Firebound - First Three Chapters

Chapter One

The old necklace burnt in Abigail’s hand. The feeling licked over her fingers as she held it tighter, almost crushing the pendant. Necklaces shouldn’t burn. But there it was lighting up her hand, the same way that striking a match directly against her palm would have done. She repeated the mantra in her head: necklaces shouldn’t burn. Abigail let her mother’s old necklace slip back through her fingers and settle back into place. It sat in its normal position round her neck, just as it should be and not burning anymore. She ran her thumb along her fingertips. Apart from the papercut on her ring finger, they felt the same, not burning, or even burnt, not hot or even that warm. Just normal. She reached up to touch the necklace again. Her hand heated up. She pulled away and kicked out at a pile of dirty school shirts, scattering them across the red carpet.

            This was stupid. She was just being stupid and way over-sensitive. She kicked out at what was left at her dirty laundry pile, sending t-shirts flying. Gold didn’t just randomly heat up, at least not without something causing it to. Flames didn’t just spring up out of nothing, unless maybe you counted the way fire had engulfed her mum’s car last year. This was just the anniversary coming up. It was just her mind playing tricks on her. It couldn’t be anything else. She wouldn’t let it be anything else.

            Abigail took off the necklace and carefully placed it on her overflowing desk, next to her history coursework which she hadn’t started yet and was due in thirteen days ago. She didn’t need any reminders of her mum tonight if she wanted to have a good time and she was determined to have a good time. Tears over last year’s car crash could wait for at least another day. Her gaze drifted back to the necklace as she threw more clothes out of her wardrobe. She had worn that necklace almost every day for the last year. She felt naked without it on, unprotected, unprepared. She gulped. She couldn’t wear it and put on her act of being normal tonight.

            Her fingers traced the necklace’s symbol on her neck. Her spine chilled. She could almost feel her mum’s presence in the room, lecturing her about the mess. A small smile formed. At least she could find ways to remember her mum even if she wasn’t here. And one of those ways was wearing her necklace, her symbol. Her eyes looked back over to it, lying on the desk. Her smile grew a little. The sun from the window caught the opals on the golden necklace, making them look like flickering flames. She dropped her smile as she shook her head; her mind and the lights were playing some serious tricks on her today.

            She was royally losing it. And that nonsense with her necklace would cut her off from the crowd if she lost it. She was normal, no she was better than normal. And she would stay that way, necklace be damned. She was popular. Or at least she had been. No, she still was. The necklace hadn’t heated up; the symbol hadn’t flickered in the light. There were no flames. Just a stupid overactive imagination. An imagination that could be easily dismissed when she got out of the house.

            Abigail gulped turning her attention back to something uncomplicated, like what to wear tonight. She kept her outfit simple: trainers, jeans and a hoodie. She turned to the mirror, giving her appearance a final once over. She looked okay. Her trainers didn’t have their usual crust of mud at the toe and there weren’t any unintentional extra tears on her jeans. She’d do. Apart from her hair. She yanked at it. Her red hair flickering, like a fire spluttering into life, as she let it fall out of its messy school day plait and halfway down her back. Ignoring another trick of the light, she headed for her bedroom door.

            She paused as she reached the bottom of the stairs.  The noise had been masked by the sound of the television coming from Holly’s room. Her sister had been watching some stupid news programme that had been commenting on the storms battering the north of Scotland. Her feet followed the voices and the closer she got the more she wanted to hear. She paused again, her hand on the kitchen door. Her teeth dug into her bottom lip. She held her breath. Not daring to move. But not able to go anywhere else.

            By the sound of it, she should be listening to what was going on in the kitchen. It hardly mattered and was pretty sure that she hadn’t been invited to join the conversation. It was about her. Her phone buzzed again and she pulled it out of her pocket with her free hand. Jordan. He was outside. She swore. He hated waiting. She pocketed the phone and her other hand moved off the door. She should head out to him. But. But. Her hand found its way back onto the door handle, wrapping around it. That was her dad’s voice in there.

