Cracks
Authors: Caroline Green
‘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
T
he 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.