Chapter One

There is much to be said for books. They can help you learn and educate yourself, or they can tell stories to excite the imagination. A book can teach you how to become just about anything. I, however, don’t get to read a lot of fiction.

My parents were technology based people. They believed that the best way to learn was over the internet, watching tutorials and videos. Although I do believe this, there is a lot I could have learnt from reading. I’ve noticed there is a lack of emotional connection between myself and others. It appears that reading in their younger years helped them to develop the ability to connect with one another. I can’t even bring up the courage to say ‘hello’ to the girl I like. She’s a bookworm, which is just one of the many reasons I’m interested in talking to her. From someone who reads a lot of blogs on the internet to developing a relationship over new and exciting adventures…on paper.

During our lunch periods, the library remains open. There aren’t a lot of students that prefer spending their time inside but the select few who do are generally the ones that are excelling in every class they attend. Today was the day I decide to join these particular students indoors and hope to gain the attention of Cecilia. Easily one of the most beautiful girls I have ever seen. She’s not the cheerleader type, if you know what I mean. The complete ‘Girl-Next-Door’ package.

As I walk into the library I can see her across the room, sitting on her own in one of the dark red chesterfield chairs. Her legs tucked in beneath her, you can see the exposed skin from the holes in her jeans where she cut them and replaced the holes underneath with lace to give it texture. I can’t see the book she’s reading, only her face as she brushes back her long dark hair behind her ear to read better – not that it did a lot of good, her hair is long and wavy and tends to fall back into place easily.

Walking close I can feel my heart pounding, but I’m determined to talk to her this time. I walk around the tables centered in the library, she looks up from her book as I get closer. Stopping in my tracks I can now hear my heart beating and echoing through my ears. I can’t do this. Turning around I rush out the library and into the sun, where Axel is waiting for me.

“So, how’d it go?” He asks, bright and cheerful as always.

“I couldn’t do it. I panicked.” Axel crosses his arms, and looks at me like I’m a complete dumbass.

“She’s not even going to know you exist if you keep this up.” I close my eyes for a moment trying to think why that happened, why I became so scared. Axel fidgets with the chain from his wallet that attaches to his belt. It completes his rather laid back demeanor.

Out of nowhere I’m pushed forward, not hard enough to fall over but definitely hard enough to notice.  I turn around and see her standing there, looking as flustered as I felt.

“I-I’m so sorry I didn’t see you there.” Now all I had to do was respond.

“Yeah, um, I mean no, I shouldn’t be standing.” She looks at me a little puzzled and I realize, “No, I meant that, I shouldn’t be standing in front of the floor- door!” I wanted so desperately to stop talking.

“Oh, um, well I guess it’s a truce then?” She looks up at me and clutches her books closer to her chest. “See you in class, Chase.” She says, right as the bell rings. Within the moment after she is gone.

I can’t feel my legs, let alone get to class. Axel elbows me in the ribs, forcing my mind back into reality. “Cecilia Harth just spoke to you. I guess it’s not that hard after all.” He chuckles.

“Yeah, only I made a complete idiot of myself.”

“You certainly don’t need any help with that. Let’s go, if we’re late again we’ll surely get blamed for the mishaps happening around this joint.” By mishaps he means that a student has been up to mischief and pranks are their preferred method of attention seeking – only no one knows who it is. I couldn’t do anything so bold, so I doubt a teacher would ever accuse me of it. My fear of people and danger is almost notorious. Axel smacks my back and insists on going to class. I sigh, defeated, and walk towards the Physics hall without further complaint.

Our school is very traditional, over one hundred years ago the first building here had only three classrooms, and it’s since been expanded to multiple buildings, allowing for different types of classes to be separated from each other. The Physics hall didn’t just have physics, but was nicknamed such due to the five classrooms just for physics based experiments and two for each other type of science like chemistry or biology. I enjoyed a variety of different classes but only some took my complete interest, Physics was one of them. I’d like to think that I’m good at the topic, but with Cecilia in my class I often get distracted and make a fool of myself.

Axel and I enter the seminar hall type room, looking through the back rows for spare seats. It’s not like it’s a particularly large room with endless rows of seats, the classes held forty students per room, but I still didn’t want to sit at the front.

Cecilia walks in behind us, now with different books in hand. She looks around for a moment before taking a seat in the second row.

