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  Growl

  By

  Elaine Pierson

  Copyright © 2011 Elaine Pierson

  Ebook formatting by www.ebooklaunch.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to real events, people or places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Ebook formatting by www.ebooklaunch.com

  Lacey Hannigan Novels

  Growl

  Change

  Redemption

  Other books by Elaine Pierson

  Summer’s Curse

  Visit the author’s website at elainepiersonbooks.com for information about upcoming books.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter One

  Lacey had dropped her backpack at the bottom of the stairs and went into the kitchen to fix herself a snack.

  “Lacey, can you come in here for a minute?” her mother called from the livingroom.

  Lacey stopped a few feet into the kitchen and hung her head low. After the day she had, the last thing she wanted was to talk to her mother. She looked to the backdoor and thought about sneaking out, but given her luck she’d get busted and be in even more trouble than she was already in. She let out a deep breath and made her way into the livingroom.

  Her mom, Jackie and stepdad, Tom were sitting side by side on the super ugly yellow and green flowered couch that Tom had brought over from his house after he married her mom six years ago. Lacey could tell by the look on their faces that she was in more trouble than she had thought. With her arms crossed over her chest, she sat down in a chair across from her parents and quietly waited for the inevitable lecture she was about to get.

  “Why don’t you start by telling us how all the windows in the girl’s locker room ended up in a million pieces on the floor? And then you can tell us why Melinda Cross thinks that you tried to kill her” Tom said and pierced Lacey with an angry stare.

  She looked at him, then at her mom and let out a deep breath. “There is no point in playing this question game Tom, you already know what happened to the windows. I broke them, but you know as well as I do that I can’t help it. I tried not to get angry. I tried to control myself but Melinda pushed me too far.”

  “So you think that makes what you did okay? Melinda made you mad so you try to kill her. What’s gotten into you?” he yelled.

  Lacey jumped up and yelled back, “I did not try to kill her! I just wanted her to leave me alone, but she kept going on and on about my dad and how he didn’t want me. And I lost it. I might have scared her but I did not hurt her” she said with certainty.

  “You used your powers to shatter all the windows and she was cut by the glass shards. How can you say that you didn’t hurt her? Damn it Lacey, we’ve talked about this. You can’t go around using your powers on people every time someone makes you mad. Melinda is your friend, the only friend you have and this is how you treat her” Tom said.

  Lacey narrowed her eyes at him. “My friend? You’re kidding, right? Melinda Cross is not my friend. She has teased and tortured me ever since the fifth grade when she first moved here. Just because she says hello to me in front of you does not make her my friend. And I already told you that I didn’t mean to hurt her.” She looked to her mother for support. “Mom, you have to believe me when I say that I didn’t mean for any of this to happen.”

  Her mother frowned. “You never mean for things to happen but they always do, don’t they?” she said and quickly looked away like she regretted saying anything.

  Lacey rolled her eyes. “Whatever! I should have known better than to think you would take my side. You never have so why should you start now” she said and started for the stairs to go to her room.

  “Get back here!” Tom yelled, “We’re not done with this conversation.”

  Lacey glared at him. She hated everything about him, from the stupid way he combed over the few strands of hair he had to cover the fact that he was practically bald, to the way he doted on her mom like she was an infant in need of constant care, always hovering around her. He even closed his downtown office and turned their guest house into his new office so that he could work from home and be close to her all the time.

  Lacey couldn’t help but think that his psych patients would be better off if they found another shrink because Tom was a quack. Out of all of the shrinks her mom made her see when she was little, he was the worst. After her mother told him about her telekinetic powers, he did everything he could to provoke her into using them on him so he could see what she was capable of. But even at the young age of nine, she knew better than to let anyone see what she could do. She learned early on that she was different and people didn’t like different.

  After two years of Tom trying to get her to trust him enough to let him see her use her powers, he finally got what he wanted. When she found out about him and her mom getting married, she got so upset that she lost control of the hold she tried to always keep on her powers and lashed out at him. She tossed him across the room like a ragdoll and demolished everything in his office. When she was done, it looked like a tornado had come through and Tom was crouched in the corner, shaking like a leaf on a tree on a windy day.

  “What do you want me to say, Tom? I screwed up. Okay. I lost control of myself for a minute. I’ll get a job and pay for the damage” Lacey said.

  Tom stood up and pulled her mother up with him. He wrapped his arm protectively around her shoulder. “Don’t worry about the damage. I’ll pay for it” he paused, “But your mother and I have decided that it would be best for everyone if we send you back to the hospital for a while.”

  Lacey’s mouth dropped open and she struggled to breathe through the memories that assaulted her mind at the mention of the hospital. After what happened in Tom’s office, he had convinced her mom to have her committed into a children’s psychiatric hospital so they could study her powers. He wanted to know how she was able to move things with her mind and unfortunately, her mother had agreed. Lacey spent four months in the hospital and every day that she was there, was pure hell. The doctors kept her hooked to machines to monitor her brain activity as they tried to coax her into using her powers. When they found out that simply asking her to do what they wanted didn’t work, they tried other methods.

