DIFFERENT (Different Series Book 1)

Different

ERIN J CROSS

Copyright © 2014

All Rights Reserved
. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.

Chapter One

Then

It had begun with a fire.

              The crimson and amber flames had engulfed the building with vicious ferocity. I’d felt the heat brush against my skin, and the smoke had tingled in the back of my throat.

              I’d never been over fond of possessions, probably because I was used to not having any. Still, I didn’t enjoy having to watch the Kingstons’ belongings and home become one with the flames.  However horrible their son might have been to me as they stood by, oblivious, I knew that they didn’t deserve this.

              I hadn’t meant for it to happen. I’d still been in denial about what I was truly capable of, hadn’t realised what I was doing. We all kid ourselves sometimes, though, don’t we? Whether it be that we will make the netball team, come top in the history test, or simply fit in and are normal. That’s all I’d really wanted, just to be normal.

              Staring up at the flames that I’d created, I knew that I was far from normal, and this fact terrified me.

Now

I sat cross-legged on my swirly pink bedcover, typing my English homework out on my laptop as I nodded my head along to the Katy Perry album I had blaring out. Louisa had insisted that I borrow it, and even though I wasn’t expecting to like it, I actually kinda did.

              I looked around at my small but cosy hot pink painted room. It wasn’t a colour that I’d have chosen, but I was getting used to it, even though my foster parents Gloria and Terry said it could be repainted if I wanted. It had been Louisa’s room, but she’d moved into her brother’s bigger room after he’d moved out of the home, which meant that I got her old room.

              I’d currently been living with the Prestons for a month, and it was far better than any foster home I’d stayed in before. They’d instantly made me feel welcome instead of treating me like an outsider.  They introduced themselves to me by their first names, and they didn’t talk to me in a babyish voice or ask me a trillion times if I was okay. Instead they’d treated me like I was human, and on the first day, they had told me that I could be in charge of walking their husky, Alf, at least once a day.

              I was glad that I wasn’t in London anymore and that instead I was an hour away from it in a quaint town called Oakwood, which was surrounded by more fields than I’d seen in my entire life. I was glad that I’d been given a fresh start. I wasn’t going to mess it up this time because I was actually starting to like it here. No one knew me. I could just blend in and be normal; well, at least try to be.

              ‘Celeste,’ Louisa shouted, as she barged into my room. ‘Mum says can you turn it down.’

              ‘Sure,’ I smiled, as I turned the music volume down on my laptop.

              ‘I knew you’d like it,’ she grinned, as she fiddled with the strap of her lacy pale pink vest top.

              At thirteen, Louisa was a couple of years younger than me, which was kinda cool because I’d always wanted a little sister. She was also the girliest person I’d ever met in my life. In the whole month I’d known her, she’d always been in at least one item of pink clothing. 

              ‘It’s okay, I suppose,’ I smirked.

              ‘You like it. If you didn’t you wouldn’t have been attempting to deafen us all with it,’ she darted from one foot to the other as she spoke. Typical Louisa, as she couldn’t stay still for long.

              When I’d first met her, she’d instantly made me think of the wrens that used to perch in the branches of the old oak tree that was at one of my previous foster homes. She was small and quick like they were, and although on the surface, with her pale skin and long wavy blonde hair, she looked delicate, on the inside she was much tougher than she appeared.

              ‘Maybe I was trying to deafen everyone so that they wouldn’t have to endure it ever again.’ I placed a loose strand of my shoulder length black hair behind my ear and repositioned one of my legs.

              ‘You can’t fool me, you liked it.’ She perched onto the edge of my bed and swung out her legs. ‘That’s good if you like her; it means you can come and see her with me when she’s next touring.’

              ‘Well, if no one else would go with you, I guess I may take pity on you and everything. I’m nice like that,’ I smiled.

              ‘Yeah, so nice,’ she giggled. ‘Anyways, now I can actually think, I’m going to go finish my homework before dinner. Mum’s made her homemade lasagne, which is quite possibly the best thing ever.’

              ‘Sounds good.’

              I watched her dart towards the door and leave my room, and I resisted the urge to blast the music out again.

              I tried to go back to completing my homework, but without the music I found myself struggling to concentrate. It was then that I found myself on the internet, typing into the search engines. It was then that I found myself staring at the picture of the burnt ruins of the house that I used to live in.

              ‘I’m sorry,’ I said to the screen, as I became too mesmerised by the picture to look away from it.

              Hearing sounds outside of my room caused me to click off the picture with frantic speed before staring at my bedroom door, which I noticed Louisa had left ajar.

              The door opened, and Alf panted his way in and came over to me, placing his front paws onto my bed and sticking his tongue out at me.

              ‘Hey, boy.’ I stroked his head, paying particular attention to his ears, which were his favourite place to be stoked. ‘I will walk you after dinner.’

              On hearing the word ‘walk,’ he put his legs back down onto the floor and looked at me and then at the door.

              ‘Later,’ I chuckled, as I watched him pant out of the room.

              I turned my focus back to my laptop and went back to typing out my homework.

I managed a couple of words before the image of the burning house came back into my head. Mrs Kingston’s sobs as her husband held her in his arms and they watched on as the fire brigade fought against the flames. Most of all I remembered the way that Max stood there with his arms folded across that stupid navy blue hoodie that he never seemed to take off. He gave me just one glance before looking away from me. A look that told me that he knew exactly what I was and what I had done.