“You know,” Axel comments, “, now that you’ve at least physically spoken to one another, we could take a seat next to her?” I look at him with an exhausted expression before taking the two seats in the back row.

Axel walks back with me to my place every day after school. Since he lives across the road, he prefers to stay with my family until his parents return from work. My parents aren't actually my parents. When I was a child my parents flew to England where they were the victims of a hit-and-run incident. The driver was never found. That being said, my parents wished that I would live with their best couple friends since I had no other blood relatives. Joe and Suzie have been together for nearly twenty years, and are more than happy to call me their son. I was lucky to be given to them, even when they had their first child. To my younger sister, I truly am her older brother – she’s never known any different, and since she’s currently twelve, she probably won’t know any difference until she’s eighteen. I’m okay with that, she’s my sister, and as annoying as she can be, she’s the best. The only reason she doesn’t think I’m not related, is because Suzie told her she didn’t change her last name right away to Reynolds, so I have her maiden name, Harland.

Turning down our tree-covered street, Axel stops at his cottage house first to put his bag away in his room before coming across the road to my place. Joe and Suzie wanted the quiet, mundane home living style cottage home filled with wildflowers and odd garden ornaments. They were eighty before they hit thirty.

Entering through the front door I throw my backpack underneath the hanging coats along the dim white walls, Axel walks ahead of me, taking an immediate left up the chipped wooden staircase. Suzie has been attempting to convince Joe to buy carpet to cover the stairs but he still thinks redoing them with new wood is the best way to go. By the time I begin the stairs, Axel has already made his way into my room. I don’t mind people entering my room because it’s usually tidy, despite the dozen images on the wall of rare movies. My bed is pushed into the corner of the room next to the window and my study desk is opposite the door. Aside from the bookshelf, that has no books on it, next to the wardrobe on the other side of the window, there is nothing particularly unique about this room that makes it especially mine. Most of my items are either in drawers or in boxes. Axel is sprawled out on my bed, which he does often.

“So, now that you’ve spoken, why don’t you just ask her about the Winter dance thing?” He asks me,

It didn’t take me long to respond, “For one, I can’t dance and will likely step on her dress, knocking her over into the punch bowl and be the laughing joke of the school. Less risky to just not ask.”

“What if someone else asks her?” I thought about that for a moment, and the way it concerned me,

“She hasn’t gone any other year, what would make this one so different?”

“Just saying, she’s quite hot. And there is chatter.” This was news to me. I sit in my desk chair and spin it around to face him, pressing the power button on my computer as I do it.

“What chatter?”

“Steven is thinking of asking her to the dance. And you know, he’s not exactly a horrible looking guy and saying ‘no’ to him might push her into the wrong category so she has to say ‘yes’.”

“I have no idea what that means.”

“You know, the category that cheerleaders and jocks can pick on someone because they wronged one of them.”

“Oh. Still doesn’t make much sense. But maybe she won’t really see that and say ‘no’ anyway?”

“That’s the worst thing that could happen!” He throws his arms up into the air, “If she says no and doesn’t realize the consequences, she could get stuffed into a locker by lunch time. I think you owe it to her to ask her to the dance before someone else does.”

I sigh, “Is this really your logical train of thought?” He sits up and nods with a grin. I’m startled by the knock on my door. “Who is it?” I ask,

“It’s Bee!” My sister, Bethany, prefers to be called Bee or Bumblebee.

“Come in.” I’m just glad she’s the type to knock. As she opens the door, I see her walk in with her all time favorite outfit. I know it well because she has many pairs of the yellow and black bumblebee striped socks and the black short-shorts. The white shirt she wore with it was new though. “You’ll never guess what I heard at school today about your school.” She smirks,

“Let me guess,” Axel chips in, “, we’re a bunch of stuck up loons?” Bee laughs, but only because she’s developed a crush on him.

“No, that there’s an Abnormal in your class year!” I roll my eyes. Abnormals have been hunted by the government and anyone else that can get their hands on them for years. I don’t think it’s right. They are being attacked by people because of their abnormalities, hence the name. They’re special because they have certain capabilities or powers that make them better than the average person, which is why the government wants to stick their fingers in that particular cookie jar. Eventually they’ll find a really strong one they’ll want to try and duplicate the powers of.

