And Then We Screamed exclusive first chapter
<<Opening credits of:
And Then We Screamed
documentary>
Five years ago, the small town of Maple Lakes effectively sealed itself off following an outbreak of inexplicable screaming among its teenage girls.
In an attempt to quell the contagion, the mayor passed an order banning any news organization from entering the town. Nobody has heard anything from almost all the original screamers since.
This year, our documentary crew was granted exclusive permission to interview those involved, to try and understand the circumstances that led to this nondescript town becoming an international news sensation.
Here’s the story they had to tell.
A CAUTION TO VIEWERS: You watch this documentary at your own risk. Knowing, by doing so, you make yourself vulnerable to screaming yourself. It’s still an extremely contagious behaviour, and viewers continue at their own discretion.
Clover Gray, former photographer for the Maple Lakes High School paper:
The first girl to scream was a cheerleader. Typical, really. I always wonder how differently things would’ve gone if someone less popular than Abigail Maiden had started screaming.
Brody Deacon, former editor of Maple Lakes High School paper:
Abigail Maiden wasn’t just a cheerleader; she was The Cheerleader. You know? The girl in school everyone wants to be. Until, of course, she screamed.
Clover:
That first scream still rings in my head sometimes just before I go to sleep. It was as terrifying as an emergency siren. In some ways, I guess it was one.
Mr Simon, former principal of Maple Lakes High School:
There was nothing about our school that was out of the ordinary. We were a good school, filled with good kids, in a good town. Every parent was happy to send their child there.
Clover:
Parents had no choice but to send their child there. It’s the only high school for miles. The town’s so small you can walk from one end of Maple Lakes to the other and not hit your daily step count.
<Patient Zero: Abigail Maiden>
Abigail Maiden:
<smooths down her blouse and flips her hair over her shoulder>
Hello, hello? Is the mic working okay? Yeah? All right… <sighs>
Off camera:
Are you okay, Abigail? If you need more time…
Abigail:
No, I’m fine. Thank you.
Off camera:
In your own words then, kindly talk us through what happened five years ago, on October 14th.
Abigail:
Right, thank you. So… <deep breath> Everything in life was going perfectly up until then. Travis and I had made things official over the summer, and he’d picked me up that morning in his new car. His parents had surprised him with a convertible for his eighteenth birthday. I felt like we were on a movie set. I even dressed the part, you know? I wore shades, and red lipstick, and wrapped my hair up in this silk scarf. I used to do things like that back then… <pauses> The weather was gorgeous. The maples were turning, and we drove to school with the top down, along roads lined with red leaves. Yes, it wasn’t ideal that we had our midterms that day, but my best friend, Emerald, and I had been up late studying the night before. Some of my class were losing their minds, because this was their first time taking an in-person test due to all the Covid disruption. Our school was making us take them all in the gym to build up our “test experience” and that made everyone freak out more. But I felt pretty con fident. French is my best subject because I spent a summer in Paris with my mom before we visited the Vatican. <Smiles and looks down>
Anyway, the morning was pretty unremarkable. It must’ve been Monday, because I remember we had homeroom, and then I went straight into the gym for the test. We each had our own little tables set out in alphabetical order. I remember I was sitting in the middle of the gym because my surname is “M”, so everyone was around me to see it…
And… Sorry…
Can I take a break? Sorry.
FIVE YEARS AGO…
OCTOBER 14
CLOVER
I hate French at the best of times. And by that, I mean when I’m eating a chocolate croissant on a Sunday morning, with Avery, in her old tree house, casting my usual love spell on Brody Deacon. Love the croissant. Love Avery. Love the tree house. Love our Sunday morning magic sessions. Hate the French bit.
“You are seventeen years of age,” she always says, sitting cross-legged on the wooden floor with our salt circle around us. “And you still can’t pronounce croissant.”
“I can.”
“You always put a ‘t’ on the end.”
“So?”
“So that’s not the French way.”
“To pronounce the actual letters in their words?”
“Exactly. It’s so not…chic to pronounce actual letters. You just allude to them, sexily.”
Anyway, even Avery breaking tradition and bringing croissants to homeroom this morning doesn’t cheer me up.
“Here’s a croissant with a ‘t’,” she says, unravelling it onto my desk with a flourish. It rolls out of the greasy paper from Le Petit Bakery and lands on my photography portfolio, erupting flakes of pastry everywhere. “And here’s a sprig of rosemary for extra luck.” She takes a bite of her own croissant and grins, while I pick up the rosemary and brush the pastry debris from my precious folder.
