Project X was released by Wayward Ink Press on 23 September. It's available for purchase from
Wayward Ink Press
Amazon
To give you a taste of what you'll find inside the covers, I've written a prologue, introducing the two main characters, This scene is mentioned in the book, but only briefly, from one POV. I think this might give you a little more insight into what's going on, on the inside.
This is an exclusive preview, so enjoy
MATTHEW
“For God’s sake, keep your eyes on the road.”
“But have you seen those
spires. Look at the windows! Shit, Matthew, we’re going under an arch.”
“We go under an arch to get to the supermarket, Cory.”
“That’s a railway bridge, it doesn’t count.”
“It’s still an architectural masterpiece.”
“If you like that kind of thing. Oh my God look at that! It looks even more like Hogwarts than in the
pictures.”
I had to groan at that. Cory’s been on about Hogwarts for weeks. If I’d
known he would get so Harry Potter™ fangirl on me, I’d have chosen an
ultra-modern university – all chrome and glass. I’d actually chosen one,
despite having taken the Oxford / Cambridge entrance exam. Even though they’re
the two best and most prestigious universities in the UK, I wasn’t keen on
going. I’m a working class boy through and through and brushing shoulders with
the upper echelons of society, with their cut glass accents and inbred
arrogance, didn’t appeal at all.
Cory told me over and over that it wasn’t like that anymore, and anyway
my prejudices about the upper classes were irrational and foundless. Just
because someone spoke with a posh accent and was heir to a fortune, didn’t mean
they were a bad person. I listened to what he had to say, shook my head and
went back to grumbling about being made to feel inferior. It didn’t help that
Cory infuriatingly pointed out that any feelings of inadequacy and inferiority
would be down to me, not them, and I should at least give it a chance.
Unfortunately we’d both passed the exam, and Cory was so crestfallen when
I tried to talk him out of going, I’d finally given in. I always do.
Cory was my very best buddy. We’d been friends forever, although we were
an unlikely couple, I have to say. Before anyone gets the wrong idea, ‘couple’
means ‘pair of friends’. We were mistaken for boyfriends often enough but,
although Cory’s gay – and I always said if I ever took a walk on the gay side
it would be with him – I’m straight as they come.
I’d like to say I was a one woman man, and had a steady girlfriend since
junior school. That’s definitely what I wanted – a steady relationship, leading
to marriage, a nice house, a couple of children and a dog. Unfortunately, it
had never quite worked out that way, and the longest relationship I’d had that far
was six months. I thought that one was going to last, until I got the ‘long
distance relationships don’t work, and university changes people’, talk the
week before. Ah well, there’s a lot to be said for starting over with a clean
slate. So there I was, young free and single and about to launch on the
greatest adventure of my life.
It didn’t really start right then, though because we’re only there to
look around and make the final decision about whether we wanted to come here.
If there had ever been a chance we wouldn’t, it evaporated the instant Cory
caught sight of the elegant gothic buildings, and had long gone by the time we
passed under the arch and followed the signs for the visitors’ car park.
It was a mistake to let Cory drive. His eyes were everywhere but on the
road, and how we managed to get to the car park without swerving onto the
immaculate lawns, or hitting something, I’ll never know. Fortunately, the car
park was almost empty. We were early, of course. Cory wanted to leave at some
ridiculous time, like five am, but I managed to contain him for a couple of
hours.
The car rattled and hissed, as we chugged to a highly relieving halt. I
think it was furthest my poor old banger had ever gone, and she was as glad to
arrive as we were. Bless her, she was a bit of a wreck even then, but she was reliable,
and even if she wasn’t pretty, she was all mine. Well, mine and Cory’s. We’d
saved up together and paid half each. Not that it would have mattered. We were
so close we tended to treat just about everything we owned as joint property.
Except the computers.
Cory’s a computer genius. He’s seriously amazing with anything to do with
computers, from building them, to writing his own code and designing websites
and games. Most of our friends, as well as pretty much everyone in both
families, has a website or blog designed and set up by Cory. They’re not all
well maintained or even used, but they’re there. It’s a testament to his
persuasive techniques that even my great-grandmother has a blog, on which she posts
recipes and embarrassing photographs of the family; present and past. She might
be the only eighty year old in the country to know her way around the internet
so well. She’s researching our family tree, and has more friends on facebook™
than I do.
The crazy thing is, that Cory’s genius doesn’t stop there. He’s also
freakishly talented at science, especially biochemistry. He actually worked in
a real lab in the last year of ‘A’ levels and did some kind of advanced course
instead of the bog standard syllabus. I’m totally convinced that one day he’s
going to build a cyborg, and I’m not the only one. Characteristically, Cory’s
coy about his talents and had no confidence in his ability to be the first
person to crack the whole ‘organic/mechanical fusion’ thing.
