Blackout

By Joey Paul

Imagine having everything you ever wanted. A perfect family, a perfect boyfriend, perfect friends – the whole group that only exists because of you!

Then imagine waking up one morning and discovering you don’t have any of that.

It was a dream...a dream you had in a coma that was supposedly brought on by drugs.

Imagine having to start again at school, desperately trying to fit in and prove that the “drug” thing must have been a mistake - that you do deserve to be one of the ‘elite’. Trying so hard to remember what really happened that night.

Welcome to Tally’s life...only problem is someone doesn’t want her to remember.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Joey Paul
• Release date: Sep 14, 2012
• ISBN: 9780955343704

Joey Paul

Joey Paul is a multi-award-winning indie author, exploring young adult. She has released twenty-one books so far, with another due out in 2024. Her current works include the "Dying Thoughts" series, which is eight books, the "Lights Out" trilogy, the "Cramping Chronicles" series, as well as several standalone novels. She writes across genres, with crime, mystery, paranormal, sci-fi and dystopian being the ones most frequently on her list. She is writing her next two books at the moment, having recently finished her last two.Joey is disabled and a graduate from The Open University with a BA (Hons) in Health & Social Care. When not reading medical textbooks, she enjoys reading crime novels, medical dramas and young adult novels. When she's out and about, she likes looking for Tupperware in the woods with GPS satellites, otherwise known as geocaching. And when she's not doing THAT, she's sleeping! She's 42 and has been writing since she was retired from her job on medical grounds at the age of 19. She plans to write for as long as she has ideas or until someone tells her to stop!

Book preview

BLACKOUT

Joey Paul

Published by Bug Books

Copyright 2012 Joey Paul

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

(This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold 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. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

For the real Mr. Leonard – who may never have taught me French; but has kept me breathing.

For everyone who fights like ‘Lisa’ and has yet to lose.

And for my nan, who always told me I looked better – even when I didn’t.

CONTENTS

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-One

Twenty-Two

Twenty-Three

Twenty-Four

Twenty-Five

Twenty-Six

Twenty-Seven

Twenty-Eight

About Joey Paul

Acknowledgements

Also by Joey Paul

One

Maybe if I concentrate really hard I can make myself invisible to Mr. Collins, that way he can’t call on me. That way he’ll never know I didn’t do the homework. His eyes travelled around the class and I was thinking, please not me. Please not me.

Ah, Tally, question five please, he said. Damn, and with only five minutes to go before the end of class, I was so close! I looked over at my friends, trying to get any clues on the answer. They looked as blank as me. Typical, they didn’t do the homework either. Why did he have to pick me?

Umm…I didn’t really understand that one. I said, crossing my fingers under the desk. I was hoping that he would fall for it. He didn’t, and I ended up being kept behind to get a stern lecture on the importance of completing homework. Ugh! So boring.

I’m Tally Jenkins. I’m fifteen and I love my life! I have so many friends and am currently dating the most popular guy in school! His name is Callum (Cal for short), he’s on the football team and even if I do say so myself – he’s cute! He’s 5ft 9ins, has jet-black hair and the cutest smile. It makes me melt when he smiles at me. I had to run to meet him after school. Mr. Collins made me late and Cal hates it when I’m late.

It was okay in the end; Cal was stood with all my friends waiting for me. Summer called over to me. Hey Tally! Did Mr. Collins have much to say?

Not more than the usual, I replied. I walked up to Callum and gave him a kiss on the cheek. He smiled at me. (God, my insides were melting when he did that.) I had better tell you about my friends, just the ones in my inner circle. If I mentioned all my friends it would take forever!

Sophie Carter is fifteen, nothing special about her. She’s just one of those people who are born popular and no one ever knows why. She’s in Year Ten with me; in fact she was in Mr. Collins’ class with me that afternoon. Sophie is the typical blonde bombshell; she’s tall and slim and has waist length blonde hair. Sophie and me aren’t friends per se. She’s had this crush on Cal for years and she hated that I got him.

