Page 37 of A Flash of Neon
Joel snorts and teases a biscuit from the packet. “What would I do? I don’t have any talents.”
“Yes, you do,” I say, prodding him in the side. “You can act.”
“Thanks, Laur, but I don’t think anyone would appreciate me standing up and reciting a Shakespearean monologue.” He grins and slides his tiles across the table. “But I’ll be there to give moral support or be on the till, or both.”
“Where did Neon come from anyway?” Mutti asks me. “He seemed to pop out of nowhere, but the two of you are such good friends already.”
She glances up from her numbers, her eyes slightly narrowed. I almost wonder if she suspects something, but after a moment she looks back down at her tiles and sets three sevens in the middle of the table.
“I guess we clicked pretty fast. One of those things,” I say, keeping my eyes fixed on my numbers. “And, before either of you say it,no, he’s not my boyfriend.”
Mutti smiles. “I wasn’t making any assumptions. You know it would be OK if he was, though, right? We’d be totally supportive if you wanted to date a boy. Love is love!”
Joel and I both roll our eyes. Our parents never get tired of that joke.
“Thanks, Mutti,” I say, laughing. “Good to know.”
We play three rounds of the game. Mum wins the first, Joel the second, and I take the third before Mutti pretends to be a sore loser and flounces off to the kitchen to make more tea. While she’s gone, Mum gets up to take the laundry out of the washing machine, leaving me and Joel alone. He checks they’re both out of earshot, then leans towards me.
“What’s going on with Neon and Aurora? Are they OK?”
Keeping my voice to a whisper, I tell him about Carrie taking them to her friend’s place. Joel seems relieved that Neon is no longer sleeping in a barn, and his jaw drops when I describe the house – it turns out Tamara Mackenzie is very,veryfamous, at least to film buffs like Joel.
“Are you all right?” I ask. “Weren’t you supposed to go back to uni last weekend?”
He blinks. “Uh, yeah, I was. I’ve decided to stay another week or two. I’m missing a few tutorials, but most of the stuff is online anyway. I’ll catch up.”
“Oh. OK.”
Joel was different before he moved to St Andrews. He’d play tricks on me all the time – he was always jumping out of cupboards or from behind the curtains to scare me, and one time he mixed half a bottle of extra-spicy hot sauce in with the ketchup and almost blew my head off. He could be annoying, but he laughed more than he does now. He made me laugh a lot too. He’d find really bad, low-budget movies from the eighties and nineties for us to watch together, and we’d spend the whole hour and a half laughing at the plot holes and cheesy dialogue. We used to have entire conversations in film quotes. It was like a secret language, both of us cracking up while Mum and Mutti looked on, smiling but baffled.
That changed when he went away to university. Joel still comes home a lot, but he spends more time alone in his room these days. He’ll still joke around or watch films with me, but sometimes he’s distant and quiet in a way he never was before. I thought he was stressed about all the work he had to do, but maybe there’s something else bothering him.
Before I can ask him about it, Mutti comes back into the room with four cups balanced in her hands.
“Another round?” she asks, setting them down on the table. “I want at least one small success tonight, and it’s clearly not going to be with my edits.”
I smile and agree to another game, but the worries in my stomach multiply. If Neon and I don’t find a way to get rid of the Blanks soon, Mutti might never write another book again.
There’s a vampire outside the post office. She stands reading the notices about dog walkers and piano lessons in the window, her black hair slicked back and a red velvet cape sweeping past her ankles. When a couple of boys in the year above mine walk past, sniggering about how Halloween isn’t until Friday, she hisses and bares her fangs at them. One of the boys jumps back and knocks into the post box.
“Whoa!” After a beat, the fear leaves his face and he lets out a high-pitched laugh. “Sick costume.”
The vampire isn’t the only strange character hanging around. Walking to school, I spot a small child so pale they can only be a ghost. There are other people I think might also have come from the Realm, people who look like anyone else, but who wander the streets staring at things like Neon would when he first arrived here. One man outside the Co-op picks up a chihuahua and examines it like a piece of fruit, which does not please its owner.
Everyone else has noticed too. At school my whole class is talking about the oddly dressed strangers they’ve seen around town. Luckily everyone seems to assume they’re wearing costumes for an early Halloween event. Maybe the presence of the Blanks has sucked away their ability to imagine anything other than the most obvious explanation.
“We’re lucky you turned up in October,” I tell Neon. “This would be a lot harder to explain in July.”
It’s lunchtime, and Tilly, Neon and I have come to the park along the road from school. It’s freezing, but we’re on the lookout for any other characters that might turn up. Jamie and Elsie sat with us for a while, but eventually they got bored and cold and went back to the nice warm library.
“Speaking of Halloween,” Tilly says, rubbing her hands together to heat them up, “have you two found costumes for the disco yet?”
Tilly and her friends don’t usually come to school discos, but they make an exception for Halloween because they all love cosplay. This year, they’re each going as a different Doctor fromDoctor Who.They’ve had their costumes ready for ages. Caitlin and Hannah ordered their devil and angel outfits weeks ago too.
“I’m going to wrap a load of toilet paper round myself and go as a mummy,” Neon says. “And I found a bird mask in the Art cupboard, so I’ll wear that too. A mummy-crow hybrid.”
“I can’t believe I left it so late,” I say, a wispy white sigh leaving my mouth. “I love Halloween.”
