Embracing the Unkown: How it Began
Chapter 3

I was an idiot.

A completely, and utterly, stupid idiot.

Never mind that I knew the meteor was dangerous. Never mind that every time I so much as thought about going near it, alarm bells instantly went off in my head. Never mind that last time I visited it, I ended up paralyzed; unable to move or escape my thoughts, or that some random, creepy guy crept up behind me.

All that, and yet I still found myself walking up the hill, into the forest, every step taking me closer to a fallen rock whose power I could feel pulsing in my very blood.

The hill and forest seemed to take forever to climb walk through; much like the never-ending stairs in that old Mario game. I loved that game when I was little. It was dark out, as I had sneaked out the house, but I didn’t trip over anything; oddly enough, the ground seemed to be free of anything that could possibly trip me up.

The meteor was the same as before when I reached it; a large rock sitting in a clearing that it itself created. I’d have expected somebody to have moved it by now. Don’t scientists like to collect space rock?

Any thoughts going through my head were soon vanquished as the power radiating from the meteor intensified. Again, images of storms, of fires, went flashing through my head, blinding me. I was rooted to the spot, unable to move. I could feel my blood boiling, and water was dripping off of my fingertips.

“Katy,” the wind whispered. “Katy.”

That was odd. The wind could whistle, but since when could it talk?

“Katy,” it whispered again. “Turn around, Katy.”

Goosebumps rose on my arms. My blood was still boiling, but my skin was cold with fear. The fear appeared to be enough to un-paralyze myself, and I slowly turned round.

“Hello, Katy.”

And I screamed.

My eyes flew open, and I barely held in a second scream as I flinched back from the figure standing over me.

“Get away from me!” I yelled, throwing a ball of flames at him. I saw the figure duck, and the flames crashed into my bedroom wall. Wait – my bedroom wall? And since when did I throw fire? I could hear somebody cussing in the background, and the figure left the room, returning a moment later with a glass of water which he threw at the wall to make sure no fire remained.

I blinked and shook my head, trying to clear it. I felt so disorientated.

“What the hell was that, Katy?”

“What?” I slurred, pushing myself into a sitting position. Now that my heart had slowed down and I’d woken up a little, I didn’t feel like I was in danger anymore. “Jack? S’that you?” I squinted my eyes, trying to see.

“Yeah, it’s me.” As my vision cleared, I was finally able to see him clearly. He was wearing blue boxers, and nothing else, and his hair was all mussed up as if he had only just gotten out of bed. Which, I supposed, he had.

“Sorry. Did I wake you?”

“Not at all. I just felt like running into your bedroom like an idiot at three in the morning for the fun of it.”

I winced. “I didn’t wake Mum and Dad up, did I?”

“No. They’ve got their earplugs in – although, the way you screamed, I’m surprised you didn’t wake them up anyway. Bloody hell, Katy! What was that all about?”

“I – um – bad dream.”

“I gathered that.” He sighed, and sat down on my bed.

“I’m not sure I want to talk about it,” I said quietly, not meeting his gaze. I knew that man, the one from my dream. He was the one who had distracted me on the hill before, when I was with Lucy. Who had crept up on me; who had given me the feeling that he knew something about me. He was dangerous.

“Okay, then. What about the fire?”

His voice had taken on an odd tone; an unhappy, regretful one.

“What fire?” I faked ignorance, though I knew the attempt was futile.

“Don’t play dumb, Katy. I know you know what I’m on about.”

“I don’t, actually. I mean, I know what you’re on about, but I didn’t know I could do that…Jack, you knew something was up, didn’t you?” I finally lifted my face to meet his gaze. “You knew something happened to me, because something happened to you, too, didn’t it?”

We stared at each other for several long moments before Jack finally sighed and look away.

“Yes,” he finally said. “I suppose, in a way, I can…” he paused. “I don’t know, affect the wind or something. I can speed it up, or make it go slower…and, yes, I knew something was up.”

“Some people would kill for – for powers like these, and all we can do is act all depressed about it…” I trailed off, and shook my head. “Have you told anybody?”

“No. I thought I was going crazy, actually.”