            Relief rushed through her, filling up her lungs with air. Her dad was home. Maybe all her deliberate fights, detentions, and days in isolation at school had worked. He must still care. He’d come home. Maybe the days of conversations with his voicemail were over and he’d stopped burying himself in work and disappearing on business trips. In the last year, he had so often got home late into the evening and then shut himself in his office until after midnight, before making sure he was out early the next day. But right now, he was here and not locked away from them, instead he was in the kitchen arguing with her grandmother. Abigail paused, processing that thought. That was even stranger than her dad actually being home. Her grandmother had been banned from the house following a huge row just after Beth’s eighteenth birthday. Six years ago. And then when her grandmother had tried to come back in again, the day following her mum’s funeral, she’d been kicked out again.

            “Abi is my daughter; she is nothing, nothing, to do with you.”

             “No, she is everything to do with me. She is my Heir and as of today, she is of age and you can’t do anything to stop that anymore.”

            “How many times? She is not your Heir.” Her dad sounded out each of the words. “She is my daughter and I won’t have her involved in that mess.”

            “Just look at her, Thomas.” Her grandmother’s voice was the opposite to her dad’s, calm and controlled, but she too sounded out each word. “Stop and look at her. She is just like her true ancestors. Her brown eyes, her red hair, that is my lineage in her. Even Julia accepted that. You can claim Bethany and Holly all you like, but that girl is mine. Abigail is my Heir, she is part of my world, and the sooner you accept that then the sooner we can stop wasting time.”

            A thud sounded against wood and the noise ricocheted through the air and pushed Abigail’s breath back down her throat. Her hand stayed frozen on the door, not wanting to push or pull it away. That wasn’t her passionless dad in there. Not the man that responded to his daughter being involved in a fight by putting a note on the fridge with the dates that she was grounded for and an explanation that she had lost that week’s allowance. It was more like the man who had screamed on the touchlines as she had flung herself into a tackle on the football pitch or had bounced up and down uncontrollably as she sprinted towards the finish line on the track. It was the man that she had given up on having back, her actual dad and not the robot he had become since last December.

            “We rejected that world when you killed off your last Heir. You won’t treat my little girl the same way.”

            “She is hardly a little girl anymore.”

            “Sylvia, let me make this clear. You will not get your hands on her. You will not treat Abi the same way that you did Julia.”

            “Julia made her own choices.”

            “So will Abi, without your interference. You will not hurt her. You will not train her. She is not your Heir. She will not place one foot in that world!”

            “Don’t be ridiculous, Thomas.” Her grandmother’s laugh bounced off the closed door. “You never had a say in this. You should have never been involved it in. I can only thank the Spirits that I now get to make up for my daughter’s mistakes.”

            “GET. OUT. OF. MY. HOUSE.”

            Abigail moved from her frozen position. The words hadn’t made sense. Heirs. Worlds. Multiple worlds at that. But that didn’t matter. This wasn’t a time to stop and think about all that. Her dad and grandmother were fighting on the other side of that door. They weren’t going to be in there for much longer. She wasn’t going to waste that. Or let them disappear.

            She rushed into the kitchen and headed straight for her dad, hugging him and dropping all the guards that she used to protect herself. “Dad.”

            “Happy birthday,” her dad said pulling his stiff arms away. He smiled at her but it didn’t seem right. His smile tightened, there was barely a curve to his lips. It looked forced and she had offered enough fake smiles herself to know when someone didn’t mean it. “Shouldn’t you get going? You’ve made plans with your friends, right? You shouldn’t keep them waiting, Abi.”

            Abigail glanced down at her phone, it was showing another three messages, before ignoring them to focus on her dad. “I could cancel.”

            “It’s not like you to let your friends down, Ab, and we haven’t got anything going on here. You’re best off going out.”

