by S. K Munt
THE HIVE
Book #1 The Enigmatic Trilogy
S.K MUNT
Copyright © 2020 by S.K Munt
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Dedicated in loving memory to Howard T Parsons,
a writer, a reader, and a character unlike no other.
The Night The Sky Fell
Saturday November 4th, The Year The World Ended.
Finn Monroe hadn’t gone to a party since she’d started high school and when people asked her why, she said it was because her mother didn’t own a car, so because they lived so far out of town, getting around was difficult. Her peers were usually mystified to learn that Finn was a perma-pedestrian, but also satisfied enough by that explanation to walk away before she had to admit that she hadn’t been invited to a party since high school had started anyway.
Finn’s lack of popularity wasn’t a secret, because everyone had heard at least one of the rumours that Georgia Janks had spread about her by then. But no one understood how much of a loner she was, because she hid the damage that had been done to her behind a perky attitude and a screen of acquaintances who didn’t like Georgia Janks either; girls who tolerated Finn eating lunch with them only because they weren’t quite mean enough to chase her away.
I’m a Cling and have been since the first week of high school… Finn grit her teeth as her bike hit a patch of loose earth at the top end of Paige Hayes’ dirt driveway and began to wobble wildly. But that’s gonna change tonight!
Most kids would have lost control in her predicament, but Finn had a lot of practice when it came to handling disasters, so she dug the scuffed toe of her sneaker into the gravel, bringing her and her vintage mountain bike to a skidding halt in a shower of dirt. She got coated in it, but she was already so sweaty from the eight-kilometre bike ride from the Peninsula where she lived, to the remote outskirts of Cutrock Hills where the party was being held, that she didn’t see what difference it made. Besides, this was a camp-out in the bush next to an old stone mine- not a soirée and Paige had promised they’d go swimming in the creek at one point- so why should she care that the French braid was falling out? Or that her cropped, navy blue shirt and cargo shorts were plastered to her with sweat? She was just relieved that she hadn’t been kidnapped.
Finn dismounted her bike then began to push it along Paige’s serpentine driveway, breathing in the scent of wattle blossoms that had honeyed the air as she wrestled her phone out of her pocket. Riding all that way alone had been the most challenging thing she had ever done, especially on that muggy November afternoon, but she’d made it and she was eager to share that fact with her mother. It had taken forty-five minutes longer than she’d anticipated so she was technically late, but she’d gotten there before sunset, which was a relief because she hadn’t been able to afford Cara’s gift and a light for her bike on what she made delivering pamphlets each week.
Once the text had gone through, Finn fished Cara’s gift out of her bag, which was more like a peace-offering than anything else. Not because she’d ever done anything to Cara Wiley, but because the person that had invited Finn to the party had been the hostess Paige, not the birthday girl herself, which made the situation an awkward one. Finn had been too embarrassed to accept the non-vitation at first, but Paige had begged her to come, pointing out that it was her house so she could invite whomever she liked. Besides, Paige had only offered to throw Queen-Bee Cara a birthday party because she had half a dozen male cousins who lived out on the Shard Islands, who’d been begging Paige to introduce them to her school friends from the mainland for months. Paige didn’t have many school friends, because she was a tomboy by nature and an outcast by nurture, but Cara’s birthday had been coming up and her own mother had been too strict to permit her to have one of her own, so Paige had invited ‘The Hive’ over to celebrate it there, swearing they’d get to meet cute guys and drink if they did. And the Hive girls had eagerly agreed, especially after they’d looked up Paige’s cousins online and had discovered that they were all cute, because popular or not, Bonnie Sullivan was the only one of them that actually had a steady boyfriend.
‘The Hive’ was the term that Paige, Finn, and a few other girls from school used to refer to Cara Wiley and her friends, who’d inherited their social status from Cara’s older sister Miriam, who’d been the reigning Queen Bee of North Broadsound High for years before they’d come along as lowly freshmen. They weren’t the most popular girls at school, because there were older, larger and more athletic groups higher up the food-chain than they, but they were about as untouchable as ninth grade girls could hope to be, not only because of the Wiley name, but because of their wily leader’s nature and Bonnie Sullivan’s connections with her boyfriend and his thug friends. No, girls didn’t exactly fawn over Aaron Bragg and his mates, because they weren’t renowned for their looks or sparkling personalities, but those boys knew how to get their hands on things that most kids couldn’t, which guaranteed them an invite to every party and a lot of street cred.
Typically, a girl like Finn (who was as straight as she was short) might have gone all the way to graduation without girls like the ones in the Hive ever learning her name, but they’d absorbed Shelly Nash into their clique at the start of the eighth grade and had been stuck trying to shake off Shelly’s old friends- like Finn and Paige- since then.
The Peninsula girls that Finn had counted as friends had all been nobodies during primary school, because Finn had been too small, Paige had been too fat, Shelly had been too square, and Georgia had been too bossy- at least as far as their peers had been concerned. But Shelly had always been tall, thin and blonde, so when she’d ended up in a separate homeroom with the Hive girls on the first day of high school, she’d been mistaken for the glamorous type and swept into their fold. Now, she went only by ‘Michelle,’ shoplifted things she couldn’t afford to keep on trend with her suave new friends, smoked at parties (even if it wreaked havoc with her asthma) sat at the back of the bus where Finn feared to tread, hid how strictly she’d been raised, and fell madly in love with a new, older guy each month.
