Page 41 of A Flash of Neon
Carrie shakes her head. “I don’t know. I … I can’t think.”
Her face is changing. The light in her eyes fades; her mouth droops; her shoulders sag as she grips the steering wheel. It’s like the personality is draining out of her. I don’t understand it – I’ve been closer to the Blanks than she is now, and they’ve never affected me this badly.
“Carrie!” Neon gives her shoulder a light shake. “Think of Aurora, Carrie.”
That brings some of the spark back into her eyes. Carrie looks at me, still frowning in confusion, but eventually gives a small nod. Outside, the Blanks are still advancing. Their arms rise and their hands reach towards us, the fingers as pale and thin as bones.
Carrie swallows. “They’re not …people, are they? They’re not alive?”
“No,” Neon says in a low, tight voice. “They’re nothing.”
With that, Carrie slams her foot on the accelerator. The tyres squeal as the car races towards the Blanks. In the space of a few seconds, their colourless figures grow larger and larger, filling the entire windscreen. A second before the car comes into contact with them, they scatter into the darkness. When I look behind me, they’re nowhere to be seen.
When I wake up the next morning, Tilly has sent me a video. It’s a thirty-second clip showing a crowd of people on the beach at Chanonry Point on the Black Isle. It’s a good place for spotting dolphins – when we had a picnic there for Mum’s birthday last summer, there were dozens of people with binoculars or fancy cameras on tripods. But this crowd is something else: two hundred onlookers, maybe more, all talking excitedly and gazing out to sea. After a few seconds, there’s a rumbling sound, the surface begins to tremble and a whale jumps out of the water.
A purple whale.
It’s like a scene from a Disney film. The whale isenormous– impossibly big, way too big to be real – and its skin is the deep, sparkling amethyst of Aurora’s eyes. On the shore, the people in the crowd gasp and clap and hold up their cameras. The whale twists elegantly in the air, gliding in a perfect arc against the pale grey sky, then slips back into the water with a splash.
The image is so dazzling, I press the video call button without thinking about the fact that Tilly and I haven’t talked over the phone in years, and I don’t know if we’re at that stage of being friends again. Luckily it only rings twice before her face appears on the screen. She’s still in bed – I recognise the teal-green duvet cover and the pile of plushies – with Bella tucked up beside her.
“What do you think?” Tilly skips the hellos, exactly like old times. “It’s got to be another one, right? Everyone in the comments is saying the video is fake but I ran it through some websites that detect AI-generated content and they only rated it two per cent likely.”
“Definitely from the Realm, then.”
I sigh. My hair is a bird’s nest, and my eyes are still smudged with yesterday’s mascara, but Tilly’s seen me looking much worse – like the time I tried to dye my hair red in primary seven.
“That beach is about thirty miles from here, though,” I say. “What do you think it means that they’re turning up further away?”
“No idea. But maybe it’s a good thing!” Tilly sits up, sending a cat plushie sliding off the pile. “Maybe the Blanks will head over there and forget all about Neon. Huge purple whales have got to be more of a priority than one teenage boy who looks exactly like anyone else.”
I tell her about the Blanks lingering outside school last night. Once we got back to the director’s house, Carrie and Neon decided that it would best if he stayed away from school today. Whenever I’ve actually seen the Blanks, they’ve been in quiet or dark spots, and very few people have been around. They don’t seem to like others to notice them, but if they want to get to Neon, they’ll have to take that risk eventually. Our school isn’t safe for him any more.
“So I was thinking I might have the flu today. Or maybe a stomach bug, or a migraine.” I wince and press a hand to my forehead. “But also that I might suddenly feel much better after my mums go to the bookshop and I decide to cycle over to see Neon.”
“Now you mention it, you look like you’ve got a migraineanda stomach bugandthe flu. You should definitely stay off school.” Tilly grins and lifts Bella’s paw to wave goodbye. “But make sure you recover before the disco tonight. I need to see that costume!”
Two hours and one Oscar-worthy performance later, I arrive at the director’s house on my bike. Aurora is lounging on the chaise longue, her coat glittering in the weak October sunlight. Neon is making crêpes, the food Karma would always make for him when he was feeling down. He doesn’t seem to enjoy having to do it himself – he grumbles about not understanding British measurements, then cracks an egg so hard the entire shell shatters into the bowl. I help him pick out the pieces before taking the bowl from him.
“Here, I’ll do it.” I grab a wooden spoon from the worktop and begin mixing the ingredients together. “Are you OK? You seem a bit down.”
“Yeah. Not the best day.” Neon sinks on to a stool by the worktop. His head drops into his hands. “I loved your school. Being there made me feel, I dunno, actually real. It sucks I can’t go any more.”
“It might not be forever,” I say. “You’ve been here for two weeks now, and the Blanks seem to have much more trouble finding you than the other characters.”
“That’s because everyone here believes I’m a normal person. The other characters don’t have that, so they’ll be easier to track down.” He runs a finger through the flour on the worktop. “But I can’t stay in this house forever, and I can’t keep running from them.”
“I really don’t think they’ll find you here. Maybe we could ask Tamara if you could stay a bit longer, even after they come back. There are so many rooms, I bet they’ll…”
“Laurie.” Neon looks up at me. His dark eyes are serious. He doesn’t seem anything like the shooting star of a person I wrote into my story, or the carefree, happy kid I met at the train station two weeks ago. “I think it’s time for me to go.”
My heart plummets to the floor. “No. We’ll sort this out. There has to be something we can do.”
“There’s not. I don’t know why but my being here has obviously opened the door for a bunch of other characters to follow me into the real world. Look how people reacted to the cù-sìth yesterday. We can’t have creatures like that wandering around.” He looks at Aurora and swallows. “Besides, it’ll bring more and more Blanks here, and you’ve seen what that’s doing to everybody. I’ll come to the Halloween disco tonight, but after that I’m going to leave. I want to do it before they get to me first.”
Deep down, I know he’s right. It’s the safest option for everyone, the sensible option, but also the loneliest one. A lump fills my throat, and, before I can stop myself, tears are spilling down my cheeks. Neon moves round the worktop to give me a hug. He holds me for a long moment, then steps back and takes both of my hands in his.
“Promise me something.” He ducks his head so his gaze meets mine. “Promise me that you’ll sing at the open-mic night, even if I’m not there.”
