Good Girls Die First

by Kathryn Foxfield

Genres: YA Fantasy; YA Horror

Synopsis

For fans of Karen McManus' One of Us is Lying and films like I Know What You Did Last Summer, comes a gripping thriller about murder, mystery, and deception.

Blackmail lures Ava to the abandoned amusement park on Portgrave Pier. She is one of ten teenagers, all with secrets they intend to protect whatever the cost. When fog and magic swallow the pier, the group find themselves cut off from the real world. As the teenagers turn on each other, Ava will have to face up to the secret that brought her to the pier and decide how far she's willing to go to survive. The teenagers have only their secrets to protect and each other to betray.

Perfect for:

• 13-18 year-old mystery fans
• Fans of Karen McManus and Stephen King

 

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Release date: November 30, 2021

Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire

Print pages: 287

Sample

One

On nights when the winds blew wrong, distorted music seemed to drift inland from Allhallows Rock. Sunset cast the island in foggy shades of red and orange, and for a moment, it appeared as if it was still burning.

Then tar-dark waters swallowed the lights, and the people of Portgrave once again looked away. Any questions they had about the abandoned carnival and its mile-long pier vanished. Most of the time, Ava forgot the island was even there.

Nothing like blackmail to refresh the memory.

Up and down the shadowy beach, silence stretched on and on. In one direction, an expanse of shingle and seaweed paved the way toward the grubby neon lights of Portgrave seafront. In the other, a concrete seawall followed the curve of the shore, making the dilapidated huts and boarded-up shops look like a prison complex.

Ava saw no potential blackmailers, or anyone else, for that matter.

Eight o’clock, Portgrave Pier. Can you keep a secret?

That was what her invite said. Earlier that week, a pristine white envelope had dropped onto her doormat. Inside, a photo Ava thought no one but her had ever seen. Someone had used an old typewriter to print that day’s date and the cryptic instructions on the back. Nothing else. It had to be blackmail. Why else would someone have sent Ava evidence that they knew her biggest secret?

She turned her attention to the pier. Beyond the padlocked gates, it stretched out to sea like a matchstick bridge left out in the rain. Rotting wooden boards hid a perilous drop into foaming water. Forty-year-old scaffolding dangled at awkward angles. For anyone unconvinced, a hand-painted sign read DEATH LIES THIS WAY.

Once, the island had been a pleasure pier. Carnival attractions. Fairground rides. An arcade and a nightclub. The Magnificent Baldo had been its king until his kingdom was destroyed in an unexplained blaze. The fire department and the coast guard had dutifully put out the flames. Someone had erected emergency scaffolding to save the pier. Then everyone had returned to the mainland and locked the gates.

That was as much of the story as Ava knew. The adults in town didn’t talk about Portgrave Pier. They didn’t talk about Baldo. It was almost like they’d forgotten. Ava had asked her grandma a few times, but she had replied with warnings to stay away, then couldn’t explain further when pressed. The strange aura of forgetfulness surrounding the pier meant Ava had stayed away until blackmail had brought her to the pier’s gates.

Out of habit, Ava raised her DSLR and framed a shot. There was a strange beauty in the rusty turnstiles and collapsed doughnut booths. But Ava wanted her photos to be more than dramatic natural light and washed-out colors. She wanted them to say something. She wanted to capture the ghosts of capitalism and disinvestment that still lingered on the pier four decades after the people had vanished. At least, that’s what she wrote in her Instagram captions.

She held the camera at arm’s length and half-heartedly snapped a selfie. She immediately viewed the photo. Dusk gave her face a pixelated appearance. Dark waves cut blunt below her jawline. Olive skin made flawless by the low light. Lips slightly parted and unsmiling. Ava never smiled in pictures; smiling made her look sixteen.

“That camera will steal your soul,” a voice called.

Ava’s stomach tightened. She didn’t need to turn around to know it was her best friend, Jolie, approaching over the breakers. Ava and Jolie were rarely apart, like fries and ketchup or those creepy twins from The Shining.

One time, Jolie had broken her arm falling off the seawall, and Ava’s own arm had ached for weeks. Another time, a dye-based disaster had left Ava’s hair a garish shade of orange, so Jolie had colored hers to match. Everyone had called Jolie “Bozo” for weeks, and Ava’s own mistake had been obscured by Jolie’s larger-than-life, ginger-hued shadow.

Sure, there were times when Ava found Jolie’s friendship claustrophobic and stifling. But most of the time, there was no one she’d rather have in her corner. Only this was different. The blackmail was something Ava needed to fix by herself, without Jolie’s interference or judgment. Jolie wasn’t meant to know she was here right now.

