A/N: Okay, cool- this is my first original fiction. I entered this in a competition, but I still haven't got any feedback yet…hmm, oh well. I hope you enjoy it.

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Watching Flame Shadows

By goofy monkey child

Introduction

I woke up in a hoodlum's jacket.

            The low, grunting sounds of motorbike engines tearing around somewhere behind me filled my ears. I rubbed my eyes blearily as I waited for my concentration to awaken, and tried to rid myself of the tired blockage I was feeling in the back of my mind.

            I sat up as bits of chewed up grass flicked me in the face for what wasn't the first time that late afternoon. I turned my head, brushing a small hand over my raven-black pigtails in an attempt to rid my hair of the grass pieces now infesting it, and watched with undetectable envy as two boys tore around the verdant park on their motorbikes, with no consideration that I was sitting here, bored as hell, with absolutely nothing to do.

            My older brothers had picked me up from school that day, on account of the fact that mum & dad were going out that afternoon, therefore not being able to pick me up from school, and saying they would be home later that night.

            What was meant to happen in this situation was that my brothers were to pick me up from school, take me back to my house, and then wait there with me until mum & dad got home. What ended up happening was my brothers picking me up from school, then taking me to the park on Thirteenth Street so they could ride their motorbikes around there for three freaking hours.

            A track was starting to wear out in the grass from the four bike wheels repetitively riding through the various parts of the park, and I turned my head back around, unable to stand watching those two circle around behind me once more.

            I shifted around uncomfortably, even though the grass beneath me was surprisingly feathery soft. I sighed as I looked around in boredom, and noticed a funny-looking tree to the left of me with pointed branches. The sway of the tree's branches drew my attention across to the once shining horizon in front, as the tiniest sliver of the sun peeked over the top of it for evening dusk.

            The upcoming night air began to linger, and I shivered slightly, hugging the outsized jacket I was wearing around my body a bit tighter, just as Vitto Spinelli rode up next to me. He silenced the engine and, taking off his helmet, shook away his shaggy dark-chocolate brown helmet hair with a few flicks of his head.

            "Hey runt," his husky voice called me, with no remorse to the fact that I hated when he called me that, "What time is it?"

            I looked at my watch briefly and answered, "6:15," before looking up to the 16-year-old's face and asking with as much sisterly politeness as I could muster, "Hey Vitto...do ya' think that maybe I could maybe, umm, maybe...have a go on your bike???"

            Vitto looked like he might have almost laughed, but instead just saved pointing out the hopelessness of my question by answering:

            "No way in hell!"

He then glanced down distastefully at his dark-red hooded jersey, dressed very loosely on my small, undeveloped 11-year-old body. A glint of predictable temper swiped across his dark brown eyes as his abrasive knuckles clenched a little bit firmer around his handlebars. "And what the hell is my jacket doing on you???"

"Being worn?" I replied with light-hearted humour, before noticing Vitto's expression, and realizing he didn't think I was very funny. Vitto doesn't take anything as a joke. I'd tell him to lighten up, but his whole output to life is so dark he'd probably cast a shadow on the flame. "Come on Vitto- the sun's goin' down and it's gettin' really cold out here! Besides- you're not wearin' it…"

"That doesn't mean you can just go and put it on without my permission!" He snapped as he seized the hood of the jacket behind my head and wrenched it upwards, attempting to pull it off of me with no remorse. Once he had gotten the jacket over my head and off me, he held it up and looked at it like I'd given it some sort of horrible infectious disease. He then looked down at me like I was some sort of horrible infectious disease.

"Where's your jacket???" He asked unsympathetically, as he noticed me starting to shiver again.

"I left it at home." I answered, wishing more by the minute that I had just bothered to put my black leather jacket on that morning.

"You left it at home??? Well that's your own fault then, isn't it!" Vitto retorted, looking me firmly in the eye with a disapproving scowl, "Sasha, you can't just go around expecting people to lend you things all the time when you forget them! Take some responsibility for yourself and grow up!!!"

