An alarm clock came to life in the early morning hours of the day, screaming its call for its owner to stop dreaming and enter reality once again. A long slender hand emerged from a cocoon of blankets and gave the alarm a quick smack to shut the infernal machine up. With a moan the arm returned to its cave and pulled the blankets closed in an attempt to block out the intruding day. Within moments the alarm sprung to life yet again to be quickly silenced, this time by the heel of a foot. Struck from its place on the night table the alarm hung mere inches from the floor, saved from a dreadful fall by its cord. The arm snaked out from its hiding place to retrieve the alarm and pull it atop of the bed. A single green eye stared out from the blankets at the clock's display with its numbers reading, "7:16" in bright red lights. With a tired moan the blankets unravelled to reveal a teenaged girl clad in baggy pink flannel pyjamas. She sprawled out on the bed, knocking the blankets partly to the ground, and stared up at the ceiling. The clock held lightly in the palm of her hand as she contemplated if smashing it on the ceiling would silence the day forever when there was a knock at the door. "Samantha, are you awake?" The voice of her mother called out from behind the door. "Yeah." Samantha called out irately from her spot on the bed, not making any move to actually get up. The door slowly opened and a middle-aged woman with long sleek straight blonde hair and a haggard look upon her thin narrow face entered the room, "Look at you!" Samantha's mother stated disappointedly, "You are not even dressed and you have school in less then an hour." Samantha groaned as she rolled out of bed, "I'm going." She said listlessly as she got to her feet and stretched. "I want to see you downstairs in ten minutes." Her mother ordered, "Why can't you be more like your sister?" She probed coldly, "She is already dressed and eating breakfast. You are turning sixteen tomorrow so why don't you try acting more like an adult." Her mother left without waiting for an answer and closed the door behind her. "I'm not sixteen yet." Samantha muttered under her breath. She never understood why her mother bothered to compare her with her ten-year-old sister. The girl was in elementary school still while Samantha had just begun her first year of high school. She wished she could be back in elementary school like her sis. She missed recess and the long lunch breaks with her friends. She had found that since going to junior high school things have changed, a lot. Most of her friends drifted away over the years leaving her with only a few close friends. Now that they were in high school she suspected that even those few remaining would drift further away as they found new lives for themselves. They were almost adults now after all, a fact that she was reminded of every day by her mother since she turned thirteen. She was beginning to hate the prospect of becoming an adult and detested it ever so much more every time she heard her mother remind her of her age. She glanced around her room and frowned. Her mother had demanded her to put her toys away before her sixteenth birthday, however Samantha refused to do so. Stuffed animals from her childhood adorned every piece of white furniture that filled her room. They peeked out from behind the table lamp that sat upon her night table, they lined up along the dresser as if in some strange parade. Several shelves that her father had nailed to the wall above her bed were overflowing with the critter; a couple would fall upon her while she slept to join the others that already took up half the bed. She did not want to pack up all her memories and knew that when she got home from school there would be an argument over them just like everything else, but could not give a dame about it. There would be arguments no matter what she did or didn't do so she figured she couldn't win no matter how hard she tried and decided to forgo the toys for now and head for the washroom. In the brightly light washroom, with it mirrored walls and lines of lights above the sink; Sam got a good look at herself and let out a deep sigh. Her short thin wavy blonde hair hung loosely around slightly chubby, freckle-speckled face giving her the appearance of an twelve year old and not someone about to turn sixteen. She was small and frail, a twig in comparison to other girls, which only made her cheeks stand out all the more. Her eyes were the only remarkable feature she had, or at least that was what she had heard all her life and they were the only physical trait about herself that she did not detest. They were large in comparison to her face and held gleaming emerald irises that's colours seemed to shift in the light. She loved staring into her own eyes just to watch the way the light reflected off of them. Often wondering what she will look like in the years to come. She wished that the rest of her body would be as elegant as her eyes were, but realized that was a silly thing to wish for. She grabbed