At first, Finn hadn’t understood why her previously studious and responsible friend had felt the need to change so much, like a chameleon blending into its underwhelming surroundings, but now that Finn had lived like an outcast for almost two years thanks to Georgia Janks, she totally understood the appeal of belonging to a solid pack of kids that had your back, even if that meant being a little less authentic sometimes. And that was why Finn was now determined to be accepted into the Hive before the end of the school year- because she couldn’t bear the thought of tenth grade being as lonely as eighth and ninth had already been.
Sadly though, like Finn’s ex best-friend Georgia, Cara had stayed popular by being a tyrant- not for being a kind, scholarly star like her lovely sister had once been, so Finn knew that there was a good chance that Cara was going to make her wish that she hadn’t shown up to the party anyway. Still, there was a spectacular meteor shower foreca
sted to put on a show that night, so if Cara did end up giving Finn a hard time, then Finn intended to retreat to the quarry anyway, where she’d be able to stargaze to her heart’s content, just as she would’ve if she’d stayed home alone.
The view from out here will be even better though! Finn thought then, glancing up at the perfectly clear, fading blue sky and thanking the weather gods for having blessed the day, even if the mountain-bike gods had cursed her with roads that had had the look and consistency of pockmarked porridge. And if Paige comes with me, we can double our luck by wishing for better lives together!
Finn heard bass thumping against the air somewhere nearby then, and as she leaned her bike against the fence, she noted that the music and laughter that she could hear seemed to be coming from the rear patio, not from within the house.
Here we go! she thought, wetting her lips and reading the ‘Have fun,’ text that her mother had sent back before shutting her phone. It’s happening! I’m going to a party- with GUYS!
Finn didn’t actually care about partying with guys, because she’d met enough of Paige’s crazy cousins over the years for the novelty to have worn off already. But there was still something cool about going to a co-ed sleepover, and she was pretty sure that it was a first for the other girls too, which made her feel less dorky about how ecstatic she felt to be doing something so grown up. So excited, that the silvery strings of the parcel in her hands had begun to shiver in response to the charge that was flowing through her, making her tremble with the thrill of possibility. Finn had been planning to simply follow the music around the back of the place, bypassing the front door all together, but before she could take a single step, she heard a muffled giggle and looked over at the porch, flushing to realise that the people that she was the most apprehensive about seeing- the Hive Girls- were right there on Paige’s front veranda, eyeing her from behind their bedazzled phone cases. They all owned smartphones of course, and though Finn wasn’t ashamed of her cheaper model, she put her flip-phone away quickly when she saw them, because whenever Cara saw it, she asked Finn is she was calling someone in the year 2000- a joke that offended her more as a lover of wordplay than a poor person. It made her want to snap at Cara: ‘Get some new material!’ and this was not the night to snap.
‘Good grief…’ she heard Cara mutter as she took off her helmet. ‘The Cling actually came?’
Finn’s heart sank, but she swallowed, waved, and then began to move toward the clique on her jellied legs, feeling her lungs tighten when she saw that unlike her, Michelle’s clique had dressed up suave in long floral skirts, with pretty, pastel tanks and the strappy leather sandals that were all the rage. They’d all curled their hair into loose waves and layered the contouring on thick too, which made Finn feel like a deformed thumb sticking out of a perfectly manicured hand especially without Paige the tomboy there to balance them all out.
Why did they dress up so much? Finn chewed on her lower lip. She liked dressing up as much as the next girl did, but she’d actually underdressed on purpose that night, not only because she’d had to ride there, but because every time she’d tried to dress suave for anything before, Cara had usually been the first kid to mock her for trying too hard, which had implied that Cara never tried. Did they not realise that this is a camp-out?! Or that a possum lives in that couch?
‘Wow, Finn!’ Cara exclaimed in greeting. ‘You didn’t ride all the way from the trailer park on the Peninsula for this, did you?’
Cling, trailer park… the words bit into Finn’s skin like shrapnel. But she’d had a lot of practice dealing with Cara’s prickly personality by then, so she cleared her throat before responding as cheerfully as she could manage: ‘With added weight to boot!’ She stepped toward the edge of the raised veranda and held out the gift-wrapped candle. ‘Happy birthday, Cara!’ She waved shyly at the other girls, before asking: ‘How come you’re all out here though, not-’
‘We needed a moment alone to discuss something privately,’ Cara said, making no move to reach for the gift and leaving Finn no choice but to awkwardly deposit it on one of the horizontal rails of the veranda, like a faithful subject leaving an offering for a deity. Finn hated the fact that she’d made such an awkward entrance, and that she was stuck down on the ground squinting up at them because she was already so much shorter than they were... but she kept her chin up regardless. They were teenage girls in her friend’s front yard after all- not queens in a castle tower- and she had to remember that!