            “Guess so.” She looked down, focusing on the phone and taking her time to reply to Jordan’s message that she would be right out. She didn’t want him to see her face right now. She needed time to recompose it and put back on her ‘I’m fine’ act. His early appearance obviously had more to do with a fight with her grandmother than wanting to see her. Abigail forced herself to smile, hopefully looking less fake than her dad’s had looked and turned to look at her grandmother. “Hi, Gran.”

            “Happy sixteenth,” her grandmother crossed the room. She held Abigail’s face softly for a moment, letting her hand linger on her right shoulder as she pushed Abigail’s hair out the way. Her grandmother pulled her into a hug and whispered, “Permissum incendia suscipio.”

            “What?” Abigail said.

            Her grandmother smiled, the first genuine smile in the room, or at least it looked like that. “Don’t worry about it; you have nothing to worry about now.”

            “Time to leave, Abi.”

            “But.”

            “Time to go.”

Chapter Two

Her dad pushed her out the door before she had time to ask any other questions. Ask what those words meant. They were plain weird and not English, but strangely they didn’t feel that alien to her. It was almost like she had heard them somewhere before and they had been buried in her subconscious. She didn’t get it. But what was more important right now was that she was on the wrong side of the bloody door again.

She swore. Her toes tapping out the sound of her heartbeat as she gnawed down on her lip with her teeth. Her hand held onto the door handle for a good ten seconds before she let it go and grabbed her jacket off the peg by the stairs. It didn’t look like she was going to get any answers from her rowing relatives. Her dad was completely against that. So surely it would be better to just go over to her grandmother’s after school tomorrow and get answers without her dad interfering. And why should he get to do that anyway?  It wasn’t like he wanted to be part of her life anymore. Besides, it was her birthday, at least her dad was right there, she should get to enjoy it.

Abigail headed outside, putting on her black biker jacket and hugging it into her body, more out of habit than because of the cold December air. She wasn’t feeling cold. She didn’t get cold. Her body had some kind of weird type of wiring that kept her warm at all times and had even seen her walking around the Alps in February in just jeans, t-shirt and hoodie, when everyone else had snow jackets on. But right now, hugging her jacket was offering her support and she was going to need that if she was going to have to go back to pretending everything was fine. Jordan was waiting for her at the end of the driveway.

“It’s about time,” Jordan said. “I’ve texted you enough times.”

“And if you wanted me to come down faster, you could have come up to the house.”

“Your dad’s car is in the driveway.”

“So?”

“I didn’t fancy getting a bunch of grief off him.”

“Oh, get over it,” she huffed out a breath, she didn’t want to deal with grief from her boyfriend tonight. “And it’s nowhere near as bad as your mother treats me. I swear she takes some kind of twisted satisfaction in saying ‘Jordan, darling, it’s the Cooper girl’ or questioning me about my mum. And I still walk up to your door instead of texting your phone and expecting you to just appear.”

“If you want to get into a fight then you’re going the right way about it and you seem to be forgetting that you need me. Without me, Abi you’re no one.”

“I don’t need anyone.”

He smiled, “Really? That’s not how I see it.”

“You were no one last year, not until you started dating me.”

Jordan’s smile grew. “It’s funny how things change.”

Abigail forced herself not to respond. She didn’t need an argument to remind her how life had changed and for tonight, she just wanted to pretend that nothing had changed in the last year. “Let’s just drop it. Okay?”

“Good, ‘cause I’ve much more enjoyable plans for tonight.”

He took her right hand and gave it a small pull. A pull that shot up to her right shoulder. Her left hand moved up there, massaging her shoulder, like she would do with any sports injury. But she hadn’t had an injury there in years. Not since she had taken a fall in a hockey match in Year Seven and had a stick slammed directly into it. She hadn’t even banged her arm recently or taken a fall in a training session. She dropped her hand as the tension released from her right shoulder, ignoring any leftover pain. She wanted a normal birthday, just like everyone else got.