a comb and run it under water before brushing her bangs out of her eyes. They were getting long and she figured that she would need a haircut soon. She parted her hair over her left eyes then quickly grabbed a few of metal hair clips that lay around the sink to hold her bangs to one side, Green, blue and one with a yellow butterfly upon the end. She hated the way her hair would curl around her ears and tickle the backs of her ear lobes so added two more hair clips behind her ears to hold them in place as well. Finally satisfied she hastily brushed her teeth and returned to her room to find some clothes. She pulled a pair of torn jeans and a blue t-shirt out of the dresser and tossed them onto her bed, then added a red hooded sweater from her closet before stripping off her pyjamas. It took her much longer than ten minutes to get prepared and she tried hard to ignore the cross look upon her mother's face as she entered the kitchen and took a bowl down from the cupboard. "Could you move any slower?" Her mother scolded, "You will be late for school." Samantha glanced up at the clock to see it was now fifteen minutes to eight, "I can bike there in ten minutes, no problem." Quickly she placed the bowl back in the cupboard, then grabbed a granola bar and headed for the front door to find her sneakers, a pair of white runners that had turned a light brown from all the mud they had gathers from her adventures through the many trails behind their house. She could feel her mother looming over her as she stepped into her shoes and began to tie the slightly mud encrusted laces. "I am beginning to wonder if we should allow you to turn sixteen." Her mother suddenly stated surly with a shake of her head at the state of the girl's shoes. Samantha's mind froze at those words. Her mother had threatened to hold off her birthday before, back before her thirteenth birthday. She had fallen off her bike and scrapped both her knee and elbow so badly that blood flowed over her the new white dress her mother had bought her the other day. She tried hard to hold back the tears but the moment her eyes set upon the blood as it pool up on her knee the tears began to flow. Unfortunately for Samantha her mother had been talking to one of the neighbours out front of their house and witnessed the accident, seeing her daughter crying in front of the neighbours infuriated her more then anything in the world. She grabbed Sam by the arm and hauled her back into the house; only when they were out of earshot did the yelling start. First it was about how Sam was always destroying the beautiful clothes that she bought and then it was about how she was always crying over nothing. Sam could have had a broken arm or leg and it would still be nothing in her mother's eyes. Her mother's voice kept rising as she poured alcohol over the girl's wounds, only causing the tears to flow steadier. Finally her mother became so fed up with Sam's tears that she told the girl that if she did not stop she would not turn thirteen. Samantha knew deep in her mind that there was no way that someone could stop someone's birthday from happening, however she feared that if her mother set her mind to it she could stop anything from occurring. Samantha struggled to control the anger that was boiling up inside of her as she stood up to face her mother. The woman was standing in the middle of the hall in her stark white nurse's uniform and a stern look upon her face. Samantha knew better then to argue with her mother but this was her birthday and she could not just give in on this, "But mother you can't!!" She exclaimed as panic filled her mind. Her mother had a way of ruining her day and she always did it at a point when Samantha needed to be somewhere, "You promised my friends could come over tomorrow and everything." "Well you should have thought about that and tried harder to act like a lady." Her mother scolded, "I swear, I honestly thought that by the time you got to High School you would begin to show some level of responsibility and here I see you room is still filled with toys." She chided her daughter, "I have yet to see you even attempt to try acting a little more like a young lady and less like a child. Look at you, you are a disgrace." She gestured to Samantha's attire, "Why can't you get a hair cut without my suggesting it?" Samantha rolled her eyes. She had heard this lecture many times. Over the summer holidays Samantha was bombarded by her mothers accusation and insults. From how much of a disgrace it was to be seen with Sam in torn jeans or the way she always wore T-shirts that were so big on her that the collar would fall off her shoulder exposing too much skin, as well as her lack of manners or attention to her own looks. It was not her fault that shirts never fit and she was not going to wear some of the dresses her mother tried to buy on more then one occasion. Samantha had grown out of the frilly dress stage when she was only nine years old and by the time she was thirteen she stopped wearing dresses entirely. She wore