the EXPOSURE

In November, I partook in National Novel Writing month, and was victorious. For this reason, I have been hard at work with editing the novel that took all of my time and then some. Its title is "the EXPOSURE" and I would like to share the first two chapters with you (Prologue & Chapter One). These are the edited versions that will be in the published version of the novel, so I do hope that you will enjoy them!


Clock’s chimed in deep tones that resounded within the foundations of the homes on Remised Lane. “’tis four o’clock!” they announced proudly. The light and airy dings and the heavy dongs of the great grandfathers awoke none in their endless record of time. Their faces saw what no others could see. Some were young as a newborn baby, while others as old as the dirt in the well tended to gardens that sat in front of the uptown homes that lined the clean and paved road.

This was not a poor neighborhood in the slightest; the homes were newly refurbished and stood in a great magnificence, even in the dead of night when there were no eyes to view their splendor. The mailboxes had the last names of their respective families carefully stenciled onto them in sharp contrast to their colors. There were the Masons, the Smiths, and more.

This night was not like the other nights in the neighborhood; the cool blanket that coated the earth was heavier than normal with foreboding. Nighttime critters had halted their orchestra of song, and even the wind had halted. The world had drawn a breath and not exhaled, and everything seemed to be tilting on a very precarious axis. From the end of the row of homes, spaced evenly apart quite sparingly, unnatural light shone.

Slowly, the homes came to life, one by one. Lights clicked on in individual rooms in the homes as the inhabitants looked upon the source of the home that was disturbing the never ending routine that broke for next to nothing. In the bedrooms of the young, there were foreheads and noses pressed to the cool glass of the windows; parents and the elderly groaned in the disturbance, but found their irritation to partake in a magnificent vanishing act before their very eyes.

The early spring still had the chilled winds of winter lingering in the nearly nonexistent breeze that would flare up on occasion. Eyes were turned to the luminescent home in fear and despair. A fire blazed on one side of the home and rapidly spread. Soon, the silent night was filled with choked sobs and screams of terror. The heartstrings tugged of many, urging the family inside to rush out, very much alive and very much safe.

As the tears fell, it became apparent that the neighborhood was a close knit one, where families spent weekends on their lawns and made small talk with other families. Their children all went to school together; they had monthly block parties. Tragedy was not a common topic to be discussed in their conversations. Why, earlier that very night they had been enjoying the company of many during a block party at their very homes. Nothing had seemed out of sorts; the families son and daughter had been all smiles and very proper about everything, making themselves seem oblivious to the exuberant extremes of the societies known teenagers that came from medium-income families.

There came chatter as someone made another call to the emergency hotline. It seemed that there had finally been someone to answer the phone, and the woman was frantically giving answers to the questions. When she hung up, she announced that the fire department was on the way and that police would be as well. The mother and father had been wonderful people, but it seemed to be taboo to already be thinking of the family of five as dead. The eldest were twins, and the youngest was a solid decade younger.

Before long, the sound of crackling wood was overcome by the overwhelming sound of the fire engines. Despite the hope that the families led to, they couldn’t help but feel that the wails of the sirens announced absolute doom. No one took notice of the shadows that darted into the darkness behind the home, or of the two sacks that they carried. By the time that the officials had arrived, the shadows were gone, with no singular doubt that they had been caught.

Immediately, the men and women parted to begin helping to put out the flames. It seemed instantaneous that the flame was put into control and was completely vanquished. The fire department people were in awe of this, as they had never tamed such a large flame in such a short amount of time. The home itself had no possible hopes of being lived in while it was in its current state. On the horizon, the sun had begun to rise in the sky, offering a small amount of light to the efforts.

On all the minds of the workers when they took the next effort to enter the home was the idea that anything that had once been alive would now be charred. Three men and fifteen minutes claimed the discovery of three dead bodies. The mother, father, and a daughter were officially claimed as dead. When the three were loaded on to the stretchers to be taken to a morgue, it was all the people of the neighborhood could do to not cry. Some were not as strong as others. Their tears streamed openly, creating paths down their soot covered faces.

