by Bea Paige
Fuckwads.
“That’s all you have to say?” the judge responds.
But instead of slapping my arse with another punishment, he just sighs heavily as though he’s just as jaded with the world as I am. I watch as he clasps his hands together and regards me for a long time before speaking.
“Your crime holds a minimum sentence of eighteen months in juvenile prison, but both your social worker and lawyer have petitioned for a lesser sentence. For some reason they seem to think you’re salvageable. Despite your appearance and lack of any remorse for your actions, I’m going to believe them.”
I snort, folding my arms across my chest ignoring the pounding beat of my heart and the anger bubbling inside, the hurricane of rage I was born with is never very far away. I know for a fact my lawyer doesn’t give a crap about me, and my social worker? Ha! Don’t make me laugh. That bitch will be glad to see the back of me. I’m pretty sure she’d rather see me locked up, my case file neatly filed away in some cabinet in her office never to be looked at again.
“You come to my court dressed like that,” he says wrinkling his nose at my ripped jeans, Doc Martens and see through mesh top.
“At least I wore a bra,” I snarl under my breath, glancing at Fitzpatrick whose jaw tightens in anger.
“You’ve not even bothered to make an effort to present yourself in a suitable manor…” the judge continues, his words lost behind a growing haze of rage that I can’t seem to dampen right now.
What the fuck has my appearance got to do with it? I have blue hair, a nose stud, lip ring and tattoos and that immediately makes me a leper to society, does it? All these thoughts make acid of my blood as he blithers on, but I don’t show how I feel. On the outside I’m cold, disinterested, maintaining a sense of aloofness. It’s my ‘don’t give a shit’ attitude that I’ve perfected over the years. Besides, I’m not really worried about me, I can take a stint in juvie. At least I’ll get a place to sleep every night and food in my belly. I’m told they even have video games. Sounds like heaven to me. The only thing I don’t like about a prison sentence is that I worry for my little brothers and how they’ll survive without my visits. They might be living in a different foster care home than me (not that I stay in my own very often), but I still get to visit them regularly. Eighteen months in prison is a long time to go without seeing them both. That thought makes my mouth go dry and my hands turn clammy.
“Despite all of that,” he continues, whilst a buzzing fills my ears making it hard for me to actually hear what he’s saying, “I’m giving you one final chance to change your ways. You will attend Oceanside Academy in Hastings.”
My gaze snaps up to meet his. Oceanside Academy in Hastings? How is that any better than a prison sentence? I’ve heard about that place, a reform school for fucked-up kids just like me, but that’s not even the worst part. It’s a residential school, miles away from my little brothers. Is this prick insane? Sitting forward in my chair, my mouth pops open, ready to bombard this shit-stain of a man with my response. But Fitzpatrick grabs my arm and squeezes.
“Don’t be foolish,” he hisses.
I’m about to tell him to get lost too when my brain finally catches up with the rest of what the judge is saying. His words somehow penetrating the anger I feel.
“You’ll be able to return home during the term breaks to ensure you’re still able to maintain a relationship with your siblings. I’m told that they’re your one saving grace…”
The judge lets that statement hang in the air, and it successfully shuts me up. We make eye contact, and he narrows his eyes at me. But of course, I should’ve known it comes with a caveat, the motherfucker isn’t stupid.
“This is a suspended sentence, Alicia. If you mess up, or you don’t meet your obligations at the academy then I can and will enforce the full sentence and you’ll find yourself in prison as soon as you can whip out your spray can and tag your name on a wall. There will be no visitation rights then. None. Do I make myself clear?”
Clenching my jaw and trying my best not to tell the judge what I really think of him, I simply nod my head. “I understand.”
And just like that my life is upended once more.
Outside the courtroom, Fitzpatrick turns to me and rests his hand on my arm. I look at his fingers pressing into my skin, then him with distaste, a scowl drawing my lips up in a sneer. His eyes widen as though he truly thinks I’m about to bite. He releases his hold. Finally, the twat understands me.
