Cold Reader One makes contact

Something about that title sounds like I need a radio microphone to hear the next response!

My class is, finally, settling down. The work load is feeling more manageable. Also, I've listened to the new Muse CD so often I don't know why I didn't love it all, totally, on day one. (You know it's a bad sign when you're thinking of doing the radio phone-ins, in the hopes of winning tickets to see them live - bless!)

The cold readers, who have also been busy with the work life balance, must be eating their way to the end of the book. Perhaps they thought injesting it was the way to go. I've been a study in patience. :S Today, before school, I got an e-mail from the first of the cold readers - who only got four chapters as I was nervous of sending the whole thing out. She has asked for the rest... with lots of exclamation marks. I'm taking that as a good sign.

After school I logged on here and found messages and a new follower. I like good news. It turns average days into quite another thing. Welcome Danni. I loved reading over on your blog. I felt right at home.

NEAR EDGWARE

PREFACE

Dark, clawing brambles shredded my skin. Gasping and shaking, I scrambled to higher ground at the top of the mound. I dragged shallow breaths into my aching, ice-scorched lungs. Time, like my energy, was running out and I still hadn't delivered the warning.

I’d come back home to enjoy hanging out with my friends. Instead, I’d spent time researching a little known sub-culture and walking, make that running, into danger. Before being ripped apart and dying - if I was lucky - it could be I had just enough minutes left to invent a time machine; perhaps he really wasn’t worth all this?

I imagined myself in quieter, safer, alternate realities. In my head I agonised over the question but in my heart I found the answer: the excitement of knowing, and being loved by him. I loved him. He made even this seem like the right place to be. I smiled and, even though he wasn’t there with me, I reached out my hand as if we could really touch.

Time machines are over-rated. I’d stand by my choices.

I took a deep breath and screamed.