Struck Read online

  Struck:

  The Lightning Project Book 1

  by

  Victoria Kinnaird

  “Anyone from anywhere can do anything.” – Tyler Joseph

  The Conductor – AFI

  Victorious – Panic! At The Disco

  Kick In The Teeth – Papa Roach

  Levitate – Twenty One Pilots

  The Phoenix – Fall Out Boy

  The Criminals – Anti-Flag

  Cry – The Used

  Brandenburg Gate – Anti-Flag feat. Tim Armstrong

  Down Below - Creeper

  Younger – letlive.

  Na Na Na – My Chemical Romance

  Do or Die – Thirty Seconds to Mars

  Burn It Down – Linkin Park

  new white extremity – Glassjaw

  Crossing a Line – Mike Shinoda

  The Northern – Alexisonfire

  Desolation Row – My Chemical Romance

  I’ve spent my entire life looking for a way out.

  Can I say “my entire life” at seventeen years old? It sounds really dramatic, I like it. I guess I can get away with it, after everything I’ve “been through”. That’s my therapist Laura’s favorite euphemism for what happened – it wasn’t something that was done to me against my will, not something that destroyed whatever slim chance I’d had at a normal life. It was something I’d “been through”, like I’d emerged on the other side as some sort of beautiful butterfly. Yeah right, Laura. Some part of me died in that shitty old orchard, the day I was Struck. I’m still not entirely sure which part, though.

  That’s the problem. When you find yourself in what can only be described as a clusterfuck of horror – dead bodies and fire and violence (real violence, not the pixelated computer game kind, or blood free comic-book-movie violence), bones and hearts and hope breaking around you - do you stand and fight to protect the world that screwed you over, and in turn, protect the therapists that refuse to acknowledge that you’ve been screwed over? Or do you turn tail and get the fuck out of there with what’s left of your life?

  Are you a hero, or an idiot?

  Newsflash: I’m not brave.

  I spent the majority of my teenager years hidden behind a laptop screen, prying and snooping. I electronically forced my way into the secret lives of Orchard Side’s best and brightest, only to discover that the people held up as some sort of standard in the community were pretty awful human beings.

  An adolescence in the closet, hiding in the shadows of the internet, hacking and hating everyone. Too lonely to live in such a small town, too bitter to reach out; a perfect teenage contradiction. I hated it.

  I kinda miss it, now.

  I’ve been told countless times that the powers don’t make you a superhero. You make the hero. (Thanks, Laura). The human in superhuman, the heart among the science, the soul among the sensational.

  If that’s the case, the world is fucking screwed.

  I’m not a good person.

  Am I superhero?

  Guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

  Life changing days should come with a warning.

  If I’d known that stupid Monday was the day my life was going to change, I would’ve at least attempted to dress better. Who wants to meet their destiny in a ratty pair of ripped jeans? I would’ve kissed my mom goodbye. I (probably) wouldn’t have rolled my eyes at my dad, although I can’t guarantee it. It would’ve been cool, to give ‘em something nice to remember me by.

  But hindsight is always 20/20, or whatever. So, as it turns out, the last morning I spent with my parents was pretty run of the mill. That means I was cranky as hell and not afraid to show it, as per my perfectly constructed, anti-establishment, unhappy teen persona.

  I slept through my alarm, having spent the night before glued to my laptop learning a very important life lesson. The gist: if you think the married Mayor of your picturesque but hideously old-fashioned town is above sleeping with his cute, barely legal intern (who also happens to be a dude) and taking some pretty risqué photos of them in the act, then you’d be wrong. My mom used to ask why I was so angry all the time and little discoveries like that were pretty much the main cause.

  So I was pissed off, as usual. Mayor Samuel Ellis had spent the past year spewing traditional family values bullshit from his lectern/pulpit, seducing some poor kid while his witless wife waited patiently at home. Nothing upsets me like hypocrisy. Yeah, I was (am?) an asshole too, but at least I was (am) upfront about it.