Ava switched the camera off. When she finally looked up, her friend had circled her to lean against graffitied boards, glaring out from beneath the hood of a giant panda onesie. Frizzy blond curls, ends still dyed orange, escaped in every direction.

“Fancy seeing you here. I thought you had a hot date with Photoshop tonight,” Jolie said.

A definite tone, but Ava let it go. “You can’t talk. You told me you were revising. You were going to switch off your phone.”

Jolie narrowed her eyes, clearly unsure whether it was worth staying mad at Ava when she’d also lied. “So what are you doing here?”

“Urban decay is my thing,” Ava said, nodding to the pier.

“I’m sure all fourteen of your followers will be delighted.”

“Nineteen thousand, but who’s counting?” She paused. “Did you follow me here?”

Jolie continued to glare. “Um, no? I got an invite in the mail.” She pulled a face, wrinkling her freckled nose. “Who even sends things through the mail anymore?”

Old people and blackmailers. Emphasis on the blackmailers. So Jolie was here because she had a secret of her own.

“What did it say?” Ava asked.

Jolie eyed her suspiciously. Eventually, she pulled a piece of crumpled-up paper from inside the onesie and practically threw it at Ava. “Take a look if you want.”

Ava smoothed out the creases. It was a mock-up of a nineteenth-century circus poster. A bearded lady sat primly in a high-backed chair with a tiny woman standing on her knee. At their side was a boy who looked more wolf than person and a man with elephantiasis. WELCOME TO THE FREAK SHOW, read the banner above their heads.

Ava flipped it over. On the back were typed instructions identical to those on her own summons.

Eight o’clock, Portgrave Pier. Can you keep a secret?

In Ava’s opinion, there were two kinds of secrets in the world: secrets that lost their power when you told them, and secrets that changed everything. The second kind of secret turned a person inside out and showed who they really were. Ava knew what kind of secret her own was, but what about Jolie’s?

“Does the picture mean something to you?” Ava said.

“Mean something?” Jolie said.

“It’s just that my invite was…personalized,” she said.

Jolie’s hard expression cracked a little. “I figured it was someone messing with me. Trying to be funny, you know? Because of Max. Some of the dead ends on the estate call him freak show when he leaves the house.”

“Oh,” Ava said.

Jolie’s older brother had almost been killed in an accidental house fire the previous summer. A cigarette left unattended. Flames that spread too fast for him to escape. He was probably going to spend the next five years undergoing painful skin grafts and plastic surgery to repair the damage to his face.

Ava scrubbed her fingers through her hair, already sticky with ocean spray. “That’s harsh.”

Jolie took her invite back from Ava. “That’s why I’m going to find out who sent this to me and knee them in the bojangles. Yours isn’t the same, I take it? Hand it over, then.”

Ava tried to decide how much to reveal. One person—the mysterious blackmailer—knowing her secret was already too many. She pulled the invite from her pocket and toyed with it.

“Is that the car park at the Oracle?” Jolie snatched the photo and examined it. “Why has someone sent you a picture of a multi-story car park?”

Ava opened and closed her mouth, unsure what to say.

“Um, what happened at the car park?” Jolie said.

“Nothing.”

“Liar! I can tell when you’re hiding something from me. You go all pink and sweaty.”

“And I can tell when you’re hiding something from me. Like what that freak show poster really means.”

They stared at each other. Once upon a time, Ava had believed there could never be any secrets between her and Jolie. Ava wasn’t the only one who’d been hiding things.

In the end, it was Jolie who broke the standoff. “Isn’t the Oracle a hookup spot?”

“Why would you even know that?”

“I don’t know. You’re the one with a thing for photographing concrete bollards or whatever, you weirdo.”

Ava forced a smile. She almost managed a laugh, but then a distant church clock struck the hour. Each chime vibrated in the pit of her stomach. She faced the pier. A lamp flickered. One by one, the pier lights buzzed on, shining grubby orange through the fog. Ava had never seen the island lit up; she hadn’t realized it still had power. “Someone’s gone to a lot of effort for a Thursday night,” she said.

“I won’t lie,” Jolie said, “this is basically the opening to every horror film I’ve ever seen. Teenagers mysteriously summoned to a derelict pier, and then the murders begin.”

Ava peered through the fence. “You’re screwed in that case. In the films, the bad girls always die first.”

“Balls, you’re right. Especially when they’re dressed as a comedy panda.”

“Which brings me on to my next question…”

Jolie shrugged. “All my other clothes are in the wash.”

