by Bea Paige
Contents
Blurb
Bea Paige’s Books
Academy of Misfits Playlist
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
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
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Author Note
Copyright ©: Kelly Stock writing as Bea Paige
First Published: 25th August 2019
Publisher: Kelly Stock
Cover by: Everly Yours Cover Designs
Kelly Stock writing as Bea Paige to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in retrieval system, copied in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise transmitted without written permission from the publisher. You must not circulate this book in any format.
This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Blurb
I’m the kid your parents warned you about…
Eighteen months in prison or doing time at Oceanside Academy.
Reform school has met its match in me, even if it is full of young offenders. Thieves, graffiti writers, drug runners and other petty criminals reside within the walls, and I'm just like them.
But what they didn't tell me was that I'd be one of only a handful of girls in a horde full of boys. It'll take more than just street smarts to keep my wits about me.
Everyone here has a chip on their shoulders, and I'm no different. Mine's one of the biggest, that's why they call me Asia because mine is as large as a continent.
Rules or not, these bad boys are about to discover that I've earned my label for reason...
I'm the biggest misfit of them all.
**Delinquent is book one of this new gritty, contemporary reverse harem academy trilogy and deals with adult themes and subjects you may find upsetting**
Bea Paige’s Books
Academy of Misfits (Academy reverse harem romance)
#1 Delinquent https://books2read.com/AcademyMisfits1
#2 Rejecthttps://books2read.com/AcademyMisfits2
Finding Their Muse (dark contemporary romance / reverse harem)
#1 Stepshttps://books2read.com/Steps
#2 Strokeshttps://books2read.com/Strokes
#3 Stringshttps://books2read.com/StringsFTM
#4 Symphonyhttps://books2read.com/FTM4
The Brothers Freed Series (contemporary romance / reverse harem)
#1 Avalanche of Desire https://books2read.com/AvalancheOfDesire
#2 Storm of Seduction https://books2read.com/StormSeduction
#3 Dawn of Love https://books2read.com/DawnOfLove
#4 Brothers Freed boxset https://books2read.com/BrothersFreed
The Sisters of Hex series (paranormal romance / reverse harem)
Prequel to The Sisters of Hex series:
Five Gold Rings: https://books2read.com/FiveGoldRings
Sisters of Hex: Accacia
Out Now:
#1 Accacia’s Curse https://books2read.com/AccaciasCurse
#2 Accacia’s Blood https://books2read.com/AccaciasBlood
#3 Accacia’s Bite https://books2read.com/AccaciasBite
Sisters of Hex: Fern
Out Now:
#1 Fern’s Decision https://books2read.com/FernsDecision
#2 Fern’s Wings https://books2read.com/FernsWings
#3 Fern’s Flight https://books2read.com/FernsFlight
The Infernal Descent trilogy (co-written with Skye MacKinnon)
Out Now:
#1 Hell’s Callinghttps://books2read.com/HellsCalling
#2 Hell’s Weepinghttps://books2read.com/HellsWeeping
#3 Hell’s Burninghttps://books2read.com/HellsBurning
Links to Bea Paige’s social media:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/BeaPaige/
Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/beapaigeauthor/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/BeaPaigeAuthor
Pinterest:https://www.pinterest.co.uk/beapaigeauthor
Bookbub: https://www.bookbub.com/authors/bea-paige
Web:https://www.beapaige.co.uk
Academy of Misfits Playlist
It’s no secret that I listen to music whilst I write. Some authors like to write in utter silence, I’m not one of them. Music is my muse. I have been known to write, listen to music and sing all at the same time! Oftentimes music will inspire an idea, just like the case with Delinquent. The idea for this story was very much influenced by “Bad Guy” by Billie Eilish and cemented an idea that had already begun to form.
Below are my favourite songs from the playlist.
Listen to the full playlist on Spotify HERE
“Peer Pressure” by James Bay featuring Julia Michaels
“Bad Guy” by Billie Eilish
“I Don’t Care” by Ed Sheeran featuring Justin Bieber
“Chains” by Stormzy remix with Nick Jonas
“Snow White” by Dennis Lloyd
“Run Run” by Ray Blk
“Shut Up” Stormzy
“Into You” Julia Michaels
To all the kids out there who had a tough start in life, who may still have to fight every day to survive, this one’s for you.
“My dear young lady, crime, like death, is not confined to the old and withered alone. The youngest and fairest are too often its chosen victims”
~ Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens
Prologue
Alicia Loi Chen which loosely means Great Noble Thunder… or some such crap like that.