Next in the group is Jessi Rickman. She’s another one who fell into popularity. She’s fourteen and in the year below me. Jessi is also slim with short, black hair. I don’t really know her that well. I see her socially but we don’t talk much; personally I think she’s a snob.

After Jessi comes Jenny Masters. She’s the youngest in our group – only in Year Nine but she’s cool. Her dad is a computer programmer and they’re filthy rich. He invented some virus program or something. Jenny is of average build and always wears a necklace – it’s her name in Chinese. She has the cutest earrings made of jade and shoulder length ginger hair. Even though Jenny is a year behind me I know her better than some of the others in the group.

Faith Peterson is in my year and one of the nicest people I know. She even talks to Lisa Simmons. She’s the geek girl in our year. She’s got this really chubby face and a pale complexion. She’s got long wavy mahogany hair and she’d look all right if she had it cut properly. Lisa’s problem is she doesn’t even try. Don’t get me wrong I talk to her too, just not in public. Faith was adopted when her parents died. She has no proper living relatives but her adopted mum let her keep her own surname. She’s really skinny and tall and has this cool spiky brown hair. Faith is in our group because she doesn’t care what people say, she just does what she wants. This one time she got suspended for swearing at a teacher – she’d wanted to go to the nurse and the teacher said she couldn’t so Faith just walked out, only turning to swear at Mrs. Hadworth.

Claudia Borago is fourteen. She’s foreign and moved here from Russia or Poland or somewhere like that. She always looks so tanned and with her long, wavy auburn hair, she’s not exactly lacking admirers. She has the cutest accent! She always tells us about teachers who can’t pronounce her surname. She’s had some pretty funny variations. The best thing about Claudia is she does the BEST impressions. She’s had me in tears of laughter in the past.

Summer Mandragora is cool purely because of her name. Her and Faith are two of my best friends (after Susannah, of course.) She told us she was named after a season because her parents were going through a phase and they wanted an original name. Summer’s another one of those people who takes on hopeless cases (like Lisa) and doesn’t tease them. I know it’s only because she likes charity cases. Summer’s a chubby girl but with her black curls and Gucci glasses and her pierced nose, she can pull off chubby.

Alycia Arman is another Year Nine girl who’s made it into our group. We’re very exclusive. She’s also another one who fell into popularity. Alycia is Black and she has her hair done in all those little braids. She looks so cool. Just think, if they could isolate the gene that makes you popular, people like Lisa wouldn’t be a hopeless case. See, I do care!

Susannah Piper is my best friend. She’s short and petite and has a brown bob with one of those braids in it. If anyone else wore them it would make them look so last year, but Susannah can pull it off. We’ve known each other since we were at primary school and since then, we’ve been inseparable. We’re the coolest people in the group. It all started because people wanted to be friends with us. We judge them on their looks, personality etc, and if they pass they get in and if not we exclude them until they get the message. Sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind.

Anyway that’s the group. Sometimes we all would hang out together, but today I just wanted to spend some time with Cal and get home. Summer asked me what Mr. Collins had said.

Oh the usual. How, ‘did I realise that this was an important part of my GCSE year and if I didn’t start bucking up my ideas I would never go to college or university.’ Like I care about that! I said, which isn’t strictly true. I DO care about college and uni. I want to be a doctor so I need good grades; I just have more important things to do with my evenings, like watching ER, it’s research for my future career. Anyway, the exams are another year or so away, so what does missing a few pieces of homework matter?

Before long we broke away from the crowd and it was just Cal and me. I love it when he walks me home. I think it’s sweet that he worries about me getting home safe. When he reached my house (which I’ll tell you about in a minute) I asked him if he wanted to come in.

Can’t tonight. I gotta get some football practise in before tomorrow’s game, he said. Cal plays for the local under-sixteens on Saturdays. I always go and watch him play and afterwards we usually go out somewhere. I kissed him goodbye and watched him leave.

Tally, keep tomorrow evening free, he called to me.

Okay! I replied. I love it when he surprises me, I just hope I have something nice to wear – maybe I can persuade Mum to let me go shopping for something new. I saw the best top in town the other day. It’ll go great with my embroidered jeans. I wonder if I can convince her to let me buy it. It was only £45, if I remember rightly. My mum gets all worked up about how expensive clothes are. She just doesn’t understand that I NEED those kinds of clothes; otherwise I’ll be a complete outcast.

