Read an extract from the book:
Prologue
My name is Samantha Williams, I’ve lived for seventeen years, nearly eighteen and there’s one question I still can’t find the answer to. I think it’s the same question that everyone knows there is no real answer to: why do we have to die?
There’s the obvious reason, our bodies aren’t made to live long, but why aren’t our bodies made to live forever? There’s the whole religion aspect, that everyone has a time and it’s God who causes our life and our death, but I don’t like that. It means that my mom and dad were supposed to die when I was three. It’s saying that I was destined to be left parentless and with the knowledge that this world is cruel, and oh yeah, full of vampires. I mean that literally, by the way. Because my mom and dad weren’t just murdered, they were slaughtered by two vampires who broke their way into my house and ripped out my parent’s lives right in front of me.
I know what you’re thinking, but I’m not insane. I might have spent five years in an asylum over in England, but that was simply because people just thought that I was insane which is completely different from actually being insane let me assure you.
I got out of the asylum when I was nine. I hadn’t changed my mind on the fact that vampires existed, I just learnt to stop insisting that everyone else should know it too. Of course, I was still that half-English-half-American kid who grew up in a psych-ward so I had a rocky time getting back into society. No one wanted to adopt me (big surprise there), but there was never a shortage of foster parents.
Since my parents had died, it meant that their money went to me, so by default I was loaded. There’d been tons of law suits over it, the money I mean, and it had finally been decided that since I was too young to actually do anything with the money, my money would fund whoever cared for me, hence the constant stream of fosters.
This year that was all going to change. This was my last year with a foster family and then that money would be mine. No fosters, no high school, and no stupid social worker. This was the year I would meet him.
There’s the obvious reason, our bodies aren’t made to live long, but why aren’t our bodies made to live forever? There’s the whole religion aspect, that everyone has a time and it’s God who causes our life and our death, but I don’t like that. It means that my mom and dad were supposed to die when I was three. It’s saying that I was destined to be left parentless and with the knowledge that this world is cruel, and oh yeah, full of vampires. I mean that literally, by the way. Because my mom and dad weren’t just murdered, they were slaughtered by two vampires who broke their way into my house and ripped out my parent’s lives right in front of me.
I know what you’re thinking, but I’m not insane. I might have spent five years in an asylum over in England, but that was simply because people just thought that I was insane which is completely different from actually being insane let me assure you.
I got out of the asylum when I was nine. I hadn’t changed my mind on the fact that vampires existed, I just learnt to stop insisting that everyone else should know it too. Of course, I was still that half-English-half-American kid who grew up in a psych-ward so I had a rocky time getting back into society. No one wanted to adopt me (big surprise there), but there was never a shortage of foster parents.
Since my parents had died, it meant that their money went to me, so by default I was loaded. There’d been tons of law suits over it, the money I mean, and it had finally been decided that since I was too young to actually do anything with the money, my money would fund whoever cared for me, hence the constant stream of fosters.
This year that was all going to change. This was my last year with a foster family and then that money would be mine. No fosters, no high school, and no stupid social worker. This was the year I would meet him.
Chapter One
Madison, my foster mom (now an ex-foster) waved bye at customs. She wasn’t allowed through because she hadn’t got a ticket. Just me. I was moving to Seattle and I wasn’t coming back. I don’t mean that in a harsh way, it’s just that every time I moved from a foster house I had a good reason. This time it was because some prat had threatened to smash my windows in if I got a car – and I had really wanted to get a car. Moving house and exchanging families now was sort of like swapping out a cell phone for a better model. Everyone does it when they get bored of their old cell phone and had used up all the apps, gotten a few scratches, smashed in the screen and then: buy a new cell phone. It happens.
It could have been one of those soulful movie montages, but I don’t think Madison felt that way about me. I know I didn’t feel that way about her. We’d never really gotten close. It was my money she had been looking after anyway.
All my stuff had been sent over to my new house, aside from the clothes that I was wearing and my bag with my phone and a book for the plane. I had felt no attachment to my old family. Like I’d said, moving was sort of a mundane thing to me now. But one thing struck me as strange this time I moved. And it wasn’t Seattle’s weather, because I generally picked gloomy places to live (made me feel like I was back in England). It was the feeling that I was getting into something way over my head.