the occasional skirt, but that was only on hot days and she would prefer to wear shorts even then. "Mother, I don't have time for this." Samantha remarked coldly. If she didn't hurry she really would be late for class and she did not want that. School was one of the few things in this world that Samantha actually enjoyed. It was her escape from the nightmares that was her home and at that very moment she longed to be freed from this dispute and be on her way. "That is exactly my point." Her mother stated, "You never listen to me. You are always thinking of yourself. Why can't you try to act like me for once." "Because I want to actually graduate from High School, mother." Samantha snapped, quickly regretting her words as her mother's hand struck her across the face with enough force to nearly knock the girl off her feet. Samantha was used to that kind of response from her mother so had time to brace herself for the blow, but if she had not caught the wall with her hand she would have been knocked to the floor. "I dropped out because of you." Her mother angrily reminded her, something Samantha had been reminded of from the moment she entered school. Her mother was forced to leave school at seventeen because she was pregnant with Sam; "If you weren't around then I could have graduated and not ended up in these dead end jobs all the time. Do you have any idea what it is like having to be a porter at a hospital, do you?" Samantha rubbed her cheek as she righted herself and nodded, "Yes." She said quietly, she knew all too well what her mother went through at work because every time her mother got a new job she made a point of taking Sam to work with her so her daughter would get a better idea of what she suffered through for her, "I'm sorry." She knew that bringing up her mother's schooling was a bad idea, but for some reason when her mother got on her case she always felt a need to dig right back and every time she received a smack for stepping out of line. Not wanting to continue with this fight Samantha grabbed her backpack, turned on her heels and headed for the door, "I... I have to go." She stated then rushed out of the house before her mother could protest. Around the side of the small, two floor, duplex that they called a home she found her mountain bike leaning against the fence. She rarely locked the bike up at home even though she was well aware of how much the bike cost. Her mother gave it to her for graduating from Junior High and it was a constant reminder that she needed to graduate from High School or she would forever be under the woman's wing. Not wanting to deal with her mother any longer she grabbed the bike by the handles and ran down the street with it, one foot on a pedal while the other kicked at the ground. After drifting a block or so away from home she came to a stop and pulled off her backpack. Inside a small pouch on the side she took out a small yellow plastic walkman, press the large black play button, then placed the headphones over her head before dropping the walkman back into its pouch and slinging the pack onto her back. The familiar sound of Roxette poured out of the headphones as she leapt onto the pedals and tore down the sidewalk on her way to school. She tapped a hand on the hand break to the beat, enjoying the rhythm as Joy Ride blared through her ears. The tape was a mix of 80's tunes that her best friend, Tristan, had mixed for her over the summer holidays and she loved speeding along on her bike to the sound of soft rock filling her mind, her troubles at home nearly forgotten as the next song began to play. She quickly found herself lost in the sensation of the music upon her ears and the feeling of the mountain bike's thick tires tearing up the ground beneath her. She had to admit that it was a nice bike, she had only driven a dirt bike before summer and the height of a mountain bike was not easy to get used to, but after adjusting the breaks a little and fiddling with the gears she found the ride was smooth and graceful. She did not even feel the bumps as she moved off the sidewalk to take a shortcut through a small forest behind the school. She stood up on the pedals and leaned over the handle bars as she turned another corner and started on a downhill drop that would have scared her a few years ago but now she knew the path by heart and could feel her heart pounding hard as the wheels of the bike skid along an embankment at top speed and everything became a blur. Trees took on the quality of a watercolour painting that had been left out in the rain as she sped along the dirt path. She kept her eyes on the ground, concentrating hard on the terrain in front of her. Lightly hopping over the root of a tree and ducking in time to miss a fallen branch of a tree. The thrill of the near miss accelerated her and she felt a rush of excitement as she rounded yet another bend. ((STOP!!!)) A voice suddenly cried out inside of Samantha's head. Before she knew what she was doing her hand quickly squeezed the brakes as tight as she could and