Page 38 of A Flash of Neon
Last year, I went as zombie Willy Wonka. Mum found this perfect purple coat in a charity shop, and Mutti spent ages doing my make-up to make me look like a member of the undead. The effect was actually really creepy – I’d freak out if that character ever stumbled out of the Realm.
“How about I come over to yours after school?” Tilly shifts her hands under her legs. She’s always had trouble keeping them warm in winter – sometimes her fingers turn completely white. “I can help you find something.”
“Oh, OK. That would be great.”
Her offer takes me by surprise. We’ve been spending lots of time together lately, but only with Neon around. I ask him if he wants to come along, but he shakes his head.
“No, thanks. Carrie’s coming to pick me up, so I’ll go back to the director’s house to hang out with Aurora and—” Flinching, he breaks off and points to the other end of the park. “Look! There’s one over there.”
Between a cluster of trees, the vampire I saw outside the post office this morning appears. Her hair is dishevelled, the edge of her cape is now caked with mud, and there’s a worrying red smudge around her mouth that I hope is jam.
Neon stands up – whether to greet her or to run, I’m not sure. Before I can ask, my mind fills with a thick, familiar fog. A cold feeling floods my chest, and the world around me seems to lose some of its colour.
Tilly puts her hands to her head. “What’s going on?” she whispers. “I feel really weird.”
Before I can answer, a colourless figure in a long coat steps on to the path behind the vampire. Its hood falls back, revealing a blurry white oval where a face should be. Tilly lets out a strangled scream; Neon mutters a swear word and scrambles backwards. The Blank moves slowly and uncertainly towards the vampire, its arms stretched out like it’s searching for its target in the dark.
The vampire spins round. She gives a loud, sharp hiss; her arms fly out to the sides, batlike in her cape. But then, before she can attack or escape, the tension seeps out of her. The Blank reaches out a hand and runs two long pale fingers down the vampire’s face. The image of her body breaks into tiny pieces and blows away like dust, spinning in three loops of red and black before disappearing into nothing.
Out of the fog in my head, one thought emerges.
“Run…” I tell Neon. “Run!”
I don’t wait to see what the Blank does next. I grab Neon’s sleeve and we race out of the park, through the streets and back to school. They’re getting closer, and we won’t be able to run forever.
I feel jittery for the rest of the afternoon. That’s mostly because of our close call with the Blank and the fear one will burst into our classroom and make Neon disappear, but the thought of Tilly coming to my house is making me nervous too. We arrange to meet at the school gates after our last class, and when she doesn’t turn up immediately I start to worry that she’s forgotten or changed her mind. She comes running round the corner a moment later, still pulling on her coat.
“Sorry! I had some library loans due.” She shrugs her right arm into the sleeve and tugs up the zip. “Mrs Henderson told me they had complaints aboutsixmore books today. Isn’t that crazy?”
“I wonder if that’s because of the Blanks,” I say. “If they’re sucking the imagination out of people around here, I bet their empathy is going too.”
“You’re probably right.” Tilly shudders, and I know we’re both picturing the faceless figure in the park earlier. “Did Carrie come to pick Neon up?”
I nod. “He’ll be safe at the director’s house – it’s miles away.”
It’s the first time that Tilly and I have been alone since our argument in the girls’ toilets last week. That feels like a lifetime ago now. I’m worried it’ll be awkward, but we exchange theories about the Blanks as we walk down the road to my house, and soon all the nerves have gone. It almost feels like old times, the days when our houses were like second homes to each other – we had so many sleepovers that we both kept extra pyjamas and toothbrushes there.
Mum’s at work when we get in, but Mutti is in her home office, writing. When she hears us talking, she comes through to greet Tilly. She doesn’t bombard her with questions like she did last time, but instead lists every single snack in the house – she even offers to make us pancakes. Her obvious delight that we’re friends again is a bit cringe, so I tell her it’s fine and grab some crisps to take up to my room.
“Sorry about that,” I say, once we’re safely inside. “They think you’re their long-lost second daughter.”
“It’s OK.” Tilly sits down on my bed, her eyes scanning my room for changes since she was last here. “Mine are the same. When I mentioned we were talking again, they actually gave me a round of applause.”
I open my wardrobe and start pulling out things that I might be able to use for a costume. There’s not much – my favourite colour is turquoise and most of my clothes are quite bright, nothing very suitable for Halloween. Tilly can’t think of anything, either, so she takes out her phone and searches for ideas.
“How about that?” she says, pointing to a horrible orange jumper that someone gave me last Christmas. “You could use some black fabric to add eyes and a mouth and be a pumpkin.”
“Wouldn’t I look like a giant toddler?”
“Probably, but I think you could pull it off.”
I laugh and toss it to her. “We’ll put it in the maybe pile.”
“Fair enough.” Tilly lays the jumper out on the bed. She’s quiet for a long moment, her lips twitching in a way that means she’s weighing out exactly what she wants to say next. “I know our parents are being embarrassing about it, but … it actually has been nice hanging out together again.”
My cheeks flush pink with happiness. I pull a black-and-white polka-dot T-shirt off its hanger and pass it to her. “Yeah. It has.”
“It feels sort of silly that we stopped now. I was trying to work out exactly why it happened.” She catches the T-shirt and adds it to the maybes. “I think I really wanted to be someone new after we started high school. I wanted a fresh start. And I felt like that meant separating myself from the person I’d been in primary school.”
