Cracks Read online

  ‘A gripping story, impossible to put down.

  Green cranks up the tension with every page.’

  L. A. Weatherly,

  bestselling author of Angel

  ‘Cracks grabbed me from the very start . . .

  had me holding my breath as I turned the page,

  and I was rooting for Cal every

  nail-biting step of the way.

  An action-packed and gripping thriller.’

  Chicklish

  Caroline Green is an experienced freelance journalist who has written stories since she was a little girl. She vividly remembers a family walk when she was ten years old when she was so preoccupied with thoughts of her new ‘series’ that she almost walked into a tree.

  Caroline lives in North London with her husband, two sporty sons and one very bouncy labrador retriever.

  Her first novel, Dark Ride, was longlisted for the Branford Boase award and won the RNA Young Adult award.

  Praise for Dark Ride:

  ‘Full of tension, mystery and real-life drama,

  Dark Ride is not to be missed.’ Chicklish

  ‘Almost impossible to put down.’ Goodreads

  ‘Fresh and convincing.’ Booktrust

  For my dad, George Green, who gave me the writing gene

  First published in Great Britain in 2012

  by Piccadilly Press Ltd,

  5 Castle Road, London NW1 8PR

  www.piccadillypress.co.uk

  Text copyright © Caroline Green, 2012

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.

  The right of Caroline Green to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN: 978 1 84812 168 3 (paperback)

  eISBN 978 1 84812 207 9

  Also available as an ebook

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

  Cover design by Simon Davis

  CONTENTS

  PART I

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  PART II

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  PART III

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  The first crack is freaky.

  I’m alone in the boys’ toilets at the end of break-time. Everyone else has drifted off to class. I’m just washing my hands when there’s a creaking, groaning sound like a dying cow above me. I look up to see a dirty great crack racing across the ceiling. A piece of plaster falls off and just misses my head. I run out, straight into my maths teacher.

  Peters says, ‘Why aren’t you in your classroom? Didn’t you hear the —’

  ‘The roof’s coming down, sir!’

  ‘What? Show me.’

  He goes in first. ‘What are you talking about? I can’t see anything.’

  I follow him in.

  The ceiling looks exactly as it always does. There are no cracks. Toilet paper glue-balls cover it like constellations of grotty stars.

  ‘Is this some kind of joke?’ sighs Peters. ‘You’d better get yourself along to your lesson,’ he says. ‘Think yourself lucky I’m not giving you detention.’

  He walks off down the corridor.

  I take one last quick look up and then get out of there as fast as I can.

  The second crack is even freakier.

  You have to climb a huge hill to get to our bungalow. It sits right on the top, like the massive zit my stepdad once had on his bald head. I made the mistake of laughing and he slapped me round the face so hard my teeth played tunes.

  His name is Desmond, Des for short, and he has a son called Pigface. Of course, he isn’t really called Pigface. He’s called Ryan, but he has a face like a pig and is half as smart.

  Des must know Pigface is an idiot, but you’d better not criticise him. I guess that’s why they say blood’s thicker than water. My mum, Tina, is all right, but she has a huge blind spot when it comes to Des. She says things like, ‘I deserve a bit of happiness, Cal, don’t spoil it for me. Can’t you all just try to get on with each other?’ Deep down in a place I don’t visit too often, I reckon there’s something a bit missing with her maternal affections, to be honest.

  As I was saying, we live – Pigface, Desmondo, Mum and me – in a bungalow at the top of the hill. If you manage to get there without coughing up one of your lungs, you can stop for a minute and take in the lovely view.

  There’s the brewery on the edge of town. It has a permanent cloud coming out of the giant chimney, like in a kid’s drawing. Except this one isn’t fluffy and white, it’s black and filled with chemicals and muck. There’s school, in case I try to forget about it between three-thirty p.m. and eight-thirty a.m. And there’s the top of Riley Hall, the young offenders’ place where they put all the bad lads. As in, ‘If you don’t do your homework/eat your peas/stop picking your nose you’ll end up in Riley.’ I sometimes imagine Pigface getting locked up in there for some crime he’s bound to commit (I’m thinking something involving violence is most likely) and then Des topping himself in his grief.

  I can dream, can’t I?

  I haven’t been first back to the bungalow for ages because I’ve been going running every night or doing circuit training at school. I go to the hiding place to get the key, which is under the car that sits on bricks at the front of the house. FYI, there’s also an old sink and a toilet from when Des started to do our bathroom. Over there is the shed, or, as I still think of it, The Shed. Des used to shove me in there to teach me a lesson sometimes and it was filled with spiders and webs and general horror. There are loads of old petrol cans too from when Des had a phase of doing up cars. The whole thing could have gone boom with the slightest spark. Des’s massive thighs rubbing together in their polyester trackie bottoms would be enough to do it. Now though, it’s where he keeps the proceeds from his other ‘business’. It’s got a load of old fertiliser, packs of foreign batteries and a load of alarm clocks that don’t work, among other tat.