She smiled at her boyfriend, “Where are we going?”

“The park.”

She tucked her hand into his and Jordan picked up a carrier bag off from the floor. “You want to give me one of those and we’ll start the evening over.”

Jordan dropped her hand and pulled a can and passed it to her. “Is your shoulder alright?”

She opened it a took and a sip, “I overstretched at the basketball match yesterday,” she lied as she took another drink. “It’s nothing.”

“And you won, it’s always worth picking up the odd knock if you win.”

“‘Course I won.” She took another drink, “We meeting anyone else tonight?”

“Nah, I thought we’d have more fun with just the two of us.”

Abigail threw the empty can into a bin and took another can from Jordan before upping the pace as they turned onto the next street. Jordan tucked his hand into the back pocket of her jeans, as they got closer to the park. Abigail knew she should relax. She took another drink, forcing herself not to focus on either her aching shoulder or her grandmother’s fight with her dad. But even acting normally with Jordan didn’t feel right tonight. His hand felt cold and it wasn’t even that cold a day, although the misty breath in front of her was dispelling that theory.

The pair of them reached the park around twenty minutes later and settled on the park bench around the playground area. Jordan passed her a can from the bag, and they both took a couple of gulps, before he leaned in and kissed her. As her lips met his, all the other things that were happening in the world or even just outside the park disappeared. The background noise faded and blurred. The noises of the nearby cars, tuts from passers-by and all those other needless sounds in life barely registered as a dull murmur to her ears. Adrenaline pumped through her body as Jordan deepened the kiss. Goosebumps sprang up on her arms, as their jackets, and hoodies fell to the ground and their bare skin touched.

Their hands clasped for a moment before Jordan seized his chance and upped the adrenaline levels again. Shivers finally chilled her spine as Jordan flipped her back on the bench. Her temperature rose again, the kiss sending her heart pounding against her ribcage and making her want to take things so much further. Heat had taken over her body. Her heart raced as it would when she pushed for a personal best in a hundred metre sprint. And all reason was gone.

She grabbed Jordan’s t-shirt and pulled him back in for another kiss after just a few quick breaths. She was nowhere near finished. Abigail let her hand slip between the fabric of his boxers and denim of his jeans. She didn’t want this kiss to end. The best kisses were never rushed and she had no intention of rushing this one. She wanted to enjoy every second. Every touch. Her hands made their way from his hips to his bum and she felt his hands travelling her body, touching her skin, only breaking apart when she banged her aching shoulder. Pain and heat combined, the fire inside her intensifying.

“Jordan, stop.” She pushed him off her and her hand went back to her shoulder.

“What? Why?”

“My shoulder.”

He smiled, “I’m not interested in your shoulder, and I’ll be careful.”

She pushed him back as he went in to kiss her again, “I said no. Alright?”

Jordan glared at her, “What?”

“I don’t want it to turn into actual injury, okay, give me five, have a drink or something, while I try to sort it out.”

Jordan grabbed another can from the bag, “Alright, take five, we wouldn’t want ‘miss star athlete’ getting a proper injury.”

Several drinks later and the pain disappeared from her shoulder, and they continued with the rest of the evening that Jordan had planned. It was well after midnight when Abigail snuck back into the house, not taking the time to check out whether the light in her dad’s study was on. She clumsily made her way up the stairs, trying, more out of habit than worry for any punishments, not to make too much noise. Without changing out of her clothes, she crashed straight on her bed.

She woke the next morning with a splitting headache and swearing at the alarm. After a quick shower she paused in front of the bathroom mirror, already regretting her late night. The next few days were going to be hard enough as it was, without adding to her own problems. She reached into the cabinet and felt around for some painkillers, only to pull out an empty box. Well that was just wonderful and bound to make school go even better today.

