Page 1 of Born in Ruin

Prologue

ISHAAN

It was perfect!

Ishaan stared at the perfect, red, cherry tomatoes on the tiny plant. Wonder unfurled in his thirteen-year-old heart as he reached out with one finger and touched the one closest to him. He’d done this. He’d grown these tomatoes from scratch. For a boy who’d spent the last few years permanently hungry, it was nothing short of a miracle. If he could grow his own food, he’d never be hungry again.

“Oye Garib Rath!”

The shout had his shoulders tensing as he retracted his hand from the plant and stood, shoving his hands into his pockets. His finger went through a hole in the right pocket, the rip in the fabric a new one. Dammit.

“What have you got there?” Naveen Kumar, class bully and all-round ass, sauntered over with his entourage falling right behind him. “Tiny balls?” He laughed uproariously at his stupid joke, the others laughing like loons too.

“Hey, that’s a good nickname for him,” Parash chortled. “Tiny Balls.”

Ishaan said nothing but he shifted his stance, just the slightest, to cover his little garden patch.

“What are you doing out here, Tiny Balls Nerd?” Varun peeked over his shoulder. “Isn’t it too sunny for the geeks right now?”

Ishaan didn’t reply. Anything he said would only add fuel to their vicious fire. A little distance away, the school gardener looked toward their little huddle. He looked away just as quickly, ducking his head towards the cabbage patch he was digging around in. Smart man. No one wanted to get on the wrong side of this bunch. The Dusty Devils as they called themselves were rich, entitled, and family to the school trustees. You would be stupid to tangle with them.

Ishaan had been called many things in his life, stupid was not one of them. As the sole scholarship student at Crestwood Heights, he had a bullseye the size of a sun planted on him. As the runt of the class, with uniforms that either were two sizes too small or four sizes too big, the size of the sun turned into an understatement. He was the class joke and the perfect target for every bullying loser in this school, kids and adults alike. For in Crestwood Heights, the real danger didn’t come from the children. It came from the adults in charge who turned a blind eye to what went on right in front of them.

“Where are your friends, Tiny Balls?”

Ishaan shrugged. He leant down and picked up the frayed haversack he’d dropped on the dusty ground when he’d seen his tomatoes. He stepped around Naveen, hoping to walk awayfrom what was coming. Maybe, just maybe, today would be his lucky day.

It wasn’t.

Majid, Dusty Devil no 3, caught the back of his half open haversack and heaved, the worn strap giving way under the force and snapping. Ishaan barely had time to react before his things went sprawling all over the ground. His computer notebook, flapped open, pages instantly soaking through the wet mud of the recently watered garden. He fell to his knees scrambling in the dirt to pick up his books and stationery. He couldn’t afford to replace them if they were damaged beyond repair.

He didn’t see the kick coming but the leg caught him in his ribs, kicking the breath right out of his lungs. Ishaan fell face first into the dirt, pain slicing through his side, one of his pencils digging into his cheek. And then he heard it, the giggling.

His eyes snapped open, and he pushed himself to his knees, keeping his head down and his eyes on his things as he picked them up and shoved them back into his now muddy haversack.

“What’s going on?”

Ishaan squeezed his eyes shut, humiliation coursing through him. Of course, it was her. It was always her.

“Nothing much Yukhi,” Varun drawled. “Just having a little fun with Tiny Balls here.”

“Tiny Balls? Are you sure you’re not talking about yourself?” Mayukhi Chatterjee shot back, the smirk in her voice evident to everyone. Somehow the DD’s were never annoyed with herfor taking potshots at them. Ishaan supposed she was rich and popular enough to get away with it.

He got to his feet, his ruined things shoved into the bag on his back and tried, again, to step around them. Only this time his path forward was blocked by the gaggle of giggling girls. Mayukhi stood at their head, her arms crossed over her chest and something that looked an awful lot like pity in her eyes.

Ishaan’s eyes burned with unshed tears, his chest hot with emotions that were too big for his teenage mind and body to contain. He didn’t need her pity. He didn’t need anything from any of these rich snots.

All he needed now was to get out of here before he lost whatever little control he had and started bawling like a baby for his mother. He could hear the DD’s start to flirt with some of the girls, stupid comments about their hair and how good they smelled. Ishaan, on the other hand, smelled of dirt and manure.

The good part, though, was that the arrival of the girls distracted the boys from Ishaan.

He almost made it. Almost!

And then, Mayukhi Chatterjee, tossed her hair over one shoulder and grabbed his arm. “Hey. Did you grow those?”

Conversation around them died down as everyone turned toward them. Ishaan pulled his arm out of her surprisingly strong grip.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he muttered, shouldering past her.

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