Page 1 of Dared

PROLOGUE

AGE TEN

“Hahaha! It’s the stuttering ginger kid!”

I gritted my teeth, breathing through the hurt as several loud whispers and stifled laughs echoed around me. Why was it acceptable to be so horrible to another kid for something they were born with? Something they had no control over?

I didn’t evenhavea stutter. I just… When I was in front of people, my nerves overtook me. I froze up, and my mouth and brain and lungs didn’t always work properly together. It wasn’t like I could help it, any more than I could help my hair being the way it was. And anyway, Ilikedmy hair. I liked the reds and golds and hints of brown. It reminded me of my mum. She’d died when I was a baby. My dad had never really shown much ofan interest in me, and that was okay because I knew I reminded him of her, and it was painful. But I’d talked him into showing me photos of my mum, and I knew we shared the same hair. It was my link to her.

A lump came into my throat, and I blinked rapidly.Please. Please don’t freeze up. Get through this, and then you can sit down and be invisible again.

“He’s gonna freeze!” The excited, high-pitched voice came from my left, immediately shushed by the teacher, but it was too late. I’d already heard it.

Staring down at the paper in my shaking hand, I bit down on my lip, staring at the words that were blurring on the page. My entire body was trembling as I opened my mouth, a fast, shallow breath escaping. “Sh-Shakespeare wrote R-Romeo and J-Juliet in?—”

“Look at him!” This voice was gleeful, and I swallowed around the lump in my throat, the lump that had increased in size ever since I’d been forced to stand in front of the class and read out my homework assignment.

I licked my cracked, dry lips. It had to be obvious to everyone that I’d lost control of my emotions. My throat felt like it was closing up. “I-in?—”

“He’s gonna cry!”

Against my will, a tear trickled down my cheek and then another. The paper fell to the floor as the whispers closed in on me, the laughter growing louder.

The teacher rushed to the front of the room, reprimanding the class and ushering me back to my seat, but it was too late. I buried my face in my arms, digging my teeth into my left bicep in an attempt to stifle my sobs. My shoulders shook as the tears fell hot and fast with the eyes of my classmates on me, there to witness me falling apart.

1

Reclining back in my gaming chair, I rolled my ankles in slow circles as I browsed through the newLesath Legendsin-game armour that had just dropped. As I was equipping my character with a new shield, I heard the front door slam, and a minute later, my flatmate, Connor, was poking his head around my bedroom door.

“Alright? What you up to? I’m gonna be recording for my channel for the next couple of hours, then I have a Twitch stream at nine.”

That was Connor-speak for “do not disturb me while I work on my online content.” It was the main reason we made good flatmates. That, and the fact we were both studying for a computing degree. Connor was so different from me—confident and outgoing, but he needed peace and quiet to make his content. When he’d discovered my love for endless hours ofgaming when I wasn’t occupied with my uni work, he’d asked if I wanted to split the rent with him on a flat he’d found close to campus. I’d already resigned myself to living alone or having to share a house with strangers, as I’d done in my first year of uni, so his offer had come as a complete surprise. But when he’d promised me he was serious, I’d happily accepted.

“I’ll just be here gaming, anyway.” Stretching my legs out with a groan, I continued. “I don’t want to move for the next few hours. Dance practice killed me today.”

Shaking his head, Connor grinned at me. “You brought it all on yourself, bro. Who combines a computing major with a dance minor? Only you. Take me, for example. A far more sensible combination of visual communication and computing.” He shook his head. “Then again, you get to hang out with hot dancers. Maybe I could get an intro sometime. If they’re hot and single, send them my way.”

“Yeah…maybe.” It wasn’t that I didn’t want him to meet my dance friends. It was just that I only had two I could really call friends, and both were in relationships. Connor knew I was shy and struggled with anything social or being in the spotlight, but I felt a bit…humiliated, I guess, that we were drawing closer to the end of the second year of our degrees, and I’d made friends with a grand total of two people on my dance course. It was more or less the same story with my computing major—I had Connor and another friend called Niall, who I usually teamed up with for group projects, but there wasn’t anyone else I properly hung out with.

I wished I could be normal.

Connor nodded, rapping his knuckles on the door frame as he straightened up. “Don’t even worry about it. I’m gonna go and get set up. If you get hungry later, there’s still some of that pizza in the fridge. I only had a couple of slices for lunch.”

“Thanks.” I smiled at him, grateful that he understood and always seemed to know when to back off. “Good luck with your things.”

“You too. Have fun killing monsters. Y’know, you could get a decent Twitch following if you live-streamed your games, make some money out of it.”

“Not happening.”

“It was worth a try.”

I winced. “Sorry.” Every now and then, he’d try to get me to do something outside of my comfort zone, rarely succeeding, but he didn’t give up or take offence when I said no.

He grinned at me. “You know I’m gonna keep trying.” With a salute, he disappeared, and I settled myself at my desk, ready to playLesath Legends.

A message popped up in the chat window, and a smile spread across my face. Hammerhead was online.

HAMMERHEAD:

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