As the dead ones were taken away, the families stood remaining, parting only for the vehicles to get through, and then swarming back in to watch the house as the roof crumbled in and as the walls collapsed. Mothers and fathers held their sons and daughters, crying in remorse. The Carters had been friends to everyone, and immensely charitable. With their father an astronaut and their mother a famous actress, there seemed to be nothing that they struggled with.

Amazingly, they were nowhere near egotistical about it. They acted as though they were the same as everyone else – people, with the goal of surviving the tough times of life. The small voice that broke the speechless sobs hung on the air like smog on a city.

“Where are the other two?”

The speaker, a small girl of eight or nine, gazed at the suited men who were ready to leave investigations to the agents with widened and tear filled blue eyes. The ash sat on her eyelashes like never-melting snow as she waited for their answer.

Gazes flicked back and forth. No one had the heart to tell the younger ones that there was no chance that anything had lived through the fire. Of course, they still had to discern what had started the fire. If someone had intentionally started it, why had they? The hours had stretched to the time when the sun rises on the earth, its rays of gold breaking through the dark of night. With the dawning light, finding things would become easier for the firemen.

To appease the minds of those younger, the crew of the last remaining fire truck entered the once marvelous home. Even though they knew that the remaining two had no chance of being alive, they searched. Some could say it was half hearted, but try as they did; there was nothing that they could do.

When the final truck departed, the sun cast a singular ray on to the mailbox of the family from the clouds that hung low in the sky.

The funeral service was set to happen in two weeks time.


(words :: 1,215)



How irritating.

It repeated on loop in Tian’s racing mind. He paced at the back of a group that crowded the window that looked into the infirmary – the door had been locked in order to separate them from the boy who had been brought into the building before the waking bells had even begun to stir to alert students to the arrival of another day. Word of the arrival of a comatose student had spread like wildfire in the enclosed building. The crowd was notably smaller now than it was before, due to it being time for classes to begin, but there was still a good number that found studying this person more important than learning.

The fascination by nearly everybody in the school had been enforced when classes had been halted the day that the boy was brought in over a week ago. Giddy girls gossiped by the glass window, giggling at the mop of seemingly golden hair that stood out against the white of everything else in the infirmary.

On the other hand, Tian, and a few others, was aggravated. The crowds that herded around the infirmary blocked the way to and from the arithmetic and sciences portion of the floor. The headmaster had made an announcement that there was to be no intrusion upon the new person, though it did not seem to matter to the girls that huddled at the window, giggling incessantly. Those that had heeded to the will of the headmaster were huddled near the infirmary, but not enough so that they were in the zone of “disruption.”

Legs moving mechanically as he paced, Tian found his frustration growing more and more prominent. If these pods of stationary people did not start moving, he would be late for his physics IV class. He was never late for class, though he often skipped classes that he did not want to go to. No one really bothered to pay attention to him – unless he was coughing up a storm that sounded asthmatic.

“Your anger builds with more speed than a cheetah in a sprint.”

Tian grunted in response to the statement. He held no desire to speak with the headmaster. In all truth, he wanted to get away from the man, and all these students, as soon as physically possible. Just as he had thought of an escape route through the maze of adolescents, he felt a hand rest on his shoulder.

“You should be glad. The new fellow shows potential of being equal to even you,” the headmaster hissed slowly, as if trying to make sure that a particular message came across to Tian. His deep green eyes bore in to Tian’s bright emerald ones.

Discovering that there would be next to no hope to escape now that the headmaster had caught him, Tian averted his gaze. A frown creased the corners of his mouth in a rather unhandsome manner. “So what?” he spat icily, pushing the headmaster’s hand away from his shoulder. Oddly, the look that he was given by the headmaster sent a surge of guilt through the pit of Tian’s stomach. Before he could allow himself to feel any worse, Tian turned on his heel and stalked away, moving with purpose through the pods of students and the long halls of Exposure Academy.

Unlike nearly all the others, Tian was not raised in the outside world. He had been here since he was old enough to stop breast feeding, or so the headmaster had informed him. His education and training to live securely in the outside world had been implanted in his mind since he was four or five. There was little about the school that he was unaware of, and if he discovered that there was something that he did not know, he spent all of his spare time trying to work out the puzzles, rather than working on the piles of homework that he tended to let build up.

