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Neon Hart is the same age as me, but he was born six months ago.

It was a Friday in April, bright and surprisingly warm for spring.

Caitlin, Hannah and I had bought sandwiches from the Co-op for lunch and taken them to the park instead of eating in the canteen.

They had a show coming up for their musical-theatre class, so after we’d eaten they practised a dance routine while I sat on the grass and made daisy chains.

Sometimes I felt left out if they rehearsed when I was around, but that day I was busy thinking about other things.

The night before, I’d started writing a story about a group of friends in New York City who form a band and become famous.

My brain was brimful of ideas about the characters, the drama, the plot twists.

I’d tried to write books before and had always given up, but I was sure this was the one that would stick.

Then, right in the middle of a dance move, Caitlin spun around to look at me.

“You know, I was talking to Victoria in Maths and it turns out she’s never kissed anyone. Can you believe that?”

Right away, my stomach began to sink. Sometimes Caitlin would come out with odd thoughts out of nowhere or change conversations mid-sentence when she got bored of what we were talking about.

But from the way she looked at Hannah, the tiny split-second smirks that flashed across their faces, I could tell that this wasn’t random.

They had planned to bring this up in front of me.

“It’s not that weird,” I said awkwardly. “Loads of people haven’t kissed anybody yet.”

“Seriously? She’s almost fourteen.” Caitlin’s top lip curled. “It’s a bit sad, don’t you think?”

“Not really. I doubt Tilly or any of that group have kissed anyone, either.”

I had no idea if that was true. Tilly Chan had been my best friend all through primary school, but she hung around with Jamie Singh and Elsie Jackson now.

I always saw them together in the canteen or the corridors at break, usually playing some complicated board game or making their Doctor Who fanzine, but Tilly and I hadn’t spoken in almost two years.

She could have kissed a dozen people as far as I knew.

“Well, obviously. Who’d want to kiss any of those nerds?” Caitlin laughed. “No offence.”

Hannah did a high kick and spun round. “Have you kissed anyone, Laurie?”

I hadn’t. They knew I hadn’t. I would have told them if I’d kissed someone – Hannah had her first kiss with a boy from her church youth group last year, and she went on about it for ages.

She and Caitlin were trying to embarrass me.

It wasn’t the first time they’d done this: one time they made up a secret code for different bodily functions and spent a whole afternoon giggling at me when I unknowingly said I needed to fart.

I should have told them the truth. They might even have respected me for being honest, gone back to their dance routine and forgotten all about it.

But I couldn’t. I didn’t care that I hadn’t had my first kiss – until that moment, I’d hardly even thought about it.

I just didn’t want to give Caitlin the satisfaction of admitting it.

“Yeah, of course,” I said, trying to keep my voice all light and casual. “I mean, only once. But yeah, I have.”

“Oh yeah?” Hannah looked at Caitlin. “Who?”

“Just this boy I met when I was on holiday in Brighton last summer.”

“What was his name?” Caitlin was grinning, and I realised with a kick of regret that I’d done exactly what she’d hoped I would. She wanted to trap me in a lie and make me squirm.

Instead of backing out, I said the first name that came into my head. It was the name of one of the characters in my new story – the one I most wished could hop off the page and actually be my friend.

“Neon Hart.”

“Neon Hart?” Hannah laughed out loud. “His name was Neon Hart ?”

“Yeah,” I said, my voice squeaking a little. “He’s American.”

“So, you’re telling us you kissed an American boy called Neon Hart on holiday and never even mentioned it?” Caitlin asked, adding quotation marks round his name with her fingers.

My throat was starting to get tight. I didn’t understand Caitlin.

Whenever I was alone with her, we had so much fun.

She stayed over at my house twice while Hannah was in Italy for the Easter holidays, and it was everything a sleepover with your best friend was supposed to be.