‘Go away, go away,’ I said under my breath, as I knocked the back of my head into the palms of my hands.

I just wanted the fire, Max, and my past out of my head. I wasn’t the same afraid girl as I had been back then; I had a new life now, and I wasn’t going to mess it up. This time I was going to fit in. This time I was going to be normal.

***

I sat around the large round pine table next to Louisa. Gloria and Terry sat opposite us, although Gloria had barely touched her food, as she kept leaving the table to get us drinks or give us extra helpings of food.

I put a forkful of lasagne into my mouth as Alf sat by my feet under the table, eagerly waiting for one of us to drop some food. Turns out that Louisa had been right about her mom’s lasagne being the best. I was already on my second portion, and to make it even better, there was crusty homemade garlic bread to go with it.

‘Did you girls have a good day at school?’ Gloria asked, as she finally sat down and lifted up her fork.

‘Yeah, it was really good. I got the highest mark on my history test, and then at running club I was the fastest I’d ever been, and Mr Higgins said that he thinks that I have real potential. I even beat Candice Morrison,’ Louisa said, before she grabbed another piece of garlic bread out of the porcelain dish in the middle of the table.

‘Well done, darling,’ Gloria smiled.

‘Yeah, well done, love,’ Terry said, as he placed his cutlery down on his empty plate. ‘And thank you, Gloria. It was delicious as always.’

‘Thank you, but it was nothing really. So how was your day, Celeste?’

There it was: the question that I used to dread ever being asked. The truth was my day had been quite good. I seemed to blend into my new school, which I’d never done before. The problem was that I was so used to trying to move quickly away from this question that I found myself replying the same way that I always used to.

‘Yeah, it was all right.’

‘Only all right?’ Gloria looked at me, concerned. ‘Are sure you’re settling into school life okay?’

‘Yes, it’s fine. It’s better than fine. It’s great,’ I smiled.

‘That’s good to hear. Remember that we’re all here if you ever have any problems.’

‘Thanks.’ I maintained my forced smile, but inside I was starting to feel sick. Maybe it was because I’d eaten too much, or maybe it was because my past refused to leave my head.

I looked at the immaculate woman who sat opposite me. Her golden skin barely showed any sign of age, her dark blonde hair was fixed up into an elegant looking bun, and the red lipstick she wore was the exact shade of her cotton blouse. She was perfect, this family was perfect, and I knew that I wasn’t. I destroyed things, even though I didn’t mean to.

I tried convincing myself that the Prestons weren’t like the other families and that it’d be different this time. It’d been a month, and nothing bad had happened. No one thought that I was odd; instead, I’d been in control, I’d been normal.

‘Right, who’s for dessert?’ Gloria asked as she stood up and started to clear up the plates. I noticed that, as usual, she’d only eaten half of her food.

‘Me,’ Louisa said excitedly.

She put the plates by the sink, and then she walked over to the fridge and took out a huge raspberry cheesecake. After dishing us up all a portion, she started to load up the dishwasher. She was like a real life Stepford Wife: she literally never seemed to stop.

After dinner I put Alf’s lead on and led him outside. It was a still autumn evening, the kind where the sky was starting to darken so that there was an eerie, gloomy feel to the place. Weird, really, but I always felt at my happiest when I was out walking Alf at this time. There were never many people around, and I found it refreshing being able to wander around without being distracted.

We walked through the various housing estates on our way to the park, and I didn’t take much notice of the pristine, detached houses. Before moving in with the Prestons I used to take far more notice of these houses while wondering what it’d be like to live in one and to have a proper family.

We practically had the whole park to ourselves, besides the middle-aged couple who were nearly at the gate as we walked in. I walked off the gravel path and onto the damp grass, and then I bent down to take Alf’s lead off.

He stared up at me eagerly as I picked up a nearby stick and threw it across the park, and then, without hesitation, he ran after it.

I grinned as I watched him pounce on the stick and wrestle with it before making his way back over to me with the stick in his mouth.

‘Okay, boy,’ I said, as I took it out of his slobbery mouth and prepared to throw it again.

The rabbit must have appeared from behind one of the bushes or something, as it hadn’t been there a moment ago. Its ears pricked up on seeing Alf, and then it darted off.

‘No Alf, don’t. Get the stick instead,’ but it was no good, Alf didn’t want the boring old stick, not when he could have rabbit. He wasted no time in running after it.

I raced after him, a hopeless feeling of panic twisting in my gut. I couldn’t lose the Prestons’ dog; that just couldn’t happen.

I could barely make Alf out anymore, he was so far out across the park. I looked around myself quickly before taking a deep breath. I couldn’t lose Alf; I couldn’t mess up my new life. No one was around, so no one would see.

I focused on the blurred figure of Alf that I could just make out. I focused so intensely that my eyes felt strained and my head began to hurt. That’s when Alf started to move across the park, as if someone stood in front of him, dragging him. He let out a wail and tried to run off, but he was under my grip, and I wanted him to come towards me.

He looked scared and confused: he didn’t understand why he couldn’t run away even though he was trying to. His paws skimmed across the blades of grass, and he pricked his ears up and wailed louder.

I knew that I shouldn’t have done it, yet, at the same time, I had to admit that it felt good. That was the problem with being able to do what I could: sometimes it became addictive. Sometimes I felt like I couldn’t stop myself.

When Alf landed by my feet, I bent down and attached his collar before I stroked him. He jerked his head back and barked at me as he tried to rub the collar off against one of his front legs.