Page 4 of A Flash of Neon
“I didn’t think—” Caitlin looks as stunned as I feel. “We didn’t think – we thought you were—”
“Are you OK, Laurie?” Hannah puts her arm round me, then smiles at Neon. “I think she’s actually speechless.”
I can’t even nod in response. This is unbelievable. And I don’t mean that it’s surprising or astonishing or any of the other ways that people use that word – I mean this is actuallyimpossible to believe. I don’t know whether I’m hallucinating, or trapped in a dream, or have been duped into appearing on one of those prank TV shows, but Neon Hart cannot be standing in front of me. He just can’t. It can’t be true.
Because Caitlin and Hannah were right: Neon doesn’t exist.
I made him up.
Neon Hart is the same age as me, but he was born six months ago. It was a Friday in April, bright and surprisingly warm for spring. Caitlin, Hannah and I had bought sandwiches from the Co-op for lunch and taken them to the park instead of eating in the canteen. They had a show coming up for their musical-theatre class, so after we’d eaten they practised a dance routine while I sat on the grass and made daisy chains.
Sometimes I felt left out if they rehearsed when I was around, but that day I was busy thinking about other things. The night before, I’d started writing a story about a group of friends in New York City who form a band and become famous. My brain was brimful of ideas about the characters, the drama, the plot twists. I’d tried to write books before and had always given up, but I was surethiswas the one that would stick.
Then, right in the middle of a dance move, Caitlin spun around to look at me.
“You know, I was talking to Victoria in Maths and it turns out she’sneverkissed anyone. Can you believe that?”
Right away, my stomach began to sink. Sometimes Caitlin would come out with odd thoughts out of nowhere or change conversations mid-sentence when she got bored of what we were talking about. But from the way she looked at Hannah, the tiny split-second smirks that flashed across their faces, I could tell that this wasn’t random. They had planned to bring this up in front of me.
“It’s not that weird,” I said awkwardly. “Loads of people haven’t kissed anybody yet.”
“Seriously? She’s almost fourteen.” Caitlin’s top lip curled. “It’s a bit sad, don’t you think?”
“Not really. I doubt Tilly or any of that group have kissed anyone, either.”
I had no idea if that was true. Tilly Chan had been my best friend all through primary school, but she hung around with Jamie Singh and Elsie Jackson now. I always saw them together in the canteen or the corridors at break, usually playing some complicated board game or making theirDoctor Whofanzine, but Tilly and I hadn’t spoken in almost two years. She could have kissed a dozen people as far as I knew.
“Well, obviously. Who’d want to kiss any of those nerds?” Caitlin laughed. “No offence.”
Hannah did a high kick and spun round. “Haveyoukissed anyone, Laurie?”
I hadn’t. They knew I hadn’t. I would have told them if I’d kissed someone – Hannah had her first kiss with a boy from her church youth group last year, and she went on about it for ages. She and Caitlin were trying to embarrass me. It wasn’t the first time they’d done this: one time they made up a secret code for different bodily functions and spent a whole afternoon giggling at me when I unknowingly said I needed to fart.
I should have told them the truth. They might even have respected me for being honest, gone back to their dance routine and forgotten all about it. But I couldn’t. I didn’t care that I hadn’t had my first kiss – until that moment, I’d hardly even thought about it. I just didn’t want to give Caitlin the satisfaction of admitting it.
“Yeah, of course,” I said, trying to keep my voice all light and casual. “I mean, only once. But yeah, I have.”
“Oh yeah?” Hannah looked at Caitlin. “Who?”
“Just this boy I met when I was on holiday in Brighton last summer.”
“What was his name?” Caitlin was grinning, and I realised with a kick of regret that I’d done exactly what she’d hoped I would. She wanted to trap me in a lie and make me squirm.
Instead of backing out, I said the first name that came into my head. It was the name of one of the characters in my new story – the one I most wished could hop off the page and actually be my friend.
“Neon Hart.”
“Neon Hart?” Hannah laughed out loud. “His name wasNeon Hart?”
“Yeah,” I said, my voice squeaking a little. “He’s American.”
“So, you’re telling us you kissed an American boy calledNeon Harton holiday and never even mentioned it?” Caitlin asked, adding quotation marks round his name with her fingers.
My throat was starting to get tight. I didn’t understand Caitlin. Whenever I was alone with her, we had so much fun. She stayed over at my house twice while Hannah was in Italy for the Easter holidays, and it was everything a sleepover with your best friend was supposed to be. Caitlin told me about the boy she had a crush on, but she also talked about her parents’ divorce last year, and we made my mums mad by banging around in the kitchen, baking marshmallow crispy squares at half past two in the morning.
But sometimes, when it was the three of us, she and Hannah ganged up on me like this. There was no way to know when it would happen or why. I just had to put up with it.
“I didn’t know if you’d believe me.” I threw my half-finished daisy chain into the grass. “You obviously don’t, so I guess that was the right decision.”
