We nod briskly.
‘Got it. Okay, everyone act normal,’ Josh whispers, taking a sweeping and exaggerated step forward.
A puff of laughter escapes me at the idea of normal. Normal is a distant memory.
The path we’re walking on is wooden, criss-crossed with graffiti and strange scratches – all part of the theme, I assume. It forks off into three different directions at the end, with signs pointing to the Jungle, Maggie’s Field, and the other to the Firecrest stage.
‘I’m gonna run straight to Jungle, then to Yellow Camp if they follow me,’ Owen says quietly. ‘Nora and Elliot, you head to Maggie’s Field, and Hennie and Josh can go to the Firecrest stage. If you split up too, it’ll be easy enough to lose them there.’
Josh salutes, bouncing on his heels as he walks. ‘Aye.’
‘Alright, see you at Rolo’s, team.’
We reach the end of the path and hesitate for a moment, people immediately bristling at the disturbance in pedestrian flow and stepping around us. The air around us seems to still as we wait.
‘Scatter!’ Owen hisses. Before he’s even finished the word, I feel my arm being torn to my right as Elliot takes off at a furious pace and my legs stumble trying to keep up with him. I squeal with the surge of adrenaline, gripping onto the drumstick for dear life, and try not to think about how many people are staring at us in bewilderment.
‘Come on, princess,’ Elliot encourages me as my breath starts to rush out in pathetic huffs.
We run past a section of toilets and fly straight under a flowery pink and yellow painted sign that reads:Maggie’s Field.
‘Be careful!’I shout as Elliot pulls me around a set of parents clutching toddlers and children.
Joyful shouts and sudden screeching hits us from all sides, and I recall that Maggie’s Field is the area created specifically for children and families. To my left I see a sprawling sandpit, a cinema tent and a playground hosting perilously long swings hanging freely from tree branches.
Elliot slows his pace as the path inevitably starts to fill with more and more children and prams. I turn around to check if the girls followed us after all, and see the flurry of long blond hair move towards us in the crowd.
‘Yep, they’re following us,’ I confirm with a glare, as Elliot continues to weave us quickly but carefully through the endless horde.
‘Shit,’ he snarls. ‘Let’s head straight to the Green Camp and hope we lose them there.’
He takes a sharp right and takes off down another path brimming with people, his gaze turning to check me over briefly in an imperceptible flash of blue.
Leading us both to the very edge of the path, he expertly darts and weaves between endless groups of people. The crowd is less dense on the edge of the paths, but it means more work and moving around to avoid colliding with someone.
I feel my body suddenly start to topple backwards as my foot slides on something under me. My other hand grabs onto Elliot’s wrist in a panic, catching myself just in time before I land directly on a mayonnaise-drenched carton. He pauses mid-step to steady me and pulls me back upright firmly.
‘You okay?’
I nod breathlessly. ‘Thanks.’
Without responding, he turns and continues to move through the crowds.
‘Do you have a visual?’ he calls back to me.
‘Do I have awhat?’
‘Can you see them?’ he barks.
Turning back to assess our surroundings, there’s only a blur of dozens and dozens of faces I don’t recognise.
‘I can’t tell!’ I report.
The Maggie’s Fields’ exit leads straight into the Green Camp, and I look around us to spot a batch of food stalls and toilets sitting just before a never-ending rolling hill of tents. Elliot moves us to the side as his gaze darts around the area, his chest rising and falling heavily.
‘We need to hide,’ he says with a frown.
‘We can’t keep running?’