I grinned, grateful that I wasn’t the only one to have reacted so badly. “So did I. I told Dave today, though. Feels good to not be keeping it a secret from him. He says he can talk to Billy about it – um, when I let him.”

“Billy would probably be able to help us a lot,” Jack nodded slowly. “I’ll let you decide when to tell him, though.”

“Thanks. I don’t feel much like telling anyone else…though, with my luck, everybody will know soon. I need to talk to Lucy, too…Dave thinks she might have something…”

“He could be right,” Jack agreed. “That’s what I’ve been worrying about all week.”

“You shouldn’t worry so much,” I teased. “Your hair is grey enough all ready.”

“You know I’ll get you back for that, right?”

“Bring it!”

Again, words can’t ever possibly describe how I felt, now that things were out in the open between Jack and I. We’ve always told each other everything, and always been there for each other, because mum and dad are out at work so often. They don’t neglect us or anything, but we’re used to not seeing a lot of them.

“Any plans for today?”

I glanced up from my magazine to look at Jack, who was leaning against the worktop texting somebody. “I’m meeting Dave later, and I think I’ll talk to Lucy. I need to know…”

“Yeah, that sounds like a good idea,” Jack agreed. I heard his phone make a noise as he finished his text and sent it, before slipping his phone into his jeans’ back pocket.

“Who’re you texting?”

“Paul. His motorbike broke down, and I’ve been trying to help him fix it.”

“Not going so well, then?” I asked, noticing the slightly frustrated look in Jack’s eyes.

“It’s going okay, considering neither of us are mechanics.” He shrugged. “It just takes so long.”

“I’ll bet.” I scrunched up my nose. When I was younger, our Dad used to teach Jack and I about fixing up cars. It was fun, those few hours a week, when we got together with Dad. We don’t do anything like that anymore. What wasn’t fun, though, was how I always came away covered from head to toe in horrible, smelly, dirty black oil.

Jack laughed at my look. “It’s really not so bad, you know.”

“Easy for you to say,” I scoffed. “Boys don’t give two hoots about what they look like.”

“Now, Katy, you know that isn’t true. Where do you think your mascara keeps going?”

I stared at him. “You’re kidding, right?”

He grinned.

“Thank god,” I sighed, closed my eyes, and placed my hand over my heart in a dramatically relieved fashion. “Funny you should bring that up, though. My eyeliner is missing now. I just don’t get where my makeup keeps going. Obviously, you and Dad don’t need it, and Mum has plenty of her own…Lucy doesn’t like half of the brands I buy – not that she would steal, anyway…where is it all going?”

“I wouldn’t worry about it too much,” Jack shrugged. “You probably just keep misplacing it.”

“Maybe,” I agreed. Inside, though, I wasn’t too sure.

I left the house just after twelve, to meet Dave at the park at half past. We had agreed the day before that he would help my practise controlling my power – although, how he planned to help, I did not know – and we knew the perfect little place, hidden amongst the trees in the park, to do it. To get there, though, I had to walk past the hill that everything had first started on, and I stopped at the foot of it to stare up at it with distant eyes. Goose bumps, once again, rose on my arm as my eyes connected with the large, green forest at the top, and I felt myself shiver involuntarily. The dream was still in my mind, too, and my eyes kept darting around nervously without my conscious permission. It felt like somebody was watching me, and it creeped me out; I kept thinking of the man who had distracted me, who had crept up on me in my dream. Something about him felt different, fiery, dangerous. He was trouble.

I heard a noise behind me, and I jumped a foot in the air, but when I whirled around with wide eyes it was to find myself watching a cat slinking along the path with a very smug expression. Probably just killed a bird. I spared the forest another glance before I shook my head, trying to clear it, and headed onwards to the park.

For a Saturday, the park was fairly empty. There were only perhaps a dozen children there, whereas you could often run out of fingers and toes to count their numbers on. I skipped by them, as the spot I was after was away at the opposite end of the park. One of the parents, Kathy, waved to me, and I waved back with a smile. She had a six year old daughter called Marilynn (who preferred to be called Mary), a sweet little girl that I had babysat numerous times now. I couldn’t spot Mary in amongst the other children, though.

