Chapter 1

I started bending my fingers down, as though I were closing my hand into a fist�and, at first, nothing seemed to happen. Then the water started to bubble. Shocked, I stepped forward and brushed a finger over the glass. It was hot.

 

When I woke up it was to find that firstly, it was extremely dark, secondly that my head was absolutely killing me, and thirdly…I was surrounded by trees. I quickly jumped up, trying to ignore the dizziness that enveloped me as soon as I was standing. Around me there were several large rocks, a lot of fallen trees and a faint burning smell. I turned slowly on the spot, looking around me with wide eyes, trying to remember what had happen before I woke up.

I was running late. I was supposed to be getting Lucy at her house, so we could meet the boys at the park. It was our last night of the summer holidays, and we wanted to have some last few hours of fun before we were bombarded, once again, with schoolwork.

When I finally got Lucy, I could see that something had happened. She was hyper; far more excited than I could ever remember seeing her. She told me she had seen something fall into the forest and, being the good friend (and idiot) that I am, I agreed to go with her to find it.

She led us to Mishelgan hill and from there to the forest, which is situated right at the top of the hill. The forest was dark, but she’d had the sense to bring torches with her, so it wasn’t too bad. We did fall quite a few times, though.

Eventually, we found ourselves in a clearing. Well – a newly-created clearing; something had crashed here, and it in turn had caused several trees to break and fall, creating a wide, open space (with some broken wood in it, of course).

“What is that?” I asked Lucy breathlessly. I thought it was only out of excitement, or of wonder, but then I felt myself growing dizzy.

“A meteor,” she told me, also sounding short of breath. “I saw it crash. It was so beautiful…”

“Am I the only one who feels dizzy?” I asked Lucy as my vision worsened, turning to her with worried eyes.

“I thought it was just me,” Lucy answered slowly.

“Something’s wrong,” I told her, glancing around. The world was spinning; the trees were blurring into each other. “Something…”

Then everything turned black.

A meteor. I looked around at the large pieces of rock again, this time recognising them for what they truly were. Then, suddenly, I heard voices. They were distant, but they were there. Evidently, Lucy wasn’t the only who had seen the meteor fall.

“Lucy?” I called out quietly, pushing myself into a kneeling position despite my protesting, burning muscles. “Lucy!”

“I’m here,” she whispered. I turned around to see her crawling unsteadily towards me. “What on earth just happened, Katy?”

“I don’t know, Lucy, but we need to get out of here! People are coming – you’re not the only one who saw it crash-” I broke off, freezing as I heard a twig snap nearby. “Come on, Lucy! We need to go!”

She nodded in agreement, her eyes round with fear and confusion. “But go where, exactly?”

“Anywhere!” I exclaimed in a loud whisper, before grabbing her hand and pulling her up off the ground. “Seriously, Lucy, are you trying to get us caught?”

Although, how I could be worried about getting caught when I had just been rendered unconscious by a fallen meteor is something that, even to this day, I fail to understand.

“Sorry,” she mumbled quietly, taking her hand back so she could follow me and walk faster. We took the long route through the forest, eager to avoid running into anyone. It felt like hours had passed when we finally exited the forest and found ourselves standing on the hill again. I glanced around nervously, but nobody was there; obviously, everybody was either sleeping or already in the forest. I grabbed Lucy’s hand again, and pulled her down the hill with me, setting as fast a pace as I dared to on the slightly-damp ground.

“Right,” I told her quietly when we reached flat ground again. “We’ll just…go home, right? Clean ourselves up, get some sleep. Are you hurt at all?”

“My head’s killing me, but that’s it, really.”

“Good. That you’re not hurt worse, I mean. C’mon, I’ll walk you back home. I’ll get you earlier than usual tomorrow, right? That’ll give us time to talk about it… and figure out how we’ll deal with the boys, too.”

“Okay,” Lucy agreed, her expression vague. I could tell she was still in a daze.