As soon as I got on the bus to Seattle, I felt as though I’d been to Meadowbrook before. And I really hadn’t. Previous to my parent’s murder I’d lived in New York, and after that I’d lived in England. I’d come back to the US and that’s when the line of fosters came, and one place I’d never had a foster house in was Seattle. So when I got on the bus to Seattle and I started to get that feeling of recognition… I was kinda freaked out.
I plugged in my headphones and started listening to Lady Gaga, my favourite artist. She wasn’t just my favourite artist because I liked her songs (her original songs that is), but because her songs had a deeper meaning behind them to me. When I was finally released from the asylum her song had been top of the charts. Her music literally meant freedom to me and right at that moment in time freedom was exactly what I needed when I was trapped on a stuffy bus filled with heavy breathing people. Pissed off people, might I add, because the first thing I did was open a window and let in a huge gust of wind blowing rain into the bus. Hey, I didn’t want to spend the entire ride breathing in their used air.
As soon as I neared my final destination I felt as though the trees even looked sad. I knew how they felt. It was as though nature knew what I was feeling and could mirror my mood exactly. I’d sat on this particular bus for an hour, and my ass was numb. I needed to get off.
When the bus slowed down to stop off near a café, I got off quickly. I was probably close enough to my foster house anyway. I turned down my music and walked though the rain into the café. I didn’t exactly have any directions to Molly and Kent’s house (my new foster parents), so I thought that I might get some directions in there. It wasn’t exactly a bad idea.
I pulled down my leather hood and wiped my shoes on the mat in the door way. My entire outfit was soaked, like I had just gone for a swim and had forgotten to change out of my clothes. I pulled a hair tie off my wrist and tied up my long black hair.
It was probably rude if I asked for directions on a whim without buying anything, so I took a seat in an empty booth, looking around my surroundings as I waited for a waitress to come over to me.
The café around me was exactly the same as every other café I’d ever been to. There were groups of women sitting huddled together deep in conversation, a table filled with men, laying out their laptops and briefcases on the surface of the table and the waitresses in their battered old uniforms.
It wasn’t really that interesting; I had been in LA for a couple of months so really a Seattle café didn’t really top my scale of cool. It wasn’t the place or the people that made me stay in towns, I suppose if it was I would stay in the same town longer. I would’ve made friends and they would’ve persuaded me to stay. Of course, that’s not to say I hadn’t made friends in other towns, but they couldn’t help that people talked too much, they gossiped and it ruined the whole relationship thing – just like the two women at the counter who were starting a new conversation about me.
“Did you see her come off the bus? Window open all the way here, not a care in the world for the other people,” The woman said to her friend.
“It’s the new child the Masons are fostering. Molly told me that she’s had twenty nine foster homes before coming here to Seattle,” The friend said, taking a sip of her steaming cup of coffee.
“I heard that she doesn’t even use excuses to move onto a new foster house. She just decides and leaves. She’s been all over America Moll’ said. I’m guessing that it’s a bad break up that makes her move,” The middle aged woman said.
“Really… In every town?”
“Well, just look at her. She seems like the type.”
They were talking quietly so that I couldn’t hear, but it was like a remote had been switched and I could hear what they were saying and I sort of had a right. They were talking about me and other guys so I had a right to listen in. Little did they know what ever info they had on me would probably be wrong. Apart from Molly Mason being my new foster mom, and the part about me having twenty nine foster homes, and the part about me not using excuses from moving to place to place, but they were dead wrong about the guy thing. I’d never had a serious relationship in my entire life… or any relationship, actually. Sure, guys seemed interested in me, but the whole ‘night of the living dead’ look that I had put most guys off from actually going further than just comments on how hot I looked. Basically, they were only wrong on one account, but those women were still wrong about me!
A waitress came up to my table and asked what I would like to order. She was sort of pretty in a plain way. She had natural blond hair, which was a refreshing change, since most blonds were peroxided. She had these aquatic blue eyes that looked straight into mine, like she was seeing through me. That was when I sort of registered that she was looking at the red ring that went all the way around the pupil of my eye.