One of the reasons he was so keen to go to that particular university,
was because they’d created a personalized syllabus, so he could study both his
passions together. I bet the professors were creaming their pants over him. Not
literally, I hope. The last thing I needed was to get involved in a professor/student
scandal, and Cory was more than capable of getting into trouble without ever
seeing it coming. It’s not just his eyes that are short-sighted.
“Come on, Matthew, let’s have a look around. Maybe we can find the
science labs. Oh.” He paused and peered at me, his startlingly blue eyes round
behind thick lenses. “The Law Department as well, of course, and the library.”
“That’s what the tour’s for,” I said, laughing at his expression which
was a mixture of eagerness and frustration. He was like a kid in a candy store,
and had no idea where to go, or what to look for first. I knew what was going
on inside that head of his. His mind was racing in about a million directions
at the same time, and he was having a hard time remembering I was even there,
and that my interests lay elsewhere.
As we stood, procrastinating, a loud screech startled us both, and we
looked up, as one, to see sleek, black car heading our way. It skidded on the
gravel and threw up a spray that spattered our lower legs with dust as it came
to a stop, hardly more than an arm’s length away. Why, with a whole car park to
choose from, did it have to land next to us?
For a moment, the car crouched, purring and seeming to watch us with its blacked
out eyes that twinkled and flashed in the morning sunshine. Then the engine
cut. The air continued to pulse with its sound for a few moments, before true
silence fell and we could hear laughter from somewhere in the distance.
The silence stretched until it became oppressive. Who was in the car, and
why didn’t they come out?
“Why doesn’t anyone get out?” Cory whispered and, as if he’d summoned
something, the doors opened and four people spilled out, laughing and talking
in loud voices. How had we not heard them from inside?
My attention was caught by the two girls, who had been in the back seat.
They were the epitome of everything I’d dreaded about attending that
university. They were loud, brash, and beautiful with shrill, cut-glass accents
and short skirts. Everything about then, from their flashy shoes, to the
careless swish of their hair and the sunglasses perched artfully on their
heads, screamed ‘designer’, and careless chic. They wore their wealth and
privilege like badges, emblazoned on everything they did.
Beside me, Cory gasped and my attention immediately transferred to the
driver of the car, who had emerged silently, slightly later than the rest. My
curious gaze met cool green eyes that stole my breath. I had, and have, never
seen anyone so perfect in all my life. The girls were clones, typical specimens
of the ‘in crowd’, but him…
Long black hair hung to below his shoulders in a sleek waterfall of silk,
broken by an inch wide streak of brilliant blue at the right front. The
stunning hair framed a face that could have graced the cover of Vogue™ or gazed
down from a catwalk. He was breathtakingly beautiful, with slanting emerald
eyes and flawless, china-pale skin.
The boy’s emerald green eyes caught and pinned me so that I could do
nothing but gape, unable for some reason to look away. Cory nudged me, but I
ignored him. I was afraid that if I broke the gaze, even to blink, the boy
would be gone. I didn’t know why I cared, but I did.
“Matthew.”
Finally. I had to give in to Cory’s insistence, and I glanced at him with
a frown on my face. “What?”
“You’re catching flies.”
I growled at him and turned back to the boy.
“Do come on, Morgan,” someone called. “I’m getting dirt all over my
Vuittons. They’ll be ruined. And I’m parched, darling. We really must find
somewhere decent to get a drink soon, or I’m sure I’ll die.”
Was I mistaken or did a flash of anger cross his face? If it had, it was
quickly replaced by something else. I took it as arrogance and distain,
although I wondered about that later. Right then it made me angry. How dare he?
How dare they? Was I so far beneath them they wouldn’t even deign to
acknowledge our presence?
“Nice to meet you, too,” I called after them as they walked away. No one
so much as glanced in our direction.
“Wow,” Cory said when the little group had disappeared.
“Yeah. See why I didn’t want to come here? This place is going to be
crawling with people like that. Are they really the sort of people you want to
spend the next three years with?”
“I’m sure they’re not all that bad,” Cory said, but he sounded shaken and
the certainty had leaked from his voice.
“Come on,” I said, even angrier that the rude arrogance of those plastic
people, had upset my friend. “Let’s find someone who can point us in the right
direction.”
Cory tore his eyes from the place where the group had disappeared, and
gave me a weak smile. “Can we look for the labs first?”
“We can spend all day in the labs if you want. It’s not as if it makes
much difference to me what the lecture rooms in the Law Department look like.”
Cory brightened immediately, and in moments was babbling again, as he
dragged me across the car park to what looked like a main entrance.
MORGAN
The mindless chatter was driving me insane, not to mention the laugh. Oh
God, the laugh! I have no idea what I was thinking, going out with Sarah
Blythe-Carter. She was a nightmare, especially on long car journeys. With
hindsight, I should have insisted we stay at mine the night before, but Sarah’s
friend was having a party in the City, so we crashed there. Driving for over an
hour, with a hangover is bad enough, without that irritating bray from the back
seat sounding like a klaxon in my ear every five minutes.
