoughts pass through my mind in a torrent. As my eyes glance the world for one final time, numbness starts in my fingertips. At first it is subtle, barely noticeable. Then it burst in feeling and heat. My eyes snap open, mind wondering to thousand of possible things of what happened, but none prepare me for what I see…

My eyes snapped open. Again! The third time in a fortnight that I’d had flashbacks of my old life, of Amelia James, the spoilt little brat that knew nothing of what happened in the real world and everything about her. But I wasn’t Amelia James anymore. That was four years ago, when I was fourteen and stupid. I was Lea Emmerson, the girl that had finally achieved eighteen years of age and the right to walk around on her own without any childcare-thoughtful policemen bothering her. If only looks were on my side, though.

“Young lady,” said a passing policeman, stopping to observe my little ‘burrow’ I had made on a park bench “What are you doing here? Are your parents not around?”

I sighed and sat up, stretching as I replied to the officer.

“No, my parents are not around, partially because I left them, partially because I don’t have any,” I let the shock of those words sink in. The policeman suddenly had an intense interest in his collar.

“Uh, I’m very sorry, young lady. Don’t you have anywhere to stay? I’ll bring you to a place where they have nice food and clothes,” The policeman pronounced food and clothes as if showing me words I had only vague knowing of, which irritated me slightly.

“Sir, I am eighteen, and perfectly capable of taking care of myself. I have somewhere to stay, I’m just camping out,” I said smoothly, and gave the police officer a gracious fake smile “But thank you very much officer. You can go bother more ‘kids’ you think are too weak to survive on their own now,”

I walked off swiftly, taking my old patch worked blanket and stuffing it into my bag that I used as a pillow. I could hear the policeman calling after me, but I have always been fast, and soon lost him down an empty alley.