Abigail scooped her hair up, brushing her right shoulder as she did so and felt a burning sensation in her hand. She quickly dropped her hair, examining her hand, to see if anything was wrong with it. Finding nothing there, she scooped up her hair again and felt the same tingling feeling as she brushed her right shoulder. Abigail turned, and with her back to the mirror and looked over her shoulder. A red tattoo of three vertical opals, just like the ones on her mum’s old necklace, marked her shoulder blade.

Chapter Three

Ignoring the stinging feeling, Abigail ran her hand along the new mark on her shoulder. Her frown growing as she combined examining the mark with her fingers and by looking in the mirror. If it wasn’t for the clear skin between the different shapes and the outline, the mark could clearly have passed for a burn – it had the clear red glow to it. If not a burn, then it could have been a birthmark or a tattoo. But a birthmark would have been there since well, birth and she was positive that even her dazed head would have remembered leaving the park to go and get a tattoo last night.

            Gently, she ran her hand along the mark, her fingers making a circling motion as she did so. It wasn’t just the same mark as on that necklace, it was also the same symbol that was on her mum’s gravestone. She was sure of that now. And she was equally sure that she didn’t want that mark on her back. Abigail grabbed the soap and ran it over her shoulder. She bit down hard on her lip and water filled her eyes as she rubbed, pain growing with every touch. Tears trickled out of her eyes as she rinsed off the soap. She turned her back to the mirror and looked over her shoulder. The damn mark was still there and now, if anything, it was shining brighter and rawer.

            “Ab!” Her sister Holly’s voice shouted up the stairs. “Abi, we’re going to be late.”

            Abigail huffed out a breath. She didn’t have time for this – Holly or her headache. She ran down the stairs, ten minutes later, still swearing and pulling on her school blazer. Her shirt was only half buttoned, untucked. She had her tie as well as an overflowing school bag in her hand. She didn’t need Holly to go off on one as well as everything else and her sister would literally kill her if they got caught up in traffic. Not that she would have minded getting in late, and if it wasn’t for Holly, she’d probably be late more often, but Holly had this mental liking for school.

            Holly was waiting for her when she got to the kitchen, drumming her fingers along the table, uniform perfect and her boring brown hair in its flawless and boring braid. Unlike Abigail, she was the textbook schoolgirl and if you listened to their teachers, a good example and an excellent house captain. Not that she tended to listen to those lectures. Rather she would tune them out the more people asked her why she couldn’t be more like her sister.

            Abigail ignored Holly as she gulped down some orange juice straight from the carton before she grabbed an apple out of the bowl on the kitchen counter. As her sister moaned, she dived into the pile of shoes by the back door. She took a large bite of apple as she threw shoes over the floor trying to find her black school ones. The last thing she needed right now was not to be eating right, especially if she wanted to consider herself a serious athlete and avoid another lecture from one of her coaches. When she found the shoes, she caught Holly’s blue eyes only to see that judgemental look in them.

            “What time did you get in last night?”

            “What do you care?”

            “Fine,” Holly glared at her, “What took you so long this morning?”

            “Nothing.”

            “I’m not wasting time on this.” Holly directed Abigail towards the door with a slight push on her right shoulder. “Let’s just go.”

            Pain throbbed through her shoulder and Abigail muttered a variety of her favourite swear words, just under her breath but still loudly enough for Holly to hear them. Hopefully, that would give her sister enough of a hint that she was hardly in the mood to sit and chat. Not that they ever did that much, but today really wasn’t the day to start. She just wanted to get to school, get out and forget that today had happened or that tomorrow was happening either for that matter.

            Not that that was going happen. A greater fear was growing in the pit of her stomach and it was starting to eat away at her. Something very strange was happening here. The necklace. Pains in her shoulder. Her grandmother’s visit. Heirs. Worlds. The tattoo. And all this was happening on the eve of the anniversary of her mum’s death. More curses sprang to her lips. Something was wrong and wrong with her, and not the type of wrong that kept getting her called into her Head of Year’s office at least weekly at school. That mark may have appeared out of nowhere but she would be amazed if it disappeared as easily.

