var skimlinks_settings = {
noskim: true
};
Regardless of what the calendar says, there’s a certain subset of people already counting down the days until fall. Summer’s long days and winter’s cozy nights do nothing to quiet the all-consuming craving for Gilmore Girls rewatches, Nancy Meyers movie marathons, and—my personal favorite—books that somehow hit even harder with a chill in the air. The moment Labor Day passes, my bookshelf is overflowing with dark academia novels, cozy fantasies, and, of course, a classic Halloween mystery.
While there’s still a little time before it’s officially fall, I have the perfect treat to tide you over. We’re excited to share an exclusive excerpt from Aashna Avachat’s upcoming novel, Mischief Girls. Ahead, discover everything you need to know about what’s sure to be one of the most talked-about mysteries of the season, plus an exclusive sneak peek at the book.
Every school has its secrets—but at the exclusive Ellison College, the past might prove deadly—in this twisty puzzlebox mystery.
About the author
Aashna Avachat is a writer, reader, and lawyer from California. She studied English and Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley and law at Harvard Law School. She is also the author of Love Craves Cardamom. When she’s not working, she’s probably reading on a sunny patch of grass, going on long walks to grocery stores, or being cozy with one of her many foster cats. Visit her online at aashnaavachat.com.
What is Mischief Girls about?
30 YEARS AGO: three students walked into the woods surrounding Ellison College, and only one came out. They became known as the Mischief Girls, and their case was never solved.
HALLOWEEN WEEK, MODERN DAY: Ellison freshman Raina isn’t interested in digging into the past. To combat her personal demons, she volunteers at Night Walk, a campus program dedicated to helping students get home safely. Until one night, Raina escorts a fellow freshman to her dorm…only to learn that the girl disappeared before she ever made it through the door.
NOW: With the help of the missing girl’s stepbrother, Raina begins to investigate. But when the pair of them discover that she’d been looking into the Mischief Girls murders prior to her vanishing, the case suddenly becomes much more complicated.
From professors’ offices to state penitentiaries, Raina relentlessly hunts down the truth. But if she wants to find it, she’ll have to accept that maybe what happened to the missing girl didn’t begin the night she disappeared.
Maybe it all started 30 years ago, in the woods.
Exclusive excerpt from Mischief Girls by Aashna Avachat
“My mouth tastes disgusting,” I tell Landon in the morning.
They shake a bottle of Gatorade. “I need to be in bed alllll day.”
Our room is dim, the blinds drawn against the morning—well, noon—light. Clothes from our costume deliberations are strewn across the floor, and makeup, hair gel, and body glitter clutter our desks. My nightstand is piled high with loose jewelry. I yawn and brush my teeth extra-long before crawling back into bed, bringing the covers up over my eyes.
“There was a guy last night,” I mumble to Landon.
“Who?” I can hear them turn over in bed. Landon and I met during Ellison’s summer program (they were here to start training with the orchestra early), and we decided to room together once the semester started. It feels like I’ve known them longer than I really have.
I poke my head out of my comforter. “He was at the taco truck when we were downtown, and then also at the LaSo party. We talked for a bit. He was cute—like, really cute. I gave him my number, but he hasn’t texted me.”
“Name?” Landon waggles their eyebrows.
“I never got it,” I admit. “I was a little out of it.”
They sit up in bed, suddenly energized. “Well, what do you remember? Height? Hair color? Eye color?”
I laugh. “Are you the DMV?”
“Ellison is small. I bet we could find him. We’ll look at photos people posted last night. He’s gotta be somewhere in them.”
“Wait. That’s such a good idea!” I find my phone on my nightstand and click it open. There’s a text in the Night Walk chat from Theo asking if someone can swap shifts with him tonight—apparently he has a date—but still nothing from Taco Truck Boy.
I swipe Theo’s text aside, open Instagram, and head to the LaSo account, then to all the photos tagging them.
“He was tall, brown, with really dark eyes and eyelashes, and short but, like, soft hair,” I say. “He was wearing an Ellison sweatshirt.” I pause. “That’s honestly all I’ve got. Oh, and he was gorgeous.”
Landon snorts. “Very helpful. I’ll show you every hot guy I see.”
I grin and settle into bed, scrolling through the photos, and I see one with me and Abigail in the background. It’s a photo of Poppy, posing in her Tinker Bell costume. The number by the heart symbol jumps out at me: twelve thousand likes.