Fortunately, the hall cleared out further down the hallway, allowing Tian less weaving between groups of ten to fifteen. Now, they were about four or five, some as small as two, and were not in the way of anyone or anything that might want through the hallway. Now that he had put some distance between himself and the nearest annoyances, Tian took a few deep breaths, focusing on relaxing his mind and allowing his anger to flow out of him.

The energy of the student population flowed peacefully through the walls, creating an air of belonging to those who came into the building. It was warm and welcoming in some places, and cold and haunting in others. Certain types of energy moved to parts of the building where similar types flowed most commonly. One certain flow surged around where Tian stood in the hall, greeting him with mental images of feathers and freedom.

It was what your released energy did here. They swam around in the walls, and would occasionally come to you and show you images of what you truly desire. For over a year now, Tian had been greeted with the sense of freedom in the greeting. Usually, it was met with an urge to rebel against the headmaster and run away, but he knew that there were powerful barriers around the building that would keep students in. Those same barriers gave an illusion to those who were not one of “their kinds” as the headmaster would say. The illusion was that of a haunting forest blocked off by an imposing fence.

As soon as the energy had come, it was gone once more to roam through the walls. Placing his hand on the wall, he noticed that the energy was not truly as well as it had seemed. There were energies flowing where they usually did not go, and they were colliding dangerously with others. Sure, the energy tended to have a will of its own, but it was magnetized toward similar energies. Never had they really collided like this. The only time that Tian could think of was the hour after a new person arrives. It had been a week since the fellow in the infirmary had been brought in, so it could not be his doing.

Frowning, Tian continued to class.

Things had seemed to be completely normal now, until he heard other footsteps. Surely, he had been alone, had he not? Slowly turning, Tian looked to see if there truly was anyone else in the hallway, he found nothing. Shaking his head, Tian told himself that he was being paranoid because the headmaster had been acting more strange than was average. If it had been any other day, he would have skipped class to investigate, but he actually wanted to get to there. Only six other students were in the class, which made it the ideal sort of environment for him to learn.

The energy that had once been so clustered seemed to be heading for the same source, Tian realized as he forced himself through the doors to the physics class. Even the teacher looked weary and unwilling to begin the day. Class had not yet started, but already the other six were there, looking as though they had camped out in the room so as to avoid maneuvering through the clusters of morons in the hallway. These were the only six in the entire school that Tian had even bothered to connect with, though, they never spoke outside of class.

Class drug on with devastating slowness, leaving heads to nod as brains tried to sleep in response to the rare lecture. Usually, the professor was bright and cheery – she loved her job almost as much as she loved her husband. It had always seemed that her enthusiasm was bottomless, but Tian supposed that even she had her limits.

About forty-five minutes into the two hour class, Professor Newman released class. As Tian left, he heard her muttering to herself about “unfortunate happenings” while looking at a folded newspaper that sat on her desk. His curiosity peaked, but he let it be, knowing just how women got when they were in a mood.

In the hallway, Tian found that the energy was diverted in a different direction and was denser than it had been earlier. Looking around, Tian tried to locate the source, which had to be near, based on how clustered the energy seemed to be.

To his left, in a shadowed part of the hallway, unused due to an experiment gone wrong, Tian caught the sound of whispering. Silently, he walked over to the unused classrooms, feeling an urge to discover what had the power to manipulate the energy like that. A screech sounded as he neared a classroom; the next thing he knew, Tian was sprawled out on his back, and his whole torso hurt like he had been the target of a very angry dodge-ball player.

“You know, eavesdropping is very rude, young man.”

The indignant voice was directly in front of him. Looking, Tian saw what looked like a mass of red through his blurred vision. He had hit his head rather hard on the hardwood floor, and the throbbing seemed to circulate in waves. The rest of the person, female from what he could tell, was distorted and blurry.

“I wasn’t eavesdropping,” he protested, sitting up. A surge of dizziness washed over him, leaving Tian to hold his head and groan. When it passed, he saw that the girl was standing with her left hands on her hips and that her weight was shifted to the left side. There was a look of skepticism upon her face as she glowered at him.

