DIFFERENT (Different Series Book 1) (4 page)

              ‘Sorry,’ I mumbled out, ‘I was just looking for my friend.’

              ‘That’s all right,’ he grinned. ‘I came up here to escape the lame music. You wanna take a seat? I don’t bite.’ He patted the free space on his bed.

              I blushed before I sat down next to him, placing my jacket by my side. His dark blue walls were covered in various band and film posters, and he had a skull and crossbones flag hung up behind his bed.

              ‘So you’re a friend of my sister’s then?’

              ‘Yeah, kinda,’ I said, the realisation hitting me that he was Megan’s brother.

              ‘So what’s your name?’ He edged himself closer to me, so that his legs were touching mine.

              ‘Celeste.’

              ‘Neat name, mine’s Brandon,’ he grinned, revealing his slightly crooked front teeth, an imperfection that only added to his attractiveness. ‘You in my sister’s year then? Don’t think I’ve seen ya about school.’

              ‘Yeah, I started a month ago.’

              ‘Do you like it around here?’ he said, as he placed his hand on my leg. I flinched, but he didn’t take it away.

              ‘Yeah, it’s okay,’ I muttered, before standing up abruptly. ‘I better go and find my friend.

              ‘Hey, what’s the rush?’ he stood up and grabbed my arm.

              ‘I need to find him,’ I tried shaking his grip off me, but this only caused him to tighten it.

              ‘Your boyfriend doesn’t need to know you’re here. I’ll never tell,’ he smirked as he pulled me in closer to him so that I could feel his breath on my face.

              ‘No, I wanna go.’ I tried to flinch free from his grip, which caused him to grab onto my other arm.

              I had an image of Max’s face in my head, and the smug look he gave me when he knew that he was in control. I stopped him, and I could stop Brandon, too.

              All the posters on his walls simultaneously tore themselves in half.

              ‘What the-’ he said, his grip tightening on me so that I felt his nails start to dig into my flesh.

              I focused hard on him, noticing the mole on his left cheek and the hint of green that speckled his otherwise blue eyes. I focused as hard as I could, and that was when his fingers started to curl back off my arms. He looked down, horrified, not understanding what was happening. Still, his fingers kept curling backwards.

              ‘Make it stop!’ he screamed out.

              I blinked my eyes, and that’s when he brought his hands up to his face and moved his fingers. At least he could still move them and they weren’t broken. At least I’d stopped in time.

              He was staring at me like I was a monster. Tears filled my eyes as I turned and ran out of his room.

              I’d just wanted to make him feel like he’d made me, scared and helpless. I hadn’t actually wanted to hurt him. I’d ruined everything, my whole new life, everything. Maybe I should have just let him have done what he wanted to, at least then I wouldn’t be standing outside of his room struggling to breathe.

              I knew that I hadn’t meant that, though. Brandon had no right to hurt me; he had no right to have done what he did. He was more of a monster than I’d ever be.

              There was still a queue on the landing. Someone was shouting my name, but I ignored them and started to run down the stairs. I just wanted to get out of here. I just wanted to go back to the Prestons.

              The music was still blaring out, and the hallway was still packed full of people. I shoved my way past them and ran outside, the cold night air hitting me with effect.

              ‘Celeste,’ a voice I recognised said, causing me to turn around.

              Leo puffed his way over to me, grinning like everything was fine.

              ‘I’ve been looking for you,’ he said before taking in my teary eyes, and his grin faltered.

              ‘No, I was looking for you, but you left with her,’ I sobbed out.

              ‘What’s happened?’ He lifted up my arm and traced a finger over the red mark Brandon had caused. ‘Who did this to you, Celeste?’

              ‘No one, okay? Not that it matters. It doesn’t matter because I sorted it.’ I shook his hand off me and walked off up the driveway.

              ‘Hey, come back!’ He ran after me.

              ‘Please Leo, I’m okay, really. Go back to your girlfriend.’

              ‘Why are you being like this?’

              ‘Because you practically dragged me to this party, and then you ditched me.’

              ‘It’s a party, you can’t expect me to babysit you.’