  So good ol’ Sam’s secret wasn’t much of a secret anymore and I spent the five minutes of hot water I got for my morning shower brooding over how best to take him down. It had to be done. It was noble. And if I happened to take great joy out of exposing the Mayor’s dirty little secret, well, that was just a bonus.

  I towel dried my hair, pausing in front of my dust-caked mirror to contemplate getting some horrendously bright streaks through the jet-black tangle that I passed off as my hairstyle. My dad would hate it so it definitely worth considering.

  Black jeans, black shirt and black boots, like I was pre-empting a pair of black eyes. It wasn’t unheard of, in my small-town days. Having a mouth faster than my reflexes got me in all sorts of trouble. The school principal (gambling habit) and his secretary (loves gay porn) were so used to seeing me in the office that they already had a bunch of send-home letters pre-typed with my name on them. Dear Mr and Mrs Thorn, I’m sorry to report that your son, Ethan…

  My mom was standing at the kitchen sink, the too-bright morning light caught in her white blonde hair. She seemed so small, framed by the big window with her shoulders hunched and lips pursed. She was worrying, she was always worrying. It was probably about money. We didn’t have much of it, which is a bit of a problem when you’ve got a teenage son who might have the frame of a stunted weed but eats junk food like it’s going out of fashion. She hadn’t said it out loud but we both knew I wasn’t going to college when/if I graduated at the end of the school year.

  My dad would argue that fact until he was blue in the face. Trust me, pride doesn’t look good on him. My mom always told me that I looked like my dad had when he was a teenager, something I’m sure she meant as a compliment – she did marry him, after all – but I didn’t take it that way. Black hair streaked gray, blue eyes dark with disappointment and a permanent scowl, that’s how I remember him. My dad had been screwed over since the day he left high school, his dreams of playing college football shattering like the bones in his left foot when he’d accidentally crashed his pick-up on the way to his graduation ceremony. He still walked with a limp when it got cold, or when it rained. He was bitter as hell and wasn’t afraid to tell anyone who’d listen – it was one of the few things I respected about him. My dad wasn’t blind to the injustices of life, but he was pretty blind to everything else.

  He looked up from behind the paper – a copy of the Orchard Side Chronicle, the dizzying heights of local journalism – to scowl at me. I met his disapproval with my favorite blank eyed stare.

  “You need a haircut,” he barked, before returning to what I’m sure was a cutting-edge piece about parking fees on Main Street.

  I flipped him off, grinning when my mom caught my eye. She clucked and fluttered about the kitchen, using the last of the milk to pour me a half bowl of no-name cereal. It tasted like cardboard, poverty and defeat.

  “What classes do you have today, sweetie?” She asked as she sat down at our creaking kitchen table. I rolled my eyes (same shade of bitter blue as my dad’s) and shrugged.

  “Does it matter?” I replied through a mouthful of cornflakes.

  “Of course it does, Ethan,” she murmured. “You’re such a smart kid, you could do so well…”

  “I know, mom.”

  “And so han
dsome too, if you just let down your guard a bit I know you’d make friends.”

  I’m pretty sure she has to say that, right? Like, it’s some sort of parenting rule. You have to believe that your kids are good looking/kind/smart. After all, biologically, they’re half yours. If you don’t like them, well, who will?

  My poor mother.

  “I know, mom.”

  She sighed, I sighed. I ate some cereal and sighed again. Not exactly a picture-perfect morning. Not something I’d want them to remember me by. But that was breakfast at the Thorn house – disappointment, disillusionment and just a hint of resentment. That’s how my parents will remember me.

  I ducked away from my mom’s goodbye kiss, swinging my fraying backpack onto a narrow shoulder before slinking out the door. It was another beautiful, banal day in Orchard Side, California. The compulsively trimmed lawns glittered in the sun as I strolled past. I wasn’t in a rush to get to school, never had been. My middle name is Tardy.

  Well, actually, it’s Justin. But you get the point.