she began to skid along the path. The front wheel bit into the dirt bringing the bike to a quick halt, however the back wheel refused to stop and began to leave the ground. The world moved in slow motion as Samantha realized that her bike was about to flip end over end. For a brief moment the entire world came to a standstill as the bike stood on its front wheel and Samantha found herself staring straight down at the dirt path before her. That was when she noticed it, sitting mere centimetres away from her front tire was a large toad, it appeared to be staring up at her. She abruptly realized that if she did not do something double-quick she would land on the poor creature. Without a second thought Samantha wrenched hard on the handlebars causing the rear of the bike to turn in mid air. The world abruptly returned to normal speed as the bike came crashing down on its side, throwing its owner off. Samantha toppled to the ground and lay on the path blinking at the canopy of trees overhead. Her heart pounded against her rib cage with such force that Samantha thought it would break out if it did not slow. Her eyes darted around as she tried to piece together the events that landed her on her back in the middle of the woods. 'What the hell was that?' She thought to herself as she tried to catch her breath. Slowly she rolled her head to the side to see the toad sitting right before her, staring at her with those big black eyes. "D... did you call out to me?" She inquired, not really sure if she wanted an answer or not. Hearing voices in the forest was not something new to Samantha, but this was the first time she heard something shout at her. Over her life she always had this feeling before she stepped on any critter, be it furry or otherwise. She never understood what would stop her from hurting a creature, not like she wanted to, but this was a little too freaky for her. She let out a laugh then got to her feet and glanced down at the toad, which was still staring up at her, "What's wrong, hmmm?" She knelt beside the toad and looked into its eyes, "You know you don't belong on the path like this. You'll get hurt if you stay here." She proceeded to gently pick up the toad and held it up to her face, "You really didn't call out to me did you?" The toad licked its eye in response. Glancing around she spotted a small pond off the side of the path and set the toad next to the water's edge, "Now you stay off the path alright." The toad leapt from the girl's hands into the water and swam away, "Take care little guy." She called out after the toad then turned to check on her bike. For the first time she noticed that her Walkman had fallen out of the backpack and her headphones were no longer on her head. Curiously she scooped up the device and turned it over in her hands. It did not seem broken and when she pressed the play button the sound of "Tears for Fears" blazed forth from the headphones, singing, "Shout". With a shrug she placed the phones back on her head and picked up her bike, with the Walkman in hand. The bike did not seem damaged so she jumped back on and speed off to school, hoping that she would not be too late. Before long she broke out of the trees to find herself on the school's back lot, where the gym classes were usually held on good days. The sight of many kids still trickling towards the school gave Samantha a good feeling. She hated being late more than anything else in the world, because it meant one more thing for her mother to argue about. She pushed hard on the pedals and sailed across the field on her way towards the bike racks. As she glided her bike into an empty spot at the bike rack she heard someone called out to her over the music. "Hey Sam!!" A smiling girl with long wavy blonde hair and similar taste in clothing called out from the shadow of a tree. "I was beginning to wonder if you were going to make it on time." She said as she approached her friend. "Hey Trish!" Samantha returned the greeting as she pulled the headphones around her neck, then took a U-lock off the bike and wrapped it around the back tire and the frame of the bike before latching it to the bike rack, "I almost didn't." Samantha admitted bleakly, glancing at the girl occasionally. Tristan's smile faded the moment she say the red mark on the girl's face and the dirt stains on the side of her jeans, "You alright?" She inquired anxiously, "Were you in an accident?" "Yeah." Samantha gave her friend a half smile, "Just crashed in the woods." She explained simply. Tristan gave the girl a sceptical look, but did not push the matter, "Thought you were the goddess of those trails." She remarked confidently, "I don't think you have crashed since we were in grade three." Samantha rubbed the back of her head in embarrassment, "That is not true. Anyway, this new bike is a monster to handle, it glides nicely, but breaking is a pain. I will tame it before the year ends I'm sure of that." She patted the black sit of the bike proudly before starting towards the school, "Something really weird just