  We don’t even bother hiding the key to the house that well. It’s not like we have much to nick inside, although Pigface has his beloved Xbox, which he never lets me near. Not that this stops me from playing on it all the time when he’s not there. If I’m not playing on it, I’m pretty much thinking about when I’ll get my next chance. I wander into his room, intending to have a go on Call of Duty. First, I pick up one of his weights and give it an experimental lift. Not too bad. I must be getting stronger even though I still need to use both hands. I lift it higher and wave it about a bit, dancing on my toes.

  ‘Look at me, Pigface!’ I say. ‘Think you’re so tough, yeah? Yeah? One day I’m going to kick your fat —’

  I don’t mean to let go of the weight, really I don’t. But it slips out of my hand. And lands right on top of the
Xbox with a sickening crunch. The room shrinks around me and my vision goes all blurry. I think I’m going to be sick . . . Then I spring into action, frantically trying to turn it on. But it’s dead.

  I’ve gone and killed Pigface’s Xbox!

  ‘Oh God, oh God, oh God, oh God . . .’ I’m gibbering as I look pointlessly around the room for a magic device that will turn back time and make it not have happened. I can’t stand to look at it, all broken and accusing, so I run into the living room, heart pounding and mouth dry, trying to think.

  I hear a noise outside and the shock feels like someone has unzipped my skin. I flick back the grey lace curtain and peer out. But there’s no one there.

  I’m standing in the middle of the room, quivering all over when there’s this beeping sound. It starts quietly and then gets louder and louder so I have to cover my ears. I feel like my head will pop like a balloon.

  Then a voice says the word, ‘Stabilising,’ so close to me I wheel round and shout ‘Who’s there?’ but there’s no one. Something makes me glance down at my hands and I see they’re covered in hundreds of tiny spots. But they’re not really spots, they’re lights. Like someone’s pointing hundreds of lasers at me. I try to shake them away and they switch right off and everything is normal again. I look out the window but all I can see is a small black and white cat, which seems familiar, and is staring at me in that sod-you cat way.

  Cracks in the ceiling . . . weird voices . . . funny lights. Maybe it’s my mind that’s going.

  I’m so freaked out that my teeth clack like falsies and I collapse on the sofa. I’m still sitting there, thinking hard about not thinking, when Des walks into the room, holding a bag of groceries.

  ‘What’s the matter with you?’ he says.

  ‘Nothing, just chillaxin,’ I say, really unconvincingly.

  Des stares at me like he’s never seen anything so pointless. ‘Well, you can get off your arse and put this shopping away.’

  I follow him into the kitchen. You don’t argue with Des. He weighs about seventeen stone and looks like he’s carrying triplets in that belly. He’s bald, like I said, and his head and neck are about the same width. It’s as though he has one big fat column of flesh with facial features at the top. He smokes and likes his fry-ups and lager. Really, he’s a heart attack waiting to happen. Sometimes I slip him some of my chips just to speed things up a bit.

  I put the milk and cheese into the fridge and Des sparks up a fag. They all smoke in this house. If we had a guinea pig, it’d be on the B&H too, I swear.

  I cough, even though I don’t really need to.

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry, is my evil cigarette bothering you, princess?’ says Des.

  He often calls me ‘princess’. That’s the kind of comic genius he is.

  I ignore him and start to put the bread away. He walks up to me, smiles, and blows a big gust of smoke right into my face, so close I can smell his eggie lunch. I cough for real then and he laughs as he leaves the room.

  My eyes are streaming and I wipe my face, picturing Des driving off a cliff to make myself feel better. Then I do a dumb squeak and shoot back about three metres because . . .

  . . . there’s a massive crack right down the middle of the kitchen table.

  It makes a groaning sound as one side keels over, and a box of eggs crashes to the ground.

  I almost shout for Des but, remembering what happened in the bogs, I force myself to stop. I close my eyes and open them again and, in that instant, everything is back as it was before. Except for the eggs, which are lying on the floor in a smushed mess.

  Just at that moment, Des strolls back into the room. ‘You useless little sod – did you drop those?’

  No, Des, I’m suddenly seeing giant cracks appearing everywhere. And by the way, I’ve knackered your son’s Xbox.

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Well, you’re paying for them,’ says Des, filling the kettle with water. ‘Eggs don’t grow on trees.’

  ‘Don’t they?’

  I really need to learn to keep my gob shut. For a fat bloke, he can move surprisingly fast. He’s across the room and holding my chin in his meaty fist in a split second. His piggy eyes narrow so much they almost disappear. He’s so close I can hear the wheeze in his breathing and see all the beardy dots on his chin.

  ‘Now, you know that I love Tina to pieces, don’t you?’ he says in a dangerously quiet voice.

  I nod, or try to. He’s gripping me so hard my bottom lip is folded in half.

  ‘But you . . . you’re nothing to me. Nothing. You’re nobody. Do you understand? Nobody.’

  I nod. He’s really hurting me now.

