‘So here we go; this is the playlist I made for you. I’ve set it pretty low and I’ll leave you to listen. I hope you like it. Can you hear it, Alice? Do you remember any of these?’
‘Where is she? Where is she? Off with her head!’
Suddenly, the woods are filled with screaming, and playing-card soldiers are racing through the trees towards us. The Hatter takes my hand and we run into the fog, stumbling and slowing as the mist encloses us. Breathless, we hide behind a tree as the soldiers run past just metres away.
‘I think you should go home,’ the Hatter tells me, when the soldiers are gone. ‘The longer you stay here, the harder it will be to leave. And things are getting dangerous for you.’
‘But I don’t know how to get home!’ I say.
The Hatter takes my hands. ‘You just have to remember, Alice,’ he says. ‘You just have to remember, and you’ll find your way back.’
But I can’t remember anything at all.
After the boys left, the party mood crashed. Savvy was philosophical, already sending Snapchat messages on her mobile to Dex, but the others started bickering almost right away.
‘It’s only just past eleven,’ Lainey complained. ‘Who has a curfew that early on a Saturday night?’
‘Lots of people,’ Yaz pointed out. ‘We’re thirteen years old, Lainey. C’mon, admit it – we had fun. They weren’t going to stay all night, were they?’
‘It just felt kind of abrupt,’ Lainey said. ‘Did Luke say anything to you, Alice? Did you do something to annoy him? He seemed quite happy earlier, when he was with me …’
‘I don’t think Alice annoyed him,’ Erin quipped. ‘They looked pretty loved up to me!’
Lainey winced, her lower lip trembling, and I knew how much she must be hurting.
‘We were just talking,’ I lied. ‘That’s all. About old times.’
Lainey’s eyes slid away from mine, her eyes cold.
‘Is there any more of that teapot punch?’ she demanded. ‘This sleepover’s gone flat – we need something to liven it up! We have the whole night ahead of us, and Savvy had that hide and seek game to play.’
Reluctantly, Savvy put her phone away. ‘No more punch,’ she said. ‘And the hide and seek was going to be teams: girls versus boys.’
‘We can still play,’ Erin said with a shrug. ‘We’ll just do it the regular way. Who needs boys? We can have just as much fun without them, right?’
I liked Erin’s declaration. Seeing Luke again and spending some time alone with him out by the tyre swing had been without a doubt the most exciting moment of my entire life. Apart from that magical twenty minutes, though, I couldn’t help feeling that having the boys around had been massively stressful. We’d already been acting cool, showing off for Savvy; when the boys arrived, that had taken on a new edge. Flirting, competing with each other … the fun had ebbed away, replaced by stress, anxiety.
And when things didn’t work out, we got moody, mean.
On balance, it had been a whole lot easier before the boys had turned up, when we were clearing up and dancing around the kitchen. Was I the only one to think that way?
‘Sure we can; who needs boys?’ Lainey said, a little half-heartedly. ‘You set the rules, Savvy – is anything off-limits?’
Savvy shrugged. ‘Not really. Just don’t mess anything up, and don’t touch anything if you go into my parents’ room, or Carina’s. And stay in the house, I suppose, or else the search could go on forever.’
‘It could go on forever anyway,’ Yaz pointed out. ‘This house is huge! And spooky …’
‘It’s not spooky,’ Savvy countered. ‘There are no ghosts; or none that I know about, anyway!’
‘All old houses have ghosts, though,’ Erin said, watching my face to see if I was scared. ‘The shadows of the past … of people who died here years ago … people who did bad things. Every house has a history.’
‘I’m not scared,’ I said.
Yaz gave me a sidelong look, remembering the times we’d spent Halloween together, terrifying ourselves with ghost stories and ghoulish pranks. Lainey and Yaz knew me too well; they knew I didn’t like ghost stories, didn’t like the dark. They knew all my weaknesses, just as I knew theirs.
‘It won’t be scary,’ Savvy said. ‘It’ll be fun, and it might just burn off some of the sugar high from all those cupcakes! I’ll be the catcher. Last one to be found gets to choose the DVD, OK?’
‘OK!’
Savvy flopped down on the sofa, going back to her phone. ‘Go on, then,’ she said, scanning for messages. ‘I’ll count to a hundred. Scram!’
We ran. Yaz and Erin made for the stairs, but as I turned to follow them, Lainey grabbed my arm.
‘Alice?’ she said. ‘Wait; I know a great place to hide. And Savvy’s bound to look upstairs first, it’s just so obvious …’
I shrugged out of her grip, undecided.
‘Please?’ she said. ‘I need to talk to you. About us; about what happened … about being friends again. And about Luke.’
Her eyes were wide, helpless. This wasn’t the girl who’d given me the silent treatment for a whole summer and then dumped me for Savvy Hunter; the cold, anxious girl who’d tormented me at Savvy’s bidding had gone, vanished. Lainey was as vulnerable as the girl who used to sit up for hours at childhood sleepovers, telling me about her bullying stepdad, how unhappy she was at home. It was like the last two years hadn’t happened. Lainey needed me, finally, and I was there for her, the way I always had been.