That’s when I realize where I recognized Poppy from: the internet. I remember hearing that an influencer was starting at Ellison in our class. I scroll through her posts. Poppy does lifestyle photos and vlogs, daily videos of her making breakfast, going to the gym, doing her makeup. No wonder she’s been too busy to hang out with us plebs. She has a sort of effortless beauty about her. I wonder if she gets hungover, too, or if she woke up today looking as beautiful and pristine as she does in her morning routine vlogs. I’ve just hit the button to follow her when Landon gasps.
“Did you find him?”
Landon shakes their head. “No, uh. An Ellison student is missing.”
“What?”
“Someone in our year. People are reposting a graphic her RA shared. She hasn’t been seen in over forty-eight hours. And she lives on campus, so that’s concerning.”
I blink. “Oh, shit. Can you send me the post? I’ll share it, too. Maybe Night Walk can spread it on our socials.”
They nod, and a moment later, my phone buzzes with the text. I click it open and enlarge the image, and a chill spreads through my body.
“Oh my god.” The words catch in my throat and come out croaky. “I know her.”
Landon sits up like they did when I told them about the guy, but this time, their face is contorted in concern. “You do? Anika Mehta?”
Hearing her name out loud makes it all the more real. “She came into Night Walk the other day. When—when did she go missing?”
“It says she was last seen Thursday. She never came home that night.”
A weight settles in the pit of my stomach. “No. I saw her Thursday. I walked her home. I— How—?”
Panic creeps into me. I walked a girl home, and now she’s missing. And, according to Landon, she never even made it all the way back. Which means—in the time between my dropping her off and however long it would have taken her to get to her room, something happened. Something bad.
I rack my brain, but now I can’t remember: Did I check to make sure she went inside before I turned around? Did I make sure nobody followed her in?
Was this my fault?
I see Anika in my mind’s eye, replaced by Maya. Anika could be someone’s younger sister. How would I feel if Maya didn’t make it home one day? Fear racks my body. I was supposed to protect her.
Landon is at my side in a moment. “Hey,” they say gently. “Don’t jump to conclusions.”
My hand is shaking until Landon takes it. “How can I not?” All of me is shaking now, with a memory tugging at the edges of my mind that I really, really don’t want to remember. “Nothing like this has happened to me before.”
But that’s not true, and I know it.
“It was literally my job.” I add. “Like, the job I get paid to do.”
Landon rubs my wrist. “Breathe. Think about it this way. You can tell the people looking for her that you saw her Thursday night, and maybe you can help them get more information. Right?” They squeeze my hand.
I nod, unable to form coherent thoughts. “Yeah.” With numb fingers, I type out a comment saying I walked Anika home through Night Walk on Thursday, and I can share more information with whoever needs it.
When I press Send, Landon stands. “Let me make some tea. We both need it.”
Nobody replies to my comment on the post.
I spend the rest of the day rigid with unease and adrenaline, like I’m ready at any moment for danger, but of course, nothing happens. In the evening, I head over to my Night Walk shift and call Pooja on the way there.
“Raina,” she says after I tell her everything about the missing girl, because she knows me so well, “breathe. Please, please breathe.”
“Thursday. I might have been the last person to see her.”
“Maybe,” she says calmly. “Maybe not.” Pooja’s a journalism major, and she wants to be an investigative journalist someday. She’s great at talking to people, putting them at ease. “The post you sent me says she hasn’t been back in her dorm since Thursday, but it’s only Sunday now. It’s entirely possible she took a long weekend.”
“Then why would her RA be making a missing poster for her?”
“Again, breathe. And ‘missing poster’ is a bit of an exaggeration. It’s just a pink square that says ‘If you’re friends with Anika Mehta and you’ve heard from her in the past few days, please contact me.’ Just because she didn’t show up to a scheduled meeting they had, and her roommate said she hadn’t been home.”
“And because she hasn’t answered anyone’s calls or texts. Obviously.”
“Yeah, and I’d probably make a dramatic post like that if you hadn’t texted me back in two days, too,” Pooja says. “But knowing you, you’d probably have been finally catching up on all the sleep you miss or stuck studying in the Student Center basement without service. Just because somebody doesn’t answer their phone doesn’t mean they’re in danger. She might just not like her RA. Or her roommate. God knows I don’t text people back for a week sometimes.”
“True.” But my heart is still pounding.