Ava rested her back against the fence. Jolie ambled over to join her. She stuck a hand down the neck of her costume and pulled out a battered metal lighter. She flicked it on and off, staring at the flame until the wind breathed it out. Flick, click, flame, start again.

She snapped the lid closed. “I keep trying to work out why we’re here. Whoever’s behind this thinks they’re being Hawking clever with those invites.”

Ava stood up straighter as she spotted a dark shape approaching along the deserted embankment. She squinted at the figure, recognizing the familiar slouch of his shoulders. “Talking of someone who thinks they’re clever…”

“Is that Skanky Clem?” Jolie said.

Ava rolled her eyes. Jolie hated everything popular, be it fashion, music, or people. Clem embodied all three. “That’s mean. But yes, I think so.”

Clem stepped into the glow of a streetlamp. He saw them and stopped in his tracks. The way the shadows fell turned him into a silhouette, sinking into a puddle of light. It reminded Ava of an album cover, all mysterious and artsy. She couldn’t resist lifting her camera. He covered his face with a hand before crossing the road to join them. Red-rimmed glasses, vintage suspenders over a torn Kraftwerk T-shirt, fair skin with pink cheeks.

“What are you two doing here?” he said too loudly, then removed the headphones from his ears. They hung around his neck, spewing out something electronic and full of discordant notes.

Ava stared at him. His woolly hat was pulled low. His full lips were curled into an almost-smirk. Full lips Ava could still remember tugging on with her teeth. Shame crept up her cheeks.

“You two? Doing here?” he repeated.

“Just out for a nice evening stroll,” she said, then instantly regretted how dorky it made her sound. She clamped her mouth shut and made a mental note to avoid talking at all costs.

He shot a confused glance at Jolie’s panda costume. “All right, then.”

“Did you get an invite too?” Jolie said. “Hand it over.”

“Wow, you’re bossy.” He reluctantly took out a piece of paper and held it out to Jolie. Three people. Three secrets.

Ava leaned close to take a look. It was a gig flyer printed on cheap paper, like the ones littering the pavement outside Black Box on South Street. The artwork was the silhouette of a naked woman, her head thrown back in ecstasy.

APPEARING LIVE TONIGHT, the print read. WHITE FLAG.

White Flag was the name Clem went by on the sites he used to promote his music. Was someone trying to blackmail Clem over his music? That didn’t explain the woman’s silhouette.

“Classy.” Jolie shot Clem a look. She’d deliberately plucked her eyebrows so one was permanently quirked in an expression of disbelief. Ava knew how disconcerting one of her looks could be.

Clem glared back at Jolie, teeth clenched. “It’s not a real flyer.”

“Obviously,” Jolie said. “We all know you only play music in your bedroom and use Ava’s pictures to make your album covers look less basic.”

“He did ask permission,” Ava said quietly. This was the closest Jolie had come to complimenting her photos in a long time.

“Whatever. So, are we going in or what?” Jolie shook the security fence like a caged monster.

“You think we’re meant to walk over to the island?” Clem said.

“Tap-dance across if you want, I don’t care,” Jolie said. “Come on.”

She heaved herself up the fence and jumped over. The boardwalk creaked ominously as she landed on the opposite side, and two rats scuttled for the safety of a children’s helicopter ride. Ava shuddered.

“Ladies first?” Clem said hopefully.

Ava shook her head and stared silently as he reluctantly climbed. She was being weird and awkward. They’d kissed. So what? There was no reason why she couldn’t speak to him like a normal human. She could tell him to watch out for the rats. Or she could tell him to be careful.

“Be the rats,” was what came out. God.

“That’s handy advice. Thanks.” He swung himself over the top.

“Be the rats?” Ava whispered to herself, pushing her camera through a hole in the fence before following him over. “What’s wrong with you?”

She landed on the other side and scooped up her camera. The three of them picked their way along the pier, stepping over gaps in the boards. Waves crashed in the darkness below. Clem walked ahead, Ava and Jolie behind.

“What’s going on?” Jolie whispered to Ava. “You’re being odd. Even odder than usual.”

Ava’s eyes flicked over to Clem, then away again. “It’s nothing.”

“Clem?” Jolie’s mouth fell open. “You and Clem?”

“It was a one-time thing, and now it’s super awkward. Can we leave it?”

“Nope, definitely not. I can’t believe you never said.”

“It was hardly something I wanted spread around the whole school. He’s so—”

“Skanky? Too right. He’s slept with half of the girls in our year. Oh, Clem, your music is so wonderfuuuullll,” Jolie drawled. “He’s as pretentious as a peacock without the peas.”

