Fairytales for Wilde Girls by Allyse Near Page B

‘Couldn’t have finished him better myself.’
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    On the ride home with James, the back seat was empty. Isola propped her legs up on the dash, her still-damp skin glimmering in the glass-focused blaze of the setting sun. Morrissey mourned through second-hand speakers as they cannoned into the sunset like daredevils.
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    Forever the Girl – Advice from Saint Pip
    Edgar’s best mate, Pip Sutcliffe, had excitable eyes high on his face like glassy periscopes. He wore slouchy knitted caps and hoodies and looked like the boy the bored security guard would indiscreetly follow around the store. In truth, he was a veritable fountain of nonsensical knowledge, passing out nuggets of information he’d gleaned from a lifetime of nosiness. Friends called him Saint Pip the Guru. He talked an awful lot of crap but if one looked hard enough there were rice-chunks of good sense, diamonds stuck in that steaming pile.
    â€˜Pip,’ called Edgar, ‘I need your advice.’
    Edgar was sprawled on nineteen-year-old Pip’s couch in his flat in downtown Avalon. The olive-green sofa had been taken from rubbish left on a stranger’s nature strip. It hardly had any springs and smelled as though it had been involved in something illegal. ‘A bargain,’ Saint Pip had labelled it.
    â€˜Lucky for you, mate, the doctor is in .’ Pip was peeling vegetables over the sink in the adjoining kitchen. The apprentice chef wandered out, threw a carrot and peeler at Edgar, and joined him on the couch as he hacked away at a carrot for the stir-fry. ‘Now, what’s – Majella, babe, turn it down a decibel.’
    Majella Lavery, more commonly known as Jella, was a gorgeous black Welsh girl with a vivid smile. She was Pip’s easy-going girlfriend, and the amicable hostess of the Big Party that had kicked off the school year, which was held secretly in her parents’ house while they were holidaying in Barbados. The next morning she’d found broken beer bottles in the bathtub, a pair of naked strangers in her parents’ en suite, and a floating cloud of vomit in the pool.
    â€˜Damage bill was, like, three hundred pounds,’ Jella had said cheerfully at the time. ‘ Wicked party, though.’
    Right now she was sunk in a mostly crushed beanbag (cheap on eBay, pick-up only, no refunds), playing a violent video game across the room. ‘You can’t tell me what to do,’ she responded heatedly. ‘Crush the patriarchy!’ Jella turned the volume on her game up; they could hear the violent screeching of zombies, the squeal of a chainsaw.
    Pip shrugged, then asked loudly in Edgar’s ear, ‘What’s the problem?’
    â€˜Well, there’s this girl –’
    â€˜There’s always a girl, Eddie,’ said Pip, switching straight to guru-mode. ‘And there’ll always be the girl, you know? From Eve in the Garden to the Whore of Babylon. You know?’
    â€˜The what of what?’
    â€˜Never read the Revelations bit in the Bible?’ His huge eyes went even wider. ‘Hardcore stuff, man. She’s this chick who rides a dragon. I thought you’d have heard of it for sure. She sounds like she’s come straight out of your drawings.’ He waved his hand regally. ‘Continue, son.’
    â€˜Well, there’s this girl, and I do fancy her a bit,’ Edgar admitted. ‘She’s –’
    â€˜Pretty?’
    â€˜Beautiful. And mysterious – she’s literally the only other person I’ve seen living on that street.’
    Pip shifted in his beanbag. His periscope eyes zoomed in. ‘A mysterious chick who lives in the woods? Sounds hot.’
    â€˜Sounds what ?’ Jella called, looking around distractedly.
    â€˜I mean, sounds not,’ Pip self-corrected. ‘Undead alert, Jella.’
    Too late. Gore splattered the screen, and she sighed as she found herself on the restart