 

 

It didn’t take us long to get to Lucy’s house, and I quietly bid her goodbye before heading back to my own house. I barely registered my actions at all as I crept through the silent house and into the bathroom; it wasn’t until I had the door locked behind me and I was standing at the sink, in front of the mirror, that I really became aware of anything. I raised an eyebrow at my reflection; I was filthy. I was covered in dry dirt, and semi-dried sweat, and my hair looked…a mess. It, too, had dirt in it, and some leaves, and already I was dreading having to brush it; I could see so many knots and tangles. I let out a tired sigh as I pushed the plug into the sink and turned on the water, staring at my wavering reflection in the water as it filled. When I finally turned off the tap and dunked a cloth into the water, I could have hit myself in frustration; somehow, I’d managed to fill the sink with cold water rather than hot. Grumbling to myself, I pushed my hand into the water again, as though it would suddenly heat up. No such luck. Biting my bottom lip to prevent myself from calling the sink immature names, I soaked the cloth in cold water and started wiping my face – and I jumped. The water on the cloth was…well, warm. I stared at the seemingly innocent cloth with wide eyes, sitting warm in my hand, and then brought it back up to my face. It was definitely warm. I dropped it back into the water, sloshing myself with little droplets that created dark spots on my clothes, and touched the water in the sink. Warm. There was no doubt about it: the water had somehow heated up. Or maybe I was just really tired – I certainly felt it. However, no matter the reason for the miraculous warmth of the water, I needed to clean myself - and so I did. I could think about the miracle of the water tomorrow.

 

 

 

When I woke up the next morning, I felt truly terrible. I was covered in sweat, and I could literally feel the heat that was radiating off of my body. Slowly, I pushed myself into a sitting position and glanced at my clock. It was seven thirty. Mum and dad would be at work by now…which meant I was alone in the house, as Jack would still be at his friend’s house. I sighed, pulling my sweaty hair back into a low ponytail, and slipped out of bed. I badly needed a shower. I locked the bathroom door behind me when I entered, even though the house was empty, turned on the water, and turned to look at my reflection in the mirror. I didn’t look any different than usual; the same lightly-tanned face was staring back at me, the same blue eyes gazing into my own, admittedly looking a little confused. I sighed again, vaguely noting that I seemed to be doing a lot of that lately, and turned to wait for the water in the shower to heat to a decent temperature.

 

 

 

Deciding that the water had to be warm enough by now, I stripped off my clothes and stepped into the shower. It wasn’t cold, exactly, but it certainly wasn’t warm. Someone – dad, probably – must have fiddled with the settings again. I sighed (again), trying to ignore my goose bumps (it was amazing how fast my body temperature could change, wasn’t it?) as I washed. It was when I reached for the shampoo bottle that I remembered what had happened last night…how the water had suddenly heated up for no apparent reason. I shivered, glancing at the sink. Did that really happen? It was impossible…but I’d never been one for imagining things, not even when I was really tired…and I certainly couldn’t imagine something as realistic as that. A small frown creased my brow as I set the shampoo bottle back down and watched the cool-ish water falling. I knew it sounded crazy, but I decided that maybe, if I wished hard enough, perhaps the water would heat up again. I mean, what was the worst that could happen? It wouldn’t work? I’d feel embarrassed? I closed my eyes in concentration, willing the water to heat up. I felt crazy, and incredibly thankful that nobody could see me doing this. You can imagine my shock when it actually worked, and the water heated up. As soon as I started to feel freaked out and lost my concentration, though, it turned cool again. By that point I was starting to feel really scared, so I gave my hair the quickest wash I’d ever given it, and didn’t bother drying properly before dressing myself and leaving the bathroom and into the relative safety of the rest of the house.

 

 

 

The kitchen was empty when I entered it – not that I’d expected otherwise, of course. Why would it be occupied? Everyone in the family was out, and we didn’t have a pet. I grabbed a banana from the fruit bowl (my stomach felt a little too queasy for a proper breakfast) and slowly sat down on one of the kitchen chairs, relieving my shaky legs of my weight. I tried not to think about anything in particular as I ate my banana, but the thoughts were harder to ignore when I finished it, without my being able to concentrate on chewing rather than thinking, and I soon found myself pouring cold water into a glass and sitting it on the table. I had heated water up twice. Imagining it once is stretching it pretty far with me, but imagining something like that twice? I didn’t think so. I couldn’t be imagining it…unless this was some freakishly long dream. Hey, maybe I hadn’t woken up yet? Maybe I was still lying in the forest, surrounded by large rocks and fallen trees...or, better yet, in the hospital?