I hadn’t had red eyes at birth, because I don’t really think that there is a genetic way to have red eyes like mine. The iris that most people have, the pretty blue like the blond waitress or a brown colour is something you get when you’re born, from your DNA. My eyes became like this on that day, when the vampires had killed my parents. I don’t know how it happened, even vampires don’t have the same glowing red colour that I had, but it did and the thing that annoyed me the most about the colour was the fact that it would not go away, even if I wore contacts.
“Water?”
It sounded like more of a question than a reply. I wasn’t really sure what the traditional thing to order was when you were just in there to get directions, but I thought that water might be a safe bet.
“Yes, we have water. Is there anything else you would like?”
“Do you know the directions to…?” I asked pointing to the address which I had written on my hand after my social worker had found my new foster home.
The waitress told me the directions, and then went off to fetch me my water.
I turned off my music and pulled out my cell from my pocket, playing a game on it until my water came. I was half way through drinking my water when my pocket began to vibrate, and my ring tone sounded out, drawing attention to me.
I looked at the caller ID and sighed. It was my social worker, Mr. Optimist. His real name was Mr Harris, but when I was nine I’d had a bit more sense of humour than I had now and had thought that calling him a name which would show his entire alter ego would make me feel more comfortable with the idea that this man was now going to (attempt to) control my life.
“What?” I said frustratingly though my cell speaker, gulping down the rest of my drink.
It had been known since day one that I hated his very existence. He was one of the constant reminders in my life that a normal family life was as far away from me as the idea of admitting to someone how my parents died and them responding with ‘that’s entirely probable and not at all insane’. One of the things which I hated (and something he loathed as well) was calling me up on my cell phone for a chat. He’d only call me personally if I was in trouble. Which I was a lot, so I’d either had to have done something exceedingly bad this time, or my foster parents had called him – which didn’t make any sense, because I couldn’t have done anything wrong yet as I hadn’t even met them.
“Did you get on your flight?” He asked rather irritatingly, he was not one for small talk.
“Really? You’ve called me up to ask me that question?”
I could imagine his face. His hand tracing his unshaven chin, his neck rasping as he took each breath of smoke contaminated air. It wasn’t like I cared he was determined to kill himself in a slow cancerous way, resulting in a horrible death with a lot of doctors crowding around his yellow skinned body putting their noses up at his foolishness to start smoking in the first place – it was just one of the many reasons I disliked him.
“Samantha!” He yelled loudly, I hoped the gossips over at the bar of the café couldn’t hear his irritated voice, because then that would start up a whole new topic on me.
“Yes, I got on the damn plane,” I said.
His complete a lack of faith in me was completely beyond normal and made no sense what so ever. I was the one who always had to pay to go to new cites/towns/states because you weren’t supposed to move from city/town/state every couple of months and I always told him where I wanted to go; why did he even ask whether I got on the plane? If I didn’t want to come to Seattle I could have chosen another place.
“Then why am I having phone calls from your new foster parents telling me that you haven’t arrived yet? I’m fed up of having to explain to this woman why her foster kid is missing. She’s going to figure out one day that you’re a complete screw up, but I would have thought that even you would have the curtsy to wait until you meet her to destroy her hopes of a normal foster kid.”
I sighed, some people just never changed.
“If you and Molly –” I said, reminding him of my new foster mom’s name as he’d no doubt forgotten, “– haven’t noticed, the damn sky is having a party and all the little rain drops are invited.”
I pulled on my coat and walked out of the café leaving a $20 on the table, thinking that would be around the right price for water and a tip. Probably a little bit too much of a generous tip, but I needed to get out of there. I didn’t want to be in a place full of prying eyes and ears, when I was talking to him, I’d rather listen to his pathetic rants when there was something else to distract me, like walking in a rain covered city.
“Jeez, you’d think that after a two hour flight I would be allowed a little time to get my bearing’s and have a little rest.”
I passed a few houses that looked quite nice along the way. I then stopped paying attention to where I was walking and just listened to what I knew was going to be a big rant about how I screwed up every family I went to and how this family wasn’t going to be any different.
He did, unfortunately, have a point. I didn’t like to admit it, but he did. It was probably the combination of red eyes and endless nightmares that really freaked people out and when you throw in a couple of run-ins with the law and my tendency to do the opposite of what anyone told me to do you could sort of understand why people’s lives got screwed up when I came in them.