“I don’t believe you,” the statement was cold and hard, as if the fact was not already glaringly obvious.

Finally able to stand, Tian frowned. “You shouldn’t cause so much of a distraction to the energy if you don’t want to be caught,” he retorted. The throbbing in his head had dulled, and it seemed that the pain in his chest was fading away to being a slight irritation. His blood felt charged form the blast of energy, but the charge made him feel like he was burning – which was not a pleasant sensation.

The red haired girl seemed to be edging to the side, looking for an escape.
Tian gave her a scolding look. “You aren’t getting out of here,” he informed her while summoning an energy barrier.

Her hands moved firmly from her hips to fold across her chest as she shifted her weight to the other leg, “Just what makes you think you have any say in what I do?” The retort fueled the flame that was Tian’s temper, but it somehow seemed to vanish every time it got hot.

“Keep your business about you,” he ordered. “Don’t act so innocent when someone finds you because of the ruckus that you make. It looks moronic on your behalf.”

The red haired girl just laughed at him. It as though the idea of facing being moronic was like swatting a fly to her. This confidence was infuriating, but the rage never seemed to stay. The sensation of being completely fired up, and then calm as a tree in a windless environment was one of the most bizarre things that he had ever experienced.

“What are you doing?” he inquired, wishing that he could hold on to his temper. “Whatever it is, stop it!” There were moments when he had it, but as soon as he shouted, he was calm once more. Once he was calm, the idea of being calm when he should be angry just angered him again. It was an endless cycle that he prayed would come to an end soon.

The red haired girl laughed at him, flipping her bangs from dangling in her face. It was then that Tian noticed the color of those eyes. They were a pristine blue, like the sky t noon on a clear day. “You are just assuming that your emotional problems are my doing,” she stated, sounding insulted.

Brows furrowing with frustration, Tian resisted the urge to punch this girl in the jaw. Of course, he could not do so, because hitting girls was nearly as wrong as kicking kittens. “I know you are!” he growled, fighting furiously to hold on to the anger.

“So maybe I am,” the girl suggested innocently. “What are you going to do about it?” By this time, she had circled around Tian. Their positions had been swapped, and the girl knew that this was her victory. Blinking in recognition, Tian realized that he was no longer blocking her escape. He realized it too late, though, because as soon as she had asked her question, she had vanished into the depths of the school’s hallways.

Whoever that girl was, Tian was sure that he would avoid coming into contact with her again – at least until he found out what exactly had just happened. She was a force to be reckoned with, and it seemed that he had some research to do on manipulating energy.





For the remainder of the week, Tian was extra careful about keeping to his own business. Since his encounter with that girl, he had been to the library at least ten times, and was unable to find anything he did not already know on manipulating energy. His frustration built higher and higher with each resulting failure. He was actually rather glad that his emotions were his on again.

After yawning, Tian drummed his fingers over the keyboard. It was two in the morning, and he had barely begun his essay that was due the next day. With the research on whatever that girl was doing to him, training to control his powers and emotions, and classes all piled on top of one another, Tian had left the latter item on the list to gather dust, rather than actually getting it over with.

So he was now stuck with three problem sets for his physics class, an analytical essay for AP Literature, and learning several new defensive techniques for his Defending Yourself class. The problem sets had been finished a little over an hour ago; since then, he had been staring at a blank document on his computer. More than once, he had tried to write the paper, but the words would fail him, and he would clear it all in frustration. He no longer had a roommate; his previous one graduated two semesters ago and there had been no replacement yet.

Not that he was complaining. He did not care for the company of others. They were distractions from what really mattered – being on top.

Another yawn parted his firm frown as Tian looked once more at the prompts for the essay. “Analyze the different groupings within your school and how it affects the amount of societal dysfunction,” he muttered aloud, as though there was someone who cared listening. There wasn’t, but that was the first prompt for the essay. A harsh laugh came from him; he couldn’t be bothered to care less about the “social groupings” at Exposure. They were all morons, for all he cared.