“Thank you, but I’m still going to fail, dude.”
“This is why finals are such a beautiful thing,” she reminds me, plopping down on the desk next to me. “Today’s midterms are just a starter pancake. Nobody eats the starter pancake.”
“Tell that to my atrocious GPA.” I dig my lacy sweater out of my bag. It’s sunny outside, but the temperature’s dropped in Maple Lakes this last week, like the weather got the memo that Starbucks has brought back pumpkin spice lattes. Not that we have a Starbucks in our town, but still.
Avery opens her notebook and scribbles nine dashes on a fresh page, starting a new game of Hangman. I tuck the rosemary sprig into my training bra and take a bite of croissant, leaning over to bark out random letters as she slowly executes a stickman. Homeroom fills up around us in the usual Monday chaos; people a bit angsty because of the midterms. The sun streams low through the long windows. Mike’s sitting atop his desk on the back row, spinning a basketball, his profile so clear against the reddening maple leaves outside that he looks like he’s on a coin. I hold up a finger to pause Avery, and reach down for my Nikon camera. I line up the shot and Avery smiles as I click.
“Thank God you’re on yearbook, otherwise that would’ve been creepy as hell,” she comments.
“Can you say that in French?”
“Not until this little guy is dead.”
I bark more letters at her, and groan when the man is hanged before I guess croissant. The bell rings but Miss Finley, our homeroom tutor, isn’t here yet. She’s rarely on time for any of her English classes either – one of the reasons she’s a firm favourite among students. A few people have books out for some last-minute cramming but I know that would freak me out further. So I finish my croissant and fight Avery for the only napkin to wipe my hands.
Abigail and Travis appear in the doorway, entwined like a pretzel and looking like movie stars. Abi’s wearing a retro headscarf and Travis pulls it off to get her attention. They start fully making out while everyone pretends not to look.
Avery rolls her eyes. “Do you think they might want everyone to know they’re in love?” she whispers.
“I think Abi wants us to know she’s in love about as much as she wants us to know she once spent a summer in Paris.”
“At least she knows how to say croissant properly.”
I thump Avery just as Miss Finley arrives behind them, coughing. “This isn’t a biology class,” she says, and Abigail blushes while her cheerleader friends clap her from the back row. I get a waft of her Parisian perfume as she passes me, face flushed, and dragging Travis along. It always feels a bit weird to be close to Abi – like you’re near someone famous.
Miss Finley slowly unpacks her bag onto her desk. “Settle down,” she tells us, without even looking up to check if we are settling. She’s our youngest teacher by miles and struggles not to be a “friend” rather than a teacher.
I twist around quickly to peek at Abigail and Travis kissing again. It’s not that I want to kiss Travis – he is way too alpha for my niche tastes. But I do really want to be kissed at some point in the near future, if the universe would possibly allow it. And I don’t want to be kissed by just anyone, but someone who is the editor of the school newspaper. Someone who has red hair, insurmountable numbers of freckles, and the best pair of arms that have ever existed on a person. Someone who is not in my homeroom, but in the one next door, because I know Brody’s entire schedule like an obsessed stalker.
“Okay, you really need to settle down now.” Miss Finley claps to shut us all up. “Right, we’ll take attendance and then I’ll run through the revised schedule for this week, which is all very different, as you’re well aware, due to midterms being in the gym. Please do not turn up to my English class this morning as you’re either supposed to be taking French or in study hall. I know my classes on Shakespeare are groundbreaking but still don’t turn up.”
We laugh good-naturedly at her teacher joke, then Miss Finley takes attendance while I zoom in on the shot of Mike. I smile. It’s perfect. In fact, it almost looks like a professional portrait and I get that zingy thrill I always get when I take pictures – that feeling that I’m thankfully good at something. The opposite of how I feel about my upcoming French test. My brother, River, hoovered up all the smart genes, alongside the sport and popular (and massive asshole) ones, leaving me to be the artistic sibling in a two-person gothic subculture with Avery. But I’d rather be the creative one right now because my yearbook photos give me an excuse to speak to Brody. Brody, as in, the love of my life if only he could hurry up and figure that out. Brody, the owner of such delicious arms that they should come with public liability insurance. Brody, the boy sitting on the other side of the wall, probably having deep, sexy, intellectual thoughts about media ethics and, annoyingly, not about how much he’s falling for me.