“Get your bloody bearing’s? You can bloody do that at your new house, but of course, you don’t really want to go there, do you? I’d have thought that you would have learned by now that whatever town or house you chose is never going to be good enough for you. You need to grow up, Samantha. You need to get to that bloody house this second! I don’t care that it’s raining. I don’t care if there’s a fucking hurricane outside, you’re going to get off your ass – because knowing you you’re probably sitting in some cushy restaurant not giving a fucking damn about anyone but yourself – and you’re going to apologise to Molly and spend the next couple of months feeling fucking sorry for yourself and screwing with your new foster parents until you leave.”
What did I tell you?
I exited the call and looked around. The first thing I noticed was that my body was soaked. I hadn’t been able to zip up my coat, so water had run down my chest the entire time I had been walking. Other than that, I couldn’t see a thing. Where ever I was, I had literally walked so far away from the city that I could only see by natural light, and there wasn’t any natural light. I couldn’t even see the moon, because something was covering it.
I turned on my phone, my home screen image illuminating the place around me. The picture on my screen had been taken a year before the incident, before my parents had been killed. Just my mom, dad and I laughing like the happy family we had been. It had been taken on holiday, the picture. We’d had three more days of fun and sun left before we had to go back home. Back then we’d been the normal family. My mom always smiling at something funny that I did, even something ordinary which I did she’d find hilarious and laugh to my dad, like I was their own little joke. We’d been walking along the beach in Jacksonville when a woman had offered to take our photo. It was one of those old fashioned photo booths where you put your head under that cover thing attached to the camera, way out of date for 2003, but I thought it was really cute. I begged my mom to let us have a picture taken. My dad had said something about wanting to go back to the hotel and watch a football game (he was English so he meant soccer). I’d begged and begged and my mom had given in and she had told him to live for a moment, saying it would make a nice memory for me.
Flash.
That picture had taken a second, but the memory I had was the only one that I could remember of truly being happy before they died.
When I had been on the phone, I’d seemed to have followed a trail all the way up into one of the many forests that nestled around Seattle. Huge trees with vines stemming from every possible place and grass as tall as my knees with hundreds of different flowers and mosses surrounded me, enclosing every little space. The leaves above were so thick that they blocked the entire sky, explaining why the rain wasn’t coming down as hard, or why I hadn’t been able to see the moon.
I looked around, unsure of which way I had to go. I kept my cell phone on, so I could see where I was going, and walked back the way I thought would lead me back to civilization. There were slopes in the forest where trees had been chopped down, or where weather had worn away the soil, creating massive drops and inclines into the ground. They didn’t look like smooth drops either. Besides the small streams that had been made from the falling rain, rocks protruded from the slants, glaring at me, as though they were personally threatening me, telling me that it was only a matter of time before they came after me. I shuddered, thinking about what it would be like to be so unfortunate to fall down one of those drops and continued on walking.
I knew that I had been going the wrong way when all that stood in front of me was a huge gradient, and the kind which dropped down dangerously with rocks as sharp as panes of glass and stones as big as doors protruding from the ground. I cursed myself for thinking about what it would be like to fall down one as I walked towards the slope. I couldn’t turn back now. I needed to continue on walking. I could almost see the glow of street lamps a little way ahead, and the only way that I was going to get back to civilization in time was if I was to brave the hill.
I placed my foot down hoping that my shoes had a firm enough grip.
Okay, Sam. All you have to do is put one foot in front of the other, and then you’ll be fine.
I was about to step down onto another rock, the little words of encouragement giving me motivation to move on from one slippery rock to the next, and then I heard it. It was the smallest of sounds that wouldn’t have been noticed if I was in town, surrounded by chatting people, cars and the business of everyday human life, but out in the forest where all that could be heard was the sound of rain falling and my own shoes moving through the leaves, the sound of someone or something else moving through the forest could easily be heard. That one sound was all it had taken for my foot to lose the grip it’d had and for the rest of my body to fall after my foot. My body tumbled down the slope. Finally, I landed at the bottom of the drop, covered by a small river of leaves and rainwater and then… Nothing.
It could have been one of those soulful movie montages, but I don’t think Madison felt that way about me. I know I didn’t feel that way about her. We’d never really gotten close. It was my money she had been looking after anyway.
