𝗣𝗶𝗻𝗲-𝗛𝗲𝗮𝗿𝘁𝘀

ᴘɪɴᴇ-ʜᴇᴀʀᴛꜱ ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀ ᴇʟᴇᴠᴇɴ

-Gabriella, 18-

"C'mon, don't be all mopey. You literally won both races, and not by the skin of your teeth, either. What more could you want?" Lex asked around a mouthful of pizza. This pizza place was lovely, the woman at the counter pleasant, prices cheap, and there were enough students around us to confirm it was always this good.

"It's not that." I groaned, resting my forehead in my hands. "I've just feel really weird since we left the track."

After my first race, my heart had begun to beat faster, for no given reason. I hadn't been anxious or afraid, but the pace of my heartbeat said otherwise. And there was an ache deep in my chest- originally, it had been pleasant, but it had grown painful and took my breath away a few seconds after the race was over. I'd had to excuse myself to the bathrooms just before the 10:00 race, but even then, it seemed to only get worse.

I'd struggled through my 11:00 race just fine, and won, as I was expecting, but the horrible feeling in my chest was distracting me. My eyes kept pricking with tears, like I had hay-fever, and a sad sort of empty feeling kept stabbing into my brain until everything was giving me a headache. The worst part of all was that it felt like a vague part of my conscious was trying to tell me something, get me to do something, go somewhere, to fix it, but I just couldn't figure out the details.

If this had been the first time I'd experienced this feeling, I'd have gone for a checkup at the nearest A&E, but unfortunately I'd felt similar once before. It was a very long time ago, 2 years to be prescise, back when I had just left St Caspers.

The strange pull had been the same, too.

The sort of feeling like I had a compass built in, and I was being directed North, constantly. It kept my muscles tense and achey, and the frustration of not feeling up to going wherever my body and head were telling me to go was bringing me close to tears.

"I'm sorry, Gabriella. Do you need painkillers or something? I probably have some in my bag." She offered, and began to dig around in the hoarder's treasure trove that was her handbag.

Painkillers didn't fix this feeling.

I'd had to just wait it out, last time. It had taken almost a week, and by the end I felt so perpetually nauseous that I could barely keep food down.

I groaned.

Please let this episode be much, much shorter.

The bell on the door chimed. It was quiet: if my senses hadn't been so sharp, I'd probably not have heard it over the chatting around us. I tore off a little piece of Lex's pizza, deciding that if this nasty feeling was going to last as long as last time, I needed some fuel in me to survive it. I began to chew the piece. Damn, there was a lot of cheese. The primal part in my brain seemed to be satiated with the food, and the painful feeling actually started to ebb away, just a little bit. It was hardly noticeable, but made me eagerly tear off another piece of the slice, and eat that, too.

"My favorite customers! How are you boys?" The shop owner asked whoever had just walked in. I tuned into her conversation as Lex began to rant about the mess in her purse, and Molly managed to stuff an entire slice of pizza into her mouth in one go.

"All good thanks, Mrs Laurita." A voice replied.

Just at that noise, I found myself freezing up. A pleasant feeling washed over me, not entirely drowning out the pain, but rinsing some of it off for good. I could almost ignore it, now. The skin on my arms and the back of my neck prickled, but it was a pleasant feeling. Curious, I turned my head to face the counter. Did I just find this guy's voice really hot, or something?