Emotionally Charged

by Selina Fenech

  Table of Contents

  Copyright Information

  Dedication

  Part One Hero Me

  Part Two Angel Masks

  Part Three Strength to Fall

  Memory’s Wake By Selina Fenech

  A Thank You to My Readers

  About the Author

  Emotionally Charged

  by

  Selina Fenech

  Copyright Information

  First Published by Fairies and Fantasy Pty Ltd 2011

  Kindle Edition

  Emotionally Charged copyright © 2011 Selina Fenech

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 978-0-9871511-4-8

  http://www.selinafenech.com

  License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Amazon.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Dedication

  To my baby, due to arrive into the world not long after this book.

  I can’t wait to meet you.

  Part One

  Hero Me

  Ever since I was a little girl I wished a rich, handsome hero would appear and whisk me away from my mundane life. Common dream I guess, but I’m nothing special either. I never thought it would actually happen. Or that nothing-special me would be the hero that did the saving.

  ***

  I stared at the crack that ran up our living room wall. To my parents, it said insurance claims and dodgy contractors doing repairs. To me it said excitement. The crack gave me shivers like it was carved up my spine.

  We’ve always known our town was near a major fault, but it’s one of those sleepy fault lines that doesn’t do anything for decades, centuries even. Then just when everyone in our middle-class paradise had achieved a false sense of security it decided to give a big heave. Like it was screwing with us on purpose, to spice up this suburban daydream, give us a slap and wake us up. There had been a small tremor that I can’t remember when I was a baby. This latest, just after my seventeenth birthday, was a magnitude 6.8. It woke me up.

  Dad was on the phone to his cop buddy getting all the updates. Tilting my head to his conversation, I kept my eyes on the crack, worried that if I looked away it would disappear and life would return to normal. Boring. Dad repeated the main points of interest for Mom to hear as she cleaned the wreckage in our home. Power was out everywhere and likely to stay that way a while. Mom had already insisted on lighting candles even though it wasn’t dark yet. The whole room smelled of struck matches. With power out, there also came the warning of people taking the opportunity to loot while the city was still in chaos. I raised an eyebrow in consideration. No. Wrong team.

  Dad’s news report continued. A few buildings had collapsed completely, lots of injured and a few deaths. They were setting up shelters in town for people who lost homes. One was being run at my high school.

  I bet they needed volunteers. Not as exciting as looting, but that was where I had to be. My life had so little excitement even handing out blankets had my mind brewing up romantic dreams of adventure.

  I peeled my eyes from the crack. “I want to go and help.”

  Mom looked up at me from the floor where she worked at brushing up shattered ornaments that had shaken from our shelves. Her collection of ceramic owls would never be the same. Lines around her mouth and forehead told me she was going to give me the worried mother talk. But I could tell she wasn’t really thinking about me. She was just sad about her well put together home being ruined, and worried about her shop downtown. I could read the emotions all over her. With each emotion there’s an energy that shines from a person that I can almost see. Not like an aura or anything; that sounds so new age crazy. I’m just good at telling how people feel. Always have been. It’s nothing special but it does come in handy. When you know how someone is feeling, you can give just the right response to get what you want.

  I pre-empted Mom’s speech with soothing words. “I’ll just be helping out in a shelter, under the watchful eye of other aid workers, responsible adults and doctors. Probably the safest place at the moment, right?”

  Mom tightened her lips. She looked at the dustpan and brush in her hands as though that was all she could focus on right now. Her startling blue eyes turned back toward me. Why couldn’t I have gotten those? I got brown instead, to match my hair which she won’t even let me dye. Her eyes were still telling me no. She opened her mouth but I beat her to it.

  “Just think how appealing it will look on my college application as an extracurricular activity. And I can swing past your shop and make sure it’s okay.”

  Mom’s expression brightened. Score to me. “I hope there’s not too much damage. I just had that porcelain shipment in. I’d go check myself but there’s so much to do here. Could you go there first thing? Just, if you’re late back I don’t want you out on dark streets if there’s no power still.”

  She stood up, gave me a kiss, then went to empty her dustpan, sighing as shattered owls tumbled into the trash. I saw a pink one roll in and knew it was her favorite. Dad gave her a hug as though they were standing by the grave of a beloved relative. All just a fake display. No real emotion came from either of them other than slight worry and irritation. How do people ever get so stodgy? How could they not be humming from excitement at all of this? I knew I was, but to crave romance and danger to the point of bursting was my natural state.

  Dad told Mom he was going to start calling around for repair quotes now, get in before the rush. I had been out for Sunday shopping with the girls earlier and the mirror confirmed I was still presentable. They were my best jeans, but I didn’t care if they got dirty. I threw my red trench on, phone, keys and wallet already in the pockets, and headed for the door.

  “Buses are still running, Livvy,” Dad called over. “There’s a pretty clear route to your high school. Just a couple of hours, okay? Be safe!”

  ***

  This. This is what I was made for. I think I might actually be glowing or vibrating, or something.