            “Ab. Are you okay?”

            “Absolutely wonderful. Why wouldn’t I be?” She slung her bag over her left shoulder. “Aren’t we late?”

            Holly frowned at her. “We’ll leave it until later then.”

            The day at school was as good as could be expected for a day that had some of her least favourite and utterly pointless subjects. Along with a series of teachers who seemed to take great pleasure in throwing her out of their lessons. Not that she didn’t give them much ground to kick her out.

Her mind was focused on other things so that even Kaye Wright, despite her best efforts, couldn’t get a reaction off from her. Instead of talking to her friends, or anything else that may be deemed as causing disruption, she sat doodling on notepads, the same symbol over and over again. Drawing out the marks of that damn tattoo and struggling to work out what it meant. Although her oddly quiet self was paying even less attention than she normally did.

            She had been so far from her normal self today.  No matter how hard she tried to focus on other things, occasionally including her school work. Right now, she would take anything to have a moment’s distraction from what strange aspects had taken over her life. But her mind kept flashing back to that mark, and every time it did she found herself catching her breath at the same time. No matter how rational she tried to force her mind to be, it was going into overdrive. Just what the hell was that symbol? Why was it on her mum’s gravestone, her necklace and now on her shoulder? How had it got there? And why did it hurt so much when she touched it?

            As the bell rang to signal the end of the day she screwed up the drawings and flicked them into her overflowing bag. She couldn’t let anyone else find them, especially if she didn’t want anyone to pepper her with questions. She glared at the bag and its contents before dumping them in the first bin that she came across. Once the symbol had been disposed of, she took off down the corridor and down two flights of stairs. She pelted along the corridors, ignoring the calls of ‘no running’, towards the gym changing rooms.

She couldn’t wait for her mind to become a little less preoccupied and she knew no better way to do that than to get out on a sports pitch. On a sports pitch, track or court, her mind would focus on the sole purpose of winning. And today that could be just what she needed. Sport had never let her down before. She dumped her bag down in her usual position in the changing room and attempted smiles as others craved to get her attention.

“Hey, Ab,” Kelly said as Abigail changed into her red Nottingham Forest football shirt, with its peeling number seven on the back, “when did you get a tattoo?”

“Come on, let’s get a move on girls.” Miss McCall, their young PE teacher, opened the door from the PE office to the changing room, “We’ve got a big match coming up, so there’s a lot to do instead of spending the next hour gossiping in here.”

Kelly waited for McCall to step outside before she turned her attention back to her friend.  “Abi, the tattoo?” Abigail’s hand automatically shot up to massage it.  How the hell did she explain this and why had she been stupid enough to let anyone else see the mark? “Abi, are you okay?”

“Yeah, fine.”

“The tattoo?”

“It’s just a henna.”

“You should get it done for real,” Kelly said as she tied her hair back into a ponytail, “it suits you.”

“We should get out there. Last week she made us do five laps for every minute that we were late and I’m not in the mood for laps.”

Without looking back, Abigail grabbed her water bottle and headed outside to the school fields. She didn’t want to talk about any of this to anyone, and Kelly should have got that quicker. Kelly should know after last year that if she didn’t want to answer a question then she wouldn’t and to just drop the questions. Besides, as captain of the team, she should be getting out there and leading as an example. They had a county semi-final next week.

The mutters started before she was even on the other side of the door. Not for the first time, she was the centre of her teammates’ attention, and not for the right reasons. The mutters focused on her current change of attitude. She wasn’t her normal bouncy self that getting involved in any kind of sport brought out of her and that captured people’s attention, nor had she been her explosive self that they had had to witness so often. She had just been quiet and quiet wasn’t her.

