Lucas Antoniou
“Great,” Win muttered. She had absolutely no idea who that was.
But she knew someone who would.
Win watched as her sister said farewell to her friends with all the intensity of an astronaut scheduled for six months aboard the ISS. She’d never cope with friendships like Win’s, where hugs were conveyed with one of the many GIFs she had saved of the MCU cast and crew, or where concern was expressed with a worried-looking selfie.
Once she finally tore herself away from the rest of Year 10, Sunny bounded across the car park and folded herself into the passenger seat with all the elegance of a half-drunk giraffe. Whereas Win was stocky like their father, Sunny was all gangle: long legs, scrawny arms and an annoying inch and a half extra height. On days when her sister had been particularly annoying on the way to school, Win liked to move the passenger seat a notch further forward for the return.
Today she’d moved it forward two.
Irritating or not, Win needed Sunny’s encyclopaedic knowledge of the boys of Buckthorn, which wasn’t something she’d ever considered utilising before.
“I need your help,” she said, putting the parcel on Sunny’s lap and pointing at the name. “Do you know Lucas Antoniou?”
Sunny immediately began listing candidates.
“There’s a Luke Partridge in my form. Plays guitar and never shuts up about it. Or Anthony McGrath in the year above – he used to have really nice hair but then he shaved it all off and has a weird-shaped skull—”
Sunny had never had a thought that didn’t come out of her mouth, but Win wasn’t that interested in the phrenology of Anthony McGrath.
“Lucas. Antoniou.” Win tapped the parcel to get Sunny to refocus. “Those two names, in that order.”
“Why? What is this?”
“Answer my question and I’ll answer yours. Is there a Lucas Antoniou at our school?”
“No,” Sunny said with absolute certainty.
“You’re sure?”
Sunny shot her down with nothing more than a look.
“My turn.” She pointed at the parcel. “Explain this.”
“You remember Freya?”
Sunny rolled her eyes. Freya had been too cool for her to warm to. “Of course.”
“She sent a parcel to her friend Sophie this morning” – Sunny twitched with interest but managed not to interrupt – “and inside Sophie’s parcel was another parcel. For me. And inside mine, there was this one for Lucas Antoniou.”
Sunny looked at the parcel, then at Win, lip curling up a second before she said, “You what?”
“Basically, it seems to be a very prescriptive game of pass the parcel. Unwrap a layer, pass it on.”
She left out the bit about the note and the treasure, distracted by the way Sunny was squeezing and shaking and – weirdly – sniffing the parcel.
“Stop that.”
“I’m trying to work out what’s in the middle.” Sunny squashed it and frowned. “It’s too squishy to just be infinite layers of names.”
Win sighed. Keeping things from Sunny had always been a challenge.
“There might be stuff between the names. There was a flag sandwiched between my layer and this one.” She knew Sunny had guessed what kind by the way her eyes flared wide in outrage. “The one from Pride.”
“Freya Newmarch asked her friend to hand over a parcel with a rainbow flag at school?” Sunny’s voice had risen almost as high as her over-pencilled eyebrows.
“She couldn’t have known it would be at school – and I opened it in here.”
The Freya who’d tasked Sophie with hand-delivering a parcel that could have been sent safely to Win’s house might have annoyed her, but Win still felt a need to defend the Freya who’d been a decent friend when she’d needed one.
“Look, can we skip over all this and focus on Lucas? Whoever he is.”
“Alternatively, we could just open it?”
“Sunny, no. That’s not the point.”
Sunny rolled her eyes and reset herself with a breath, then, “Checked her Instagram?”
“Done it.”
“Facebook?”
“Tick.”
“Does she have a TikTok? Snapchat?”
“Obviously I’ve already tried those—”
“I dunno … ask her?”
“She ghosted me months ago, same as everyone else—”
“Everyone?” Sunny asked, holding up the parcel. “Even her best mate?”
Win conceded the point. “She wrote Sophie a note asking her to pass it along, promising treasure at the end.”
“What a weird thing to make your friends do.”
“You’re a weird thing.” The insult came automatically as Win frowned at where her phone rested in its holder next to the wheel. “She did give me her number.”
“Who? Freya?”
“Sophie.”
“Well duh.” Sunny snatched the phone up and shoved it so hard at Win that it nearly smacked her in the chin. “Ask Sophie who he is. If he’s Freya’s pal, he’ll be hers too, right?”
SOPHIE
Like half the people at Buckthorn, Sophie, Morgan and Georgia were queuing up for the self-serve at the Tesco over the road, buying supplies for the walk (or bus ride) into town: one Cherry Coke, one Tango – and a can of Red Bull from the back of the chiller for Sophie. She’d found a study somewhere that suggested caffeine could help with pain – a theory Mum has dismissed because it didn’t fit with what she wanted to help. Sophie was willing to conduct her own entirely unscientific study without her mum knowing. Even if it didn’t help with the pain, Sophie could use a little help with the pep.
The three of them had made it as far as the till when a message buzzed through and Sophie slid her free hand into her skirt pocket, heart leaping at the sight of an unknown number.
Hi Sophie. This is Win.
Then a photo of the next layer of Freya’s parcel with the caption: Friend of yours? I’m drawing a blank.
This was her chance. Sophie stared so hard at the screen that her eyes started to water – but that didn’t make the name any more familiar.
Sophie waited until they’d paid and were heading for the exit.
“Do either of you remember Freya talking about a guy called Lucas Antoniou?” Sophie watched Morgan for a reaction. Whereas Sophie struggled to recall what she had for breakfast and Georgia lived in a rose-tinted cloud of oblivion, Morgan’s brain hoarded titbits like this. The kind of witness that wouldn’t just tell you it was Professor Plum in the library with a lead pipe; she’d know if there was a book missing from the shelf, which hand he’d used to strike the killing blow and what scandalous secret gave Plum the motive.
“Boy from work.” Morgan clicked her fingers with a decisive snap.
“Whose work?” Georgia frowned.
“Freya’s work, you noodle.” Morgan gave her a gentle nudge as they stepped out into the sunshine. “The good-looking pot washer who started after she did. Definitely called Lucas. Not sure about the Anthony part.”
“Antoniou,” Sophie corrected.
“Why d’you ask?”