Just a Kiss

* * * Preview of Rewritten Chapter One * * *

D R A F T

Rewritten Chapter One

Kissing Strangers

Clara yanked open the curtains on her new dorm and gazed down at the beams of golden light from the wrought-iron streetlamps lining the quad below. The campus had already blown every state school she’d toured out of the water. Whitley College was more esteemed than Harvard, harder to get into than Stanford, and more expensive than half the Ivy Leagues combined. Famed for its secretive selection criteria, even celebrities couldn’t buy their way in.

There was only one problem. Clara had never applied.

She dropped the curtains and moved to the door. Not the front. The one leading to her own private balcony, because apparently if you’re rich enough, you get a balcony off your dorm room. She stepped outside into the cool evening air. Deep indigo sky shifted with fog overhead, cocooning around the campus in a softly echoing blanket.

But Clara didn't feel like sleeping. Her head rattled with thoughts. Tomorrow was freshman orientation and she was too excited to lie down. Excited, and nervous.

It was weird. She’d spent the summer after graduation researching, but the school was so secretive, even the deepest Google dives hadn’t brought her more than cursory results.

Even weirder?

She’d had good grades all through high school. But all three of the state schools she’d applied to had turned her down. One after another, her hopes were dashed.

Then the Whitley College acceptance letter came in the mail and she thought it was some kind of joke. Especially when she saw the scholarship offer.

What else could she do?

Of course she took it.

Now, standing there on that balcony overlooking the foggy courtyard between stately stonework buildings, it felt all-the-more surreal. In the center of the quad was a winding garden of hedges like at some sort of old-fashioned estate.

The campus was oddly empty. Above the buildings across the way, stadium lights gleamed and the distant ringing of an announcer’s voice echoed through the fog. That must have been where everyone was.

Gazing down at that hedge maze, she felt a strange longing to see it up close.

Clara glanced back into her room. She’d only just finished unpacking. She was tired from a long day of traveling. There was nothing she wanted to do more than lie down.

But her head was buzzing.

And the longer she stood there, the stronger the urge was. One moment she was standing on her balcony, the next she had slipped out the front door and down across the quad and into the shadows of a foggy night.

Up close, the hedge maze was taller than she’d expected. Its dark walls towered over her as she found the nearest opening and stepped inside. The fog was even deeper here, the damp smell of wet earth thickening with every step.

The ground sloped downward the further she walked into the maze. Soon the shrubs were so tall overhead, the light from the streetlamps was only a distant, golden glow.

It was pitch dark where she stood. So dark she could only continue forward by trailing one hand along the wall of cool leaves at her side.

But like a siren’s call, the maze called her deeper. The light of the entrance had disappeared behind her. Deeper still, until she didn’t remember which way she had come.