Ava fought a smile. “You know,” she whispered, “he did tell me straight-faced that major seven chords are the music of love. Then he played a harmonica for me. He keeps one up his sleeve.”

“And you found that attractive why?” Jolie said flatly.

Ava tried to come up with an answer. Clem wasn’t the sort of boy who would ever make sense to someone like Jolie. He didn’t make much sense to Ava either. At school, he swaggered around, flashing a lopsided smile at all the girls. And every few weeks, like clockwork, the girl waiting at his locker morphed into a new model.

Ava would be lying if she said she hadn’t spent the last few years looking. Indulging in the odd daydream. But that was all; she needed more than hipster glasses and a famous wink. Only then she’d got talking to Clem online. Through the screen, he’d been an entirely different person, and it was that version of Clem whom Ava had fallen for.

So they’d started swapping photos and music, and Clem had used some of Ava’s artwork for his album covers. The next logical step was to meet up one night after school, but it had been a disaster. Once they were face-to-face, Ava had found herself possessed by awkwardness and could barely string a sentence together, which hadn’t mattered, as Clem had talked nonstop about himself. Kissing him had been the only way to make the pain stop, but it had also been nothing like her daydreams. Wet and slightly bitey.

“Urgh, what were you thinking?” Jolie continued.

“I wasn’t thinking,” Ava admitted.

“Not with your brain, anyway.”

Ava playfully elbowed Jolie in the side. “Shut it.”

“Hey, Clem,” Jolie called out. “Ava was telling me she thinks you—”

Ava clamped a hand over Jolie’s mouth. “I’m going to throw you in the sea if you don’t stop.”

Jolie nodded meekly, and Ava removed her hand. “Ava loves you!”

Ava glared at her. “I don’t,” she said weakly.

Clem watched them with narrowed eyes. “Right,” he said slowly, then walked on with a shake of his head. If Ava hadn’t known better, she’d have thought he looked hurt. But she did know better.

“Have I told you lately that I hate you?” Ava sang at Jolie.

Jolie grabbed her by the sides of the head and planted a wet kiss on her lips. She pulled away, laughing, and continued down the pier. Ava wiped her mouth and watched Jolie’s self-assured swagger with narrowed eyes. Jolie wasn’t acting like someone worried about blackmail. Then again, it was hard to read Jolie these days. Things had become strained between them, and Ava wasn’t sure if it was Max’s accident or the Oracle that had changed things.

“Stop being a pussy and hurry up!” Jolie called over her shoulder. Ava jogged to catch up.

They all stepped through a grand iron archway onto Allhallows Rock. Everything stank of abandonment, like slimy wood and rancid seaweed. The estuary at the height of summer. THE MAGNIFICENT BALDO WELCOMES YOU, a faded billboard read. An image of Baldo showed him to be a middle-aged white man in an old-fashioned black suit. Chains glinted at his waist, trussing him up like he was a criminal or a monster.

It wasn’t Baldo that held Ava’s attention, though. Just behind him, hidden in the background, was another man. Younger, with black face paint smeared across his eyes like a mask and a wicked grin. Ava shuddered.

“What a dump,” Jolie said.

Ava pulled her gaze away from the billboard. Jolie and Clem were looking up at a circular building perched at the highest point of the small island: a video arcade topped with a nightclub. It had survived the fire intact and looked as tacky as it had the day the island was abandoned forty years ago.

To the right of the arcade were the viewing decks and fairground rides, including a gigantic wooden roller coaster that had been almost completely destroyed by the fire. To the left, a path between stone buildings led to the stairs down to the lower half of the island. Ava could just see the tents and shacks of the carnival at the bottom, arranged along the island’s craggy shoreline, half swallowed by the sea.

“I was imagining something more…” Ava tried to think of the right word. “Romantic,” she went for, although it didn’t quite fit.

“What did you have in mind for tonight?” Clem said, smirking.

Her mouth dried up. All she could think about was how they’d kissed, and it wasn’t a good memory.

Jolie threw an arm around Ava’s neck. “Ava is going to document the moment when I work out who invited us here and punch their dick off.”

“You have such a lovely way with words,” Clem said.

“I’ll write you some lyrics, if you want.”

“Thanks,” he said, “but my tracks don’t have vocals.”

“Would it detract from those major seven chords?” Jolie said, biting her lip.

Clem’s gaze flicked back to Ava. She died a tiny bit inside. To avoid the awkwardness, she crossed a wide-open square, heading toward the arcade and club. She wasn’t there to obsess over boys. She was supposed to be finding out who was trying to blackmail her. ...