I had always considered myself to be a kind of 'tough kid'. At school, I'd been known to stand up to guys twice my size, without any hint of fear, or any doubt that I would beat the snot out of them. But it was times like these- times when Vitto would yell at me for making a simple childish mistake- that I would feel smaller and more inferior than ever before. It almost made me feel like lying down and crying sometimes- Vitto had this trick of making me feel like this disobedient little kid, just by talking to me. He made me feel like a little eleven-year-old girl.

Vitto tied the jacket around his waist and kicked on the engine of his motorbike, shoving his helmet back on his head and turning to look at me before taking off again.

Above the thunderous roarings of the engine, I regretfully made out Vitto's two departing words:

"Later, runt…"

I sighed helplessly as I hugged my knees. As I did, the growling of a motorbike engine coming up behind me once again filled my ears, and I wondered briefly whether Vitto had come back to kick me in the back of the head.

However, when the bike smoothly pulled up next to me, a figure of much taller, much handsomer physique sat upon it. Joey Spinelli took off his helmet and killed the engine, his impeccable jet-black hair morphing back into its habitually gelled style as he did so. He looked down at me with his perpetually charming eyes, and greeted friendlily:

"Heya' kiddo!"

I smiled at Joey's forever happy-go-lucky attitude, as he got off his bike and came to sit down on the grass next to me. He paused a second before seating himself.

"Jeez Sash, this night air's freezing- aren't you cold?" He asked considerately, beginning to take off his own leather jacket- much like mine only a great deal larger- as a gesture as to whether I wanted to borrow it. I imperceptibly shivered from the chilliness.

"Uhh…no. No I'm fine…" I answered, momentarily glancing down at my black combat boots- the hand-me-down ones I'd gotten from Vitto.

"Okay then." Joey said nonchalantly, slipping his jacket back on and sitting down, looking out to the dark line of horizon where the sun once was. "You know, if Vitto's being hard on you, it's only 'coz he's tryin' to bring you up as a tough kid. Just so, ya' know, you don't turn out all dependent and junk. All things considered Sasha, mum and dad sorta' treat you like…well, like a little girl."

I admit it was somewhat true that our parents babied me a little more than they did with their two boys. It was essentially another one of those cliché scenarios where all the 'mistakes' are made on the first child- example, Joey- they then try to make up for the mistakes by being a little, well no, a lot stricter on the second child- example, Vitto- then after realising that that technique didn't turn out very well, they overprotect and fuss over the third child- example, me. I didn't blame them for it; they were just trying to be good parents. I just wished Joey and Vitto would stop thinking of me as the baby of the family because of it.

"Well yeah, but that's 'coz they're parents- they have to do that." I answered, "Anyways, Vitto makes me feel more childish than mum and dad ever do. He's just so harsh on me all the time!"

"He just tries a little too hard." Joey answered as he raised an eyebrow and grinned. "Know anyone he would've gotten that from?"

"No clue." I answered sarcastically, both of us well acquainted with dad's overly regimented attempts to raise Vitto as a moral, well-behaved young man- attempts that didn't exactly work exceedingly well. "But I still don't see why-"

I was abruptly cut short by a muffled chiming noise, coming somewhere from the vicinity of Joey's jeans.

"Hold that thought Sash." Joey said as he got to his feet, took his mobile phone out of his back pocket, and walked a few steps away from me to answer it.

I leant back again, reclining onto the yielding turf beneath me, resting my arms behind my panther-black pigtails, and stared vacantly at the twilight sky. The heavens were leisurely being spattered with tiny incandescent dots known as stars; dusk had completed a metamorphic transformation into night.

The drone of a motorbike engine made it's way over behind me for the third irksome time that night. I promptly sat up and turned around. Vitto had just pulled up beside Joey, of who had just finished put his phone back in his pocket, looking a little paler than usual.

I got up and ran over as Joey motioned me to do so. Vitto and I both looked at him with inquiring glances, as he looked down at us both with less than a heartening expression.

"We gotta' go." He said solemnly, walking over to his bike.

"Where to?" I asked as he threw me a spare helmet.

"Hospital. Mum and dad've been in an accident."

A/N: Please R&R!