Whatever.

I only had ten minutes until I had to leave to get Lucy, so if I wanted to do this…if I wanted to prove myself crazy, then I needed to hurry up. I took a step back from the table, and raised a hand in front of me, palm out and facing the glass. I nearly chickened out at that point, but I forced myself to go on. I focused on the water, willing it to heat up, as I had done with the sink and the shower. I started bending my fingers down, as though I were closing my hand into a fist…and, at first, nothing seemed to happen. Then the water started to bubble. Shocked, I stepped forward and brushed a finger over the glass – only to wince and pull it away instantly. It was hot.

What the hell was going on?

 

 

 

I tried to keep my face as blank as possible as I approached Lucy’s house. I didn’t want her to realize anything was wrong…I wasn’t ready to admit just yet, even to my best friend, that I thought I had lost my mind. Well, that, or everything we had been brought up to believe – like, fairy tales don’t exist, magic isn’t real, you know the stuff – was wrong. Okay, perhaps fairy tales don’t exist – I mean, really, is there ever such a thing as a happy ending in the real world? Magic, however…there had always been a part of me that believed in that, anyway. Like, I believed in telekinesis – and, occasionally, I would go through phases of believing that, as in Harry Potter, there were witches out there, hiding their powers from us. I did think, though, at that point in time, ‘heat power’ was stretching things a little.

“Hey, Katy,” Lucy smiled at me, bouncing out of the door before I’d even made it halfway up the path. How could she be so chipper, after what had happened? “How scary was last night?”

“Pretty scary,” I agreed, thinking more of the warm water than the comet. “Did you get in okay?”

“Of course. My parents are even deeper sleepers than yours, and you know what Jamie’s like. World War Three couldn’t wake him up.”

“Yeah, you’re right.” I grinned at her, hoping it reached my eyes. “I’d ask you if you’re hurt, or whatever, but you’ll – we’ll – probably get enough of that from the boys to last us a lifetime.”

“Tell me about it.” Lucy rolled her eyes and tucked her blonde curls behind her right ear. “They’re so overprotective of us. It’s annoying – as if our parents aren’t protective enough!”

“Hey, you should be glad we have friends like them.” I nudged her playfully, trying to act like my normal self. “Imagine if we were like Cindy, hmm? Fake friends?”

“I guess. Still, though. I find myself almost – well, dreading seeing them.”

I laughed. A proper laugh this time. “Yeah, I know what you mean.”

“Say, Katy…did anything happen when you got home last night?”

I stiffened, though I tried to hide it. Did she know…? Had she realized I was acting different, that something was wrong? “Why?”

“No reason.” Now Lucy was the one attempting to look casual. I frowned at her, and she lowered her gaze and shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. Forget about it.”

We stayed away from the topic of last night after that, although something at the back of my mind was nagging me, telling me to bring it back up, to tell her about what happened when I got home – to ask her what happened when she got home. I firmly pushed the niggly little feeling away, though. I wasn’t ready to talk about that. Not yet.

 

 

 

We weren’t wrong in our prediction of the boys’ reactions; we had barely stepped one foot into the school grounds when the three of them surrounded us, asking us what the heck had happened last night and demanding to know if we were okay.

“You tell us! Why weren’t you there?” I asked. “We went through the park first, to get you, and it was empty!”

“Billy forbade us from going,” Dave explained, a little bitterly. “He sensed that something was going to happen. By then, though, it was too late to stop you.”

“Oh,” I said dumbly.

“We tried to come after you anyway,” Dave told us. “Billy’s hard to get by, though.”