‘Yeah,’ Mila Viti jerked a thumb in Bonnie’s direction then and half-mumbled: ‘Bonnie’s having boyfriend problems, so we’re having a summit meeting out here while he cools down back there...’
Finn tried not to outwardly react, though she had to bite her lip from asking: ‘Again?’ because Bonnie’s relationship with her long-term boyfriend Aaron was about as turbulent as a romance could get: high-school or otherwise. She knew saying: ‘Well then dump the bum already!’ wouldn’t help her earn a place in their squad though, so she said: ‘Ahhh...’ and smiled over at Bonnie, like she knew what having boyfriend problems was like. ‘What’s going-’
‘Yeah, so if you don’t mind…?’ Cara said, before turning her back like she’d slammed a door, making Finn recoil in surprise as Mila pressed her lips together and dropped her gaze to her phone, and Shelly looked away, making it difficult for Finn to tell if she was embarrassed for Finn- or by her.
Wow! Finn thought, stung- not only by Cara’s words, but by the fact that no one had contested them- not even her oldest friend, who hadn’t even said hello yet. That was low- even for her!
Bonnie Sullivan wasn’t renowned for her spine, but she was used to dealing with Cara too, so she leaned around her then and offered helplessly: ‘We’ll be around back in a few minutes, okay Finn?’ The corners of her lovely lips turned down in an ‘I’m sorry,’ grimace, but from behind her trendy red glasses, her green eyes screamed: ‘Run!’ ‘Tell Paige that when you see her, ‘kay?’
Everything that had previously been bright, light and hopeful inside Finn had already flickered out like a smothered flame, but she was grateful that Bonnie had at least attempted to soften her friend’s dismissal, so she nodded and turned away. ‘Will do…’ she mumbled, trying not to look like a mongrel dog that had been shooed away, even though they all knew that that was exactly what had just happened.
Don’t cry! She commanded herself after she felt her lower lip quiver. She was hurting, but she’d been through worse before- thanks to Bonnie actually- so she knew she could handle the pain without dissolving into tears so long as she breathed through it. Don’t you dare cry! Not tonight, and never EVER in front of them!
Finn was still welling up and probably would have let a tear slip free anyway had she not been distracted by a flash of white that shot through the sky right then, just to the left of Paige’s roof. She sucked in a startled breath because she’d never seen a shooting star during the day before, but instead of crying out to alert the others to the miracle she’d just seen, she closed her eyes and sent a prayer to the gods of shooting stars instead: ‘I wish to be surrounded by people who think I’m special!
Finn had sent that impassioned request out into the universe with as much feeling as she could muster, and for a fleeting moment, she actually believed that maybe she’d wished hard enough for it to actually come true...
But when she glanced back over her shoulder and saw that the others had gone back to their conversation like she’d ceased to exist... she couldn’t help but hope that wishes never came true, because if they did, she was pretty sure that she would have vanished off the face of the earth for the sake of granting everybody else’s.
*
Nothing about that evening played out the way Finn had hoped it would, so instead of swimming in the creek or going out to start a bonfire in the abandoned quarry that bordered the Hayes’ place, all they’d ended up doing was sitting around eating, drinking, and talking loudly over the rap music that was pounding out of the sou
nd system while everyone tried to pretend that the jealous fit Aaron had just pitched over Bonnie talking to one of Paige’s cousins wasn’t the most interesting thing going on.
At first Finn had felt merely bored, but as the hours passed and the sky darkened above, she became unbearably self-conscious about how much of an outsider she was, especially while the Hive all sat on one lounger together nearby near all the boys, laughing, taking group selfies and making it clear to all watching that they were special, and that Finn was not. Of course, Paige talked to her- when she remembered. But Paige was one of those girls who had always been one of the boys and she wasn’t used to having all of her cousins together at once, so she was too distracted by them to linger near any one person for long- Finn included. It was the same at school too, not because Paige had a lot of friends, but because she simply didn’t take school that seriously, so she tended to skip it at least once a week. And that was the reason why Finn had gotten accustomed to clinging onto the Hive- because she needed someone to eat lunch with when Paige was absent!
However, Finn knew that she wasn’t the only one having a rough night, and in a moment of desperation, she even approached Paige’s sister Hadley, eager to strike up a conversation with the stone-faced girl who’d been sitting alone in a corner nursing a rum and coke can since she’d stopped helping her father cook over the barbecue. Like her older sister, Hadley had always been given a hard time for being a ‘big’ girl, but unlike her older sister, Hadley hadn’t learned the value of threatening to knock people’s lights out when they did, so she was even more of a pariah in eighth grade than Finn was in ninth. In fact, things were apparently so bad for her that she’d been contemplating transferring to the small high school on the Shard Islands where she’d have her cousins around to protect her.
‘It’s weird, being out here with so many new faces around!’ Finn had said brightly, dragging a patio chair over so that she could sit with the younger girl. ‘Remember Paige’s tenth birthday? No one came, but we had the best time anyway, and spent all night playing tiggy in those big concrete pipes out in the quarry-’