  They started with just insulting and teasing her to get her mad, in hopes that she would react the same way she did with Tom, but she didn’t. Their insults hurt her, especially when they talked about her real father, but she let it go. She refused to give in to them. Then they tried withholding food from her, saying that if she wanted to eat all she had to do was show them what she could do with what they called “her special abilities.”

  Of course, they never really starved her. They gave her saltine crackers and bottled water. And then they tried to entice her by leaving a tray of her favorite foods outside her door so that she could smell it. But Lacey never gave in. Sometimes she would go days without eating anything but the crackers. She didn’t have a choice. She knew if she showed them what they wanted to see, she would never leave the hospital. So she endured everything they threw at her. Even the shock therapy.

&
nbsp; The most cruel and inhumane thing the doctors did to her was when they sent her to the shock room. There, she was strapped to a table and shocked with small jolts of electricity. They would shock her again and again, telling her that if she wanted them to stop, she had to make them. They were careful to use just enough electricity to be painful but not enough to cause any real damage. And even though Lacey had been tempted several times to show them exactly what she was capable of, she didn’t. She kept a tight hold on her powers, even when it caused her physical pain to do so. Eventually, the doctors gave up and she was released. But she lives with the memories of the torture that they put her through every day and there was no way in hell she was ever going to go back there again.

  She stared unflinchingly at Tom. “I’m not going back to that hospital.”

  “You don’t have a choice. The decision has been made and Dr. Green is on his way here to pick you up as we speak.”

  The hairs on Lacey’s arms stood on ends and she could feel the tingling sensation that felt like electricity as it surged through her body. She was getting angry and the hold she usually kept on her powers was starting to slip just like it had in the locker room. With each year that passed it seemed like it was getting harder and harder to keep her powers under control. “I won’t go!” she yelled. “I’ll be eighteen in three weeks. If you want me to leave then I’ll leave, but I won’t go back to the hospital and you can’t make me.”

  Tom smiled and Lacey wanted to punch him in the face. “Until your birthday, you are a minor and in our custody. You will go where we tell you to go.”

  “No, I won’t!” she screamed.

  The picture frames on the wall started shaking, the glass cracked across the faces in the photos. Lacey trembled as anger swelled up inside her. She glared at Tom. The lamp on the table behind him flew across the room and shattered against the wall. He turned to look at it then narrowed his eyes at her. “Go ahead, break everything in here if that’s what you want to do. It won’t change anything. You’re still going back to the hospital where you belong.”

  Tom’s last words echoed in Lacey’s head. Fear and anger seized her and she lost all control of herself. The furniture near her flew across the room. Tom’s ugly couch skidded across the floor and busted through the large picture window by the front door, half inside the house and half outside on the porch.

  The coffee table slammed into the fireplace and papers from her mother’s desk swirled around in the air above them.

  Tom grabbed Jackie’s hand and pulled her down to the floor beside him.

  The large mirror over the fireplace shattered and shards of glass swam in the air. Lacey could see everything that was going on around her but she couldn’t stop herself. She wanted to, she knew that if she didn’t someone was going to get hurt, but she was too upset to control her powers. The coppery taste of blood filled her mouth as it trickled from her nose and over her top lip. A dull ache slowly spread from the back of her head to the front, intensifying as it covered her entire head. But even that wasn’t enough to make her stop.

  “Lacey! Stop this now!”

  She looked at her mother crouched on the floor a few feet away. The tears in her mother’s eyes succeeded in making Lacey find a way to control herself. She put everything she had into reigning in her powers. Slowly, everything in the room stopped moving. The papers and glass fell to the floor in a scattered mess. Lacey looked around the room at what she’d done and then at her mother. “I’m so sorry...I...I didn’t mean to do this” she said in a choked voice as tears rolled down her cheek.

  Her mother stood shakily and held her hand out to Tom. They both stood in front of Lacey, staring at her with fear in their eyes.

  “I’m so sorry, mom. Please don’t send me away” Lacey pleaded.

  Jackie lowered her eyes and turned her head away as if she was too ashamed to even look at her own daughter. “I’m sorry Lacey, but it’s what’s best for everyone. The nose bleeds and the headaches, you need help” she paused, “Look around. Look at what you’ve done, you’re dangerous and I don’t know what to do with you anymore. Even your father...”

  “Don’t bring my father into this!” Lacey yelled, cutting her off. She wiped the blood from her nose on the sleeve of her black shirt. She hated being reminded of how much her father disliked her.

  Jackie flinched and squeezed herself closer to Tom. Lacey frowned and shook her head sadly. “Why are you so afraid of me?” she asked in a small, child-like voice. “I’ve never hurt you but all my life you’ve been scared of me.”