“You start the new term in one week. I suggest you spend the time making your goodbyes and thinking about what you want out of life, Alicia. Whether you choose to believe it or not, this is an opportunity, not a sentence. Make the most of it, and whatever you do, don’t run.”
With that he turns on his heel and walks away from me. I watch him leave with dispassion. “Save your pep talks for someone who actually gives a shit,” I call out after him, drawing more snotty glares from the staff milling about.
On the other side of the reception area, someone barks out a laugh. A boy around my age looks at me from beneath his black hoody jumper. I can barely see his features beneath the shade of his hood, but I see enough to get my measure of him. Besides, the attitude he gives off ensures everyone milling around gives him a wide berth. I’m pretty sure he’s a misunderstood ‘arsehole’ just like me. Or given the shit-eating grin that’s rapidly widening across his face, just an arsehole. Folding my arms across my chest defensively and cocking my hip and eyebrow, I wait. He raises his hand, his fingers curled into his palm.
“Wanker,” he mouths, moving his fist from side to side imitating a wank. His gaze slides to the retreating back of my lawyer before he smirks at me then pulls back his hood so I can get a better look at his face.
It's a good face. Handsome in a kind of ‘lock up your daughters and your family jewels’ way. Dark blonde hair falls over his baby blue eyes that are a little too all-knowing to be innocent. I already know from that one glance, as our eyes meet, that he’s seen and done shit that would rival any adult in this building. Face of an angel, mind of a sinner, and the type of person I avoid at all costs.
Swiping his hair back off his forehead, he gives me a wink which I resolutely ignore in my calculated perusal of him. He has a light tan, as though he spends a lot of time out in the sun, and he’s tall, fit, with wide shoulders and a slim waist. Honestly, he’d be better served on a beach with a surfboard, than in a magistrates’ court in Hackney, but life sucks so here we are.
Two dimples appear in his cheeks as he smiles languidly with a lazy kind of self-assurance. He totally thinks I’m checking him out, and I am, just not in the way he thinks. I’m cataloguing his face and filing it in my memory in case I need to refer to it at a later date. I’ve learnt to be smart, making sure when I meet a new person, I take my measure of them because you never know when you might need that kind of information.
Here's what I know in the few minutes of checking him out: he’s approximately my age, seventeen max because although he’s tall, broad, he still has the remnants of youth in the smooth skin of his face. There’s not a single facial hair in sight. He’s clearly in trouble with the law and given the way his gaze keeps flicking to the Rolex watch sitting on his lawyer’s wrist, I’m thinking theft is his crime of choice. He fancies himself as a bit of a ladies’ man. Those dimples in his cheek might work wonders on other girls, and probably women, but it won’t work on me. Beauty is used to hide a multitude of sins, and I’m not as impressed by it as other chicks my age appear to be. He's scared. That tell is harder to decipher and he’s doing a good job at trying to hide it beneath the cockiness, but the way he taps his foot is a big giveaway.
“You here for me, beautiful? Want my number?” he shouts across the room the second my gaze lands on his tap-tapping foot.
Hmm, bravado, another interesting tell. He doesn’t like anyone thinking he’s weak. Make everyone think you’re brave, confident, and they’ll believe it even when you aren’t. A to
ol I use often enough myself.
I don’t answer him, but I give him a knowing smile as I regard him.
Next to him, the good looking lawyer who has concern written across his face, looks over at me. He gives me an assessing look, his dark eyes narrowing as he regards me. I raise an eyebrow at him as he smooths a hand over his beard. The cocky, dimpled shithead, who’s almost as tall as the lawyer, looks between us.
“Bit young for you, Bryce,” he says with a smirk.
Bryce? On first names with his lawyer then. Bryce shakes his head and clips the boy lightly around the ear.
“Don’t piss me off. You’re pushing your luck already, son.”
Ah, not a lawyer. Pretty sure they’d get the sack for whacking their clients. So, who is this man? My interest piqued, I watch and wait.
The boy laughs. “Son? You might be looking after me, but you ain’t my dad, so stop pretending you are. I don’t need you here, arsehole. I’ve been looking after myself long enough before you lot came along.”