“This is not what happened with Maya,” Pooja says, and my stomach contorts. I squeeze my eyes shut. I don’t want to think about that. But Pooja goes on: “Anika is an adult. She’s a college student. You are not responsible for her. And you weren’t responsible for Maya then either—”
“Stop.” My tone is sharp. “I don’t want to talk about that.”
Pooja quiets. “Okay,” she says, then, as if to lighten the mood, she jokes, “You know, I have always wanted to do an investigative piece on a scandalous college news story. So if this ends up being anything more interesting than a girl ghosting someone for a few days, you know who to call.”
In the Night Walk office, the phones keep ringing. Foster stops spinning in his chair and takes charge, in full supervisor mode.
“Raina,” he says when I walk in, curling a finger to beckon me closer. “I need you on phones. We have temps back on standby to walk students through campus, but assigning walks is getting messy. Can you help with intake?”
I nod quickly. “Of course.” I’m relieved. I want to be here today, especially to help students feel safer on campus, but I can’t say I’m not nervous to walk people home tonight. What if something bad happens again to someone I walk with? How much safety can I really guarantee someone?
Theo and Foster are both tall, bulky. They’re men. They’d probably ward off someone with malicious intent. Despite my self-defense training, I’m relatively small, at least compared with the two of them. I might look like an additional target. The thought makes me shiver. But I remind myself of what Pooja said. We don’t know what happened to Anika. She could just have taken a spontaneous vacation somewhere. Maybe she slept over at someone’s place and her phone died. Maybe nothing bad’s happened at all.
The phone rings, and Foster gestures at me. I settle into the office chair and grab the receiver. “Night Walk, how can we help you?”
From there, the requests keep coming in quickly. “Hi. Can I please have someone walk me from Chandler Library to my dorm?”
“Can someone come get me from the gym? I’m going back to Ellicott.”
“You guys are in Koenig, right? How do I get there from Wheeler?”
When I finish the last call in the series, Theo comes back from a walk and slides into his seat next to me. “This is wild, isn’t it? Foster didn’t let me take the evening off. Had to miss my date.”
“Poor Theo.”
“We’re getting a lot of calls, though.” He shakes his head. “Is it because of that post about the girl?” He frowns. “Didn’t you walk her back the other day?”
I wince. “Yeah. She seemed fine then. I sent a message to whoever made the posts, but they haven’t gotten back to me. Should I send an email to the dean, too?”
“I’m sure if it was actually something serious, they’d have already reached out. We didn’t even get a campus security alert, so there’s probably nothing to worry about.” Theo twists the class ring on his pinky finger. “Mount Echo’s, like, the safest town ever.”
“That’s not true,” says Evelyn Toomey, another Night Walk veteran, walking by us. She usually takes the shift before me, but Foster’s asked for all hands on deck. “Just because you don’t hear about things doesn’t mean they don’t exist.”
“Oh, what, we have a mafia here I don’t know about?” Theo asks, grinning.
Evelyn sighs, looking at me. “You don’t need to be a movie villain to be unsafe.”
I know what she’s talking about. Last year, there were rumors a senior at Ellison was hitting on local high school girls. It was super gross, and he graduated quietly and online, “choosing” to take his last semester virtually. It was never big campus news, but the girls at Ellison knew.
“True,” I say. “I mean, that’s why we have Night Walk, right? To be safer?”
Theo shrugs. “Guess so.” It’s never been wholly clear why Theo signed up for Night Walk. If I had to bet, I’d say his dad made him get a job to “build character.”
The front doorbell rings then, and in walks a silhouette I immediately recognize. At first, my heart leaps at the sense of recognition, and I think, Anika? As if she’s suddenly shown up here to reveal she’s completely fine. But obviously, it’s not her. It’s the guy from last night: Taco Truck Boy.
I stand, as if he’s here for me, though of course that can’t be the case. He looks around but doesn’t see me, and when he gets to Foster, he says, “Hi. Is someone named Raina Chandra here right now?”
Wait, what?
Foster crosses his arms across his chest, and I know he’s about to ask why the guy wants to know, so I call out, “I’m here,” as though a teacher’s taking the roll.
The guy’s eyes flash over to me, and recognition passes over his face. So he didn’t know Raina Chandra was me. Although, how could he, considering I put my name in his phone as “Halloween Girl”? Foster looks my way, and I nod permission. Evelyn heads back to her station, and Theo glances at me out of the corners of his eyes, clearly curious. “What’d you dooo, Raina?” he singsongs.
I ignore him.
When the guy approaches, he knits his eyebrows at me. “You, uh, you look different without the green wig.”
