They are upon us within seconds.

The sound of screaming drowns out my thoughts, and I watch dazed as girls close in from all directions, their arms outstretched as they yell Felix and Alastaire’s names. 

The ground seems to shift beneath us, and the air all around us shimmers, vibrating with tension. 

A girl just a few feet away from me hold up her phone and takes a photo, and for a moment the flash blinds me, sending a sharp pain searing through the backs of my eyes.

I tremble, the hysterical fangirl shrieks shuddering through my chest like the buzzing of a million bees.

And as in any swarm, a queen leads the charge.

Beth Donklin, our school’s undisputed Queen Bee, leader of the three B’s, Her Royal Bitchiness, is just a few feet in front of me. 

Her long, sharp finger nails, painted bright yellow to match her Goldilocks costume, dart through the air reaching for Felix as she howls out his name.

In that moment, Felix wraps his arms around me.

In one swift motion, he sweeps me off my feet, and holds me tight as he hurtles through the crowd, like a groom carrying his bride over the threshold, but rather than cheering wedding guests we’re surrounded by crazed screeching girls.

I feel fingers brushing against us, trying to grab us, a blur of movement as Felix races towards the carpark on the other side of the field.

I squeeze my eyes shut, burying my head against his shoulder, the sound of the stampede following close behind us.

Alastaire… is Alastaire ok? The other boys were here too… have they been spotted? 

“This way!” A voice yells up ahead. “C’mon!”

I open my eyes, straining to find the source of the yelling.

Kitty’s hanging out of the window on the passenger seat side of Jade’s car, which is racing towards us over the grass. She’s waving her arms around, screaming at the top of her lungs, while Jade dodges festival-goers, almost running over a green-skinned girl dressed as Elphaba from Wicked in the process.

The car comes to a shrieking halt in front of us, and Kitty yells “GET IN!!!” as the backseat passenger door swings open.

I jump out of Felix’s arms and tumble forward, hiking up my dress over my knees and crawling over Ben and Elliot on the backseat. Ben’s pirate hat and eyepatch are gone, but Elliot’s still in his full set of knight’s armour, and I shudder as my knees scrape over the cold metal. The pretty girl who was hanging out with them earlier is there too, squashed against the side door. Her long brown hair and frilly dress is in disarray, and some of the baby pink glitter has rubbed off her mask and dusted her cheek in a shimmering streak of sparkles. I don’t recognize her from school or anywhere else, but it’s hard to tell with the mask.

One thing’s for sure though - she’s super pretty.

How do the guys know her? Or is she some friend of Kitty’s that she forgot to mention?

She pulls me onto her lap with surprising strength.

Felix follows behind me, squashing up next to Elliot on the backseat before Alastaire wedges himself in last, half-sitting on Felix as he slams the door shut, right in the faces of the screaming girls behind him. There’s a tussle as Felix tries to push Alastaire away, but there’s nowhere for him to go - his white feathered costume wings are squashed against the side door window, the white robe slipping down off his shoulder.

“DRIVE!” Felix shouts, but Jade doesn’t need any prompting - we’re already speeding across the field. I clutch onto the girl in the pink dress as the car bursts through the open school gates and does a sudden U-turn onto Barker street, screeching towards the overpass onramp at breakneck speed.

Scenery rushes past us outside; the streetlamps become brilliant streaks of fire against the dark.

The girl in the pink dress wraps her arms around me, tight, like a makeshift human seatbelt as the car hurtles through the night. 

“Shit,” I hear Alastaire mutter. “This better not scar.”

He’s holding his phone up to his face, the camera on, staring at his reflection despondently.

A thin trail of crimson blood is snaking down the side of Alastaire’s face. There’s a shallow cut just above his left cheekbone, about an inch long, surrounded by a purplish-red bruise. It must have happened when Felix punched him and shattered his mask.

Breathe. Breathe. Don’t spaz out now just because of a little blood.

“Alastaire,”I say, already feeling the old familiar vertigo take hold, the electrical buzz of my mind slipping into the haze. “You’re… bleeding…a lot”

“Don’t pass out, ok Ash?” Felix says, leaning over and grabbing my hand.

“What? Alastaire’s bleeding?” Kitty shrieks, turning around in her seat to face us. “Oh my god. Did a fan do that to you?”

Silence.

“Alastaire, speak to me,” she pleads. “What happened?” 

Alastaire shoots Felix a withering sideways glance. 

“Maybe you should ask your darling brother that,” he says.

Kitty shoots Felix a quizzical look, and Felix turns away.

“I’m taking the highway, ok?” Jade says, and Kitty nods, looking from Felix to Alastaire before giving up and turning her attention to Jade.

“Just keep driving as fast as you can,” she says. “Don’t slow down.”

“No problem, Jade says, accelerating up the onramp. We breeze along the overpass at first, but after a few seconds we’re moving at a crawl, caught up in a long line of hooting cars. 

“Dammit,” Kitty says. “Why’s there so much traffic? We need to go!”

Her voice is hysterical, on the verge of tears.

“Parties, dates, shows… it’s Friday night,” Jade says. “I don’t know what it’s like in England, but here in the U.S of A, a bit of Friday night traffic is pretty normal. What’s not normal is you suddenly freaking out, and us driving away from that party like I’m your getaway driver and we just robbed a bank or something. Does anyone mind telling me what the hell is going on?”

There’s a moment as silence as we all realise that Jade still doesn’t know.

I guess Kitty never told him about her brother being the lead singer of the world’s most famous band. Although he really should have figured it out by now.

“It’s a long story,” Kitty says.

“We have time,” Jade says, gesturing to the slog of cars crawling at a snail’s pace in front of us.

“Fee?” Kitty asks, turning in her seat to face him. “Can I-”

“Jade, have you ever heard of Fable?’ Felix cuts her off. 

“Obviously,” Jade says. “Who hasn’t. They’re-” he stops talking abruptly, adjusts the rearview mirror. “They’re… OMG… you’re…”

“Yes, yes,” Alastaire says boredly. “This is Felix Lockhart, world famous rock star and infamous pain in the ass. I’m Alastaire Cassiel-Kensington, People Magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive several years in a row now. I can forgive you for not recognizing Felix, I mean, he’s pretty forgettable, but me? Kitty, where did you find this guy? In a cave or something?”

Felix is scowling at Alastaire, who is still half-sitting on Felix’s lap, wedged in against the car door without an inch of wiggle room. Alastaire suddenly yelps out in pain, and Felix smirks.

Ouch. Someone got kneed in a sensitive place.

“So… these guys are super famous,” Jade says slowly, thinking out loud as he processes it all. “And those girls back there, at the Jubilee…”

I twist in the tight grip of the girl in the pink dress, manoeuvring myself in her lap so that I can turn around and look through the car’s rearview window.

I half expect to see a herd of rampaging fan girls running towards us, but there’s nothing, just a steady stream of cars joining the slow crawl.

“I think we lost them,” I say.

“Lost them?” Kitty says, her voice shaky, hysterical. “Lost them?! Within a few minutes, the whole of Portland… no, the whole world, is going to know we’re here. How long do you think it’ll be until they find us? Don’t you remember what happened last time, at your house with Fee? We have to leave. Our cover’s blown.”

“She’s right,” Elliot says. He’s staring at the screen of his iPhone, his expression stony, his voice even and stoic as as always. “Our location’s trending on Twitter. #FableInPortland is the top story on Buzzfeed.”

“So basically, we’re screwed,” Ben says.

“It’s over…” Kitty is half-muttering, half crying to herself in a hushed voice. “They know… they all know… it’s over.”