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Neon signs us up for Friday Showcase as soon as we get to school the next day.

He even writes our names in pink highlighter and capital letters to be extra annoying.

We spend the whole of double Art debating which song to sing.

Lots of things about Neon are the exact opposite of me – the things I want to be but am not, the parts of me I want to change but can’t – but we have the exact same taste in music: film soundtracks, girl groups and big power ballads.

Even so, it’s not easy to find a song that fits his voice and mine and isn’t some cheesy love song.

“How about something from a musical?” Hannah suggests, glancing up from her painting. “Ooh, you could do ‘Suddenly Seymour’ from Little Shop of Horrors !”

“That’s a full-on love song, Hannah. Exactly what they said they didn’t want.” Caitlin rolls her eyes. “Besides, not everyone is as into musicals as you.”

Hannah stares at her. “You love musicals too. We go to the same musical-theatre class!”

“Yeah, but you’re, like, obsessed with them. It’s kind of weird.”

Hurt flashes over Hannah’s face as she dips her paintbrush into water.

Caitlin has been different with her the past couple of days.

Different with me as well. She’s been linking her arm with mine more than usual, and when she had to pick teams for football in PE yesterday she chose me before Hannah.

It’s as if having Neon here has shifted the dynamic between us.

Because of him, Caitlin sees me as someone capable of having a friend like Neon – someone who could kiss a boy like Neon.

In Caitlin’s mind, there’s always a hierarchy, and I’ve been bumped up a spot.

Honestly some part of me is happy about that.

I’ve felt like the odd one out in our trio for so long, it’s nice to find myself in second place.

But, at the same time, I feel bad for Hannah – I know what it’s like to have Caitlin pick at your sentences, digging around for something she can use to make fun of you.

Neon looks up from his painting to frown at her. “That’s not weird. I love musicals.”

He belts out something from Les Misérables so loudly that Matt Lewis jumps and knocks his paint over.

Neon rushes over to help him, still singing as he does so.

Hannah joins in, the hurt from Caitlin’s comments melting away as she gets into the song.

A few more people start singing along, me included.

Mrs Watson tells everyone to settle down and get on with their work, but then even she joins in with the chorus.

It feels like a scene from a film – something that never would have happened before Neon arrived.

“I saw Les Mis on Broadway a few years ago,” he says, once the impromptu rendition is finally over. “I had the soundtrack on repeat for a month. Drove my mom crazy.”

“You did?” I say. “I didn’t know that.”

That’s not something that I made up about him.

Neon must be embellishing his own history.

That makes me a bit nervous – if our stories don’t match, people are going to be suspicious.

Then again, no one knows every single little thing about their friends or anyone else.

It’s normal that there are huge parts of Neon’s past that I don’t know about.

A while later, Neon runs out of green paint for his forest landscape. He goes to the supplies cupboard to get more, and Caitlin scoots along to sit beside me.

“How’s Operation Kiss the Boy going?” she whispers.

I shake my head rapidly, my eyes fixed on my painting of Ben Nevis. “It’s not. I told you, we’re friends.”

“Laurie! Come on.” Caitlin tugs at my sleeve. “You’ve only got a few days left!”

“We don’t want you to regret it after he leaves,” Hannah says, leaning over the desk towards me. “Who knows when you might see him again?”

Caitlin starts chanting, ‘Kiss him, kiss him,’ in a low voice, though not so low that no one else can hear – Russell turns round from the desk in front of us with a big grin on his face.

Neon comes back to the table with the paint, so Caitlin hops back to her own stool, and Hannah sits up with a smile, waggling her eyebrows at me before looking back down at her painting.

While Neon pours the paint into his plastic tray, I take a long look at him: the birthmark over his eyebrow, the dark hair curling behind his ears.

I still don’t know if I actually want to kiss him.

I’ve been thinking about it a lot, but whenever we’re alone, and I have the chance, I remember that he’s a fictional character that I made up, and it gets too weird.

Even if he was as normal as any other boy, I’m not sure if I like him like that.

“Hey, how about you sing ‘Don’t Stop Believin’’?” Hannah says. “There’s this version I’ve seen online for a boy and a girl, from that show Glee . It’s not a love song. It’s about believing in yourself and your dreams.”

“Oh, I love that song!” Neon sings the first few lines. “What do you think, Laurie?”

It’s a fitting title for our story, our friendship. I’ve never seen the show, but I’ve heard the version of the song that Hannah is talking about and I like it. I think it would suit our voices.

“I’m not sure I can hit those high notes.” I dab at my painting and try to ignore the nerves writhing in my stomach. “But we can give it a go. It’s our best option so far.”