              I felt like someone was repeatedly stabbing at me with a needle. Was I just a nuisance to him? Was he just too nice to tell me when to go? I walked briskly up the road.

              ‘Celeste, come back. You know I didn’t mean that,’ he shouted, but soon his words dissolved and I was left alone in the dark, and to make it worse, I’d left my jacket in that jerk’s bedroom.

              I rubbed my arms together as I walked, a confusion of thoughts swirling through my head. Why couldn’t I just be normal, why’d I have to mess everything up? Did our friendship mean anything to Leo, or had he only spoken to me back on my first day at Oakwood because he felt sorry for me?

              ‘Hey,’ a voice said behind me. As I turned around, I thought that it’d be Leo, and I couldn’t hide my smile.

              It wasn’t Leo, and my smile fell. Instead, it was a boy with ash blonde hair, a year or two older than me. He was wearing a red zip-up top, and he had his hands in the pockets of his dark blue jeans.

              ‘I don’t want to scare you or anything, I just want to talk.’

              ‘Who are you?’

              ‘Just someone who gets what you’re about. Celeste, I don’t want to frighten you, only help you.’

              ‘How do you know my name?’ I asked, feeling a mix of caution and intrigue, yet I didn’t turn and run. I wanted to hear what he had to say.

              ‘I know what you can do, Celeste. I’ve been watching you, and then I saw you in the park.’

              ‘The boy by the entrance, that was you?’

              He nodded, and I found myself taking a few steps back.

              ‘Wait, if you’ve been watching me, then that was you on the school field, wasn’t it?’

              ‘Yeah, look, I don’t want any trouble.’ He took his hands out of his pockets and held them out in front of him. ‘Please, I can help you.’

              ‘I don’t need your help.’ I turned and I ran.

              I didn’t stop running, even when my limbs ached and my breathing became staggered. I was feeding off adrenaline, and it was carrying me home.

              The boy wasn’t following me anymore, which was good because I didn’t want to have to make him stop following me. I refused to do anything like that again tonight, or ever again. I didn’t want to be different. I just wanted to fit in.

              I dried the tears away from around my eyes, and I ran my fingers through my hair as I paused on the Prestons’ doorstep. Taking a deep breath, I opened the door and stepped into the silent hallway.

              ‘You’re back early,’ Gloria said as she came out of the kitchen to greet me. ‘Honey, you look frozen, where is your jacket?’

              ‘I lost it, which I know was dumb. It’s okay, though, it’s not that cold out,’ I lied, as I placed my arms behind my back so that she couldn’t see the marks on my arms.

              ‘Well, you go and change into something warmer and I’ll make you a hot chocolate.’

              ‘Thank you, that sounds good.’

              Gloria went back into the kitchen, and I made my way up the stairs and walked into my bedroom, feeling relieved to be back in it.

              ‘Did you have a super time?’ Louisa said, as she perched on the edge of my bed.

              ‘You just totally freaked me out,’ I replied, startled, as I again placed my arms behind my back.

              ‘Sorry, I just heard you arrive home and I wanted to know how it went.’

              ‘Yeah, it was great, and thanks for the dress.’

              ‘No problem, I bet you were the prettiest girl there.’

              ‘Not quite,’ I forced a smile.

              ‘I’ll leave you to it.’ She bounced off the bed and moved towards the door. ‘Oh, and Celeste, I’m glad you’re having a good time.’

              ‘Thanks.’

              When the door finally closed I let out a relieved sigh before I unzipped the dress and changed into my leopard print pyjama bottoms and a long-sleeved black top.

              My head was swarming full of questions that I didn’t have the answers to. Would Brandon tell people what I’d done? Would Leo ever speak to me again? And who was that weird boy that had been following me?

              I felt like my head was going to burst open. I was in thought overload, and I didn’t like it. I just wanted to shake all my worries from my head and rewind back to before I’d messed things up in the park. I just wanted to go back in time and start over again.

              It was typical that I was capable of doing things that others weren’t able to do, yet I wasn’t able to do what I actually wanted to. I couldn’t fix things. I couldn’t fix myself.