  ‘And if you think you can cheek me, you’re going to find your backside kicked into the end of next week. Now clean those eggs and get out of my sight.’ He lets go and carries on making his brew.

  I get the dustpan and start to sweep up the broken eggs, darting glances at the table to check it’s still in one piece.

  It’s been a very weird day.

  Des goes off to collect Mum and Pigface from work and I hurry back into Pigface’s room. I pull out cables and put them back in again, giving the telly a thump, just in case. But it’s no use. This Xbox is a goner.

  Some old song comes into my head . . . something about it being the end of the world and feeling fine.

  It’s the end of the world all right, but I definitely don’t feel fine. My heart keeps pounding and my vision’s funny. It’s like I’m looking through a weird lens. The edges of everything feel blurred, distorted. Like none of it’s real. When I come out of the room a few minutes later and hear the sound of the car, my stomach twists and my heart races even faster. Maybe I could just slip out the back door and never come back?

  ‘. . . now make sure you leave those boots outside, Ryan, they’re filthy.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, keep your hair on,’ says Pigface and I hear Des laugh.

  Mum comes through the door, frowning. Des lets Pigface say what he likes to Mum.

  ‘Stick the kettle on,’ she says by way of hello and flops into a chair to take off her shoes. She flexes her toes and then bends over to rub them, groaning a bit. Des comes in next, smiling at something his darling boy has said and his smile slides right off his face when he sees me.

  ‘What are you staring at?’ he says.

  I turn away. ‘Nothing.’ I put the kettle on. Mum’s talking about something that happened in the supermarket where she works but I can’t really concentrate. I hear the unmistakable sound of Pigface lumbering into the kitchen and keep my back turned to him.

  ‘I’ll have a coffee,’ he says, ‘and make sure you put a decent spoonful in it this time. Last one you made was like gnat’s pee.’

  Normally, I would say something like, ‘Make your own,’ or ‘What did your last slave die from?’ but today I just dip my head and spoon coffee into cups.

  There’s a change in the air like a drop in pressure. I realise there’s no hope of him not finding out what I’ve done. He may be thick but he’s got these super-senses, like an animal. I can feel his eyes boring into me but I ignore him as I put the coffees onto the kitchen table. I almost hear the heavy clanking of his brain working as he wonders why I’m being such a good little slave.

  ‘Ooh, I need this,’ says Mum, fishing for her fags in the pocket of her blue checked overall and closing her eyes as she lights one.

  Des is talking to someone on his mobile phone but picks up the coffee and slurps loudly anyway. He runs a business putting bathrooms in but he’s obviously rubbish at it because he’s always getting customers ringing up and yelling at him.

  ‘Yeah, well, I may have said Wednesday but I never said it would be this Wednesday, did I?’ he says, walking out of the room.

  Pigface is still watching me. I look away but may as well have a neon sign saying, I’ve messed with your stuff above my head. He pushes past me to go to his room and I get a strong whiff of his pits.

  I’m thinking about whether I can run when I h
ear Pigface swear at the top of his voice and I know he’s found the broken Xbox and worked out who did it. He may be big, but I’m fast. I’m out of my chair and heading for the back door before he comes steaming into the room. Mum says, ‘What’s going —?’ but I don’t hear the rest because Pigface is screaming, really screaming what he’s going to do to me.

  I race round to the front of the house, thinking I’ll have to run away, anywhere . . . and I smack straight into Des’s wobbly belly. He grabs my shoulders and shakes me, hard.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ he spits.

  ‘Let me go! He’s gonna kill me!’

  I wrench away from his grip but then Pigface is there, his eyes almost bulging out of his head and bits of spit flying through the air. Time seems to slow down and for a moment, it’s the weirdest thing, but I can see the whole scene like I’m watching it on widescreen. Each drop of Pigface’s spit is suspended in the air like tiny jewels. The front door’s open and Mum is a silhouette in a puddle of warm light, watching and slowly smoking a fag like she’s watching all this on telly.

  Pigface pulls his fist back, his face twisted with hate. I close my eyes instinctively, bracing myself. And then nothing happens. I open one eye. Pigface’s meaty fist is about a centimetre from my face. It’s vibrating slightly and he can’t seem to move it. His face is a picture. It’s like there’s a forcefield between us or someone’s holding him back. And then there’s a whoosh and everything comes back to full speed. Des and Mum are both shouting but it’s not clear at who. Pigface storms back into the house.

  I start laughing. I can’t help it.

  ‘Did you see that?’ I say.

  ‘You think everything’s a joke, do you?’ snarls Des. ‘Well, next time I’m not holding him back.’

  Like he was! He was standing miles away, watching.

  ‘Yeah, but did you see what —?’

  ‘Shut up, Cal,’ snaps Mum. ‘I can’t believe you think this is funny. You don’t help yourself, you really don’t.’

  ‘No, but —’

  ‘SHUT IT!’ Des slams his fist into the other hand and even Mum flinches. He continues in a low growl. ‘Get to your room and don’t come out.’