I look just like my mum – average height, with long, wavy brown hair. Mum looks young as well, we’ve been mistaken for sisters in the past and my mum’s cool, apart from the clothes thing, so I don’t mind that people think we look too alike. My dad is totally different, he looks his age. He’s tall and balding; he’s in his mid-forties and wears those thin-rimmed circular glasses.

I put the key in the lock and pushed open the door. I’m home! I called into the house.

Hi honey, my dad called back. He works from home a lot; he even has his own study and work phone line. My dad designs computer games. Seriously he does – ever heard of ‘Metaxa Escape?’ My dad designed it and I was the person who helped him test it. Cool or what?

We have a massive house on one of the most exclusive estates in town. We have four rooms downstairs – kitchen, bathroom, living room and dining room. Four rooms on the first floor – Mum and Dad’s room, Dad’s study, bathroom and guest bedroom and two on the second floor – my room and my own little en-suite bathroom. My bedroom is massive and I have a double bed in it. I convinced my parents that I needed that extra space. I also have the latest top of the range computer. I need that to test Dad’s games.

You want a cup of tea? I asked my dad.

That would be great, pumpkin, he yelled down the stairs. This is the routine we go through every single day. Dad gets so immersed in what he’s doing that he forgets to get a drink or what time it is. Honestly, I don’t know how he’ll cope when I finish school and I don’t come home around the same time every day. I’ll probably come home and find him half dead from dehydration.

I made Dad his cup of tea and took it up to him. He was hunched over his keyboard, muttering to himself. He does that a lot when he’s designing.

What are you working on today? I asked him.

Metaxa Escape II, he said.

Cool. You got very far with it?

Getting there. Trying to hold a conversation with Dad when he is in the middle of an idea is like trying to turn lead into gold – impossible. He does try and make conversation though. Personally, I think he read somewhere probably a book on good parenting, that you should communicate with your children and ask them how their day went, since he asks every day but he forgets to listen to my answer.

How was your day, Tally? he asked, predictably.

Fine, I replied, as I always do.

I went upstairs to my bedroom as I usually do before Mum gets home. She likes to think I do my homework as soon as I get in. I don’t, but she doesn’t need to know that. My mum is a fashion designer so you would think she would understand my need to have the latest designs but she doesn’t. Dad is always saying her job is her hobby and she only does it so she won’t get bored. He’s always teasing her about it – good-naturedly, of course.

The thing I love most about my parents is that they have never fallen out of love with each other. Dad always remembers their anniversary and her birthday and he always takes the day off to spend with her. I think that’s so sweet. I think mine are the only parents on the planet who don’t argue with each other about stupid things like money, we have loads – what’s to argue about? Or whose turn it is to do the washing up, we got a dishwasher. We always eat dinner together – Dad stops working, even if he’s on the verge of sorting out a bug. We’re a proper functional family. I pity people who don’t have what I have.

The best bit is my parents don’t mind if I don’t do all my homework. Deep down my mum knows that when she comes in, I’m not really working; she knows I’m surfing on the Internet or talking to Cal. She just likes to pretend I’m a good little girl, besides, I haven’t failed anything yet.

Mum was late home tonight. She had some disaster at work with one of her models – apparently she had fitted into a size eight when Mum was designing the dress and by the time it was done, she’d gone up to a size twelve. Mum hates it when that happens, especially if she’s working to a deadline, like she is at the moment.

So Mum was a bit stressed when she got home and in the end we ordered pizza for dinner. I managed to get my own four cheeses one and it was tasty! I don’t have to watch what I eat; I never seem to put on even a pound. I feel so sorry for people who have to diet to stay thin and even more so for people like Lisa Simmons who just don’t care.

Just as I finished off my last piece, the phone rang and dad answered.

Hwollo, he asked, his mouth full of pizza. I love my dad but he can be so embarrassing sometimes. "Yep, I’ll just get her