“So, what happened?” asked Lewis. “We couldn’t contact you, and I know what you two are like – if you see a meteor fall, of course you’re going to go investigate it.”

“Well, like you said,” Lucy said uncertainly, “we went to investigate it. I saw it crash from my window, so I knew where to go.”

“What was it like?” Mark asked.

“A bundle of rocks, and a lot of fallen trees,” I told him. “But, something happened…when we got there, it was like – I dunno, like something was in the air. It knocked us out for a bit.”

“Are you hurt, then?” Dave asked us, concern filling his eyes.

“Do we look hurt to you?” Lucy asked. They didn’t answer. “See? We’re fine. It just knocked us out for a bit – maybe there was some sort of gas trapped inside it when it fell. Not enough to hurt us, just…render us unconscious.”

“We’re fine,” I repeated when the boys still didn’t respond. Then, just as Mark opened his mouth to say something, the bell rang.

 

 

 

I shied away from my friends that day during our breaks, warming up water in the bathroom or burning leaves outside. The fact that my ‘power’ was still working, kept working every time I tried, swayed me from the idea of being crazy – but, at the same time, I couldn’t get my head around the fact that something like that – essentially, super powers – could ever be real. Even if I could believe that, how could I believe that I was the one with a super power? I was nothing special; I was just an ordinary girl – admittedly, with completely abnormal friends – who wanted to survive school, go to university, and write a novel when she was older. Completely ordinary, so why should I be the one to have such a rare, powerful, scary power when there were so many other people in the world far more deserving of it?

 

 

 

One thing I noticed with my ‘power’ was that it required practice to master. Whilst it never failed to heat things up or, in some cases, burn them, I could never get it to the same temperature each time: sometimes it would warm up to fifty degrees Celsius, and other times one hundred. A little unreliable…and dangerous, I supposed. So many things can go wrong if the wrong object is heated up to the wrong temperature – if I’ve learned anything from my science class, it’s that heat is a very dangerous thing to play around with.

 

 

 

Dave caught up with me after school, when I was walking home. I hadn’t hung around as late as usual that day, as I wanted time to clear my head – on my own. I tried not to look annoyed as he fell into step beside me.

“Are you sure you’re all right, Katy?”

I sighed at his worried expression. "Why wouldn’t I be?”

“You’ve been avoiding us.”

“I’ve been tired. I’m not avoiding anybody.” A weak lie, I suppose, but it was true – I did feel tired. Too tired. A side effect of my power, perhaps? It happens in TV shows, right? People use their power, they put too much energy into it, and they fall in to a coma. Geez, I hope that doesn’t happen to me. You know, even now, it still feels odd referring to it as ‘my power’. It was like a fantasy…or some freaky, yet highly realistic dream.

I jumped when Dave suddenly laced his fingers through mine.

“There’s something you aren’t telling me,” he said softly.

I scowled at him. “I hate your senses sometimes.”

He smiled. “I know. You have to admit, though, they’re handy.”

“Handy when they aren’t used against me, yes.” I sighed, and his smile disappeared.

“You know you can trust me,” he told me in a soft, sincere voice – the sort of voice that could make a troll’s heart melt.

“I know that,” I told him, determined not to let him win. “But – sometimes – a girl has to have her secrets, you know?”

“Not if it’s bothering you.”

“You’re hopeless, Dave,” I sighed, squeezing his fingers gently so he would know I didn’t mean it as an insult. “Look…there’s just something on my mind, okay? Something I – um – need to figure out…something I need to get used to. I’ll tell you when I’m ready, okay?”

“You promise?”

“A furry promise,” I vowed. He grinned at the name, and I couldn’t help but smile, too.

 

 

 

When we reached my house, Dave gave me a peck on the cheek before giving me a cheery wave and walking off towards his own house, which was only a five minute walk from my own. I watched him for a few moments before turning and entering the house. I dropped my bag and shoes beside the door and sidled into the kitchen for a banana, and there I found Jack. He was sitting at the table, staring at the ceiling with an anxious expression. I frowned, and sat my banana back down into the fruit bowl. The last time Jack had had a face like that was three years ago when he found out our uncle had cancer.

