All About Us. Tom Ellen

Fourteen

       Chapter Fifteen

       Chapter Sixteen

       Chapter Seventeen

       Chapter Eighteen

       Chapter Nineteen

       Chapter Twenty

       Chapter Twenty-One

       Chapter Twenty-Two

       Chapter Twenty-Three

       Chapter Twenty-Four

       Chapter Twenty-Five

       Chapter Twenty-Six

       Chapter Twenty-Seven

       Chapter Twenty-Eight

       Chapter Twenty-Nine

       Chapter Thirty

       Chapter Thirty-One

       Chapter Thirty-Two

       Chapter Thirty-Three

       Chapter Thirty-Four

       Chapter Thirty-Five

       Chapter Thirty-Six

       Chapter Thirty-Seven

       Chapter Thirty-Eight

       Chapter Thirty-Nine

       Chapter Forty

       Chapter Forty-One

       Chapter Forty-Two

       Chapter Forty-Three

       Chapter Forty-Four

       Chapter Forty-Five

       Chapter Forty-Six

       Chapter Forty-Seven

       Chapter Forty-Eight

       Chapter Forty-Nine

       Chapter Fifty

       Epilogue

       Acknowledgements

       Author Q&A with Tom Ellen

       Extract

       About the Publisher

Prologue

       University of York, 5 December 2005

      Running was a bad idea.

      I can see that now. There was no need to run. It’s a game of Sardines, not the Olympic 100m. Plus, they haven’t even started looking for me yet. I can still hear them all outside the maze, shouting to fifty in unison. It sounds like a weirdly raucous episode of Sesame Street.

      I could’ve taken my time, strolled about leisurely in search of the perfect hiding place, but no: drunk logic told me that fifty seconds was no time at all and that the best option would be to peg it into the campus maze at top speed until I was safely camouflaged. Now, as I slow down to a stumble in the darkness, I can feel six snakebite blacks, four sambuca shots and that doner calzone I split with Harv all roiling ominously in my stomach.

      I stop for a second to catch my breath, which immediately explodes back out of me. I put a hand to the wall to steady myself, remembering too late that the wall is not actually a wall, but a hedge. I fall through it with the slapstick dexterity of a young Buster Keaton, miraculously avoiding being blinded or castrated by a million scratchy branches. I try to get up, fail miserably, and then decide that this is probably as good a hiding spot as any.

      The leaves settle around me. The counting has stopped now, and I can feel the maze bristle and creak as a dozen drunken bodies stagger into it, yelling, ‘We’re coming to ge-et you!’

      I sit there in silence, trying to work some moisture into my parched mouth and listening to my heart galloping in my chest. I reach up to wipe my forehead, and my hand comes back covered in foundation and fake blood – souvenirs from tonight’s stellar theatrical performance.

      The play went about as well as any first-year uni play could be expected to, which is to say we probably won’t be nominated for any Olivier awards, but no one fluffed their lines or vomited nervously on the audience. It was in the bar afterwards, though, where everything really kicked into gear: everyone gabbling at a hundred miles an hour about what we all want to write or direct or act in next. Maybe it was the adrenalin – or more likely the sambuca – but the world suddenly seemed alive with possibility, like I could actually see the future spooling out endlessly ahead of me, beckoning me in. Mad, really, to think that I can do anything I want with it.

      It’s funny, though. As weird and brilliant as tonight has been, I always thought