happened to me in the woods." She stated, thinking over the incident with the toad and consider how she would explain thing to Trish. Trish was the only person Sam truly trusted and even let the girl in on her little secret. The girl had been at her side longer then she could recall and she was like a sister to Sam, in fact most mistaken them for siblings until they took a closer look at the girls. The fact that they tended to share the same taste in fashion did not help matter much either. As far as Sam could tell the only difference between the two of them were their eyes. While Sam's were vibrant green and large, too large in Sam's opinion, Trish had smaller brown eyes that usually avoided intruding gazes with a glance to the floor. Sam was the only one lucky enough to peer within those eyes to stare upon the amber flecks the resided along the edges of Trish's eyes, making them appear to burn with a pain that Trish refused to allow out. "Hmm?" Tristan grabbed her bag from its spot against the tree as they passed it, "You see a ghost in there or something?" She nervously glanced towards the forest as she swung the pack over her left shoulder and shuddered at the idea. "Noooo..." Samantha said sarcastically, she could never understand why her friend had such a fear of ghosts or why she refused to enter any forested area for that matter. It was as if the girl thought some kind of ghoulish creature might leap out at her or something. "Nothing like that. It was just a toad." Sam assured the girl, still milling over the event, "It kept staring at me. It felt weird." Tristan eyed her friend, "Annnd?" She probed knowingly, her eyes wide with wonder. When they were young and the sun descended in the distance as they walked the twisting paths that made up the neighbourhood Trish would cling tightly to Sam's arm, pointing at every approaching shadow to be certain no ghost lingered within their depths. Even with her intense fear she wanted to know if Sam saw anything at all, almost as if she teetered between fear and wonderment. "And nothing." Samantha stated with a shrug, chuckling at the disappointed sigh that emitted from her friend's lips. "I nearly ran over the thing and crashed when I tried to avoid it is all." "Somehow I don't believe that was all." Tristan remarked knowingly, they had known each other since they were in kindergarten and Tristan knew that anything involving animals and Samantha was never just nothing. She still remembered how her friend had calmed an angry tomcat that had a broken leg. While everyone else ended up scratched by the cat Samantha simply knelt out of reach of the creature and stared at it. Within moment the cat was purring and curled up in Samantha's lap, "Come on, this is me you are talking to." She begged, "Tell me what really happened." "Alright." Samantha took a deep breath and glanced around to make sure no one else was listening to her, "I was riding my bike through the woods, listening to that mix tape you gave me, when I heard someone yell out, 'Stop', out of nowhere. I slammed on my breaks and nearly flew over the handlebars, doing an endo, when I noticed this toad right in front of my front wheel. It was like the world stopped and the two of us were staring at each other. I somehow got this feeling the toad was the one that called out to me." "A toad?" Tristan gave her friend a peculiar look, "Did you hit it?" "No." Samantha said gratefully and continued on with her story, "I missed the toad but crashed the bike. Strange thing is the toad just kept staring at me the whole time." "You sure it was the toad that called out to you?" Tristan inquired as they found their lockers and began to fiddle with the combination lock. "Yeah, I got this feeling that it was." Samantha opened her locker and pulled out a textbook and shoved it into her backpack. "Did you try to talk to it?" Samantha flushed in embarrassment, "Yeah... but it didn't say another word. It was like it wanted to say more but I couldn't hear it. I'm just being stupid I guess." Tristan grabbed a few of her books, "It could have been someone else, couldn't it?" She inquired in search of any other answer to the mystery. Samantha shrugged, "It felt like it came from inside of my head. It's just too weird." She stated with a shudder. Tristan patted her friend on the shoulder, "I always knew you were weird so don't worry about it." She reassured her friend. Samantha gave the girl a smirk, "Gee, Thanks." Suddenly the bell rang and kids began to rush to their classes, "I'll talk to you at lunch alright?" "Sure." Samantha waved to her friend, who returned the wave, then headed off to her class. ***** To be Continued . . . ***** Note: Characters and ideas in this story are a copyright of Kathryn K Williams. If you wish to view art from this series please visit my deviant arts site at: http://shinigami-shimai.deviantart.com/ For more of my stories visit my deviant hearts site. Also if you spot any typos or other errors please contact me.
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