  “Bless. You’re just an angel.” A woman with a cloud of white hair patted my hand as she took a blanket from me. She smiled, but I could feel the tremble in her palm and see fear lingering all over her. It made me tingle.

  I shot back a wide toothy grin, then remembered where I was and tempered it into a sympathetic head tilt. These people were here because their homes were too unsafe to stay in, or gone entirely, and there I was bubbling over on some kind of weird high. I felt it before I’d even reached the shelter. On the bus ride in a buzz built in me the closer I got and it’d been non-stop since.

  Trevor, the coordinator for the shelter, was also my high school history teacher. Any other day he was Mr. Jones, but today he insisted on being Trevor. He leaned on a bench next to me and pushed the sweat up off his forehead and back over his head, slicking graying hair away from his face. His voice came out as a long sigh.

  “I wish I still had a teenager’s stamina. You sure you don’t need a break? You’ve been at it for hours.”

  I shook my head vaguely. Hours? It felt like twenty minutes, tops. I wasn’t sure how many blankets I’d handed out or how many people I had escorted into the gym and found a patch of ground for. Any injured went straight to the hospital, but I still felt like a warrior helping out in the aftermath of a battle. I’d listened to stories, dragged restless children back to their parents, and helped unload cartons of bottled water the local U-Mart trucked in. I pulle
d my phone from my pocket for the first time and saw it was half past midnight. I also saw three missed calls and two texts from my mom. Maybe it wasn’t me buzzing, just my phone doing its vibro-dance in my pocket.

  “I’m fine, as long as my parents don’t kill me.” I tapped the screen to call them back and got nothing but failed calls. Reception was non-existent, and the messages left by my parents were all from back before seven o’clock. The last bus ran at ten-thirty, and thanks to my parents’ car-free household policy, last bus translated to curfew and I knew it. I was going to find myself at the wrong end of a serious lecture, assuming I could find a way home.

  Trevor watched my hopeless phone poking. “Phone towers have battery backups which work for a couple of hours, but in a long black out like this will have cut out by now.”

  Even if I could get through, I had no way to get home that wasn’t going to put out the neighbors, or worse, Dad’s cop friend. I cringed. Not the way I wanted to arrive home.

  Mr. Jones sighed and I wondered how good he had become at reading emotions in his time as a teacher. The amount of irritation he showed said he already knew he had another occupant to organize tonight.

  “Sorry Mr. um… Trevor. I sort of missed my ride home.” I played up my distress, going for the sympathy angle.

  “Yes, fine, you can stay here if you can find a spare bit of floor. Landlines are still working if you want to use the phone in the office to let your parents know. Briefly. Have to keep the line clear for official calls.”

  “Do you think, maybe, you could call them for me?” I hated talking on the phone at the best of times. I couldn’t see people’s reactions, couldn’t tell how they were feeling and always ended up saying the wrong thing. And now was far from the best of times. “It would just be better if a teacher told them, instead of me.”

  And yes, I was also dodging the lecture.

  Trevor rubbed his forehead, the pen still in his hand marking it blue. He added my name to his clipboard, and waved me off. “I’ll call them. School’s off for the week and people are going to be here a while, so if you want to help out again everyone would appreciate it.”

  Sounded like an offer I couldn’t refuse. I nodded gratefully and he went to the office to make the call.

  I still had my phone in my hand, and voice mail was down so I checked the texts my mom left. The earliest must have been while I was still on the bus coming in, just Mom reminding me to check out her shop. The second text, half an hour later, included directions on which new stock cartons to check on in said shop. Maybe I had over-estimated their concern for me. Still, Mom could give me just as much of an earful for not checking her shop as she could for not being in contact and not getting home. I had, after all, forgotten to go past her shop on the way in.

  I could still go now. Having some news about Mom’s “Duck Egg Blue” home-wares boutique would be a great peace offering to help smooth things over tomorrow. Her little boutique wasn’t far from school. Normally a twenty minute walk, tonight I felt like I could fly it.

  Another family trudged into the hall armed with pillows and suitcases, prepared to camp out with everyone else. I slipped past them and jogged out the school gates and onto the street. The chunky heart pendant I’d bought that morning bounced and thudded on my chest like a second heartbeat. I forgot I was still wearing it when I left the house. I hadn’t even wanted the thing. It was pretty, but just general, mass produced stuff. Nothing special or unique. It cost a large chunk of saved allowance, but my shopping buddies talked me into it. I never really gelled with my friends. We stuck together as a group but I always felt as though I was hanging onto the fringe. I thought buying this flashy necklace might make me more like them, a symbol of belonging. One of those girls who knew how to accessorize, or even cared.

  Power was still out and with it all street lights. I was already a couple of blocks away, where older terrace housing backed the main street. I could see a lot better than I normally could in the dark and I almost giggled at how good I felt. I made such good time I slowed my pace and enjoyed the excitement of the solitary darkness. This night belonged to me. I helped people tonight. I knew people were suffering, but the city felt alive now.

  Every sign of damage from the quake just excited me more. I’d grown to hate this part of town. Hate might be too strong a word, but lately all I saw here were lines of wanky shops catering to the dull middle class, middle aged who wanted to pretend they were chic and richer than they were.