All my stuff had been sent over to my new house, aside from the clothes that I was wearing and my bag with my phone and a book for the plane. I had felt no attachment to my old family. Like I’d said, moving was sort of a mundane thing to me now. But one thing struck me as strange this time I moved. And it wasn’t Seattle’s weather, because I generally picked gloomy places to live (made me feel like I was back in England). It was the feeling that I was getting into something way over my head.
As soon as I got on the bus to Seattle, I felt as though I’d been to Meadowbrook before. And I really hadn’t. Previous to my parent’s murder I’d lived in New York, and after that I’d lived in England. I’d come back to the US and that’s when the line of fosters came, and one place I’d never had a foster house in was Seattle. So when I got on the bus to Seattle and I started to get that feeling of recognition… I was kinda freaked out.
I plugged in my headphones and started listening to Lady Gaga, my favourite artist. She wasn’t just my favourite artist because I liked her songs (her original songs that is), but because her songs had a deeper meaning behind them to me. When I was finally released from the asylum her song had been top of the charts. Her music literally meant freedom to me and right at that moment in time freedom was exactly what I needed when I was trapped on a stuffy bus filled with heavy breathing people. Pissed off people, might I add, because the first thing I did was open a window and let in a huge gust of wind blowing rain into the bus. Hey, I didn’t want to spend the entire ride breathing in their used air.
As soon as I neared my final destination I felt as though the trees even looked sad. I knew how they felt. It was as though nature knew what I was feeling and could mirror my mood exactly. I’d sat on this particular bus for an hour, and my ass was numb. I needed to get off.
When the bus slowed down to stop off near a café, I got off quickly. I was probably close enough to my foster house anyway. I turned down my music and walked though the rain into the café. I didn’t exactly have any directions to Molly and Kent’s house (my new foster parents), so I thought that I might get some directions in there. It wasn’t exactly a bad idea.
I pulled down my leather hood and wiped my shoes on the mat in the door way. My entire outfit was soaked, like I had just gone for a swim and had forgotten to change out of my clothes. I pulled a hair tie off my wrist and tied up my long black hair.
It was probably rude if I asked for directions on a whim without buying anything, so I took a seat in an empty booth, looking around my surroundings as I waited for a waitress to come over to me.
The café around me was exactly the same as every other café I’d ever been to. There were groups of women sitting huddled together deep in conversation, a table filled with men, laying out their laptops and briefcases on the surface of the table and the waitresses in their battered old uniforms.
It wasn’t really that interesting; I had been in LA for a couple of months so really a Seattle café didn’t really top my scale of cool. It wasn’t the place or the people that made me stay in towns, I suppose if it was I would stay in the same town longer. I would’ve made friends and they would’ve persuaded me to stay. Of course, that’s not to say I hadn’t made friends in other towns, but they couldn’t help that people talked too much, they gossiped and it ruined the whole relationship thing – just like the two women at the counter who were starting a new conversation about me.
“Did you see her come off the bus? Window open all the way here, not a care in the world for the other people,” The woman said to her friend.
“It’s the new child the Masons are fostering. Molly told me that she’s had twenty nine foster homes before coming here to Seattle,” The friend said, taking a sip of her steaming cup of coffee.
“I heard that she doesn’t even use excuses to move onto a new foster house. She just decides and leaves. She’s been all over America Moll’ said. I’m guessing that it’s a bad break up that makes her move,” The middle aged woman said.
“Really… In every town?”
“Well, just look at her. She seems like the type.”
They were talking quietly so that I couldn’t hear, but it was like a remote had been switched and I could hear what they were saying and I sort of had a right. They were talking about me and other guys so I had a right to listen in. Little did they know what ever info they had on me would probably be wrong. Apart from Molly Mason being my new foster mom, and the part about me having twenty nine foster homes, and the part about me not using excuses from moving to place to place, but they were dead wrong about the guy thing. I’d never had a serious relationship in my entire life… or any relationship, actually. Sure, guys seemed interested in me, but the whole ‘night of the living dead’ look that I had put most guys off from actually going further than just comments on how hot I looked. Basically, they were only wrong on one account, but those women were still wrong about me!
A waitress came up to my table and asked what I would like to order. She was sort of pretty in a plain way. She had natural blond hair, which was a refreshing change, since most blonds were peroxided. She had these aquatic blue eyes that looked straight into mine, like she was seeing through me. That was when I sort of registered that she was looking at the red ring that went all the way around the pupil of my eye.
