Page 1 of Tricky Girls

CHAPTER 1

Tilda

Monsters swarm. The air is foggy. People are screaming.

And I’m still here freezing my tits off alone.

White vapour wisps from my mouth as I sigh for the billionth time, pluming towards the full moon hanging in the sky. Fitting for Halloween night. Fitting for any night here. Even during the day it stands sentinel above the castle, pierced by its spires like an animal on a spit.

It had followed me in the city too, a friend at first, something to pray to and dance to and dedicate our childish potions of mud water and berries.

It had also been there the night everything fell apart, and I’ve hated that stupid lump of rock since.

Air reeking of gunpowder, donuts and spilled booze, I stamp my boots in the dirt, arms tight around my skeleton bodysuit. Might as well have not worn tights for all the protection against the cold they’re giving. At least the bodysuit has long sleeves. Be even better if someone was here admiring it.

When I told my useless prick of a boyfriend I wanted to fuck in the hedge maze, I at least expected him to turn up.

I check my phone again but it’s still only showing one bar. This bloody island. At sea level the signal’s shite but take a hike to the clifftops, surrounded by nothing but the wind and the sea, and it’s full bars all round.

Still, one bar should be enough for a text to go through, so where the hell is he?

Body stiffening up, I drop onto a hay bale at the entrance to the maze, toeing my boot into the strewn straw. Students shriek behind me. From the mouth of the maze, dry ice fogs, blinking with colour from the strobes they’ve hooked up.

Jiggling my phone in my lap, I scan my eyes over this year’s Fright Night. Halloween was mint last year but this time Hazelhurst’s really gone all out. The clearing, surrounded by the towering evergreens the island’s so known for, is lit only by the globe above and sporadically placed lighting in orange, green and purple. Stalls run haphazardly up and down, hundreds of students thronging through with plastic cups filled to the brim with triple vodkas and whatever mouth staining mixer. I don’t recognise anyone, each face decked in some ghoulish mask or makeup. At least I’m not the only silly girl turning numb from cold.

Screeching sounds from my left. I crane my neck to watch a mime skid to a halt before a gaggle of girls. Tonguing the straw of my drink into my mouth, I take a sip of my vodka cherryade.Fit.The mime’s tall, sinewy, and he knows exactly what he’s doingwhen he stands back up, one arm boxing a girl in against a wall of hay, his painted face pressed closed to hers.

In the light of day, he’s probably any old geek but anonymous behind his costume and the heady atmosphere of a full moon Halloween night, he’s a cocksure fiend. He wanders off to find another victim and I follow him with my eyes, half hoping he’ll turn back and fall down at my feet too.

I look at the moon again, its yellowy light limning the spired towers of Hazelhurst Castle. It’s always Halloween here, the stone walls thick and impenetrable and undoubtedly full of secrets. Being here on a scholarship, I doubt there’s many I’ll be privy to. They give us a wide berth, the rest of them, lest they infect themselves with our impoverish cooties.

Can’t say I mind too much, it’s just cool to be here. Gutted it’s hump year already. I know nothing in the real world will come close to the magic of this place.

On the cusp of saying eff it and attempting the maze on my own, a roar of dry ice shoots from one of the machines, making more than one person in the vicinity flinch. We’re all watching when two masked figures, LEDPurgestyle, emerge from the fog, hooded cloaks billowing, unsnapped glow sticks held aloft like wands.

My lips curl into a smile around my straw. The mime was hot but these two… I peer closer, making sure they are actually male. It’s hard to tell in the gender ambiguous costumes, the lit masks sporting grinning expressions. They’re large anyway, taller than me, and seem buff beneath all the black.

They’re making a good show of it, whoever they are, strutting through the crowd with all the confidence of lawless revelry. I notice plenty of other girls watching and huff to myself. God, how fucked are we all? Those masks aren’t even hot, not really.

I watch openly as they approach, swaggering along to Sleep Token. So apt. One inclines their head and I sit there pleased athaving been noticed. Raising their glow stick, they use it to tuck a strand of dark hair behind my ear, leaving me all but swooning on the bench.

It’s possible I know them but as they melt into the crowd, I can’t think who they might be.

A violent shudder racks me, making all my hairs stand on end. Even my lips are numb with cold at this point. Getting up resolutely, I walk into the maze, engulfed immediately by thick dry ice.

I walk on slowly until it clears and I can see again. It’s darker in here, way, way darker, some tunnels not lit up at all. Those are the ones I go down, away from everyone else. I thumb my phone and find a quiet corner.

Swiping off my messages from Ryan, I bring up Natasha’s instead. We were supposed to walk here together, all hailing from the same trampy halls, our rooms one after another. I can forgive Ryan, he’s a guy and useless at the best of times, but Natasha’s my girl and pregaming wasn’t the same without her.

Wouldn’t even tell me why, which means she’s off with a guy, one she shouldn’t be—either that scrawny fresher from the year below or her on-again-off-again asshole with the annoyingly beautiful face.

I almost drop my drink at the feel of hands pawing my waist. Whirling round, I release a laugh at the plastic skeleton hands pushing through the hedge. I can’t see who’s on the other side but I give one arm a tug, smiling at the resulting muffled protest. I throw it over the hedge, hoping it hits whoever’s there.

I knew there’d be spooks in here, but I expected better than that. I round the corner, hoping to come face to face with a chainsaw-wielding loon. Or just Ryan, I suppose. There’re so many dark corners he could be pushing me into right now.

Instead there’s just more endless tunnels to wend down, losing myself deeper and deeper in the maze. Made from evergreenhedges, it’s a permanent feature all year, the vast expanse of which I’ve seen from the air during a helicopter ride around the island. It’s huge, fashioned into a map of the labyrinth supposedly lying beneath Hazelhurst, but I’m too drunk to care about getting lost. I’m sure some friendly clown or zombie will see me out if I do.

I run out of drink at some point and with my fingers too cold to keep them wrapped around the cup, I bend precariously to place it down, stomping on it out of habit. I don’t envy who has to clear all this up on Monday.

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