The spot was empty when I arrived – but then again, I was still a little early. It didn’t bother me; even without the need to practise controlling a power, we – that is, Dave, Mark, Lewis, Lucy and I – come here pretty often. You could call it our den, I suppose, except that other than a couple of old notebooks (one of which I swear has mould growing on it), we don’t actually keep anything there. The trees that surround the area have numerous words and phrases engraved into them; our names, our nicknames, dates, memoirs, birthdays, details of homework we’ve been set, little stick-men and stick-women doodles – you name it. We try to mark something on them at least once every few weeks, and have done for the past two and a bit years, so you can imagine how many separate little pieces of information are permanently etched into those trees.

Deciding I might as well get started while I waited, I pulled a bottle that was half-filled with water out of my pocket and sat it on the ground in front of the fallen trunk that I was sitting on. As usual, I raised my hands palm-outwards and tried to focus on pushing heat through the bottle and into the water, trying to heat it up. The water didn’t bubble, as it had before when Dave was holding it, but when I reached forward to touch it, it still burned my fingers. I pulled them back instantly, sucking on them and trying to relieve them of the pain now irritating them. I glared at the bottle as I did this, frustrated with myself. Every time I heated it up, it would heat to a completely different temperature than before, yet as far as I knew I was using the same amount of concentration and focus each and every time. How on earth was I supposed to control it? It had to be possible to control it; it would be so dangerous to use if the results were completely unpredictable…but how?

I jumped when, out of the blue, a pair of arms suddenly wrapped themselves around me. I relaxed when I smelled Dave’s familiar aftershave, though.

“Hey,” I murmured, leaning into his embrace. “How long have you been there? I didn’t hear you arrive.”

“Long enough to watch you stare into space for nearly five minutes. What were you thinking about?”

I pouted when he took his arms back so that he, too, could sit on the fallen tree trunk. He laughed, and wrapped one arm back around my shoulders. Again, I leant into the embrace. “I was just trying to figure out how to control this,” I told him, glancing at the bottle. I was reluctant to touch it yet; I knew that the water wouldn’t be heating up anymore now that I had lost my concentration, but I knew that it would also retain the heat for longer as it was trapped inside a plastic bottle. “I use the same technique every time, but it always works differently – sometimes it only turns warm, other times it starts to boil. I don’t know what I’m doing different each time, or if I’m even doing something differently at all – what if it just simply isn’t possible to control this?”

“All things can be controlled, with practise,” Dave assured me with a voice so confident that I couldn’t help but believe him. “And that’s why it’s good to practise with someone, too. You might feel that you’re doing the same thing every time, but if you practise with somebody else they might notice something different.”

He gave my shoulder a reassuring squeeze, then took his arm back and picked up the bottle. That done, he knelt down in front of me, holding the bottle in front of his chest.

“Try to make this warm,” he told me. “Not hot, just warm. I’ll tell you if you manage, then try and keep it at the same temperature for ten seconds, okay?”

“I’ll try,” I said doubtfully, raising my hand in front of me. I almost didn’t want to; what if I made it too hot again, and I hurt him? But it was his idea; he wanted to help me. I’d told him I could practise on my own, but he had been persistent. I chewed my tongue in concentration as I willed heat into the bottle, but also tried to keep some heat from it. I had no idea if it worked or not; keeping heat from something felt so much harder than pushing heat into it.

“A bit hotter,” Dave urged me. “Keep going.”

And so I did. I let my fingers curl some more, into half a fist, and pushed more heat into it, whilst still trying to prevent it from becoming too hot. I could feel little beads of sweat starting to appear on my head from the effort, but I pushed onwards. I had to get this right. I had to learn how to do this.

“That’s it!” Dave smiled. “Keep it at that.”

I frowned, and relaxed my fingers a little. How was I supposed to keep it at that? If I pushed more heat in, it would get hotter; if I pushed less heat in, it would cool down. Like those experiments we did in Science, once, but I can’t remember how we did those –

“It’s cooling down,” Dave told me, and I felt frustrated at myself for losing myself in my thoughts, rather than concentrating on the bottle. But, as I started trying to push more heat back into the water, I could feel myself slipping. I was losing my hold, I wasn’t in control, and everything was starting to get darker as though something was slowly covering up the sun.