“Jack?” I asked softly. He jumped in his seat, and cricked his neck as he turned to face me.

“Katy!” he exclaimed. Then he seemed to pause; he was looking me up and down, as though something was wrong with me. Satisfied that nobody was ill – he would have told me already – I simply stood, watching him with a raised eyebrow.

“Finished eyeing me up yet?” I teased when his eyes returned to my own.

“I had to make sure you were all right,” he told me, a small frown marring his features again. “I saw you – last night. I was there, too.”

I froze.

“I was out for a walk in the park,” Jack told me. “I saw it crash – and I saw you and Lucy appear. I followed you, just to make sure you were all right.”

“I’m fine,” I said stiffly. “We both are. I didn’t see you last night.”

“I kept out of your sight.” He grinned sheepishly.

“Was Paul with you?” I asked. Paul was his friend, the one whose house he stayed at last night.

“No. He had an essay to finish.” Yeah, and Paul goes to university.

“Are you okay?”

“Course I am!” Jack exclaimed with false cheerfulness. “It takes more than a comet to get me.”

“Sure,” I rolled my eyes. He was hiding something, but, having my own secret too, I’d feel a tad hypocritical confronting him about it. “You won’t tell mum and dad, will you?”

“What sort of loser d’you take me for, Katy?” Jack asked, trying to act offended. “When have I ever grassed you up?”

“I had to make sure.” I shrugged, and grinned.

 

 

 

I left soon after, banana in hand, to work on the homework I’d gotten that day. I only had one thing, and that was some simple trig. It didn’t take me long to finish, and I soon found myself sitting in my room without anything to do. I seized the opportunity to, again, practice my ‘power’. I wanted so badly to be able to use it properly – I guess I felt like if I could master some control over it, I wouldn’t feel as crazy.

 

 

 

I found some scrap paper and sat it on my desk (on top of even more scrap paper; I didn’t want to accidentally burn my own desk!), and then fetched my banana skin (which is kind of gross, I know) and sat it on the paper, too. I worked on the paper first, trying to slowly burn each piece of it. Some pieces still burned faster than others, and one of them caught so much fire that it very nearly did burn the desk. The banana peel required a bit more energy; I could actually feel myself growing tired as I burned it! In the end, I only burned half of the peel; I didn’t want to completely tire myself out.

“Katy?” Jack asked from my door, before opening it slowly. I froze for the second time that day as he saw the burned paper and banana peel still sitting on my desk. “What on earth –?”

“It’s for science,” I blurted out. “We’re looking at how burning things affects them – technically, we’re not getting set this homework ‘til next week, but since I had nothing else to do…”

“Right.” I could tell from his tone of voice he didn’t believe me. In fact, he had that sort of anxious look - the sort of look that says he thinks he knows something, but doesn't want to believe it - back on his face. “Lucy’s here.”

“Uh, right. I’ll just, um, be down in a second.” As soon as he left, I shoved everything into my bin and covered it with some normal, crumpled paper. That done, I quickly changed into a pink tank top and jeans before jumping down the stairs, two at a time – crash!

Suddenly, all I was aware of was a dizzying view, the feeling of falling, and a sharp pain in my elbow.

“Are you okay?” Lucy asked uncertainly, appearing out of nowhere to give me a hand up.

“Sure,” I mumbled, rubbing my newly-injured elbow. It wasn’t as bad as the last fall I had, right at the start of the holidays, when I thought I had broken my wrist. I can be rather clumsy, sometimes. “C’mon, let’s go,” I told her, sensing Jack watching us. She frowned at my apparent desperation to get out of the house, but didn’t argue.

 

 

 

“Is everything okay with Jack?” she asked as we started walking up the street.

“Yeah.” I shrugged. “Really,” I added when she raised an eyebrow. “So where are we going?” I asked, trying to change the subject.

“I want to look at that meteor again,” Lucy told me, taking the hint. “I didn’t get much of a chance to see it last night – not that I could have seen much, anyway, in the darkness.”

