Broken Trouble (Broken Storm Series Book 1)

Prologue

I had to get out of this house.

I had only just got here earlier today and already I felt like I was suffocating. Everyone here was so different than what I was used to, pretending to like me, to understand me, to care.

If there was anything I knew about my life, it was that no one understood me. And who could?

I had removed myself from the emotions any normal person would express and left only hatred and indifference. No one could even come close to what was really going on inside my head. No one bothered to look past the walls I had built to see the real me, they weren't around long enough to even try.

Sure psychiatrists had tried to snake their way inside my mind, but I never broke, never acknowledged their prying questions. It was their job to find out what was going on inside my mind, but it wasn't like they really wanted to know.

I learned long ago that opening up to people would only lead to them hating me more and treating me worse, sometimes even beating me.

Each new foster home was the same, a different venue, but always temporary, and always filled with people who were fake and heartless.

I had no interest in wasting my time with them.

I would be a legal adult within the year, then no one could hold me back anymore. That is, if I didn't end up in juvie again.

Who in their right mind would set bedtime at seven P.M. for a seventeen-year-old? They're insane if they think that's reasonable, which is why I found myself watching the last rays of sun fade into the darkness as I climbed out the window, hitching my backpack up higher onto my shoulder as I walked.

Here, in the darkness of night, I felt more at home than I ever had.

My black boots clunked heavily on the blacktop road as I walked along. I didn't care where I was headed, as long as it wasn't under the watchful, untrusting eyes of those around me. Everyone was constantly waiting for me to do something wrong because, of course, it would be stupid to trust a girl straight out of juvie.

The money I had taken from the house would last me long enough to get away from here, buy some food and maybe pay for some shelter until I could get a job. If I couldn't make it in a new, 'honest' life, then I could always go back to pick-pocketing. I have lived for years that way on my own and I wasn't ashamed of doing anything that kept me alive. I didn't feel regretful for stealing from rich snobs who looked down their noses at someone else just because of their appearance or lack of money.

My black and white dyed hair and Gothic look was definitely something they would look down upon. I dressed to express my inner self, if they couldn't understand that, then I'd give them all a single finger salute.

A sound interrupted my thoughts, forcing me to glance up and around. Everything was dark, the moon above only casting a soft shade of light across the world around me. There was nothing out here. Every couple miles or so there was a road leading to who-knows-where, but it definitely wasn't the city, not with all of the dirt, heat, and a stench of dung that hung in the air at all times.

What kind of hicks would live out here in a place like this?

The sound split through the air again and I cut through a fence and across a field towards it without a second thought. It sounded like something in pain, the sound sliced through my soul and straight into my heart. It was almost like a kindred soul was calling to mine and I couldn't stop my feet from traveling across the field.

A building came into view and I paused, suddenly nervous. I didn't know who was in the building or what I could be walking into. The sound definitely hinted at something bad. I pulled a pack of cigarettes from my pocket and lit one, inhaling the musky smoke into my lungs and feeling my nerves calm.