Page 27

There’s a vampire outside the post office.

She stands reading the notices about dog walkers and piano lessons in the window, her black hair slicked back and a red velvet cape sweeping past her ankles.

When a couple of boys in the year above mine walk past, sniggering about how Halloween isn’t until Friday, she hisses and bares her fangs at them.

One of the boys jumps back and knocks into the post box.

“Whoa!” After a beat, the fear leaves his face and he lets out a high-pitched laugh. “Sick costume.”

The vampire isn’t the only strange character hanging around.

Walking to school, I spot a small child so pale they can only be a ghost. There are other people I think might also have come from the Realm, people who look like anyone else, but who wander the streets staring at things like Neon would when he first arrived here.

One man outside the Co-op picks up a chihuahua and examines it like a piece of fruit, which does not please its owner.

Everyone else has noticed too. At school my whole class is talking about the oddly dressed strangers they’ve seen around town.

Luckily everyone seems to assume they’re wearing costumes for an early Halloween event.

Maybe the presence of the Blanks has sucked away their ability to imagine anything other than the most obvious explanation.

“We’re lucky you turned up in October,” I tell Neon. “This would be a lot harder to explain in July.”

It’s lunchtime, and Tilly, Neon and I have come to the park along the road from school. It’s freezing, but we’re on the lookout for any other characters that might turn up. Jamie and Elsie sat with us for a while, but eventually they got bored and cold and went back to the nice warm library.

“Speaking of Halloween,” Tilly says, rubbing her hands together to heat them up, “have you two found costumes for the disco yet?”

Tilly and her friends don’t usually come to school discos, but they make an exception for Halloween because they all love cosplay.

This year, they’re each going as a different Doctor from Doctor Who.

They’ve had their costumes ready for ages.

Caitlin and Hannah ordered their devil and angel outfits weeks ago too.

“I’m going to wrap a load of toilet paper round myself and go as a mummy,” Neon says. “And I found a bird mask in the Art cupboard, so I’ll wear that too. A mummy-crow hybrid.”

“I can’t believe I left it so late,” I say, a wispy white sigh leaving my mouth. “I love Halloween.”

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 about six more 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. ”

“That makes sense,” I say, nodding.

“Did you feel like that too?”

“Not really. I was just amazed Caitlin and Hannah wanted to hang out with me. They were both really pretty and loads of boys liked them, and I was so surprised they wanted to be my friends that I felt like I couldn’t say no.

” I pause. “Sometimes I wonder if Caitlin only wanted someone to pick on, though.”

“No, I think she actually does like you. She’s just the sort of person who has to be Queen Bee.” Tilly wrinkles up her nose. “I’m sorry. I feel like it’s my fault you got stuck with them.”

“You don’t have to be sorry. Sometimes people grow apart. It’s OK.”

“Yeah, but they can come back together too.” Tilly throws back her head and laughs. “Sorry, that sounds so cheesy.”

I grin. “I don’t mind cheese.”

“Yeah, but that was, like, Stilton -level cheese.”

Having her here, I finally realise how wrong my friendship with Caitlin and Hannah was.

Friends shouldn’t gang up on you. They shouldn’t make you feel bad about yourself.

You shouldn’t have to hide so many parts of yourself for their approval.

Maybe I invented Neon to get Caitlin and Hannah off my back, but I kept up the lie because I wanted a real friend again. A friend like Tilly.

“You must have thought it was pretty pathetic, me making up an online friend,” I say, once we’ve agreed that her comment was, at most, a solid Wensleydale.

“It’s not pathetic. Well, lying to people usually isn’t a great idea.

But is it really that different from getting lost in other types of stories, like books or TV shows?

” Tilly shrugs. “Some of the characters I love have really changed my life. Elsie’s dad is always going on at her to stop writing fanfic and get some proper hobbies, but I’m glad my parents aren’t like that. ”

“Same,” I say, though I don’t know how my mums would feel if they knew how deep I’d fallen into my story about Neon. They both love books but, like Mutti said on Sunday, fiction isn’t a replacement for the real world. They wouldn’t want me to let a story take over my life.

But for a little while it did. Maybe, if I hadn’t been so wrapped up in my story about Neon, I would have moved on from Caitlin and Hannah sooner. I might have tried to make amends with Tilly or found another group to be part of.

“You know,” Tilly says, “if Neon does have to leave, you could maybe hang out with me and Elsie and Jamie if you like? I hope he can stay, obviously. But I thought I’d say, you know. Just in case.”

I try not to smile too widely, but I don’t really succeed. “Thanks. You don’t think they’d mind?”

“Nah, I’m sure they wouldn’t. They will make you watch every single episode of Doctor Who , though.”

I laugh. “I can deal with that. I actually watched a few a while back. They were good.”

“You did? Which ones?!”

Tilly makes me list off every episode, then rambles on for ages about her favourites.

I don’t think I’ll ever be a Doctor Who superfan like she is, but I always liked hearing her talk about the things she loves: the way her hands dart from side to side, and how her voice gets slightly squeaky when she’s really excited.

For the first time in almost two years, part of my life feels like it’s edging back towards normal.