“Sounds good,” I said with a smile. I was rather curious about it, too; it, apparently, had given me heat power, or whatever you wanted to call it. “Hey – did you see anyone there last night?” I blurted out.

“No,” Lucy said uncertainly, glancing at me. “Was someone there?”

“Jack was,” I sighed.

“You’re kidding!”

“Nope. He won’t tell anyone, though.”

“I know he won’t. He’s cool. But still…we should have noticed him! Everything Dave and the others taught us about 'being aware of our surroundings'...”

“Easy for them to say. We’re only human.” I shrugged. She rolled her eyes at our favourite, and extremely overused, phrase.

 

 

 

It seem to take much less time than before to work our way up the hill and through the forest. I had a vague idea of where we were going but, again, I let Lucy take the lead. When we finally arrived in the little clearing, I blinked; it was empty. Not of the meteor – no, parts of that were still there (although, I think some pieces were gone) – but of people; and I had fully expected to find police, or meteortologists (I have no idea what those guys who collect space rock are called, so ‘meteortologists’ will do, okay?), or something. A meteor had fallen, for Pete’s sake! People were supposed to investigate it, not just leave it…lying here! I stared at the rock, several metres ahead of us, and quite suddenly I was hit with the feeling of being watched by something – or someone.

“Is it just me, or does something feel wrong?” I asked Lucy in an undertone.

“I feel it too,” she whispered. “We can’t go back now, though. I want to see it.”

I sighed. “I knew you would say that…I want to see it too, though. Come on.”

And so, against my better judgment, we walked towards the fallen, partially destroyed meteor. It was smaller than I remembered, but then, like I said earlier, people probably took away some of it to run experiments or something on. The main part of the meteor was charcoal black, burned from the intense heat generated whilst it travelled, and several smaller rocks lay littered beside it, having fallen off when it crashed.

“Wow,” I heard Lucy breathe, and I realized she had stepped closer to it. I frowned before moving to stand beside her, and I knew why she had said ‘wow’. I could feel energy pouring off of it; it was warming my body, it was speeding up my pulse. It was creeping into my mind, rendering it useless, and was making me think of a fiery forest and a thunderstorm.

And then something felt wrong. So very, very wrong, and it was enough to distract me, to pull me out of my unusual thoughts. I stepped back with a gasp, trying to shake myself out of it, and out of the corner of my eye I saw a man. Our eyes connected for a moment, and the feeling that something was wrong grew; and as we gazed into each others eyes, I felt like he knew me. He knew something about me, something that I didn’t know, and he looked…impatient? Annoyed? Just as I started to open my mouth – though, what I was planning to say, I really don’t know – he whirled around, and disappeared into the trees. My hands were trembling – from exhilaration or fear, I didn’t know – and my breathing was coming in short, painful spurts. I stared at the spot where he had stood only moments before with wide eyes, before I remembered what had happened before he had distracted me

“Lucy?” I asked shakily, stepping forward and placing a hand on her shoulder. “Lucy!”

She jumped, and I flinched back. Her breathing was as bad as mine.

“What the hell was that?” she asked, even as she tried to breathe normally.

“How should I know? There was a man, though, Lucy! He was – I dunno – watching us, or something. I told you something was wrong!”

“I felt it too, you know…but I had to check…” She trailed off, and turned back to face it.

“It’s dangerous,” I blurted, grabbing her arm and pulling her away. “If that man, whoever he was – if he hadn’t distracted me…”

“Yeah,” Lucy shuddered, linking her arm through mine. “Maybe we should stay away from it.”

“Agreed.”

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Big thanks to laugheableblackstorm, from fictioncentral, for betaing this chapter! ^_^
Let me know what you think!

 

Reviews

[Lizzie]

I really enjoyed this, Shannon. You have come a long way with your writing - it's fantastic.
My only skepticism is how you never told us who Jack is in relation to Lucy. I'm assuming he's her brother, as that seems most reasonable, but I was a bit lost when he entered the story without any sort of explanation.
Kudos, keep up the great work!