A note arrives on my desk just as Miss Finley tells us not to be nervous and how colleges are being understanding about Covid interrupting our studies. I see Avery grinning as I unfold the paper.
They’re definitely having sex.
She raises both eyebrows and nods her head backwards to confirm she means Abigail and Travis. I write back and push the paper to the edge of my desk.
With each other?
She sighs and rolls her eyes. I giggle and write again.
No way. Not Abigail. She’s saving her virginity for Jesus.
Avery stifles a laugh and rips the paper off me.
Jesus is all like, “Stop, honey, that’s not what I meant when I said save yourself for me. Put your pants back on.”
We both start giggling in that uncontrollable, silent way while Avery hides the note up her sleeve. Abigail’s virginal status is something the whole school is very aware of. Her father is the priest of the biggest church in our tiny town (which has three churches), so, obviously, Abigail has publicly pledged abstinence, wears a lot of white, and has never “put out” according to the various attractive boys she’s inevitably dated since she got pretty in eighth grade. Joel Hunter, one of River’s friends, publicly complained about it a lot last year, and Abigail dumped him for it, even though he was a senior. But her pledging hasn’t seemed to put any boy off , and she’s now, typically, dating the best-looking, richest boy on the basketball team to really cement the cliché – Travis.
I do not yearn to be popular, like River was, but I do think it would be quite nice to have Abi’s hair, a great body, and like conventional stuff . But I’m too scrawny and pale for such a life, and like my eyeliner too smudgy.
Miss Finley claps again.
“Right, the bell is about to go. Remember, those of you who take French elective, head to the gym. You have ten minutes to use the restrooms and put everything into your lockers. The rest of you, head to your study halls.”
There are inevitable groans as the bell rings. I nestle my camera back into its case and Avery and I steer ourselves to the restroom.
I need a nervous pee,” I explain as we push through the door. “Even though I went right before fi rst period.”
“It’s bad for your bladder to pee when you don’t need to pee.”
“You’re bad for my bladder,” I say, heading into the stall, smiling when I hear her crack up outside. “Aren’t you going to go?” I call out.
“No.”
“The test is two hours long, Avery.”
“I know.”
“You’ll have to put your hand up halfway through, and everyone will know you’re going to pee.”
She laughs again. “Okay, now you’ve made me need to go.”
I sometimes think the reason I’m so skinny is because Avery makes me laugh so hard that it’s basically a full-day workout. We spend so much time together in hysterics, hiding in her tree house, putting our crystals out to charge in the moonlight, and rewriting goth versions of Disney songs. I’ve always wanted a sister, especially as River and I have basically stopped talking, but I have Avery and that’s even better. We wash our hands and pace over to our lockers to dump our stuff , getting nervous. There’s a large clump of our classmates blocking the gym door. I overhear some guys discussing how hot Abi looks today and roll my eyes. I lean against a wall of lockers, knowing not to bother looking for Brody because he takes Spanish. Our vice-principal Mr Giles is guarding the gym doors.
“Are tigers male or female?” I ask Avery.
She sniggers.
“No, seriously!”
“Why would tigers come up in our test?”
“You never know. Are they male or female in France?”
“Well, quite clearly they’re both, that’s how they breed.”
There’s this deep warmth in my stomach. Life is much better since River fi nally started college. He’s away. Mom’s in remission. I’m getting really good at photography. And, no, Brody hasn’t declared his undying love for me just yet, but that’s only because he’s so distracted with his journalistic genius. Things are better. Okay even. Good, sometimes. On the days I’m able to block out what happened.
Abigail’s voice floats over the rabble. “I’m not nervous at all,” she’s telling Travis, while he wraps his arms around her like he’s a human sweater. “I’m basically fluent since I spent that summer in Paris.”
Mr Giles announces it’s time to file in and we’re jostled towards the door. “In silence, please,” he barks.
“Let me rub you for good luck, Clover,” Avery says, reaching over to rub my arm. “See you on the other side.”
We enter the tense quietness of the gym, glancing down at the little squares of paper on each desk that have our names on. People start finding their places and scraping their chairs back. A strange chill ripples down my spine that I put down to nerves. After years of online teaching during Covid, I’ve never experienced a proper test before. Abigail sits down delicately and flips her hair back, watching the rest of us mortals blunder about. She looks so pretty that I wish I had my camera to capture her, until someone bumps into me and I go find my seat.