“Katy, stop!”

I barely noticed his voice as I focused on the water, and of fighting off the darkness threatening to envelope me.

“Katy, stop!”

I blinked at the volume in Dave’s voice, and my arm dropped to my side. I watched with confused eyes as he dropped the bottle to the ground and slipped forward so that he was kneeling in front of me. “Are you okay?”

“Mm-hmm,” I said, too exhausted to say a proper sentence.

“No you’re not.” Dave sighed. “You’ve tired yourself out.”

“M’fine. See?” I pushed him away a little, and stood up on shaky legs.

“Sit,” Dave frowned, and pushed me back down. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“I pushed you too hard.”

I shook my head, and the motion left me feeling a little disorientated. “You didn’t do anything,” I told him, glad to have control of my speech again. I did feel really, really tired though. Already, I was having fantasies of going home and napping until next week. “You just wanted to help.”

“Let’s just get you home, okay?” Dave suggested, obviously knowing that I wouldn’t let him blame himself. I’m stubborn like that.

“Sounds good,” I agreed. “I’m tired.”

Dave laughed. “I know, Katy. You look it.” He stood back up.

“I can walk!” I protested when he tried to give me a piggyback.

“Get on, Katy.”

“No.” I crossed my arms and tried to glare at him. I don’t think it worked, though, for I saw him trying to hide an amused smile.

“Would you rather I slung you over my shoulder?”

“I can walk!”

To prove this, I stood up and tried to walk around him. It didn’t take long for me to find myself lying on the ground, though, having tripped over thin air – yes, tripped. I refused to admit that, just maybe, my legs were too weak to support my weight. Next thing I knew, I was on his back.

“I can walk,” I mumbled, still not willing to give up. Dave laughed again, and I gave him a weak kick that I doubt he even noticed.

I don’t know why I minded so much. Doesn’t every girl dream of being carried around by a really hot guy? He didn’t put me down, though, despite the fact that I grumbled and protested the whole way back to my house. When we got there, he placed me on the sofa and went to get me a glass of orange juice.

“Now sleep,” Dave ordered me when I finished the juice.

“Okay.” I laughed when his expression changed to one of shocked disbelief. Obviously, he had expected me to kick up a fuss about that, too. “I’m tired,” I explained. “I’m not going to fight with sleep.”

Dave grinned, though I could see in his eyes that he was still slightly worried. “Good. Do you want me to stay?”

I gave him a tired shrug. “I’m not fussed. If you have things to do, you might as well go. Didn’t you say you were helping Lewis with something?”

“He can wait,” Dave shrugged.

I frowned at him. “No. Go,” I reached out and poked his side. “Help him. I don’t need someone to watch me sleep.”

“Are you sure?” Now he looked uncertain, as though something was bothering him, and although I wondered why (and what), I was too tired to be bothered asking.

“Yes. Go.”

Dave laughed at my expression, and reached down to kiss my head. “I’ll phone you later, all right?”

“Mmhmm.”

He left after that, and it didn’t take long for me to fall into blissful darkness.

When I woke up again, I found myself lying uncomfortably in my bed with the covers tucked in around me, and my jeans catching against the sheets. Glancing at the time, I saw that it was nearly five o’clock. Mum and Dad wouldn’t be in yet, then. That was good. I wouldn’t have to explain to them. I don’t really enjoy lying to them, but I wouldn’t be able to tell them the truth, would I? I slipped out of bed, not bothering to brush my hair, and headed slowly downstairs. Hearing voices from the living-room, I headed through there and found Jack watching the television.

“I thought you were at Paul’s?” I asked him sleepily, trying to hide a yawn behind my hand.

“You’re awake!” Relief flooded Jack’s face. “You’re all right, aren’t you?”

“Yeah. I’m still a little tired, but I’ll live. You didn’t answer my question.”

“Dave phoned me,” Jack shrugged. “He was worried, so I came back.”

“You shouldn’t have done that,” I told Jack, doing my best mother impression. “I’m perfectly capable of looking after myself, thank you very much!”

“You would do the same for me,” Jack pointed out. “And I can look after myself far better than you can look after yourself.”