“Trust you to suggest something from Glee , Hannah.” Caitlin snorts and shakes her head. I raise my eyebrows at her and she lifts her hands in self-defence. “It’s a good idea, though. What are you called, by the way? You need a band name.”

We all throw out a few suggestions. Russell, Hari and some others overhear us talking and join in too. They have lots of ideas but they all sound too dark and rocky for who we are and the type of songs we plan to sing.

“It’s got to be Neon something,” Hari says. “I know that makes it seem like you’re the lead singer, but it’s too good a name not to use.”

“Neon something…” Neon taps his mouth with his paintbrush and looks around the room for inspiration. “Neon Paint Pot?”

Hannah laughs at that. “Neon Easel?”

“Neon Superglue.” Russell sweeps a streak of orange paint across his sunset. “Or how about Neon Story? That way it sounds like Laurie’s surname too. The first half of it anyway.”

Neon and I look at each other, and we both know that’s the one. Neon Story. It sounds sparkly, glitzy, like the words should be written in glowsticks. And, for reasons we can’t explain to Russell and the others, it suits our situation perfectly.

Picking a song and a name somehow makes the fact we’re going to perform at Friday Showcase finally seem real.

Twenty minutes later, a rush of nerves so strong it makes me feel physically sick comes over me.

None of my friends would get it – Caitlin and Hannah have done lots of shows with their theatre group, and Neon was practically born performing – so I ask to go to the toilet and hide in a cubicle while I try to calm down.

I can already feel all those eyes in the audience staring at me. Judging me. Waiting for me to mess up.

A few minutes later, the door opens with a squeak and footsteps cross the space.

Somehow I know they belong to Tilly Chan.

There’s something about the way she walks: one slow step then another slightly faster one, like her right foot is trying to keep up with her left.

I wait until she goes into a stall before I leave to wash my hands so we don’t cross paths, but she comes out a few seconds later holding a piece of toilet paper.

Our eyes meet in the mirror. Our faces freeze, then we both push our mouths into something like smiles.

“Oh. Hey.” Tilly blows her nose on the paper. “Again.”

“Hi.” It’s funny that we didn’t speak a single word to each other for so long, and now that Neon’s here we’ve talked twice in one week. “Is your hay fever bad again?”

“No, I think I’m getting a cold.” Tilly tosses the paper into the bin under the sink. There’s a pin on her jacket – a rainbow flag. I’ve never noticed that before. “I saw you and Neon signed up for Friday Showcase.”

“Oh yeah. We did,” I say, shaking my hands dry. “It’s just one song.”

It always makes me sad how awkward I feel around Tilly now.

Outside my family, she was the person I felt most comfortable with, who made me laugh more than anyone else in the world.

When we stopped talking, it felt like turning a dimmer switch on my own personality.

There were so many times I’d have a strange thought or a funny idea, something only she would get, but nowhere to put it without her.

“That’s great.” She takes a couple of steps towards the door. “I didn’t think you had it in you.”

In a flash, the sadness transforms into anger. “How would you know what I do and don’t have in me? You never talk to me any more.”

Tilly turns to me with wide eyes. Her hand is clutching the door handle, but she doesn’t open it. “What are you talking about? You’re the one who stopped talking to me.”

“Because you said you didn’t want to be friends any more!”

“I didn’t say that.” Her cheeks are going red. “I said we were growing apart. It was obviously going to happen eventually. You made friends with the popular girls. You totally looked down on Jamie and Elsie.”

“No, I didn’t!” My voice bounces off the bathroom walls. “You looked down on me because I didn’t know about Dragons and Dungeons or whatever. All of a sudden, you had this whole new life with new friends and new interests, and I was so boring and immature for not knowing anything about it.”

“It’s Dungeons and Dragons.” (I knew that. I also knew it would annoy her if I got it wrong.) “You could have asked about it. I asked you if you wanted to play one time, remember?”

I scoff. “Yeah, but probably only because your dad made you.”

Tilly’s cheeks flare again. “I shouldn’t have said that. It was the truth but I shouldn’t have said it.”

“Whatever. It was ages ago.”

I shrug, like it’s nothing, but a crack forms in my anger and some sadness seeps back in. I’ve spent loads of time imagining what I would say to Tilly if we ever spoke again. It usually ended with us both admitting that we missed each other and vowing to be friends again. Not like this.

The silence stretches between us. There’s a moment where I could be the one to take the first step, to say that I’m sorry and that I miss her. But I don’t. The door swings open, almost knocking Tilly over, and a flock of noisy first-year girls pours into the bathroom, trampling all over our moment.

“You’re right. It was ages ago.” Tilly pushes her hair behind her ears and gives a smile that’s not really a smile. “Good luck for Friday.”