That’s me. That’s my name. Pretty fucking great, yeah? At least my mum thought so given the amount of times she tried to convince me it was.
In her more lucid moments over the years, when she wasn’t messed up on some drug or other, she’d loved to weave magical tales about far away countries filled with dragons and other mythical creatures. For a long time, she had me convinced that she’d been a concubine to the Emperor of China, and I was their lovechild spirited off to England for safekeeping, my name chosen because I was born to some great Chinese dynasty.
Of course, I realised pretty soon that she was full of shit.
My empty stomach, threadbare clothes and dirty, flea-ridden flat we called home had proven that. Our true story, the one she tried to hide from, has only ever been a tale of woe… and it’s about to get a whole lot worse.
Born on December 26, 1998 during one of the worst hurricanes to hit the UK for years, my fucked-up, drugged-up, heroin addict mother actually named me after the storm that raged beyond the single
glazed windows of our shitty rundown council flat in Hackney. Her wails of pain from pushing me out of her ravaged, undernourished body matched those of the hurricane that wound its way through the feeble mould-ridden walls of our home. Tracy Carter, mum’s best friend and my surrogate mum growing up, had cradled my head as I slipped into the world wailing, my lungs bursting with rage at being born, my tiny little body already addicted to heroin. An angry baby junky, courtesy of my messed-up junky mum. Born with thunder inside me, thunder rolling outside, my name was fitting back then, I suppose. Except now I’ve shredded that name like a dirty threadbare jumper. I don’t live a fairy tale life and I’m not some emperor’s daughter, real or imagined.
I’m just Asia. A name I chose for myself, not because of my heritage. And certainly not because of my mother’s addiction for the opium produced in the Golden Triangle of Southeast Asia that finally killed her on my fourteenth birthday.
Nope.
I’m called Asia because the chip on my shoulder is as large as a fucking continent, and with good reason. I started my life fighting to live, and I’ve spent every day since doing the same damn thing… Fighting to survive.
Every. Fucking. Day.
I live in a permanent state of fight or flight, except I’m not a bird and I never run. I’ve got claws as sharp as the best of them, and a left hook to match. Truth is, this state of living is as unhealthy as the addiction I was born with. I’ve bounced from one foster home to another, interspersed with a few months in my mum’s care when she’d ‘got herself clean’, only to fall back into bad habits the second shit got hard. Heroin is a dirty drug that strips a human of their ability to function let alone bring up a kid. My mum was the worst kind of addict; weak, selfish and unable to fight for her children, herself even. I’ve pretty much brought myself up, and along the way have tried to get my younger brothers through this screwed up life we live. I’ve had to grow up fast.
Now that I’m sixteen going on twenty-six, I’ve taken life by the proverbial balls and I’m deciding how to live it. I’d be a liar if I said I wasn’t tempted to pick up a needle and shoot up just to get away from my crappy existence for a few short moments. But I refuse to be a junky like my mum. I refuse. She’d forced that on me as a newborn but I sure as fuck won’t make the same mistakes she made. I’m grateful that I don’t remember those long months being weaned off the drug, no more than a pitiful howling creature full of pain and anger.
Years later, Tracy had told me that I screamed blue bloody murder those first few months of my life. My tiny little fists bunched up, ready to hit anyone who got too close. That was the first time my mum tried to give up heroin. She’d seen how I’d fought from the second I was born, and she did the same. Alongside me she got clean and for three years my mum managed to steer clear of the drug.
But it didn’t last.
The day after my third birthday mum left me in the care of Tracy with one goal in mind, to get well and truly off her face. She didn’t return for a month. When she did, she was unrecognisable.
That was the first time I was taken into care.
But unlike her, I will not allow myself to be weak. I won’t give in to the lingering need that still plagues me even though I don’t remember the feeling of being an addict, a state that was forced onto me without any choice or say in the matter.
Growing up hasn’t been easy, I can assure you.
These days the only source of joy in an endless line of disappointment and disillusion is my art, because not only is Asia my name now, it’s also my tag. You can see it spray painted in bright colours across the whole of Hackney. A piece of me brightening the stark and dirty streets of this inner-city London borough where I live.
But like everything else in my life, that too has been taken away from me because some asshats deem it a crime to make something ugly into something beautiful.
Truth be known, there’s never going to be a happily ever after for me. I was born during a storm after all, and we all know that storms only ever leave devastation in their wake.