  Like Mom with her lifeless owl zoo. When I was younger I asked her why she didn’t get a real owl. She looked at me like I was crazy. “Oh no, they’d be so messy and difficult. You have to feed them real meat.”

  Shouldn’t life be like that? Difficult, messy, and real.

  I didn’t want my life in half measures. I wanted real affluence, real excitement, real romance. I wanted a rich, handsome prince to sweep me away to far off lands of adventure, intrigue and decadence. To save me from becoming settled with a fake life like my mom and dad. Sometimes I wondered if they even loved each other anymore, or whether they cared about me any more than Dad’s work or Mom’s shop. Everything about their life felt dulled.

  On the main street the shops were at least all still standing. Some had cracks running up pastel painted fronts, splitting quirky logos with their jagged smiles. No cars drove through, thanks to the late hour and the arty mosaic archway that led into the boutique district lying crumbled across the road up ahead. A lot of windows were broken, spilling glass onto the street and making window displays sparkle as though the shabby chic furniture or gourmet cupcakes had been sprinkled with diamonds.

  Not a lot of windows. Every window. I figured it made sense that earthquakes would break windows, but just around the corner I hadn’t noticed windows broken on the rows of townhouses.

  Already alert, I froze when a beam of light shone out of a building up ahead. I didn’t need to see the exact pastel shade of the shop to know it was Duck Egg Blue. The light jiggled then vanished. The sound of shattering echoed in the street followed by a boy-like chuckle.

  “Hey!” The word came out before I stopped to think. I yelled again in my loudest voice. “Hey, get out of there!”

  I may not like these shops, but it was my mom’s shop. The hell I was going to let someone trash or loot it. Getting called out would make them leave anyway, right?

  The possibility that it wouldn’t only struck me when five younger-teen boys in hoodies jumped out through the cleared window, bringing with them an avalanche of retro dinner sets from the display. I didn’t recognize the guys from school, and they didn’t dress like boys from this area either. More like guys from the housing estate a couple of burbs over who sometimes crashed parties around here. One or two held torches which they shone my way.

  Sure they might be fourteen or fifteen years old, and I was taller than a couple of them, but it was still five scary poors-ville thugs against one. Why did I feel like I could deal with this? I still felt invincible from earlier, but this could be dangerous. Feeling invincible only made it more dangerous, a point proved when the boys headed for me instead of making a guilty dash. Cocky kids.

  “Stay back, I have mace.” I bluffed, reaching my hand into a pocket of my trench coat. I grabbed for my phone instead, swiped it on, but couldn’t dial on the touch screen without looking. What would they do if they saw me dialing? Back off, or come faster? It didn’t seem worth the risk when I wasn’t sure the emergency number would even redirect and work with most of the network down.

  “Sure you do, legs. Like you’d be carrying gear like that.”

  I cursed how clingy these jeans were. I took steady steps away as the boys came closer. Their faces were shadowed under tightly drawn hoods. They looked like they were in uniform, all dressed in black. There were no distinguishing features visible apart from slightly varying heights.

  “I’ll call the police.”

  “Relax, we’re just out for some fun.” The chuckle in this one’s vo
ice was the same as the one who had been laughing at smashing things in Mom’s shop. His idea of fun worried me.

  Glass crunched on the concrete footpath behind me and I spun around to find one had snuck up on me. He made to grab for my arm and I stepped out of his way.

  Anger shone from him and my body flared with adrenaline. The five of them had me penned in now. They took turns pushing at me or grasping for me, but somehow I managed to slip and dodge through their attempts to pin me down.

  I called out for help into the ghost town but doubted any one would hear.

  I ducked under a wide swing from the closest guy, meant to hit me rather than hold, and pulled my keys out of my pocket in one hand and phone in the other. I made a wild jab at his chest with my longest key while I looked at my phone screen, thumbing in the emergency call. The key sank into flesh, startling me. In shock as my hand warmed with the guy’s blood, I paused too long and was pulled to the ground by my jacket collar. My dropped phone skittered out of reach.

  I barely felt the fall, but when I called for help again there was no air in my lungs for it.

  When one of them grabbed my shoulder and rolled me over, I took his hand in both of mine and twisted. I swear I heard bones break. I also thought I heard footsteps approaching, fast. I might have just been hearing things. Just wishful thinking as the guy cradled his wrist, called me something I won’t repeat and kicked me in the side of the head.

  ***

  I think I blacked out for a bit. Sounds of scuffling faded in and energy surged through my body. Snapping my eyes open I watched a new man in a white button down shirt throw one of the hoodies against a power pole. Actually pick him up and throw him. The others were already running, or stumbling, away.

  The last kid slumped against the pole and, dusting his hands, my savior turned around to reveal the face of a male model. His shirt accentuated his v-shaped chest like it had been tailored and his blond hair sat perfectly as though he hadn’t just dealt with a bunch of looting delinquents. His sleeves were rolled neatly just below his elbows, and although he only looked about twenty, the watch on his wrist was way expensive. I’d seen it in classy magazine ads.