There we have it, the fit bloke is his foster parent. Pretty sure I’ve never come across a foster parent dressed in Armani, looking like he’s just stepped out of the pages of GQ Magazine. Well, shit just got interesting.
“Wrong, you need me, and Louisa would never forgive me if I let you come here alone today. So suck it up, concentrate on the matter at hand, and stop giving that pretty little thing over there fuck-me eyes. I’m pretty sure she’d chew you up and spit you out,” the man called Bryce says, turning to give me a wink.
I can’t help but smirk, which only seems to piss Dimples off even more.
“Pretty sure I’d let her,” the boy bites back before giving me a smile that absolutely shows me that he would, and that he’d enjoy it. “Name’s Sonny,” he says as an afterthought, before being frogmarched into the courtroom on the other side of the hall.
The moment the door slams shut, the world filters back in and I notice that everyone seems to be staring, making a judgement about the boy who was just dragged into the courtroom and the girl with a scowl on her face.
“Should learn some manners. This is a court of law and not some playground for a bunch of delinquents,” some snotty-nosed woman says as she walks past me.
“Whatever,” I mutter, leaning against the wall, all of the wind knocked out of me suddenly.
What the hell do any of these arseholes know anyway? Apart from that dude Sonny, who’s clearly looking for a distraction from his shit day, I’m the dregs of society. I’m a delinquent just like the woman said, and this delinquent is about to join the notorious Oceanside Academy, otherwise known on the streets as the Academy of Misfits.
Fuck my life.
2
A few days later, whilst I’m minding my own business hiding from the world on the top of a garage roof behind the flats where I live, a firm hand clamps down on my shoulder. I don’t bother to look up and see who it is. The only person who knows where to find me is my best friend, and partner in crime, Eastern.
“What’s up, Alicia?” he asks me as he takes a seat next to me, spreading out his long, muscular legs next to mine. I try not to take too much notice of how his jeans are stretched across the firm muscle of his thigh. I’m pretty sure he’s been working out.
“You been avoiding me?”
“It’s Asia, dickwad,” I respond, shaking my head as he attempts to pass me a joint. I’m not in the mood to get high. I’ve got too much shit going on. Besides I’m seeing my little brothers in an hour. I’m not foolish enough to visit my kid brothers high on marijuana. That’d be a sure-fire way of never getting to see them again, and I won’t risk that.
“Sorry, Asia,” he retorts, rolling his eyes.
“Well, at least I’m not named after a direction on a map,” I bite back, feeling prickly. He might be my only friend, one I’ve known since forever, but he doesn’t get to call me Alicia. No one does.
“Should I come back after you’ve finished your period?” he laughs.
“Piss-off.”
“Alright, alright. We all know my mum can’t spell and she meant Easton, but I’m stuck with this name. Besides, I kind of like it. You’re Asia and I’m Eastern, it fits. Like we were always meant to be friends.”
“Hmm,” I respond, picking at the frayed hole in my jeans, my mind straying elsewhere.
“You still worrying about Oceanside? I say you got off lightly,” he adds nonchalantly.
“Taking the rap for you, jerk,” I bite out.
“Hey, you did the breaking and entering, the artwork. I just came along for the ride,” he shrugs, but I see the guilt flash across his brown eyes.
“Maybe so, but you totally owe me one for not snitching on you.”
He scowls, wrapping his arm around my shoulder and pulling me in for a hug. A waft of his familiar masculine scent of soap and apples unnerves me, like he’s spent the day in an orchard stealing basket loads of fruit rather than smoking joints and getting up to no good. I stiffen in his arms, I never used to feel this way when he hugged me before but ever since that kiss…
“Fuck man, if I could take the rap I would. It’s just…” he says, interrupting my thoughts and squeezing me tighter against his side.
“…Tracy needs you. I get it. Besides, you’re right, you didn’t do anything wrong… this time.”
