The Rebel and the Stray (The Northridge Academy #1)

PROLOGUE

When I saw the blood, I knew I had to do the right thing, irrespective of the risks.

My heart thrashed against my ribcage—a frantic bird encased in bone.

I felt so nervous. I’d never been out in our street when it was so dark before.

Well, not since my mother had taken my little sister Sophie to the hospital the previous year.

That was the first time I was allowed to leave the grounds of the house in months.

Sophie frequently got sick and struggled outside of her comfort zone, so I had gone along to keep her calm. Although the word ‘comfort’ in no way described our living conditions. My siblings and I lived in hell.

Mum said Sophie wasn’t born with the same amount of strength as my brother and me. And she was right. My sister fell ill—a lot. That was another reason why we needed to leave, to get some answers about Sophie’s declining health.

As I’d made my escape, my sister’s pale face had given me that burst of courage I needed to see things through. She required urgent medical attention: someone who could finally diagnose her condition.

Nervously scanning the road, I yanked my hood low to hide my hair.

Our house was in a remote area in Dunsfold, near Shere in Surrey, but we still had nosy neighbours.

They never acted on their suspicions of what went on behind our closed doors, though.

Getting involved in other people’s business complicates lives.

We lived on a pretty street with an acre of land, and our house from the outside looked like a regular 1950s bungalow. It was surrounded by cherry blossoms: a veil of pink that hid a multitude of the horrors that went on inside.

My grandfather planted most of the shrubs in our garden.

I didn’t remember him; he died when I was six.

My mother told us that Andrew Thorn was a grumpy old fool.

She hated the trees he had embedded there, especially the cherry blossoms. They dropped their petals after a brief seven-day bloom; a short, beautiful lie before the rot set in.

Mum ranted uncontrollably about how the withered flowers got caught on the heels of her shoes.

They added to the stains on our carpets: rust-coloured smears—like dried blood.

It had always surprised me that the untidiness bothered her so much, considering we lived in such appalling conditions.

My parents were hoarders, and our house was always full of junk, like a bleak holding cell for all the things they couldn't let go of. In our living room alone, there was a stack of old newspapers that reached the ceiling, a yellowing column of dead news and forgotten dates.

Everywhere you looked, there was something.

Old leather sofas were buried under a landslide of black bin bags filled with clothes, cracked DVD cases, magazines, boxes of shoes, unopened letters, and old takeaway wrappers: to name a few.

It was like an explosion of mess, every room drowning in things that might have been useful once.

The place was a stifling environment, a brick prison for my siblings and me, and we hated it there.

I stretched out my arms, the muscles there screaming.

It was the middle of the night, and I was in that one place I shouldn’t have been; outside, alone.

I’d left the house by the back window, which my older brother, Adam, had prised open.

I was surprised he’d managed it, considering how much pain he’d been in since my father kicked him in the ribs with his boots on.

At least his current injury was nothing like the time Dad hit Adam with his own baseball bat.

My brother was a huge fan of the Guildford Mavericks, and Jacob Thorn had bought the bat for his son on his sixteenth birthday: ironic, right?

Now that Adam was nineteen and taller and stronger, the beatings had reduced, and our father’s focus to unleash his anger fell to my sister and me.

This time it was my turn to get help. Adam was in no state to go anywhere.

The last time he’d snuck out to get me and Sophie ice creams, Dad had hit him with his belt.

The bruises from the leather had lasted for weeks.

That was three months ago, and Adam hadn’t been the same since.

It was like a switch had been flicked off.

I licked my dry, cracked lips and drew in a breath. The air tasted so fresh compared to the damp smell of our bungalow; even my unwashed skin, which was masked by the oversized hoodie I wore, was bearable. It felt so much cleaner out there.

Tugging the mobile phone I had stolen from my back pocket, I turned it on. It wouldn’t be missed; my father had an old, rusted biscuit tin full of them. But the battery on the one I had chosen was low, and I knew I needed to use it quickly.

Shuffling back into the shadows, I glanced fretfully up and down the empty street. I had stopped at the end of our road. As I said, we rarely left the grounds of our house, and so I didn’t want to get lost. If the phone didn’t connect or suddenly shut down on me, I knew I’d have to go back.

Before I used the call settings, I checked that the photos I had taken were still there, and sure enough, the images of my sister chained to her bed blew up the screen.

The raw, purple welts on Sophie’s ankle made my stomach heave, as did the colour of the soiled mattress she was lying on.

My fingers lifted automatically to my own injuries, tracing the hollows of my wrists.

Enough was enough. I was seventeen now and knew I needed to do something. If I didn’t, Sophie would die there. She wasn’t receiving the care she needed, and the only way I could save her was to run away and find help.

And then there was the matter of the damage to my father’s car: the straw that broke the camel's back. I had taken it as a sign. We had a gated drive, so he never usually put it in the garage. When he’d carefully backed it in there the previous night, I became suspicious, especially when I saw him staggering through the house looking more frightful than usual.

After hearing about a local hit-and-run incident involving a blue Honda Civic with mismatched bodywork, my feet automatically led me into that garage.

And sure enough, the front left wing of my father’s car was badly dented, as was part of the bonnet.

I remembered how my fingers had trembled as they brushed the mudguard, my stomach tightening as I saw it: a dark, rust-coloured smear, dried and crusty. Blood.

It wouldn’t have been the first time my father had been drunk at the wheel and had hit someone. But this time, that ‘someone’ was fighting for their life in the hospital. The local news station was asking for any potential witnesses to come forward.

And my mind was made up. It had to stop: all of it.

Did I love my parents? Yes. Did I agree with how they lived their lives and how they treated their children? No.

After a brief pause, I inhaled that cold, forbidden air and dialled the only number I knew by heart.