“Shut up,” I grumbled, not wanting to lose to him. He grinned. I sent him a mock-glare, and then flopped down onto the sofa beside him, lazily leaning my head against his shoulder to see the television.

“So what actually happened today?” Jack asked me. “Dave didn’t say much.”

“Well, he was helping me practise controlling my heat… power. Geez, it sounds so weird to say it like that. Um, right. I just put too much effort into it, I think. I don’t usually concentrate that hard, or practise for so long without small breaks in between, and I’ve never tried to keep it at the same temperature, either.”

“That’s all?”

“What else could have happened?”

“Nothing.”

I narrowed my eyes at him, but he stared determinedly at the band playing on the television.

“I’m going to go see Lucy.”

“I think you should wait.”

“Why?”

“You’re still tired. If you practise, you might lose control of it, or black out, or something.”

“I’m not that tired.” I frowned.

“Please, Katy, just rest today, okay?”

“What’s up with you, Jack?” I asked anxiously. “You’re acting even more protective than usual.”

“Nothing.”

“Jack.” I glared at him.

He sighed. “Billy phoned earlier…Lily phoned him last night.”

“What did she see?” I asked him as casually as I could. Inside, I felt frozen and stiff with worry and anxiety. What could she have seen that would make him this protective of me?

“That’s just it,” Jack sighed, sounding frustrated. “She didn’t see anything. She just has a feeling. She says that something bad might happen to you and Lucy.”

“Well, see? She said ‘might’. That means it’s not set in stone.”

“Take this seriously, Katy,” Jack snapped. “You’ve just gained a new power that we know absolutely nothing about, and Lucy probably has too. Maybe something’s going to go wrong with them. What else connects the two of you?”

“Plenty,” I said coolly. “If it was our power, though, wouldn’t it include you too? And I am taking it seriously, Jack, but Lily’s made mistakes before. I’m not going to tiptoe around because something – and we don’t even know what, or when – might happen.”

“Do you even think about me?” Jack asked me angrily. “It’s always been us, Katy. Do you ever think about how I would feel if something happened to you?”

“Nothing ever happens to me!” Well, technically, that wasn’t really true. Plenty had happened to me; it was because things seemed to happen to me that Jack had became so protective.

“Nothing yet. You’re tempting fate! You gallivanting around with wolves, and now to make things worse, you have a power that you can’t control! You could have put yourself into a coma earlier, if Dave hadn’t stopped you! For god’s sake, Katy, just stop for once! Rest for the day!”

He had jumped up off the sofa at some point during his rant, and was now standing, gazing at me with furious eyes. I jumped up, too.

“I’m going for a walk,” I told him in a furious voice.

His hand grabbed my arm as I tried to step past him. “Did you listen to a word I just said?”

“I’ll stay away from Lucy’s,” I told him coldly. “But I’m going for a walk. Let go.”

He didn’t let go, and I felt my anger growing. Suddenly he flinched back, and his eyes flickered between his hand and my arm, and I realized that my skin had burned him. I seized my chance, and I grabbed my trainers and escaped the house.

I determinedly kept my gaze down as I passed the hill with the meteor up top, not wanting to become tempted to visit it again. Even through my anger, I could see that it would be wise to avoid danger. Yes, Lily sometimes made mistakes with her psychic ability, but only very rarely. If she thought something might happen to Lucy and I – especially something so worrying that she felt the need to phone Billy about it - then it would most definitely be in our best interests to stay as safe as possible.

The further I walked, the calmer I grew, and soon I regretted lashing out at Jack. He was only worried; that’s just how he was. He’d always been protective of me, but he grew extremely protective after what happened five years ago. That…that was a big part of our lives. It’s also the night that I first met Dave and the others. I was ten at the time, and Jack was fourteen.

It was nine o’clock, and we wanted hot chocolate. We’d run out of milk, though, so dad sent Jack to the shop to get some. Mum argued that it wasn’t safe, but dad told her not to be silly; the shop was barely a five minute walk from our house. Besides, by that point, Jack had been learning karate for just over a year.

“So he can look after himself,” Dad had said.

I, of course, wanted to go too, and eventually Mum gave in.