  I passed a few kids from school on the way. I didn’t stop to talk, there was no point. They thought I was weird (that’s putting it kindly), I thought they were stupid (also putting it kindly) and so the warm camaraderie my mom expected me to feel with my fellow classmates had just never materialized. A few of them – freshmen, I think – glanced at me and I stared back, concealing a smirk.

  “Hey, Ethan!”

  The overly bright greeting froze me in my tracks. I should’ve known she’d be there, waiting for me.

  Vanessa was nice, in a dim witted, small town kind of way. She was harmless too, but good God she annoyed the hell out of me. She was optimistic right down to her bones, even though I suspected that she was smart enough to know better. Plus, I was pretty sure she had a crush the size of Texas on me. Poor, misguided fool.

  “Hi Vanessa,” I said half-heartedly as she caught up to me, her red curls glinting in the slanting sunlight. “Nice weekend?”

  “Not really, it was super boring,” she replied, falling into step beside me. “What did you get up to?”

  “Well yesterday I finally managed to crack the password on Mayor Ellis’ personal files and found some pretty interesting – and by interesting, I mean compromising – photos of his male personal assistant. But that was pretty much it.”

  Her stunned silence was my reward for being honest.

  “Wait, what?”

  “What d’ya think would be the best way to rat him out? Anonymous tip to the Chronicle?” I was unable to keep the slick grin from spreading across my face. “Nah, he’d probably pay them off. Could post ‘em online, I suppose…”

  “Isn’t it illegal to hack someone?” She asked, frowning. I rolled my eyes at her – she’s good at playing Conscience, little and pesky and full of misplaced morals.

  “Not when the someone is a lying, cheating, hypocritical scumbag.”

  I could almost hear her mulling it over as we walked to school. We didn’t bump hands or elbows once, a rarity that made it clear she wasn’t exactly comfortable with what I told her. Vanessa and I weren’t friends, not really, but I liked her about 75% more than most of the kids my age and that was no mean feat. I almost felt bad for upsetting her.

  Almost.

  “Just…be careful, Ethan,” she said, eyes dark with something too close to concern as we reached the school gates. “See you at lunch?”

  I shrugged, watching her as she wandered off in the direction of the science building. She blended into the crowd after a while, just another nameless, faceless kid among the herd. I leaned against the rusting gates for a minute or two, waiting for the second bell.

  My ears were still ringing as I made my way around the back of the gym, down to the bleachers by the football field. There were clouds on the horizon, white and puffy, trying too hard to look fluffy and harmless.

  I didn’t need to look to know he was there. He was always there, on time and jittery. We both had free periods first thing on Mondays (a small blessing I’m not entirely sure I deserved) and had been meeting up to make out and mutually dislike each other for most of the year.

  Brandon was everything I wasn’t, which is probably why I found him irresistible and infuriating in equal measure. He was blonde haired and blue eyed and possessed the emotional depth of a kiddie pool, yet I couldn’t help but find him oddly compelling. I liked him, and I hated it. He liked me and boy, did he hate it. It was one of the few things that we had in common, shared distaste for our repressed sexualities.

  “Good morning,” I crowed, grinning when he spun on his heel fast enough to give himself whiplash.

  “Hey,” was his grunted response, his eyes darkening like they always did in my presence. “You scared me.”

  “Right, cuz we never ever meet here for secret rendezvous,” I replied with a snort. He frowned, no doubt angry that I was mocking him, but not angry enough to send me away. God bless teenage hormones.

  “Shitty weekend?” He asked as he shrugged out of his jacket. I rolled my eyes and he wisely decided to stop asking questions. It didn’t work if we asked questions, if we cared about each other. Brandon may not have been the sharpest tool in the shed, but even he knew that.

  That’s how Brandon would remember me, sneaking around under the bleachers, like I didn’t deserve to walk down the halls of my high school with a boyfriend in tow. I left our little hiding spot with a sick feeling in my stomach, like I’d missed a step in a flight of stairs I’d be climbing forever.

