Page 42 of A Flash of Neon
More tears well up in my eyes. I pull my hand away and force a laugh. “Come on. Don’t be so dramatic.”
“I’m serious! You can do it without me, Laurie. You always could.”
I wipe my cheeks. I can’t promise that because I still don’t think it’s true. “Well, if this is going to be your last day,” I say, sniffing, “we have to make it a good one. No – thebestone.”
Neon’s freckles shift with his smile. “I know where to start.”
We finish making the crêpe mix and put it into the fridge to rest, then Neon leaves Aurora with a bunch of carrots and takes me through a door at the back of the house. It opens on to a small staircase, which leads down to something that makes my jaw drop: an underground swimming pool with a glass roof looking on to the garden. Small blue lights shine along the edge, making the water shimmer like satin.
“Carrie turned the heating on yesterday, but I haven’t gone in yet,” Neon says, dipping a toe in. “I wasn’t sure how well I’d be able to swim in the real world, and I doubt Aurora is much of a lifeguard.”
Neither of us have swimsuits, but Neon happily strips down to his boxers, and I jump in with my T-shirt on over my underwear. Neon does have some trouble adjusting to the water at first: the pressure is different in the Realm, and he takes a few minutes to work out how to keep himself afloat. I’m surprised he didn’t dive in as soon as he saw the pool – the Neon I created would have done a cannonball into the water without a second thought.
But Neon isn’t exactly the way I wrote him any more. He’s becoming more layered, more complex. He’s becoming a real person, with interests and reactions different to the ones I made up for him. I think about him talking about his ‘purpose’ coming here, like he was a plot device for my story. I don’t want his time in this world to be all about that. This is his story too.
Soon Neon is swimming confidently, gliding through the water in a quick, neat front crawl. I do a few lengths, then lie on my back, my T-shirt blooming out around me like a jellyfish. It’s started to rain, and the drops beat out a soothing pattern on the glass roof. At the back of the garden, the trees shake slightly in the wind; every so often, an orange or amber leaf flutters away and glides against the glass. Being here, floating in the warm water, all my worries drift away: the bookshop, the performance, even the Blanks.
After a few dozen lengths of the pool, Neon comes to join me. He rolls on to his back and lets out a happy sigh. I don’t even remember the last time I went swimming. Mutti used to take me almost every weekend, but at some point I started worrying about what I looked like in my swimsuit and what the chlorine was doing to my hair, and we stopped. I hadn’t realised how much I’d missed it.
We stay in the pool so long, our fingertips start to prune – something Neon finds fascinating. Afterwards, we help ourselves to super-soft robes and slippers from a set of shelves in the corner and go back upstairs to check on Aurora. She’s fallen asleep on the chaise longue, tiny tinkling sounds leaving her mouth with every breath. I sit on the floor to watch her for a moment, marvelling at how strange and incredible these past two weeks have been. After a moment, Neon comes to sit beside me.
“I think she’s ready to leave too,” Neon whispers. “She loves you and Carrie and Tilly, but she needs to be with her own kind.”
The lump in my throat bobs up again. I wish I could stop time, or go back to that Saturday at the train station and relive it all over again. I look at Neon, taking in the freckles on his cheeks, the drops of water rolling off his curls. Caitlin’s voice fills my mind.Kiss him, kiss him. Oh my God, you’re hopeless.
I have to do this – before I lose my nerve yet again, before the Blanks reach us. Before Neon leaves forever.
Drawing in a quick breath, I lean towards Neon. His eyes meet mine, startled at first, then understanding. I pause for a moment, waiting for him to tell me this is OK. He gives the tiniest nod and moves towards me until our lips touch. This is it – it’s finally happening. The lie I told all those months ago has finally come to life.
I’d always worried that I wouldn’t know how to kiss someone, that I’d bash my teeth against the other person’s, or my tongue would take on a life of its own. In fact it’s easy. It doesn’t even feel that awkward. Neon and I know each other so well, and we fall straight into a rhythm, just like when we sing together.
But somehow it’s not like I expected, either. I’m not sure what I thought would happen – not fireworks or fanfare, obviously, but something more than this. Some shift inside me that would make me feel different. More grown-up.
Instead there’s nothing. I don’t feel different. I don’t feel much at all.
“Sorry.” I pull away, and my cheeks instantly flush. “Sorry – I don’t know why I—”
“That’s OK.” Neon presses his lips together. “That was kind of weird, huh?”
“Yeah.” I swallow. “I don’t know why, though.”
“There could be lots of reasons.” Neon shrugs. “Maybe we’re not into each other like that. Maybe you don’t feel ready to kiss anybody yet. Or maybe you’re not interested in kissing anyone. Some people aren’t, and that’s OK.”
Any one of those feels very plausible right now. I know that I probably wouldn’t think about kissing so much if it wasn’t for Caitlin and Hannah. They made me feel like a loser for never having done it, babyish for not having really thought about it before. But when I actually imagined kissing someone … there was never much push. It doesn’t seem gross like it did when I was little, but it also doesn’t give me butterflies. Neon could be right – maybe kissing boys isn’t for me, or maybe I’m not into the idea of kissing anyone. I just don’t know.
“Maybe,” I say slowly. “I can’t decide.”
To my surprise, tears start to prickle at my eyes. Ever since I met them, Caitlin and Hannah have seemed so sure of who they are and who they like. They seem so ready to be grown up, and I don’t think I am yet. I know everyone is different, and everyone changes in their own time, but they make me feel like I’m losing a race I never wanted to run.
“You don’t have to decide anything,” Neon says gently. “It’s cool some people know what they like when they’re this young, but it’s not like that for everyone.”
I nod. Mutti told me that she knew she was a lesbian when she was twelve, but Mum didn’t come out until she was in her twenties. I think of Tilly, the rainbow pin on her jacket. I wonder if she knew she was pan all this time and never told me. It’s nothing for me to be annoyed about – it wasn’t my business. But we talked about everything back then. I hope she didn’t feel like she had to hide it, if she did know.
“Do you know?” I ask Neon.
Thinking about it, I realised I never properly thought about whether Neon was straight or bi or anything else. He may have started out as a fictional first kiss, but all he was to me was a friend. I never made him talk about girls or anyone else he might have liked. All I wanted was a proper friend.
He laughs. “If I know, it’s only because you decided that I should know.”