I let him hold onto me tightly, ignoring the warm pit in my stomach at his closeness. We’ve been best friends since we were babies and always had a non-romantic relationship. Of late, things have become awkward between us. Especially since he kissed me at Mr fucking Patel’s shop. That night I’d acted rashly in more ways than one. Stupid.
“Mum’s having trouble holding things together right now,” he continues, taking a long toke on the joint before blowing it out. I do my best not to breathe in too deeply. This stuff will get you high even when you’re not the one actually smoking it.
“Braydon?” I question, knowing that the only thing Tracy struggles with is her youngest son who’s got every disability under the sun; deaf, mute, with Multiple Sclerosis thrown in the mix. He’s a sweet kid, eight years old and full of sunshine despite all his problems. Tracy adores him, we all do, and she works round the clock to care for him. Eastern does his best to be the man of the house given their own father did a runner as soon as Braydon was born. But as much as Eastern would like to ease his mum’s money worries, what hope is there for a sixteen-year-old kid who spends as little time at school as I do? We both pretty much sacked school off the second we turned sixteen. They’ve stopped trying to get us to go in. Besides, we caused too much trouble, it was easier to permanently exclude us both. Fuck them anyway.
“Yes, Braydon…” he confirms with a heavy sigh.
His younger brother is a constant source of joy and worry for him. Recently, the only way he can help his mum out is by delivering Mary J. I hate that he does it, but what other choice does he have? Tracy needs the money, and even though he lies and tells her he’s working cash in hand at a legit job, I think she knows deep down he doesn’t. That cuts him deep. She’s that desperate to help one son, that she’ll allow the other to lead a life of crime. Life sure does suck.
“Bray’s needed a lot of medical care lately and mum has had to skip work a few times to look after him. She thinks she’s going to get the sack.”
“Doesn’t she get like special leave or something because he’s disabled?”
“She’s on zero contract hours, Asia, earning the minimum wage. Those fucktards who employ her don’t give a shit. As long as the offices they send her to clean are kept spotless, that’s all that matters to them.”
He drops his arm from my shoulder and scrapes a hand through his hair, the warm afternoon light catching the strands of auburn within the brown curtains that flops in front of his eyes. The evenings are still mild, which is no surprise really, September is always a better month for good weather than August is. The second kids go back to school after the summer holidays the rain stops, and the sun c
omes out. Fucking typical really.
“She’s behind on the rent and the bills. That’s why I’ve…” he continues, bringing his knees up to his chest and wrapping his arms around them. He sucks on the last dregs of the joint then throws it over the side of the garage, blowing the blue-grey smoke out slowly. The pungent smell is acrid and lingers around us like a dense fog.
“Why what?” I ask, narrowing my eyes at him.
“Why I’ve got a run for Nash this Sunday. It’s a big job, will earn me a couple ton,” he responds side-eying me.
“Eastern! Delivering weed is one thing, but that kind of money means only one thing… please don’t tell me you’re delivering speed for that arsehole.”
He doesn’t answer and my heart sinks like a rock. Of course he is.
“For fuck’s sake. If you get caught, they’ll put you away and then what will your mum do?!” I suck on my lip ring, worry coursing through me. Tracy has been a surrogate mum to me, and I love her and Braydon like they’re my own family. I hate to see them struggling but I care about Eastern too… he’s like a brother to me.
You do not kiss a brother like you kissed Eastern.
My cheeks flush at the memory, which I rapidly push aside. Fuck sake, I need to get a grip. He’s a friend. Nothing more.
“Hey, don’t do that,” he says, plastering on a fake smile for me and flicking my lip ring with his finger.
“Do what?” I respond, slapping his hand away, my cheeks colouring. I hope he can’t read my mind, though most days he seems to be able to. That’s what happens when you spend your life growing up together.
“Worry about me getting caught, of course…” he pauses, his gaze raking over my face. “That was what you were thinking, wasn’t it, or can’t best friends give a shit about each other anymore?”
“Shut up, arsehole,” I retort, willing the colour to leave my cheeks. “Of course I worry about you. You’re like a brother to me.”