  I didn’t pay much attention in class, figuring I was doing my teachers a favor by remaining blank eyed and bored. I made it through the first half of the day without finding myself on the bruised and bloodied side of someone’s fists. That fact would usually have me feeling oddly optimistic by lunch time, but I just couldn’t manage it.

  The sky darkened as the day wore on, matching my mood perfectly. Vanessa didn’t come find me at lunch – I didn’t put much effort into hiding, so I knew she’d decided to avoid me. That was enough to tip my already sour mood into dangerous territory.

  I didn’t ditch class often; in fact, my attendance was one of my few virtues as far as the school administration was concerned. There was no point ditching, where would I go? I couldn’t go home; the cable was still off and there was a chance I’d run into my mom. Orchard Side was too small to go hang out at the strip mall or on Main Street without being spotted by some sharp eyed and sharper tongued neighbour.

  So, I grabbed an extra bottle of water from the vending machine and headed to the old Bower orchard, on the outskirts of town. The Bowers had been one of Orchard Side’s founding families, but a run of bad harvests and some pretty tame town scandals had wiped them out. The last Bower had left town a decade ago, to go live in the big city. He never came back, so everyone assumed it had worked out for him. I assumed he was dead in a gutter somewhere.

  Either way, the Bower Orchard had fallen into disrepair. The house was still standing, its yellowed paint peeling while the building wheezed in the growing wind. The other kids were scared of the house, assuming it was haunted, but I knew better. The house wasn’t haunted, it was just neglected, but nothing horrifies people more than watching something beautiful waste away.

  I lay on my back on the rotting porch, watching the clouds roll in and gradually turn dark. I’d been right to mistrust them – it was going to rain, something that would no doubt send the sun worshipping residents of Orchard Side into a mild but all-consuming panic.

  I reluctantly got up at 3:30, swinging my half empty backpack over my shoulder before huffing my way across the old orchard. It had gotten murky enough to put me on edge, turning the harmless shadows of the trees into something way too sinister for a Monday afternoon. I could feel my muscles tensing, preparing for an attack. I hated that I was so paranoid, cursing my classmates as I wandered through the trees.

  The bolt of lightning tore across the sky with no warning. There was no thunder. Silence had descended over the
orchard, heavy and laced with my own fear. I swore loudly enough to make my mother blush on the other side of town and stumbled towards the nearest tree.

  I knew it was stupid to stand under a tree in a lightning storm, but all sense went out of the window when shitting-my-pants-scared kicked in. My life sucked, sure, but I wasn’t ready to be another headline in the crappy local paper. As it turns out, I would have been safer out in the open.

  I didn’t notice the circular metal plate that had been nestled among the trees. I sure as hell didn’t see the lightning bolt symbol etched on its surface. Oh, and I definitely didn’t spot the bright-eyed boy lurking amongst the trees, but he was there, waiting.

  I don’t really have a high tolerance for pain. It’s one of the (many) reasons I didn’t play sports growing up. When I stepped on to the metal plate in my too-thin shoes and experienced the first surge of electricity up my legs, I nearly bit through my tongue.

  Luckily, that first current was enough to stun me and send me into a state of shock. I don’t remember hitting the floor or convulsing so hard I cut my head on a stray rock. All I remember is gasping for breath and staring wide eyed at the sky, watching the clouds scuttle away like the traitors they were.

  I remember a cool hand taking mine, a shadow falling over me, and a pair of wide, hazel eyes watching me with something too close to fear.

  And then – cliché alert! – it all went dark.

  ***

  I skirted the edge of consciousness, every inch of my body aching.

  My surroundings bled into my vision slowly – white-washed walls and an institute sized window. The blue blanket draped over my legs was too small and scratchy. With a sigh that rattled in my chest, I tried to reach down and push the blanket away.

  I couldn’t reach it.

  The shackle around my wrist glinted cruelly in the light from the window. It was connected to the bed’s side rail with a sadistically short chain. I knew better than to yank at it, but I couldn’t help myself, earning a sharp pain in my wrist. I watched, with comically wide eyes, as a sickly blue bruise bloomed under the surface of my sallow skin.