The second prompt was more on his level of caring. It read, “Analyze the effects of judgment and jealousy on the ability for average human beings and powered humans to intermix in society.” Tian knew all about judgment and jealousy. Nearly every day, he judged someone, and it was not hard to tell when someone else was judging another. A lot of the time, judgments led to jealousy.

Mindlessly, his fingers flew across the keyboard until the minimal page limit of five pages had filled up with his tale.

His eyes drooped as he saved the file to a flash drive and shut the laptop down. As he set the machine on the nightstand beside his bed, he saw that his alarm clock presented that it was a few minutes after three. He would have about three hours to sleep before the morning calls were made.

Groaning, Tian rolled on to his side and was instantly asleep. His glasses remained perched on his nose, forever alerting those to his flaw of sight, for he had forgotten to remove them in his mindless haste. Sleeping was fitful, with dreams of endless suffering and lost love, but it was sleep.




DONG! DONG! DONG!

Powerful as ever, the gong-like bells that awoke students every morning rang out. They would persist for a whole five minutes before beginning to dim down. It was a rare occasion that anyone slept through them.

The loud clangs make Tian jerk awake, heart racing. He had been dreaming that a large and powerful beast had been hunting him. Its mane was made of golden flames as it leaped around; it was chasing him through whatever vast expanse of emptiness they had been in. His sheets were wet from sweat. Tian soon came aware of this and immediately went to take a cold shower to wake up and shake off the terror of the dream.

Once his shower was finished, Tian threw on a pair of jeans and a loose fitting black t-shirt. Up until the age of fifteen, students were made to wear uniforms. After that, they had a rather free range of things they could wear and also had privileges to leave the building to go shopping for less dull clothing.

The uniform was simple; boys wore khaki pants with a white polo and a deep red sweater vest, and girls wore maroon and black plaid skirts that fell anywhere from a few inches above the knee to the middle of the calf, and beige blouses with a maroon collar. Shoes were black, white, or beige, but rules on shoes were poorly enforced. Most everyone took advantage of the “personalization” of the schools uniform.

There was a huge grey area when it came to personalizing things. Nothing was really black and white, save for the three rules had to be followed; nothing to degrade the name of the school, skirts had to at least be to the tips of fingertips, and there was to be no belly showing or cleavage. Embroidered to stand proudly against the shirts was the emblem of Exposure Academy. It was a fearsome feline against a background of foliage in the shape of a shield. The backgrounds on the girls’ shirts were red with a beige feline, and inverted colours on the maroon sweater vests of the boys.

By the time that Tian had managed to begin making his way for the Dining Hall, he was late. The announcements for the day would already have been begun, unless there was something holding the headmaster back from making it on time. As he neared the large double doors to where breakfast was being served, Tian noticed another fellow pacing by the doors, head lowered in thought.

“Are you lost, or do you not see the large doors in front of your face?” Tian interrogated. He was not in the mood to be halted by some clueless fool. His stomach grumbled, equally irritated about being empty of food.

The boy turned, now on the defensive. There seemed to be something gleaming in his eye; madness? “Why am I here?” he demanded furiously. It seemed like he was poised to strike, like a lion trapped in a cage, when the last thing he had recalled was falling asleep with his pride. Either he really didn’t know, or he was testing Tian in a show of sheer stupidity.

That the boy was abrasively bold was the impression that Tian obtained. He appeared to be younger than he was, but not by too much. “Obviously it is because you are a special little child and need the help that the faculty has to offer. Or, you know, you’re just imagining that you are here because your mind is screwed up. This could be a dream and you would never know it, and now that I have stated that, you’re going to try to prove to yourself whether or not this is truly a dream,” he finally responded briskly. His stomach grumbled hungrily after catching wind of the scent of bacon from within the halls.

The other boy stopped his pacing and stared at his hands, turning them over as though he was expecting them to burst into flame. His mop of golden blond hair hung in his eyes, hiding what might have hinted Tian at what this stranger was thinking or feeling. From his hunched shoulders, he had assumed that the boy was in denial. Perhaps he had been ripped from his home and family without a chance for good bye. Tian would not know how that would feel. He had never met his mother, and he despised his father with almost every fiber of his being. From what he had been told, he was an accident. His father had never meant for “the woman” to get pregnant.