I respond, “If there is an Abnormal there, I’m pretty sure the school would have been in lockdown already and they would have been found.” The one way to tell a normal person from an Abnormal without them using their abilities, is by checking the location where their heart sits. Apparently there’s a very distinguishable ‘birthmark’ that forms a particular shape which relates to their powers. Fortunately for all those who aren’t normal – there are too many civil rights people and human activists insisting the government can’t body search the country to find these people, so for now they can still hide.

“Who knows? One of the students at my school said they saw someone wearing one of your school jumpers and just threw someone across an alleyway in the city with like, a touch of their hand! Sounds totally epic.”

“Sounds totally untrue.” I say, “Tell you what though, you’re all for doing the right thing, if there is an Abnormal at my school I promise I’ll bring them right back here and you can be best friends.” She giggles and closes the door.

“You know,” Axel chimes in, “, maybe that’s why Cecilia never attends the dances. Those dresses are pretty revealing. Maybe she doesn’t want to reveal the Abnormal mark?” He snickers. I turn back to my computer where it automatically opens all the programs I usually require. One was just my browser with some interesting news bulletins sprawled across the home tab. ‘ABNORMALS NO LONGER CLASSIFIED AS DANGEROUS?’ – A title that caught my eye given the recent conversation. But why was it a question? According to the snippet, they are looking to place a new law surrounding the circumstances of the Abnormals, giving them a chance to use their abilities for the right thing without ridicule or judgement. Axel reads over my shoulder, “Probably a trick, they want them to come out of hiding so they can bag and tag ‘em.” Axel has always been pessimistic when it comes to government intentions. We hear a car across the road and see his parents enter the driveway. “Hey, so would you really hide an Abnormal here given it’s illegal not to openly identify them?”

It was an odd question but I respond nonetheless, “Yeah, I mean it’s not like anyone’s chosen to be Abnormal, they’re born with it right?” He smirks at me, nodding like a chicken, then walks out of my room. I hear the footsteps down the stairs and the front door close. What an odd conversation.

The next morning, Axel is already waiting in my front yard, he looks excited and a bit agitated at the same time. Oddly obvious despite his baggy band shirts and holey jeans.

“You okay?” I ask as I approach him.

“Sort of.” He says, “Since it’s Friday, do you mind if we go somewhere tonight? I want to show you something.” It seemed oddly suspicious but I’ve known him for years, and weird is one of his specialties.

“Sure.” I say, without question. His face holds his usual smirk and we begin walking towards the school.

School went off without a hitch, no awkward moments where I bumped into Cecilia and no one questioned if I was capable of stringing a sentence together in front of anyone that wasn’t Axel. Speaking of him, I met up with him in front of the school gates, eager to know where we were going.

“Okay so,” he says, before we walk off, “, you can’t tell anyone about what you’re going to see. I’m trusting you more than ever with my biggest secret. Think you can keep it to yourself?”

This time, I roll my eyes at him, “One of your secrets? Always.” I make that comment quite often when he advises he’s going to tell me a secret, it’s always something ridiculous, for example, he once told me he emptied most of a salt shaker on his little brother's pizza and blamed it on his older brother. We begin walking off in an unusual direction – unusual to me anyway. 

We walk for a good forty-five minutes before we make our way into the forestry suburban area. I know this area only because we came nearby once during a field trip. We were meant to go camping around these woods, but the school didn’t consider it ‘out of town’ enough to classify as a camp. 

“Okay so,” Axel begins to talk after ten minutes of silence. He steps over a small brick wall where it’s fallen and I follow, although I’m fairly sure we might be trespassing. “, remember how you said yesterday that if there was an Abnormal at our school, you’d be totally cool to keep that secret right?” I shrug,

“Yeah, well I don’t see them any different to normal people, honestly.” I almost trip on a large rock due to the length of the grass. The trees become thicker and I can’t see the road anymore. Looking up into the canopy I can see that the sun is still shining brightly. Hopefully this ‘secret’ is just him getting over excited about a dead thing he’s found in the woods.

“That’s really cool. Not a lot of people are like that. And you know, we’ve been friends for ages so I wanted to tell you about this stuff but it’s super hard, you know?” I’m getting confused by this point but also concerned.

“What are you talking about?” He stops at an odd shaped shed placed in a small quarry and begins to make a descent down the side using stones placed there similar to a staircase – a slippery one.

“Come here.” He says, standing in front of the door. “Can you open this door?” He asks. I roll my eyes but then I notice – there’s no handle on this particular door. “Yeah, exactly, it’s locked from the inside.”

