Paradox (Unearthly Paradox Series Book 1)

Chapter 2

I came to, treading water and gasping for air. The boys were racing for the shore. Somehow I was out in the middle of the canal, but I had no idea what had happened or why they'd let me go. I put my hand under my skirt, praying my panties were still there-they were.

"You're a fucking crazy bitch!" Tyler yelled as he and his mates scrambled up to the bridge with fear in their eyes.

He had tried to rape me, but I was the crazy one? I stayed in the water a little longer, afraid to swim to shore in case they came back to finish what they started. Finally, I decided I had to risk it. I couldn't stay in the canal forever.

As I walked out of the water, I looked back and just about peed myself when I saw a guy about fifty metres out, looking directly at me. His eyes never wavered from mine as he slowly sank under the water. What had freaked me was not that someone was watching me-it was his eyes. They were solid black.

I rubbed at my eyes, thinking there was no way I could've seen right. I stood there waiting for him to resurface, but he never did. The way he had looked at me was unnerving. And his eyes... no matter how freakish they were, there was something familiar about them.

Shaking off my obvious oxygen-deprived hallucination, I walked up the bank to the path and then over the bridge, grabbing my bag along the way. There was no way I was going back to school, so I headed home.

By the time I arrived, I was completely dry. I dumped my bag next to the hall table and went upstairs to my bedroom. I locked the door behind me.

I expected to fall to pieces the minute I was alone, but I didn't. The whole thing felt as if it had happened to someone else. I remembered my fear and that feeling of helplessness from when they had held me down, but the emotional connection I should have felt didn't exist.

I could've put it down to denial, but something had happened after I blacked out, and I knew whatever it was would explain why I didn't have the emotional connection to the incident. Incident? What the hell was wrong with me? Rape! I was almost raped, and yet I was referring to it as an "incident."

After grabbing a pair of shorts and a tank top from my closet, I went into the adjoining bathroom. We had only been in our new home for a week, and nothing seemed to be going how it should've for me. I thought I had made some new friends, but those girls had set me up.

All I wanted to do was go home, back to Sydney, where I had been happy and where all my friends were. But my father had gotten a CEO position earning a lot more money than we would ever need. The fact that he was screwing up my life in the process didn't bother him. I had been days away from finishing school and still had numerous exams, but nothing stood in the way of his career.

I threw my clothes onto the ottoman then turned to the sink. When I saw my reflection in the mirror, I almost peed my pants. My normally brown eyes were solid black, not just the irises, but the whites, too. I rubbed my eyes with my fists then looked again. My regular brown eyes stared back at me.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" I muttered.

Turning my back to the mirror, I walked over to the shower and twisted the taps. I grabbed my towel and slung it over the frameless glass panel then undressed and hopped under the steaming water.

I tilted my head back, letting the water run down my face. The moment I closed my eyes, images of hands groping me flashed through my mind. I was going under, but I wasn't afraid. I felt at peace.

The next thing I knew, I was going down. Literally. I smacked my head against the tiles and passed out.

***

Cold water jolted me awake. I looked around and realised I was still in the shower. I groaned as I tried to sit up. My head felt as if there were a jackhammer pounding against my brain, and my body ached from lying in that contorted position.

I pressed the palm of my hand against my forehead, hoping the pressure would alleviate the pain, but it did nothing to stop the constant hammering against my skull. I clambered to my feet, turned off the water, and stepped out of the shower. Grabbing the towel off the rail, I wrapped it around me then picked up another for my hair. I changed into my clothes and looked in the mirror. My brown eyes stared back at me. I thought maybe what had happened in the canal would have had some kind of effect. Of course it did, you idiot. You don't just get over something like that. It stays with you for life.

I wished there was someone I could talk to about it. But I had no friends on the Coast, and I couldn't bring myself to tell any of my friends back in Sydney. What could I say when I didn't really know what had happened? One second, I was about to be raped, and the next, they were calling me a crazy bitch as they ran away. I didn't get why they would say that or how I could've stood a chance against five guys. Maybe it had something to do with the guy I saw disappear under the water.

I laughed. The "guy" had probably just been a bull-nose shark, and I was lucky not to have been bitten by it.

I went down the stairs to the kitchen. The sun had almost set, but of course, my father wasn't home. He hardly ever came home before nine p.m.-if he came home at all. He wasn't a practical parent. Hell, I could barely call him a parent at all. He was more like a housemate that I never saw. Where he sucked in parenting skills, he made up with other things. He thought money could buy happiness, so he'd given me a credit card, and he never questioned the bill. He'd even bought me a new car for my eighteenth birthday. But I was too embarrassed to drive to my new school in a Mercedes when so many other kids didn't even have wheels. What he never understood was that I would've given up all of those things for a father who actually gave a damn about me.

I got some painkillers from the pantry and a bottle of water from the fridge. I threw the capsules into my mouth then washed them down with the water as I went back upstairs to my room.

I lay on my bed and tried to relax. Sleep eluded me as I kept thinking about what happened in the canal and if it really was a guy that I had seen disappear into the water. I didn't know why I was so fixated on him when there were bigger things I should've been worried about, but I couldn't seem to help it.

Eventually, I drifted off, only to dream about the shark guy. His black eyes pierced through to my soul as he watched meintently.