1
“This is a fucking joke,” I mumble, just loud enough for my arsehole of a lawyer to hear.
“Can it, Chen. Sit up, take note and don’t say a damn thing,” my lawyer hisses at me.
Sitting here now in the magistrates’ court with my lawyer, who I’m pretty sure is ready to hang me so he can get back home to his two point five kids and perfect middle class wife, I wait for the verdict.
A clock ticks loudly, the sound of a pen tapping against the table and the constant low hum of my blood pulsing in my ears makes it impossible to concentrate.
“Sit up, Alicia, pay attention,” my lawyer snaps, repeating the demand under his breath once more.
I huff, feigning boredom and make a point at staring at a spot just beyond the ancient judge as he waffles on about my ‘crimes’ and my poor choices in life like his shit don’t stink. Dickhead.
Well he, like all the other adults I’ve ever come across in life, can go fuck themselves. I was doing the shopkeeper a favour by brightening his ugly back wall with my graffiti art. I’m pretty sure he gets way more customers now because of it anyway. He should be thanking me. Instead, here I am waiting on this fat balding twat of a judge to make a decision about my life, just like all the other bastards I’ve had to endure these past sixteen years. I wish I was turning eighteen this year instead of next, maybe then I could claw back some of the control I crave. As it is, I’ve got to wait another fifteen months until that happens. I’m just another kid who’s the property of the state right now.
“Breaking and entering, criminal damage, graffitiing, possession of marijuana, anti-social behaviour. The list goes on and on, Alicia…” the judge drones on. His words mingle with the memory of all the other disappointed tirades I’ve had to listen to over the years from social workers, teachers, lawyers and the endless list of control freaks that seem to want to plague my life with rules and fucking restrictions.
It's not like I need reminding of my petty crimes. I know what I’ve done and frankly, I’d do it again given half the chance. I didn’t hurt anyone. I didn’t even break into the store really, given Mr Patel stupidly left the back entrance open. And yeah, so I smoked some weed. What teenager doesn’t these days? I’m betting this arsehole next to me drinks himself into a coma most nights on some thousand pound bottle of brandy to blot out some shit or other that he wants to forget. So, what’s the difference? I smoke a little weed, big deal. At least I don’t shoot up to get a kick.
“You’re on a dangerous path, young lady, one that will lead to a life of crime and imprisonment if you continue on as you are. Do you want that for yourself?” the judge asks me, his bushy eyebrows like great big caterpillars kissing as he frowns. Talk about condescending. I shrug and look away to avoid further eye-contact, making a non-committal sound.
“You want this life for yourself?” he accuses, trying to get a reaction.
Folding my arms across my chest, I shift in my seat, refusing to engage.
Yep, that’s exactly what I want, arsehole. In fact, being a criminal was the first job of choice on my list of things I wanted to be when I grew up. Actually, being a princess was top of that stupid list my mother had made me write. All because of her crazy stories and my need to please her. I’d have done anything to stop her from picking up a needle and shooting up.
“There’s nothing you’d like to say?” he persists.
“No.” I manage to bite out.
Both he and my lawyer make a distasteful noise at my lack of understanding or care. Their opinion of me is plain for all to see. I’m just another one of those kids who’s a drain on the system. Drug-addict mother, absent father, benefit generation, uneducated, lazy, foolhardy. I’m the shit on their shoe. I’m worthless. Yeah, I get it.
“This is your last chance,” the judge says, and I’m not sure whether he’s now referring to my opportunity to speak or my proverbial last chance in life.
My lawyer, Fitzpatri
ck or something equally as fucking posh, nudges me in the side. “Alicia, now’s the time to get your point across. Don’t mess this up.”
I turn to face him, sucking on my lip ring and giving him my best ‘I don’t give a fuck’ stare. I clear my throat, finally making eye-contact with the judge.
“Fuck you,” I murmur.
Fitzpatrick stiffens. I can feel the annoyance and judgement rolling off him, battering against me as I resolutely ignore his incredulous look. Once he gets over the shock, I’m betting he’s going to love telling his perfect family about the messed-up kid who gave the judge a big fat “fuck you.” I know what he thinks when he looks at me; I’m the warning to his children. I’m the horror story of a life gone tits-up. You smoke weed, you’ll end up like her. You wear those clothes, you’re asking to be treated a certain way. You live on a council estate; you’re bound to grow up a junky or a fucking criminal. I see it in his eyes, in the eyes of all the adults who make a snap judgement about the person I am based on the way I look.