So we set off; me and Jack. We put on our wellies, wriggled into our big, thick coats (it was the middle of winter), wrapped our scarves around our necks…and, finally, we were ready to go.

“Come on, Katy,” Jack said impatiently. I gave him a sweet smile in reply, and he rolled his eyes before ushering me out of the door.

Outside, rain was falling heavily, and it was so cold that every time I breathed I could see my breath rise in front of me.

“Why’s it raining if it’s cold?” I asked Jack. “I thought the cold froze it, and turned it into snow. Snow’s a lot better than rain.”

“It’s not cold enough,” Jack had shrugged. “It must still be above zero degrees.”

“The weatherman said it would snow,” I told him with a pout. Jack laughed at my antics.

“The weatherman makes a lot of mistakes, Katy,” Jack told me in a quiet voice as we passed a house that we knew had a newborn baby in it. “Don’t believe everything you hear on TV.”

“I want snow,” I had grumbled, and Jack had laughed again. He laughed a lot at me, when we were younger. I suppose I can’t really blame him, though.

At the shop, Jack bought a lollipop with the milk to shut me up. The shopkeeper, who was friendly with our Dad, gave us a cheerful wave as we exited.

“This is good,” I told Jack cheerfully. “Want some?”

“No thanks,” Jack grinned. “I don’t really want your slobber inside my mouth.”

“I don’t slobber!”

“Of course you don’t.”

I had stopped talking to him then, pretending to be angry. I did that a lot, so I knew it wouldn’t hurt his feelings. It was like a game to us.

As we walked along, I didn’t notice that another set of footsteps seemed to be following us. Jack did. He stopped, and I walked into the back of him.

It all happened so fast.

I was thrown roughly to the ground, and Jack yelled my name. Then I heard him cry out in pain, and I knew I had to help him. I jumped up – I felt so brave, being able to ignore the ache in my knee from when I had landed – and ran at our attacker. Being only ten, though, I wasn’t very strong and I didn’t manage to knock him over as I had planned. Instead, I seemed to bounce off him, landing on my bum. When he turned around to face me with an angry expression on his face, I saw a shiny, silver object in his hand with something red on it. Behind him, Jack was moaning on the ground, and I could see him trying to sit up, wanting to help me…

Next think I knew, the silver object was flying towards me, and I jumped back in fright. It missed me by a fraction.

“Run, Katy!” Jack yelled at me. I could hear pain in his voice.

I jumped to my feet, looking around me with desperate eyes, trying to find something to hurt the man with. I so very desperately wanted to run home, to hide under my covers, to escape this bad man, but I knew I couldn’t leave Jack.

A hand grabbed me then, and I screamed, but I found myself being pulled backwards rather than forwards and when I twisted my head to look, I found myself staring into an unfamiliar face with nice brown eyes. The boy couldn’t have been older than me.

“You’re safe now,” the boy with nice eyes said. Behind me, I could hear the bad man yelling at something, his voice as full of pain as Jack’s had been, but when I turned to look I found myself being pulled further away by the boy.

“You don’t want to watch. Trust me.”

And, for some reason, I did trust him. I felt like I knew him, and I felt like I could trust him. I knew he wouldn’t hurt me.

I later found out that the ‘boy with nice eyes’ was Dave, and that the man was yelling in pain because Lewis attacked him in his wolf form whilst Mark tried to slow the bleeding from the knife-wound Jack had received on his stomach. Jack was in hospital for a week.

The ‘bad man’, who I later found to be called Thomas Evans (Lucy, whose surname is also Evans, has promised me she isn’t related to him – not that I ever thought she was), escaped. Nobody knows what happened to him; nobody has ever seen him since that night. I had nightmares about him for awhile after the incident happened, but I very rarely thought about him anymore.

I was jolted out of my thoughts when I found myself standing in front of my house again, having apparently worked my way around the block whilst I thought. I could see Jack through the window, watching a film with a much calmer expression than the one that was on his face when I left the house. I sighed, and stepped towards the door. I’d apologise to him, and then very nicely ask him to give up the TV for a bit. For some reason, I now felt the unquenchable urge to watch Friends.

Sorry for forgetting about the story... and sorry if it's hard to read. It's hard to get paragraph breaks on here. Anyway, here's chapter three xD