Chapter One- Feel... by Grace Saada

I followed her.

Running I was, only to catch up to every quick turn and dodge she made around and under the branches of trees. It was a wonder how I could actually keep up with her. Something about the fierce power she put into each turn and movement of her body made me realise just how intent she was on getting to some location. A location I had no idea about. A location, I guess, I would regret ever seeing. What I see just might change my picture perfect image of her.

Barely hearing the things that she was mumbling to herself every now and then as she ran and dodged tree branches, I tried to decipher why she was being so barbaric with anger at this particular moment and who had made this occur and maybe just maybe, I could help her overcome it.

I had only been watching her for the last couple of months or so. Throughout those months there was always nothing but trouble and hurt in her hazel depressing eyes. Within those months I had heard the ramblings and whispers from the student from our school, about all of her troubles and tragedies.

From my closure of friends, I would watch her from our seating place and watch her for the five minutes that she would sit there and pretend to eat. She never ate much. More so she only played with her food, humming to herself lightly as a mixture of emotions would cross over each other on her face almost as if her face was a child that was trying to decide whether or not to eat a chocolate bar or a vegetable stick. I only ever watched her for the other person who had told me to. Within these past couple of weeks she'd changed, so I had watched and followed her even more around the school, because five minutes was just never enough time to watch her.

Lucky I had watched her more. The trouble and hurt had grown father into something deeper than sheer troublesome and hurt and into something that was not meant to be part of her or anybody else for that matter. Knowing what she was meant to be changes everything, I think. Maybe it's because I've heard of all the reminiscent thoughts and spoken words from people that I know that knew her and therefore it changes everything I see in her every time I see her every day of the week. Though, everything I've heard about her past would never change a thing in her story; in her horrific life.

I came to a quick halt as she entered a place so beautiful and calm. I couldn't believe that a girl like her could be so sorrowful and not be cured already by a place as this. Every where I turned I'd see trees with specs of multiple colours of the rainbow from the wonderful birds that nested in their branches. The trees were a beauty themselves, growing tall and overlapping each other to form a sort of cacoon or shelter to protect us from worlds harm. If I looked close enough, I could see a small tree house, painted with greens and browns so that it could camouflage with the scenery. Across from a wheel built swing decorated with white ribbon, was a river stream that was a pure blue colour and not tainted by the dirt or debris that covered the ground. No grass grew and as I looked closer I could see a group of polished white pebbles just a bare metre from me and wondered what they were.

Tempted, I was to just go and look at them but as I was about to, I saw her walk up to them, so I quickly hid behind one of the many trees and watched her. Taking a deep breath, she approaches the polished white pebbles like a predator, reaches down and chooses one at random and threw it, aiming it in the direction of the river. As it landed, she screamed in agony as if something or somebody was ripping her insides and collapsed onto the floor, crying and pulling at her clothes and hair.

I breathed out in relief and walked forward demanding, "Why have you been in all of my secret places for?"

Looking up from her position on the floor she looked up at me and gave me a look that said that I was absolutely crazy and out of my mind. She studied me for a couple seconds, not looking me in the eye, as if she was scared and then looked away. "What's it to you?"

Knowing that acting as my normal self would turn out to be bad and unsuccessful; I played a character I knew would sustain our hate for many years to come. "Well for starters you've been putting all this nonsense and crap in my territory and cleaning things like all women do!" I picked up one of the pebbles from the group and held it up to her. Her eyes widened as I threw it across a tree as hard as I could and she scrunched up her nose as she watched it crash onto the floor. She looked up at me and I smiled bitterly, "Next time I might just chop down your little cute swing over there if you ever come here again." I said the words 'little' and 'cute' sarcastically and almost felt sorry for what she was going through with me. What I was doing though was eventually going to help her.

She got up and walked over to me. "Yeah well if you think you can do things like that to my belongings; think what I can do to yours!"

Oh I can't think, I already know what you've done, I think to myself and then smile at the thought. I look up into her eyes and say, "Is that a dare?"

She sneered up at me and almost bared her teeth. "I'm wonderful at dares," she spat the words, making them sound like a curse and then added, "But are you?"