Enter a dark dystopian world of wedding charms and dating apps that have gone too far in SO HAPPY FOR YOU, the utterly unique, dark and hilarious new thriller from Celia Laskey… scroll down for an exclusive extract!
**SPOILERS AHEAD**
Ellie was standing there holding a glass of water. “You must be dying of thirst. I’m sorry I forgot to leave any beverages in the closet.”
I grabbed the glass from her and brought it to my lips as fast as possible, greedily guzzling as water spilled out the sides and dripped down my chin. The glass was empty almost immediately.
Ellie clapped her hands and laughed. “That was too easy.”
A weird sinking feeling pulled at my body, like the earth’s gravity had gotten stronger. I put a hand on the bed to steady myself. “What was too easy?”
“You’ve got to hydrate,” she said, imitating me with a hand on her hip and a pointer finger in my face.
I swallowed a mouthful of spit, then touched my throat. “What was in the water, Ellie?”
She batted her long, false eyelashes at me. “Just a little bit of poison.”
It felt like I was zooming through the floor and the soil and the layers of rock beneath that and the core of the earth until I busted through the other side, upside down. Fuck, fuck, fuck. I had never made myself puke before, but if there was any time for it, it was probably now. I stuck my pointer and middle fingers down my throat but couldn’t get myself to gag.
“Don’t bother with that,” Ellie said, leaning down and rubbing my back. “It’s already in your system. But don’t worry, it’s slow-acting. You won’t feel any symptoms for twelve hours, probably. And by that time I’ll have given you the antidote.”
I took a breath. “There’s an antidote?”
“Of course, silly.” She booped my nose with her pointer finger. “I wouldn’t just flat-out poison you.”
“Right,” I said. “That would be crazy.”
“If you hadn’t tried to escape I wouldn’t have had to do this,” Ellie said admonishingly. “Just stay until the end of the reception, then I’ll give you the antidote—as long as you don’t try anything else. No more escape attempts. No telling anyone—that includes the police. They wouldn’t know what kind of antidote to give you anyway, since I wouldn’t tell them what poison I used.”
The falling sensation had lessened to the point that I was finally able to stand up. My brain suddenly kicked into gear like the power turning back on after a temporary outage. “I’m not sure I believe you.”
“Rob, I’ll give you the antidote, I promise.” She held her pinky out to me.
I waved her off. “No, I’m not sure if I believe there was poison in that water at all.”
She smiled and looked me dead in the eyes. “If you think I’m lying, you’re free to leave.” She made a Vanna White gesture with her arm in the direction of the door.
I stepped past her and gripped the cool metal doorknob, then turned back to look at her, searching her face for some kind of tell.
She held her features completely still, statuesque.
We stayed like that, each waiting for the other to call our bluff, for a full minute. Half of me thought Ellie would never poison me, and the other half thought she definitely would. This was the person who’d been my friend longer than anyone else; the person who had made me feel so safe when I was at my most vulnerable; the person who was second on my iPhone Favorites, right under Aimee. On the other hand, this was the person who had been shoved toward marriage her whole life; the person who seemed like she was coming unhinged bit by bit over the course of the weekend; the person who had slit a rabbit’s throat the night before. I could hold out until late tonight. Aimee would understand when I told her the story. If I was alive to tell her. If she was alive to hear it. I begrudgingly let go of the doorknob.
Celia Laskey’s dark and gripping new thriller SO HAPPY FOR YOU is out in hardback, eBook and audio. Get your copy here.