Ignoring the prattle of her teammates and their conclusions that it was the anniversary of her mum’s death that was causing the sulks and silences, she grabbed a bag of balls by the door and took them up to the pitch. It was none of their business what type of mood she was in and why. She dropped the balls at the side of the pitch and offered McCall a weak smile which she returned. At least McCall was treating her normally.

“Necklace, Abi.”

“Sorry.”  Her hand shot up to the necklace.  “Do you want me to take it back inside?”

McCall’s smile grew. “I can look after it for you.”

Abigail paused, running her hand along the familiar pattern on the necklace. She had to stop dwelling on that mark. She had a game to focus on. Pushing thoughts of that damn symbol out of her mind, she took off the necklace. It still felt warm. Abigail placed the necklace in her teacher’s hand to look after. McCall examined it for the briefest of seconds, before she put it in her jacket pocket and zipped it up.

The shooting drill was just what she needed. She lashed out at the ball with no holding back, hitting the back of the net with each shot. She even managed to join in with the hugs, high fives and smiles as she managed to hit a twenty-yard volley with her weaker left foot. A natural high pumped through her, with her adrenaline levels rising as she earned back the respect her teammates. Her mood had greatly improved as they moved into the eight-on-eight match to finish the session. She had had a chance to show off and remind people why they looked up to her. She’d had a chance to make all the whispers stop. The act that she had been trying to put on all day, however unsuccessfully, didn’t feel like an act anymore.

Almost straight from kick off, Kelly passed the ball to her. Abigail ran with it stretching out her legs and building up her pace down the wing. She danced around two players, ball glued to her feet, and flicked it over the leg of another player coming straight at her. Another burst of pace took her further up the pitch before she paused considering her options and giving other players a chance to get into position. This was a training session and the Abigail Cooper Show could wait for the match.

She moved slightly to the right instead of taking the ball for a bit of personal glory, working her angles right and crossed the ball into the box and right onto Kelly’s head. A couple of seconds after the ball had left her feet, she found herself crashing to the ground. Out of instinct, she threw her right arm and shoulder down first trying to break her fall, causing arm and shoulder to hit the ground hard.

Pain throbbed through the right side of her body – burning from her shoulder down her arm. Tears welled in her eyes and she found herself unable to stop them for the second time that day. She swore, before she forced herself to take in a couple of long deep breaths. She couldn’t afford to lose it. She had to make herself control her emotions. She rubbed her aching arm across her eyes. She wouldn’t let people see her cry. Not here. Not over just a fall. New pain pulsed through her at the movement.

She swore again and took another breath but it wasn’t working. Pain was flaming inside her and sparking up her temper. More tears welled in her eyes, but this time she just about managed to hold them back. She didn’t want to let herself cry. Tears showed a side of her that she didn’t want other people to see, a side of her that she wouldn’t let other people see. They only came when she was at her weakest. Tears made her vulnerable.

“Abi,” Shannon reached out her hand to help her up. “I’m sorry.”

She rejected the hand as she pushed herself up to her feet. She didn’t want that hand or the apology. She wouldn’t give people another excuse to feel sorry for her. Abigail looked at her teammate, her temper growing. She didn’t need to see sympathy in anyone’s eyes. That was the kind of tackle that could do serious damage, high, late and two footed. She was lucky that it hadn’t broken her leg. She may not want to deal with pity but she had no problem dealing with her anger. That tackle was plain stupid.

“Sorry?” her temper was flaming inside her and rising with her voice, as her hands crunched into fists. “What are you playing at? We’re on the same team!”

“I mistimed it,” Shannon said as a couple of their other teammates made their way over and Abigail turned her back. “I’m sorry, it was a mistake.”

Abigail bit back her retort and forced herself to take several more deep breaths. She just needed to be rational. She could almost hear her mum’s voice in her head. ‘Just ignore those instincts, Abi. Ignore them and walk away. It’s not worth losing your temper over this.’ Her mum was right. Her temper may be rising but this wasn’t Shannon’s fault or at least not all her fault. It had been so close to the surface anyway.

