The Lost Legacy

Chapter 1: Hell Is Just School

The last day of school is a very important day. It's the day before the final exams and most importantly, the start of summer vacations.

Cheers echoed through The Highgate School when the electronic bell rang for the last time and announced the time for study vacations. Every student rushed out of the classrooms to talk to their friends about the freedom that they were finally going to experience.

But that wasn't the case for a particular brunette, who walked directly to her locker to get out the duffle bag that she carried with her everywhere. The light gray and teal bag may have seemed ordinary to any passer-by, but for Sophie, it was everything. Every connection that she had to her life was inside that bag in the form of her belongings. All that she had and all that she could have would fit inside this bag where all the torns were stitched with any thread that its owner could find.

Sophie Adams was clearing out her locker when she heard a loud thud that caught her attention.

"Whatcha gonna do? Cry?"

Sophie rolled her eyes, recognising the voice. Jonathan Briggs - the biggest bully and facade of the school. Who else could it be? He was the definition of a spoiled brat, always in his own world which made him think that the world revolved around him. 

Well, he was going to be sorry for that very soon.

When she saw who he was bullying, Sophie stepped in. "Hey!" She shouted at the top of her voice when she saw him bullying a ninth-grader named Kenji. The policy of her school prevented her from ever confronting the bullies because apparently, only physical violence was considered bullying to the management. No one cared about the emotional trauma that the students underwent, which is why nobody came to her rescue when she most needed a shoulder to rely on.

Sophie may have been a freak of the school, but she wasn't an ignorant freak.

Jonathan turned around just as the hallway seemed to clear and leave only the two of them facing each other. The poster girl for bullying had stepped in without him having to wish for it. "Little Miss Adams." 

"Let him go."

Jonathan let Kenji's shirt collar loose, who fell to the ground with a soft thud. The little boy looked up at Sophie after adjusting his glasses and nodded once to convey that he was alright. Sophie gave him a polite smile and then looked at the door, which he understood immediately to be the direction for him to escape.

She turned around after seeing Kenji safely exit the school and was about to walk away, but Jonathan made the big mistake of taunting her more. "Little Miss Adams always wants to be the hero because hey, no one will be one for her."

Sophie stopped in her steps. She shouldn't have let mere words be the reason that her blood went cold. Her breathing slowed down and the mere act of inhaling became difficult. Her jaw clenched together, her fingers sinking into her palm, and all the pain she had been tolerating the past eighteen years of her life came out in the one punch she threw, which also happened to break Johnny's nose.

Jonathan fell to the ground, blood flowing in between his fingers as he held his face. The girl that had been the one he had always taunted broke all his pride by striking back for once. He shouted to his friends, making Sophie's eyes widen as she realised what they were planning to do. She walked back a few steps, getting a control over her breathing once again, grabbed her bags from the floor and ran out of the school premises.

The orphan girl was the most gossiped about in the school with the usage of many words like freak, loser and weirdo. Everyone in school knew that she was 'The Girl in Trouble' due to the unsteady life she faced. It was true that she never knew her parents and did not posses any belonging that wasn't what foster services hadn't given her.