Page 29

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 is enormous – 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 migraine and a stomach bug and the 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.”

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 – the best one.”

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.”

I shake my head. “No, that’s not true. You’re here now. You can decide that for yourself.”

“Then … we don’t know together. Cool.” Neon grins and jumps to his feet. “How about those crêpes now? I want to eat all the real-world food I can physically stomach before I have to leave.”