It was hard to feel bad for the man. If he had not been so careless, then there could have been one less stressor in his life. A wave of sorrow clung to Tian’s heart. He wished that he could meet his mother, but he knew that it was unlikely to happen. As his father had said, her kind did not live for long after they fell in with the crowd that she had fallen in with after he had taken Tian from her custody.

That was another thing that caused Tian endless nights of confusion. If his father thought so little of him, why even bother to take him away? What use would the man have with a baby that had not yet been weaned off of the breast?
Tian froze in the middle of his thought ramblings; this was the kid who had been brought in over week ago. He had not even realized that the boy had awoken from his slumber. Usually, he would have been the first to know. He supposed that he could not possibly know everything and shrugged the idea off before it could bother him too much.

“Who are you?” the boy demanded, his deep blue eyes sparking with a mix of anger and confusion.

Frowning, Tian’s emerald eyes searched over the new boy. Said nameless boy was quite different from him as far as appearance went. Where Tian’s eyes were a bright emerald, the new kid’s were a deep blue that reminded Tian highly of the deep sea. Tian’s hair was raven black, and the boy’s was a golden blond intermixed with a color that could be described as being similar to that of wheat. Tian had sharp features, making him look older and more mature, even though he was far from being all that mature about things. The boy was softer, less fearsome and more lovable, almost like a well used teddy bear. The softness countered the harshness in his eyes, leaving Tian unsure about whether to be afraid or concerned. He searched for similarities, and found more than he had thought that he would.

They both stood tall, like they had something to prove, and their heights were not too different, either. Tian assumed that this other fellow was an inch or two taller than him, which would put him at around six feet tall. There was a look of curiosity in the blue depths of the other fellow’s eyes as well; something that Tian knew was reflected in his own eyes. It was the curiosity of wanting to learn new things and take on an adventure of grandeur.

“The name’s Tian,” he grunted, finding that this boy might not be so terrible after all. Of course, he doubted that there would be any other communication between the two. New students were generally in different classes than the senior ones. In a habitual gesture, Tian ran his fingers through his mass of black hair. He supposed that was another similarity; they both had a lot of hair. Tian’s was longer, and usually, he pulled it into a loose ponytail at the base of his skull, but it seemed to have fallen out already, what with his inability to leave it alone.

The boy watched, making conclusions about his opponent. They were like warriors, circling each other while trying to size the other up without the circling. The only difference was that they did not circle each other. He nodded slowly, “Alright, Tian. I’m,” the boy trailed off, thinking seriously. “I’m Nero,” he finally finished, nodding as if it was an acceptable response. Everything about him seemed to belong to a boy that had unknowingly been taken from his home. It made Tian stop to think about how exactly this kid had been discovered.

After hearing the boy’s name, Tian turned to go through the large doors. The bacon smelled even better when the smell of maple syrup floated delicately on the drafts of air. If he was lucky, there might even be some strawberries left.

“Wait!”

A groan escaped from Tian’s throat as he turned with plate in hand. What did the kid want now? Surely there wasn’t going to be more helpless interrogating, because that’s what happened in classes after teachers had finished lectures. That the day had begun with it made Tian’s heart sink; the rest of the day was going to be unbearable if it continued on the same path.

Deciding to ignore him, Tian went through the large doors and made his way to the buffet table with haste. He kept his attention focused on the food, and paid no attention to anyone else, should their eyes wander to him, wondering what could have caused his tardiness. The attention did not waiver to him until Nero stood next to him, watching the senior student as though unsure of what to do. Shaking his head, Tian hurried to a table and shoveled down his food, fervently hoping that Nero would not follow him.

It seemed that this was not his day.

Nero sat down in the vacant seat next to Tian and picked at his single pancake and cluster of grapes. It seemed that he had a small appetite, or that the nerves of being in a new school were getting to him. “Thanks,” he muttered to Tian, but he was drowned out by the voices of the four thousand some-odd students, and Tian was doing his best to ignore him.

(words :: 4,418)

[total word count in 2 Chapters 5,633]