Chapter Four

Morning arrived, and with it came the blissful ignorance of previous events before my mind changed from dream state to being awake, and then reality hit me. I didn’t want to face the real world. I justwanted to snuggle up under my pink bedcover and go into hibernation.

              ‘Come on, sweetie, you’re wasting the day,’ Gloria said as she pulled open my curtains, which caused me to bury myself farther under my bedcover.

              ‘I’m making pancakes,’ she said in a tone far too cheery for this time in the morning. ‘Then maybe afterwards we could all go out for lunch.’

              ‘Yeah, sounds good,’ I groggily replied.

              ‘Lovely, I’ll go and make your pancakes.’

              I waited until I could no longer hear her footsteps before I pulled my bedcover off and stared up at the ceiling. I didn’t want to spend the day with a perfect family because I knew that it was all a lie. I wasn’t a part of them, not truly, and I never would be. I’d always be an outsider, and I’d always be different.

              Reluctantly, I stepped out of bed and shuffled my way to the bathroom. I turned the shower on and let the water heat up as I inspected myself in the mirror. My hair was knotted up, and I had black marks around my eyes. I looked exactly how I felt: terrible.

              The water was as hot as I could take it without it burning my skin, and I took comfort in its heat as it trickled over my body. The bruises on my arms now looked more vivid than they had yesterday, and this made me feel angry and confused both rolled into one.

              Brandon had no right to have done what he did to me, but I shouldn’t have reacted as badly as I did. I should have just made the door swing open or made him trip up or something. My anger and fear had caused me to do things that couldn’t just be put down to coincidence. Now some lowlife knew what I could do, and this fact terrified me.

              Surely no one would believe him if he told people what I’d done. They’d just think he was mad, and he’d be risking the truth to come out about what he was trying to do to me in the first place. Also, I hoped that he was afraid of telling anyone in case I did something else to him. The more I thought about it, the more I came to the conclusion that Brandon wasn’t going to say a word.

              Then there was the boy from last night. How long had he been following me for, and why? He’d said that he wanted to help me, but could I really trust him when I didn’t know anything about him? This meant that it hadn’t been Max that day standing outside of the school, which I should have been relieved about, but instead I found myself worried. At least I knew who Max was, whereas the boy from the park was a mystery to me. I didn’t even know what his name was.

              I needed to shove all this stuff from my head and just get on with the weekend. It might be my last weekend in this house with the Prestons anyway, so I might as well make the most of it.

              Back in my bedroom, I put a pair of black skinny jeans on and a red jumper, and I dried my hair with the dryer for long enough that I’d taken most of the damp off it. I put some concealer under my eyes and put on a coating of sheer lip gloss before I left my room.

              I walked into the kitchen to the smell of freshly made pancakes. Terry had a tower of them covered in syrup on the plate in front of him, and I wondered, as I often did, how he managed to keep his slim physique when he ate so much.

              ‘Morning, Celeste,’ he smiled at me before he put a forkful of pancake into his mouth.

              ‘Morning,’ I forced myself to smile as I pulled out the chair by Louisa and sat down, which caused Alf to run off from under the table and whine his way over to his basket.

              ‘We’re going to Monty’s for lunch; they do the best steak ever. So I’m only having one pancake for breakfast so I’m not too full,’ Louisa said cheerfully, not seeming to have noticed Alf’s weird behaviour.

              ‘Cool,’ I replied.

              ‘Do you want syrup, strawberry, or plain?’ Gloria asked as she placed a glass of orange juice down in front of me before walking back over to the cooker.

              ‘Plain, please.’ I decided that I should follow Louisa in not eating too much. I hadn’t been to Monty’s before, but knowing the Prestons, I knew that it’d be good.

              Gloria looked as glamorous as usual in a dark brown knee-length floral dress. There wasn’t as much as a strand of her pinned up blonde hair out of place, and her make-up was flawless. She placed a plate with a pancake down in front of me before she sat down next to Terry, where a yoghurt and a cup of tea were already placed.