I don’t even know why I took her on the visit. It’s not as if she was
going to be attending the university – or any university. Her intelligence
wasn’t her outstanding feature. In fact, she didn’t have many outstanding
features, other than that her family was rich enough, and prestigious enough
for her not to be intimidated by mine.
Of course, I’d dated…less well connected girls – boys too – but their
tendency to get overawed and over-impressed was irritating and frustrating.
Better to stick with my own class, as Father continually reminded me. Not that
I cared what Father said, or thought, but I got enough shit from him as it was.
It just wasn’t worth it. He did too good a job driving away interesting
prospects, and it was embarrassing.
The problem was, I got bored. None of them was a challenge anymore, and
they were all the same. The whole scene was a hot-bed of politics and in-jokes.
It seemed as if everyone constantly had knives drawn ready to plunge into
someone’s back; often their best friend, at least former best friend. I can’t,
be bothered with it all: never could.
It was better when my mother was alive. We used to go to parties together,
and we’d conspire to circumvent Father’s radar with ‘unsuitable’ dates. Of
course, I was only a kid then, and it was all for laughs, not because I was
seriously looking for someone. I had a lot of fun with a lot of people –
innocent, of course.
After she died everything changed. A big part of that was in me. She died
in a car accident, and I blamed myself. Of course, I knew deep down I wasn’t to
blame, not really, but Father never missed an opportunity to reinforce the ides
I was. It sucked the joy out of my life and I’d searched for it ever since.
I certainly wasn’t going to find it with Sarah. I’d got to the point
where if she’d mentioned her bloody Louis Vuitton shoes again I might have
killed her.
My head was pounding when I turned into the university and I almost
missed the sign for the car park. The tyres screeched as I took the turn too
tightly and I skidded on the gravel. I almost didn’t see the other car until I
stopped in a cloud of dust, right next to it.
I sat with my head on the top of the steering wheel, getting the pounding
under control. My head pulsed with the racing of my heart. In normal
circumstances the thrill would have excited me, but that day it made me
nauseous, and it set the harpie off again.
“What the hell were you doing, Morgan? You almost killed us. If you
wanted to get my attention you could just have called. Or were you hoping I’d
end up in your lap?”
I raised my face in time to catch her leering in the mirror, and shuddered.
A break up was looming in the very near future. I couldn’t stand another day
with let – let alone a night. To say last night had been a let-down was being
more than kind to the girl. Insipid was a word that sprang to mind.
Wanting nothing more than to get away from her, I got out of the car,
vaguely aware she was bitching about her shoes again – then I saw him.
There were two of them, standing next to most battered wreck of a car I’d
ever seen. I barely registered the blonde one, but the other….
He was tall, like me, with shaggy, honey brown hair and the most amazing blue
eyes I’ve ever seen. I thought, at first they were contacts, but I found out
later they weren’t.
I can’t put my finger on what exactly it was about this boy that
fascinated me so much, but I just couldn’t look away. He was dressed casually
in jeans and a sweater and there was absolutely nothing about him that stood
out…except that there was. There was something.
Maybe it was the startled expression in his eyes that nevertheless suggested
he’d never be intimidated by anything. Maybe it was the way he carried himself,
or the way his full lips quirked, and later compressed in a disapproving line.
Maybe that’s what did it. He disapproved of me. I love it when someone
disapproves of me.
Everything about the boy shouted ‘challenge’ and that was something I
hadn’t had in a long time.
If it hadn’t been for the sun, slanting off the many windows surrounding
us, I might have stood there longer, and maybe even worked out what it was
about the boy that had struck such a chord in me. As it was, the sunlight hurt
and I had to put my sunglasses on. That small action was enough to break the
connection and it was as if a curtain fell.
It’s strange but it was almost like we’d been in a bubble. Everything
around me had faded – except the bloody sun, thank you very much – and now it
all crashed in on me again. Sarah’s complaining cut through my head like a
knife and the boy flicked her a glance, turning away toward his friend.
There was something about the way they looked at each other than made me
think they were more than friends, and the realization cut me deeper than
Sarah’s bleating. Oh well. I knew he was a challenge, and I’d never let being
in a relationship deter me from trying – whether it was them or me who was
already with someone.
I have to admit, though, as I turned away, I couldn’t help being envious
of the way they looked at each other, and casually touched. It was as if it was the
most natural thing in the world, which of course it was, rather than carefully
calculated and socially acceptable. They didn’t even seem aware they were doing
it. It must be nice to have a friend like
that I thought as I reluctantly followed Sarah in search of something to
quench my thirst. Of course, it could only quench one kind of thirst. I was
going to have to work on the rest.