I start rubbing my lucky charm necklace – the silver four-leaf clover Avery got me for my sixteenth. Teachers place the papers face down in front of us, while Mr Giles explains how long we have, and that we can’t cheat, obviously. Then, much too soon, he’s saying, “You may begin.” There’s the rustling sound of dozens of papers being turned over, and a collective sigh as we all attack the first question. I scan it – my heartbeat racing – and giggle in despair when I see the first set of questions is about a day trip to the zoo. It turns out I do need to know the French gender of tigers after all. Which I don’t, so I systematically go through the paper, working out which questions I can answer pretty easily, and which ones I’m going to have to return to later. Ten minutes go by. I reckon I’m going to scrape a pass. Another ten minutes go by. Okay, maybe a good scrape? That second section was all stuff I know. The air in the hall has a fizzing energy of deep concentration now we’ve all settled into the paper. The scratch of pens fills the room. There’s the odd cough. Teachers pace up and down, arms behind their backs. I shiver again and pull down the sleeves of my lacy sweater, reading my last answer under my breath, when…
The room’s ripped apart by the most horrifying scream.
A scream like someone is being murdered. It strangles the room. I jolt in my chair, clutching my thumping heart. And, there, right in the middle of the hall, is Abigail Maiden, sitting straight at her desk, her mouth open. Her eyes are glazed over, unblinking, and she’s screaming, and she’s screaming, and she’s screaming.
She won’t stop.
Mr Giles dashes over. “Abigail, Abigail?” he calls out, but she can’t seem to hear him. Her eyes stare straight ahead, her screams getting louder. He puts both hands on Abi’s shoulders. “Stop it, Abi,” he shouts. “Stop it.”
Abigail startles and the whole hall jumps with her. I grab my clover necklace and rub it. Then she stops, blinking like she’s coming out of a coma, and immediately starts crying.
“What’s happening?” she calls out.
My eyes find Avery’s across the confused gym. Her pale face is whiter than I’ve ever seen it. She mouths, “What the hell?” Travis stands up between us.
“Sit down, Travis,” Mr Giles barks. “Abigail, it’s all right, come with me.” He offers his hand and she takes it, stumbling up from her desk. “I said, sit down, Travis.”
But Travis is still up. “Baby, are you okay?”
“She’s fine. These are still test conditions. I mean it, Travis. Sit. Now.”
Abigail’s weeping softly and doesn’t even acknowledge her boyfriend. She buries herself into Mr Giles’s sweater-vest and he pats her awkwardly.
“Follow me, it’s all right, it’s all right.” He starts to lead her out of the gym. “Everyone back to your papers,” he instructs. But what he’s asked of us is impossible. I can still hear Abigail’s scream in my spine. Travis stays standing, his fists clenched, staring at the door, until another teacher tells him to sit, and he finally sort of slumps uselessly back onto his seat. Abi’s empty chair almost throbs in the middle of the room and we all stare at it.
Someone starts snort-laughing and it spreads like smoke.
“What was that?” someone calls out.
“Shh,” Mrs Greeves, a drama teacher says.
But she’s ignored. The whispers get louder. A girl next to me laughs and mutters, “OMG,” and a few people join in, while my pencil shakes in my hand.
“Settle down now,” Mrs Greeves calls out over the gym, though she looks equally freaked out. “Everyone, come on. You have twenty-five minutes left.”
We settle, but nobody writes anything. We all just make eyes at one another and keep twisting around to look at the door. But Abigail doesn’t return. Every few minutes, someone starts giggling or whispering “She’s on drugs”, but I can’t seem to find it funny. The ghost of Abigail’s scream haunts the air. I feel it in my blood, though that doesn’t make sense. I clench my fist and shake it out to quell the peculiar prickling in my hand.
My midterm is forgotten. The scream’s still in my head, like the vibrations of a gong waiting to still. And, despite the unease lacing itself through my body, I have one happier thought. I need to tell Brody immediately.
Pre-order an exclusive copy of And Then We Screamed here.
First published in the UK in 2026 by Usborne Publishing Limited, Usborne House, 83-85 Saffron Hill, London, EC1N 8RT, England, Usborne.com