I hadn’t had red eyes at birth, because I don’t really think that there is a genetic way to have red eyes like mine. The iris that most people have, the pretty blue like the blond waitress or a brown colour is something you get when you’re born, from your DNA. My eyes became like this on that day, when the vampires had killed my parents. I don’t know how it happened, even vampires don’t have the same glowing red colour that I had, but it did and the thing that annoyed me the most about the colour was the fact that it would not go away, even if I wore contacts.
“Water?”
It sounded like more of a question than a reply. I wasn’t really sure what the traditional thing to order was when you were just in there to get directions, but I thought that water might be a safe bet.
“Yes, we have water. Is there anything else you would like?”
“Do you know the directions to…?” I asked pointing to the address which I had written on my hand after my social worker had found my new foster home.
The waitress told me the directions, and then went off to fetch me my water.
I turned off my music and pulled out my cell from my pocket, playing a game on it until my water came. I was half way through drinking my water when my pocket began to vibrate, and my ring tone sounded out, drawing attention to me.
I looked at the caller ID and sighed. It was my social worker, Mr. Optimist. His real name was Mr Harris, but when I was nine I’d had a bit more sense of humour than I had now and had thought that calling him a name which would show his entire alter ego would make me feel more comfortable with the idea that this man was now going to (attempt to) control my life.
“What?” I said frustratingly though my cell speaker, gulping down the rest of my drink.
It had been known since day one that I hated his very existence. He was one of the constant reminders in my life that a normal family life was as far away from me as the idea of admitting to someone how my parents died and them responding with ‘that’s entirely probable and not at all insane’. One of the things which I hated (and something he loathed as well) was calling me up on my cell phone for a chat. He’d only call me personally if I was in trouble. Which I was a lot, so I’d either had to have done something exceedingly bad this time, or my foster parents had called him – which didn’t make any sense, because I couldn’t have done anything wrong yet as I hadn’t even met them.
“Did you get on your flight?” He asked rather irritatingly, he was not one for small talk.
“Really? You’ve called me up to ask me that question?”
I could imagine his face. His hand tracing his unshaven chin, his neck rasping as he took each breath of smoke contaminated air. It wasn’t like I cared he was determined to kill himself in a slow cancerous way, resulting in a horrible death with a lot of doctors crowding around his yellow skinned body putting their noses up at his foolishness to start smoking in the first place – it was just one of the many reasons I disliked him.
“Samantha!” He yelled loudly, I hoped the gossips over at the bar of the café couldn’t hear his irritated voice, because then that would start up a whole new topic on me.
“Yes, I got on the damn plane,” I said.
His complete a lack of faith in me was completely beyond normal and made no sense what so ever. I was the one who always had to pay to go to new cites/towns/states because you weren’t supposed to move from city/town/state every couple of months and I always told him where I wanted to go; why did he even ask whether I got on the plane? If I didn’t want to come to Seattle I could have chosen another place.
“Then why am I having phone calls from your new foster parents telling me that you haven’t arrived yet? I’m fed up of having to explain to this woman why her foster kid is missing. She’s going to figure out one day that you’re a complete screw up, but I would have thought that even you would have the curtsy to wait until you meet her to destroy her hopes of a normal foster kid.”
I sighed, some people just never changed.
“If you and Molly –” I said, reminding him of my new foster mom’s name as he’d no doubt forgotten, “– haven’t noticed, the damn sky is having a party and all the little rain drops are invited.”
I pulled on my coat and walked out of the café leaving a $20 on the table, thinking that would be around the right price for water and a tip. Probably a little bit too much of a generous tip, but I needed to get out of there. I didn’t want to be in a place full of prying eyes and ears, when I was talking to him, I’d rather listen to his pathetic rants when there was something else to distract me, like walking in a rain covered city.
“Jeez, you’d think that after a two hour flight I would be allowed a little time to get my bearing’s and have a little rest.”
I passed a few houses that looked quite nice along the way. I then stopped paying attention to where I was walking and just listened to what I knew was going to be a big rant about how I screwed up every family I went to and how this family wasn’t going to be any different.
