The Sentinel

Dear Readers:

I was recently offered a book deal for The Guestbook, a chick-lit novel to be published on Valentine's Day next year. But you don't have to wait until 2014 to read my work. I'll be posting my new YA/fantasy adventure, The Sentinel, in its entirety, one section at time every Friday. I hope you enjoy the story that asks, WHAT IF SAVING THE WORLD MEANT LOSING EVERYTHING?

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To all the amazing people that have supported, helped and encouraged me to make this book possible. I love you all.

Part 1

Chapter 1: The night I should have died

A horrific squealing of brakes snatched me from my dreams. As we swerved, my friend Julia smacked her head painfully against the window. With a deafening bang, the coach lurched heavily onto its side. The lights went out. Metal screeched as it buckled along the ground. Windows popped and splintered. The coach suddenly tipped forward over what could only have been the edge of a cliff and our driver smashed into the front window. Silence fell over my classmates as we watched in helpless horror, somehow knowing what was going to happen next. With a sickening cracking sound, the glass shattered. He scrabbled frantically in the air and his grass green eyes, filled with despair, found mine as he tumbled into the dark abyss below. I knew that moment would be permanently seared on the inside of my eyelids, when fifty six people sat and watched our coach driver die. And then the screaming started again. It quickly intensified as the coach wavered precariously on the knife edge between our salvation and our death.

Standing still and unmoved amongst the chaos Mr Kennedy, my English teacher, was suddenly by my side. He tore me easily from my seatbelt, as if it was only made from paper, and swung me up into his arms so fast it was just a blur. Leaping through a window into the icy black night, he landed on the road in one swift, gigantic, impossible movement. Mr Curtis, my Science teacher, was holding onto the back of the coach with one hand. A terrifying realisation engulfed me. He was the only thing that was stopping the coach from toppling over the sheer drop and killing all my friends inside.

Mr Kennedy put me down and gestured to the coach. ‘Let it go, they’ll be too many questions otherwise. Eve is the only one that matters.’

My stomach twisted violently as Mr Curtis released it.

As gravity slowly took hold of the coach, pulling it over the great precipice, I shrieked with horror. Without thinking I flung out my hands to stop it, clinging onto the bumper. The coach stopped tipping immediately, though the screaming inside did not. My eyes widened in shock as I realised that I was now singlehandedly preventing the coach from falling. I looked back at my two teachers in disbelief.

‘Help me,’ I screamed.

Mr Curtis joined me at the bumper.

‘Eve, if we do this, you will have to lie to everyone. This never happened, the coach nearly slid off the cliff but somehow stopped before it did. You were never rescued by Guardians, we never had this conversation.’

I nodded, numbly; anything to save my friends.

With the loud, screeching sound of metal grinding against the rocks, Mr Curtis started pulling the coach back, as easy as if he was pulling a sheet off a bed. He pulled it back just a few feet but it was enough that the coach wouldn’t topple over the edge.

Before I could say anything I found myself in Mr Kennedy’s arms, whooshing through the air again. I was lying back in the darkness of the coach a second later; a darkness that was filled with screaming and fear and pain.