Page 30 of Sad Girl Hours
Nell’s eyes widen in surprise, before softening into a smile. “Right it is.” She holds out her hand.
I take it and squeal with laughter as she starts running, dragging me behind her, twisting and turning through the maze. The sky has fully cracked open into grey now, rain starting to soak through my clothes. It feels like the only dry part of my body is the palm of my right hand, tightly clasped inside Nell’s as we run, laughing, through the maze (and past a couple of bemused families who had the forethought to bring umbrellas).
“How’s your heart?” I yell to Nell as we keep thundering.
“Still there,” she calls back to me with a grin. “Having the time of its goddamn life. Oh shit.”
We’re at a dead end. Nell drops my hand to look at the map properly. “Ah, I see where we went wrong. We’re nearly there, though. Take two?”
Without thinking, I grab her hand again and lead us back off in the right direction, picking up the pace with each new twist, with each slam of our feet down into the damp earth, until finally…
“We did it!” Nell lurches forward and collapses down on to the pile of hay bales surrounding the big red flag poking out. The smell of damp farm our reward for completing two hours of meandering around the same few hundred square metres.
I lower myself down on to the hay too, looking up above us at the millions of droplets descending from noir candyfloss clouds as I try to steady my breathing. “We did it.”
We sit/lie there, listening to the rain patter down around us and our breaths trying to get back to normal. After a little while, Nell props herself up.
“So. Was it worth it? Is the centre of the maze everything you dreamed it would be?”
I lean up too. “And more,” I say. “I mean, there’s hay, there’s a big red flag – what more could you ask for as a reward for your efforts?”
“Truly nothing. This is all the reward I need. And whatever our prize is for completing it is, of course.”
“But we opened the envelope.”
“Did we?” Nell says. “Or did the envelope just disintegrate in all the rain?”
I go to throw her a disapproving look, but when I face her, sitting there, grinning cheekily at me, her normally straight dark hair starting to curl and sticking to her flushed cheeks, I find I just can’t do it. She deserves a stupid prize, even if I don’t want to lie to Sunny.
“Did I say we opened it?” I say, frowning. “Sorry, I meant that it appears to be open. But I’m sure once we tell Sunny what happened, they’ll understand.”
Nell’s face opens up into a surprised smile yet again, and I feel warm on the inside, despite the worsening conditions on the outside. I like surprising her, I realise. I might try to do it more often.
We find our way out of the maze with ease (using the map that we have never seen before and definitely didn’t take out and then put back into the envelope) and find Sunny reading in a little wooden booth by the field that’s acting as a car park.
“Oh, hi, guys! I thought everyone had gone home because of the rain!”
We just stand there, dripping and looking up at them.
“But obviously not!” They put their book down and come over to the window. “So, how did we find it? Did you have oodles of maze fun?”
“Oh yes,” Nell says. “Oodles.”
“Excellent! And did we manage to complete it without checking the map?”
I slap the two envelopes down on the counter, one clearly intact, one … less so. “We sure did!” I say cheerily.
Sunny just stares down at them for a good few moments. I can tell they’re not convinced, but they clearly decide that it’s not worth fighting about. “Amazing! Congratulations! Now, as a prize for triumphing over the maze, you get to pick an item out of our magnificent prize bucket!”
They produce what is, in fact, just a regular bucket filled with small objects wrapped in orange paper, and hold it out to us.
“You can do the honours,” I say to Nell, who thrusts her hand into the bucket with glee.
“All right, I pick … this one!” She pulls out a long, thin parcel.
“Excellent choice! Have a wonderful day, guys. We hope to welcome you back again soon!” Sunny beams a goodbye at us as we head off.
“I think once was perhaps enough,” Nell says. “I think I’ve reached my maze capacity for at least a year.”