“Secret entrance?” I ask.

“Nah, no secret. But you promised to keep mine right?”

“Indeed I did.” I say, though with the feeling bubbling up in my stomach that I was going to regret it.

“I can open this door, and inside it is all my research. Both of which tie to the same secret I’m about to show you.” He steps forward towards the door and checks over his shoulder to make sure I’m watching. With his commonly used smirk, he walks forward into the door – and then through it. I take a step back in disbelief for a moment. Positive that I was seeing things or that he was tricking me with some kind of optical illusion. I hear a lock and the door opens. “Come inside!” He exclaims. Without hesitation to follow him. I walk in through the door and he closes it. There was no light inside so I stood completely still until he plugs in a switch – who knows how he gets electricity to this place. I blink a few times as the flashing bulb comes to life and shines a light on this situation. “You see, I’ve wanted to tell you for ages that I’m one of them, but I thought it would be too weird or that you would tell someone and I’d get taken away. My parents don’t even know.” He sighs. I must have a strange expression on my face because he looks really concerned. “You’re not going to tell anyone though, right?”

I roll my eyes, “Who would I tell? The only person I talk to? Oh, that’s you.” I smile reassuringly. He exhales, looking relieved. I don’t know why he’d be so concerned with telling me. He’s been my closest friend for years, I’d never betray his trust foolishly. “So, you can walk through walls?” I ask curiously.

“Well, I can go through things, yeah, it’s called Phasing from what I understand of it.” He approaches me and turns me around to take a good look at the room. From floor to ceiling the room was filled with pictures, newspaper clippings, old tables with documents sprawled all over them and leftover takeout bags. “You see, I’m trying to find out who the others are in this town. They say if there’s one, that could mean approximately five others in the same location.”

“But according to the news they’ve only been discovered in three locations. New York, Chicago and Los Angeles.”

“So that means since I’m here there has to be others, and I’m trying to find them before someone else does. Birds of a feather right?” I look around the place and notice photos of everyone, including my family, myself and even Cecilia.

“So you suspect Cecilia to be one too?” I sigh,

“Well, no one is totally off the radar right? Thing is, what I said yesterday was true, she doesn’t show off any skin, which would be second nature to an Abnormal trying to hide their mark.”

“Or maybe she’s just conservative?” He looks at me and rolls his eyes.

“Either way, I’d like your help. There are so many people to cover and unfortunately checking them out one at a time - it’s just a slow process. Please?”

“What are you going to do when you find another?”

“Um, get them to join us and create an awesome rock band? I got no idea. I just know we should stick together and cover for each other.” That idea confused me.

“Cover what though? Most of the time you don’t use your powers. We’ve been friends for years. I didn’t even suspect it.”

“I thought you paid attention to the news?” I tried to think if I saw anything even remotely relevant but I couldn’t. “In the last few weeks, someone has been hunting and killing Abnormals. There’s a serial killer on the loose, and they’re in the town next to us. It won’t be long before they come here.” I honestly didn’t know about that, but I’m starting to see his motivation. The town nearby has been in disarray with the unusual killings of people, but I didn’t realize they were Abnormals. “Thing is, the few people that I suspect most, I think you could help me with.”

“Who do you suspect?”

“Well, until yesterday I kind of suspected your sister, but it would be nice for you to confirm that. She wears a lot of shirts and jumpers, so I can’t see anything, have you ever-”

I cut in, “Trust me, she’s not one of them. When her friends and her do that slumber party nonsense she jumps in the spa with them – certainly would have noticed then.”

“Okay, well the other, as discussed a moment ago was Cecilia.”

My heart starts pounding again, “Exactly how am I meant to help, you’re way more confident than me, you talk to her.”

“Well, I’m not exactly going to ask her to pull her top down.” My brain begins to think other things and mental images form in my head. Not what I wanted. 

“I don’t exactly want to ask her that either.”

He raises an eyebrow at me, “I’m going to ignore the obvious ‘sure you do’ and just say; yeah, but ask her out on a date. Go hang out at the mall or something and get her to try on some clothes and show you.” I look at him with the most tiresome look I can think of.

“I just can’t. I freeze up.”

“I know, but since you’re interested in her anyway, and I need to know, I’ll help you guys get set up on a date. Dude, I just revealed my big secret, work with me on this.” Suddenly, I feel sick to the core.