Page 14 of The Meet Queue-t

Huh. I think about it for a moment, pursing my lips and chewing the inside of my cheeks. Not teaching, not baking, and not caring for the sick—those three I’ve had experience in, and I’m not a fan.

The only thing that’s ever really appealed . . . it’s silly, really. A pipe dream. Something I’ve never told another person in my life.

But I’m never going to see Oliver again. If I give him my secrets, it won’t matter.

“If I could do anything,” I say, “I would write webcomics.” I watch for him to smirk or raise an eyebrow or make a sarcastic comment about starving artists, but he just nods.

“What kind of comics?”

“I’ve had a few ideas. Fantasy, horror, romance, whatever—but the one I’m thinking about right now is this woman moving into a haunted apartment.” I sink into the story and find my stride. “The ghost who lives there is just lonely, but most people freak out when he tries to make contact. And she’s this struggling . . . I don’t know. Journalist, probably. He makes contact by trying to help out with some late-night projects, finishing them for her. They start communicating through notes in the apartment and their bond gets stronger, so he becomes corporeal and they start figuring out how to send him on to the next plane of existence.”

When I trail off, Oliver says, “And?”

“And they fall for each other,” I say, feeling stupid. After meeting Brandon, I can’t imagine Oliver thinks I have much experience in the realm of love and romance. And what if he thinks romance is a stupid genre to write? Maybe he’s one of those guys who thinks that the only good books are literary ones written by white men in the previous century.

“Well obviously they fall for one another,” he says. “I figured that was a given. I mean, what happens at the end?”

Oh. In anticipation of his rejection of the whole idea—or maybe just his quiet dismissal—I wasn’t prepared to answer this question. “I haven’t decided,” I admit. “Either they decide that love transcends even death and they work something out together, or they decide to sacrifice their relationship so he can move on and she can be with a person. You know, an alive one.” Really, I know the answer and which one she—they—should choose, but the romantic, selfish part of me wants them to be together.

“You could let your readers decide?” Oliver suggests.

“For that, I’d need togetreaders.”

“So why don’t you just start writing and posting it online? There are loads of places you could put it.”

The question of the century. “Time,” I say, which is half of the answer. The other half is that I’m scared. It’s easier to never try than to try and fail—toknowyou’re not good enough. “What about you? If you could do anything in the world, what would you do?”

“Travel through time,” he says with a dimple-popping, eye-crinkling smile that makes my heart perform gymnastics in my chest. “But failing that . . . research. Help people find new answers and discoveries about the past.”

“So what you’re doing already?”

“Pretty much. But with a little more freedom.” He runs a hand through his hair, which falls back over his forehead. I wonder if the freedom he’s talking about is within himself, not within his work. “You’ll have to tell me if you ever start up this webcomic,” he adds. “I’d like to read it.”

I face the front again, because there’s about no chance I’m going to write this thing—not write and illustrate it. Not in my free time. But the support, even from a stranger, lights a fire in my chest that no matter how hard I try, I can’t seem to douse.

Chapter Five

Thequeuedoesn’tmovefor what feels like forever. Volunteers hand out blankets, and as they wait, people set up camping chairs and share food and stories. I should probably join them, I know, but I’m too anxious to make smiling small talk. Oliver was confident the queue wouldn’t be delayed for long, but the longer we’re in one place, the more I worry all this will have been pointless.

So I pace. I take advantage of the space around us and walk back and forth as I stare at the screen and wait for the numbers to change. Wait for the sixteen hours to turn to fifteen, to thirteen.

After a while, an elderly lady joins me. Dressed in hiking boots, walking trousers and a walking stick, she looks more ready for a hike up Ben Nevis than a paltry ten-mile queue. “Quite right,” she says briskly as an introduction. “In this temperature, staying still is a recipe for disaster.”

“Oh.” She has to be at least sixty, maybe more, but her short white hair is tipped with magenta and her movements are more energetic than mine have ever been. “Yeah.”

“Want a pork pie?” She produces a small pack of them from her pocket, like a magician pulling a rabbit from a hat. Just like Oliver’s chocolate muffins, they’re squashed and crumbling, but at the sight of them, my stomach rumbles. “They’re vegan.”

A vegan pork pie—who’d have thought. But who knows, maybe they’re better than the original. That won’t be hard. “Are you sure?”

“My niece is about your age, or a fraction older,” she tells me, opening the packet and holding it out to me. “And she loves a pork pie.”

Well, I can’t really say no to that. I pull one from the packet. “Are you here with anyone?”

“My nephew, but he’s sleeping.” She jerks her thumb at a tall man in his early thirties, hunched over in a small camping chair that looks about ready to swallow him whole. “Tried offering me the chair, the poor dear, but if I sit down now, I’ll never get back up again.”

The pork pie is terrible in the best way, and I take a big bite, crumbs spraying to the ground. “It was good of him to come with you.”

“Good ofhim?” She snorts. “I’m the one who got dragged along. Cried when the Queen died, he did.”

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