She needed to count to ten or something, take some more breaths. She couldn’t allow herself to raise her fists at a teammate. She was on a last warning for fighting and her school file had to be the size of her thumb over the last year. Suspension. The word swam around her head. It was shouted at her just ten days ago when Mrs Morgan had finally lost her own temper with her. ‘This has to stop, Abigail. You are throwing away your future, and I can’t keep making excuses for you. The next time you get into trouble, it will mean a suspension.’

Abigail let out another breath. Yes, Shannon had mistimed the tackle. Yes, Shannon could have sent her to the hospital but she hadn’t meant it. It wasn’t Shannon’s fault that she was slow. Nor was it Shannon’s fault that she couldn’t tackle, although she really should have thought about that before she had tried to take out her captain.

“Abi,” Shannon touched Abigail’s shoulder to try and get her to turn around.

Pain shot through her again as if it was lighting up her very being. Her fists were tightening, begging her to release them. Why the hell was it still hurting like this? And why was pain shooting from her shoulder and through the rest of her body like a rapidly spreading fire? Just what was going on with her at the moment?

She forced herself to let out several long breaths, slow, deep and controlled. She couldn’t react. She mustn’t react. But her mind was not passing that message on to her body. Her fists had curled up into a tight ball and she felt that overwhelming desire to lash out with them.

She huffed out another breath. She couldn’t let that happen. She didn’t need everyone else thinking that she had lost it. They were already whispering about it, but if she got out of here soon, then maybe she could avoid it. All she had to do was get away from Shannon, avoid hitting out at her and getting into another fight.

Abigail stormed across the pitch, picked up the door key from the top of a pile of cones and headed back to the changing room. Her temper was bubbling again as she thrust the key in the door, crossed the room and threw everything back into her school bag. She had no reason to let her temper rise.

If she could ignore Kaye Wright’s comments in class today, that were meant to hurt her and push her into a fight that would earn that suspension, then she couldn’t lose it over this. Shannon may be stupid but she wasn’t a ‘Grade A’ malicious bitch. So that meant she needed to hurry. Her teammates were making it back into the changing room as she kicked off her boots, scooped them up in her hand and left the building.

She quickened her pace as she saw the door open with the early end to the training session. She headed across the school grounds and towards Holly’s car. She huffed out another breath as she rested against the beaten up old machine that had been handed down from Beth to Holly last year, when Beth had taken their mum’s old car. She scanned the car park to see Holly making her way over and talking to the same man that Abigail had seen her talking with a couple of times last week after school. She couldn’t fault her sister’s taste. The guy that she was talking with, while not heavyset, was tall and well built. He had dark brown, longish, slightly messy hair and as he turned back to look at them, she noticed a pair of amazingly piercing blue eyes.

Holly broke away from the conversation, made her way over to her sister and handed over Abigail’s necklace. “Kelly found me.”

Abigail looked at the necklace before throwing it in her bag, she wasn’t ready to put that symbol back on. “That’s just how you want your friend to react, grass on you.”

“Well, looks like she was right to.”  Holly turned her attention to the man, touching his arm. “Come by later; we’ll be ready, J.”

“I’d prefer to start right away,” he said. “There’s a lot to cover and Dad’s insistent that we’ve been waiting too long as it is.”

Holly and the man shared a brief glance. His look seemed to be much more piercing than Holly’s, who had waited a moment to weigh up her options. Abigail could almost hear the battle going on in Holly’s head. Her sister didn’t like to be rushed into making decisions and it looked like that was just what was happening.

“Oh screw it, Josef, hold this a minute.” She threw off her coat and school blazer. Holly turned back round to face Abigail and undid a couple of buttons on her shirt. She shifted the shirt off her shoulder, revealing a red circular tattoo, with three opals contained within it. Just like the one on her mum’s gravestone. Just like the one on the necklace. And just like the one now on Abigail’s back. “Look familiar?”