“I’d hope so.” I offer a shy smile. “I thought we were going to plan the next time we saw each other.” My tone is light, but I’m confused about why he’s here.
“I was going to text you,” he says awkwardly. “I just . . . Something happened. But . . . you’re Raina.”
He looks mostly the same—beautiful, tall, kind brown eyes. The only difference is the easy smile from yesterday is gone. He looks worried. What is he here for?
“Yeah. And you are . . . ?”
“Rohan.” He grimaces. “So.”
I wait as he tries to figure out what to say.
The guy puts his hands on his face and lets out a deep sigh before launching into it. “I’m really sorry to barge in like this. The thing is, um, I saw your comment on the post about Anika. Mehta? She’s my sister.”
My eyes practically bulge out of my head.
“We don’t text every day, so I didn’t notice anything was different.” He pauses. “I saw your comment on the post about her, and I think . . . you might have been the last person to see her before . . .” He trails off.
Beside me, Theo is watching like we’re the most engaging match of Ping-Pong he’s ever witnessed, his head snapping back and forth as he watches each of our faces.
I falter. So this isn’t just a case of Anika ghosting people she doesn’t like. Even her family doesn’t know where she is. “Did—did you go to the police?”
Rohan nods. “Yeah. They filed a missing-persons report. But she’s eighteen, so they think she probably just left on her own.”
Theo leans forward. “Did she?”
“No!” Rohan says immediately. “She’d have no reason to do that.” He looks at Theo, then back to me and asks, “Can we speak separately?”
I stand, nod. “Yeah. Um. Of course.”
We walk into the small kitchenette with a mini fridge and a sink, and I turn to face him. There is a hollowness under his eyes, like maybe he was awake all night. It’s so strange to see him now, under the fluorescent office lighting. One moment, we’re flirting and planning a date. The next—I’m the last person to see his sister before she disappeared.
I feel, suddenly, like I might throw up.
“Did you— How are your parents?” I ask, stumbling over my words.
Rohan sighs. “It’s kind of a complicated situation. My dad and her mom were married for a bit, but they divorced last year. Anika’s my stepsister, or . . .” He scrunches up his face. “Was. But I’m not close with her mom. My dad talked to her, though. And they’re both talking to the police. I’m just . . . I’m the only one who’s here.”
I swallow. “Anika said . . . on our walk, that she was from Brookline.”
“Her mom’s been out of town this past week. She’s coming back, but I don’t know what she can do even if she’s here. Nobody’s heard from Anika, and her phone keeps going to voicemail, like it’s been turned off. I don’t want to scare her mom too much.” He glances at me apologetically. “This really isn’t how I thought we’d see each other again.”
“It’s okay,” I say immediately. “We don’t have to talk about that.”
He nods slowly. “Her mom hasn’t been well for a while. So I don’t want this to make her health worse.” Rohan’s voice breaks. “I’m sorry. It’s just that the cops are being useless. My dad seems to think she left on her own, too, but he never really tried to get to know her. I knew her. I just need to figure out what happened. I need to find her.”
And maybe it’s the big sister in me, or the fact that I saw Anika last, or the fact that I have a new soft spot for Rohan . . . or maybe it’s that memory from my childhood, the one I try to keep tamped down whenever it’s itching to come to the surface, the one Pooja tried to bring up, but I get it. And I want to help.
“Okay,” I say. “Where do we start?”
Pre-order Mischief Girls, releasing September 29, 2026
Every school has its secrets—but at the exclusive Ellison College, the past might prove deadly—in this twisty puzzlebox mystery.
Lauren Blue, Editor & Book Club Co-Host
As an Editor for The Everygirl, Lauren ideates and writes content for every facet of our readers’ lives, from must-read books and behind-the-scenes interviews to beauty products she can’t live without. When she isn’t sitting in an AMC watching the latest buzzy release, she can be found scouring Goodreads for the perfect pick for The Everygirl Book Club. There, she co-hosts discussions with members, debating plotlines, fancasting characters, and, of course, tossing in her own recommendations.
Feature graphic images credited to: Débora Carvalho | Dupe
window.fd(‘form’, {
formId: ‘69498d871c4452f462816f41’,
containerEl: ‘#fd-form-69498d871c4452f462816f41’
});
var skimlinks_settings = {
noskim: true
};
The post Read an Exclusive Excerpt From Aashna Avachat’s ‘Mischief Girls’ appeared first on The Everygirl.