Caitlin told me about the boy she had a crush on, but she also talked about her parents’ divorce last year, and we made my mums mad by banging around in the kitchen, baking marshmallow crispy squares at half past two in the morning.

But sometimes, when it was the three of us, she and Hannah ganged up on me like this. There was no way to know when it would happen or why. I just had to put up with it.

“I didn’t know if you’d believe me.” I threw my half-finished daisy chain into the grass. “You obviously don’t, so I guess that was the right decision.”

Caitlin’s smile faded a little. My nonchalant act almost had her convinced. “OK, then. Let’s see a photo.”

“I don’t have one,” I said quickly. “I didn’t take any, and his mum doesn’t let him use social media.”

“Oh, how convenient.”

She laughed, any doubt she’d had that I was lying vanished. Hannah gave her a look, like it was time to wrap this up – she could never go as far with the teasing as Caitlin did.

Caitlin held up her hands in mock defeat. “OK, Laurie. If you say so.”

I thought that would be the end of it. Instead, Neon became a running joke for Caitlin: she’d ask if I’d heard from him recently, or demand more details about our first kiss together.

She never accused me outright of making the whole thing up, but it was clear she kept mentioning him because she wanted me to crack and admit it.

The harder she tried, the more determined I became not to.

So I said I had his number and we spoke on the phone sometimes.

I said the Statue of Liberty snow globe that Gio brought me back from a holiday to NYC three years ago was actually a gift from Neon.

The longer my list of lies became, the harder they were to untangle.

Soon it felt like there was no going back.

One day, I created an online profile for him.

I posted photos of places around Manhattan and Brooklyn, things he had made or eaten, a pet dog that I named Cauliflower.

And then, knowing that Caitlin and Hannah would go looking for them if I ‘accidentally’ left my phone unlocked, I began to send myself messages from his account.

‘We’ talked back and forth for ages, about everything: our families and friends, books and music and TV, the things that worried us or that we were scared of.

It was partly like a diary, partly like a novel.

I created a character with a life much more exciting than mine, in a big, shiny city that I’d only ever seen on a screen, but I poured all my own thoughts and feelings into it too.

I was even creating accounts for his made-up friends and relatives to make his profile look authentic.

Caitlin still wasn’t convinced he was real, but at some point it didn’t matter.

I’d stopped doing it for her. Neon had become someone I could rely on.

He was always there to listen. I could tell him anything without worrying that he would laugh at me behind my back or use it against me later on.

He may not have been real, but he felt like a real friend.

When I told Caitlin and Hannah that Neon was coming to visit me, it wasn’t because they had been asking questions or teasing me about him – they hadn’t even brought him up that day.

I just wanted it to be true so badly, and I’d become so used to trying to prove to them that he was real that I let it slip out.

I never actually planned to come to the station today.

There are messages scheduled to arrive to my account from his in a few hours’ time, saying that he’s so, so sorry but his mum received some really bad news and they have to fly back to New York immediately.

But now … here he is, standing on the platform in front of me.

Caitlin and Hannah bombard Neon with questions, but I still haven’t said anything.

All I can do is stare at the birthmark above his eyebrow.

If it wasn’t for that, I might think that this was some horrible practical joke – that Caitlin had managed to track down a random boy who looked exactly like Neon, and could do a convincing New York accent, and had somehow persuaded him to come to Scotland to freak me out. But there’s no faking that birthmark.

“Do you mind if we go and get something to eat?” Neon rubs his stomach. “I’m starving.”

“Yeah, of course.” Caitlin puts her hand on my arm. When she smiles at me now, it’s genuine. “Do you want us to come too, Laurie?”

Somehow I manage to nod. I’ve wished that Neon was real lots of times.

I’ve imagined what it would be like to actually have him in my life, a real person and not a figment of my imagination.

In those daydreams, I always felt so happy to see him, but now I’m completely numb.

Because, as I follow him and my friends out of the train station, the truth hits me: I have absolutely no idea who this boy is.