He did, unfortunately, have a point. I didn’t like to admit it, but he did. It was probably the combination of red eyes and endless nightmares that really freaked people out and when you throw in a couple of run-ins with the law and my tendency to do the opposite of what anyone told me to do you could sort of understand why people’s lives got screwed up when I came in them.
“Get your bloody bearing’s? You can bloody do that at your new house, but of course, you don’t really want to go there, do you? I’d have thought that you would have learned by now that whatever town or house you chose is never going to be good enough for you. You need to grow up, Samantha. You need to get to that bloody house this second! I don’t care that it’s raining. I don’t care if there’s a fucking hurricane outside, you’re going to get off your ass – because knowing you you’re probably sitting in some cushy restaurant not giving a fucking damn about anyone but yourself – and you’re going to apologise to Molly and spend the next couple of months feeling fucking sorry for yourself and screwing with your new foster parents until you leave.”
What did I tell you?
I exited the call and looked around. The first thing I noticed was that my body was soaked. I hadn’t been able to zip up my coat, so water had run down my chest the entire time I had been walking. Other than that, I couldn’t see a thing. Where ever I was, I had literally walked so far away from the city that I could only see by natural light, and there wasn’t any natural light. I couldn’t even see the moon, because something was covering it.
I turned on my phone, my home screen image illuminating the place around me. The picture on my screen had been taken a year before the incident, before my parents had been killed. Just my mom, dad and I laughing like the happy family we had been. It had been taken on holiday, the picture. We’d had three more days of fun and sun left before we had to go back home. Back then we’d been the normal family. My mom always smiling at something funny that I did, even something ordinary which I did she’d find hilarious and laugh to my dad, like I was their own little joke. We’d been walking along the beach in Jacksonville when a woman had offered to take our photo. It was one of those old fashioned photo booths where you put your head under that cover thing attached to the camera, way out of date for 2003, but I thought it was really cute. I begged my mom to let us have a picture taken. My dad had said something about wanting to go back to the hotel and watch a football game (he was English so he meant soccer). I’d begged and begged and my mom had given in and she had told him to live for a moment, saying it would make a nice memory for me.
Flash.
That picture had taken a second, but the memory I had was the only one that I could remember of truly being happy before they died.
When I had been on the phone, I’d seemed to have followed a trail all the way up into one of the many forests that nestled around Seattle. Huge trees with vines stemming from every possible place and grass as tall as my knees with hundreds of different flowers and mosses surrounded me, enclosing every little space. The leaves above were so thick that they blocked the entire sky, explaining why the rain wasn’t coming down as hard, or why I hadn’t been able to see the moon.
I looked around, unsure of which way I had to go. I kept my cell phone on, so I could see where I was going, and walked back the way I thought would lead me back to civilization. There were slopes in the forest where trees had been chopped down, or where weather had worn away the soil, creating massive drops and inclines into the ground. They didn’t look like smooth drops either. Besides the small streams that had been made from the falling rain, rocks protruded from the slants, glaring at me, as though they were personally threatening me, telling me that it was only a matter of time before they came after me. I shuddered, thinking about what it would be like to be so unfortunate to fall down one of those drops and continued on walking.
I knew that I had been going the wrong way when all that stood in front of me was a huge gradient, and the kind which dropped down dangerously with rocks as sharp as panes of glass and stones as big as doors protruding from the ground. I cursed myself for thinking about what it would be like to fall down one as I walked towards the slope. I couldn’t turn back now. I needed to continue on walking. I could almost see the glow of street lamps a little way ahead, and the only way that I was going to get back to civilization in time was if I was to brave the hill.
I placed my foot down hoping that my shoes had a firm enough grip.
Okay, Sam. All you have to do is put one foot in front of the other, and then you’ll be fine.
I was about to step down onto another rock, the little words of encouragement giving me motivation to move on from one slippery rock to the next, and then I heard it. It was the smallest of sounds that wouldn’t have been noticed if I was in town, surrounded by chatting people, cars and the business of everyday human life, but out in the forest where all that could be heard was the sound of rain falling and my own shoes moving through the leaves, the sound of someone or something else moving through the forest could easily be heard. That one sound was all it had taken for my foot to lose the grip it’d had and for the rest of my body to fall after my foot. My body tumbled down the slope. Finally, I landed at the bottom of the drop, covered by a small river of leaves and rainwater and then… Nothing.