  Her mother suddenly found her strength and pierced Lacey with an incredulous glare. “You’ve never hurt me? Do you really believe that? You’ve done nothing but hurt me since the day you were born. You cost me the love of my life. I loved your father more than anything in the world and you drove him away. He couldn’t handle having a freak for a daughter so he left and I got stuck raising you alone. Not only did I have to deal with you and your powers but I had to endure the embarrassment of being the mother of the weird girl. Do you have any idea how many friends that I’ve lost because of you? I could never have anyone come over to the house for fear that they would see your toys flying around the room or god forbid, you would decide to throw one of them across the room like you did your father. I couldn’t leave the house because every time I tried, you would throw a fit and shatter the windows. I hoped that as you got older things would change but they haven’t. You’re still just as dangerous now as you were when you were a toddler.”

  Lacey staggered back at the pain she heard in her mother’s voice. She had never spoken to her like that before. Most of the time she didn’t bother to talk to her at all but when she did, she never had the kind of emotion in her voice that she had now.

  Lacey reached out to touch her mother’s arm to soothe her but the look of fear on her face stopped her. She dropped her hand to her side and closed her eyes as tears slipped through her lids. She had known most of her life that her mother was afraid of her and blamed her for her dad leaving but to hear her actually say it, hurt more than she ever thought possible.

  She grabbed her backpack from the floor in front of the stairs and headed for the door.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” Tom asked from behind her.

  Lacey ignored him and kept walking. She opened the door and walked outside to the curb in front of her house where she had parked her yellow VW Beetle that her paternal grandmother had given her the money to buy since her father wasn’t around to buy her a car. She opened the passenger side door and threw her backpack inside. Looking over her shoulder, she saw her mom and Tom standing on the porch. Tom was yelling at her to get back inside and her mother was looking down at her feet, avoiding looking at her. The pain that tiny action caused was excruciating. Lacey felt as if someone had punched a hole in her heart. She wiped at the tears falling from her eyes and whispered, “I love you mom” before running around to the other side of the car and getting in.

  She was almost hyperventilating by the time she pulled away from the curb and drove away from the only home she had ever known. She had no idea where she was going to go or how she was going to make it on her own, but leaving was the only thing she could do to protect herself and give her mother what she wanted most...a normal life.

  Fear that Tom might call the cops and report her as a runaway made Lacey eager to get as far away from Blaxton, Georgia as possible. She pushed the gas pedal all the way to the floor as more tears streamed down her face. Her emotions were becoming more and more unstable as she replayed everything that had happened over in her mind. The look of pain and fear on her mothers face, the smugness on Tom’s and the way her home looked after she lost control of herself. A sob escaped her throat and she began to cry uncontrollably. She sped across the Jackson County line and kept going, ignoring the fact that her powers were starting to act up again...until it was too late.

  The car started shaking and the windows rattled. Suddenly, one of the tires
exploded and the car ran off the road into a ditch. It crashed into a tree. The impact crushed the front of the car.

  The throbbing pain in Lacey’s head let her know that she was still alive. She lifted her head from the steering wheel and looked out the windshield to see the tree that she had hit. Her vision blurred and for a moment she saw double. She touched her hand to her head and cringed when she saw the blood that covered her fingers. She looked in the mirror to check her wound. The gash over her right eye wasn’t as bad as it felt but it was bleeding and so was her nose. “Damn it,” she cussed and wiped at the blood with the sleeve of her shirt before taking it off and tossing it in the back seat.

  Looking to the road, she checked to see if anyone saw the accident and were calling the police. Fortunately, the road was empty. Knowing that she didn’t have much time, she grabbed her gym shirt from her backpack, quickly put it on and got out of the car. Dizziness nearly caused her to fall. She leaned against the car for a few minutes to clear the haze from her mind. Several minutes passed but her vision was still a little blurry.

  A car stopped on the road and a man’s voice called out to her. “Hey, are you alright?”

  Startled, Lacey looked his way and said the first thing that came to her mind. “Um...yeah, it’s not my car. I was just walking by and stopped to see if anyone needed help but there’s nobody here.” She hated to lie and knew that she wasn’t any good at it, but she didn’t know what else to do.

  The man looked at her skeptically. “Are you sure you’re okay? You have blood on your face.”

  Lacey quickly wiped her nose with the back of her hand. “Oh, um yeah, I’m fine. I have nose bleeds sometimes” she said and pushed her achy body away from the car.

  The man watched her for a minute then asked, “Do you need a ride somewhere?”

  She looked over her shoulder at him as she continued walking away and forced herself to smile. “No, thank you. I live just down the road. I was on my way home from school when I saw the car. I’ll be home in no time.”

  The man watched her for a few seconds longer then got in his car and left.

  Lacey let out a relieved breath and quickened her pace. She needed to get as far away from the car as possible before someone else saw her and stopped to help. The last thing she wanted was for the police to find her and take her back home.