Page 11 of A Flash of Neon
Neon nods quickly. “Yeah, my mom likes to give me a lot of freedom. She’s a bit alternative. I mean, she named meNeon,” he adds with a laugh. It’s the exact same joke I wrote into my story about him months ago, and it makes my head spin to hear him repeat it now.
“All right, then.” Joel crosses his arms and raises his eyebrows at me. “You know, I’m quite impressed. I didn’t think you’d be into the whole teenage rebellion thing, but sneaking a long-distance boyfriend into the house while Mum and Mutti are away…”
My face heats up. “He’s not my boyfriend!”
“Uh-huh. Sure.” Joel grins. “Well, even so, he obviously can’t sleep in your room. You can set up the sofa bed downstairs for him.”
“I’ll do it.” Neon jumps to his feet. “Thanks a lot for letting me stay.”
“It’s not like I have much of a choice, do I? I can hardly kick you out on to the street.” Joel turns to leave, then pauses. “I’m guessing you’ll need feeding too. Are you all right with Thai food?”
He passes over his phone for Neon to select from the menu on the restaurant app. I watch his fingers paw at the screen and feel slightly dizzy at the sight: Neon, real and solid andhere, discussing the difference between tom yum goong and tom kha gai with my brother.
“Are you going to tell Mum?” I ask Joel.
Mutti I’m not so worried about – she’d probably think this was hilarious. Mum is a different story. She would ground me for the next 3,000 years. And she’d definitely want to phone Neon’s mother, and what would we do then?
I expect Joel to make me pay for his silence, like the time I left the lid off the blender and soaked Mum’s brand-new coffee machine with strawberry smoothie. I had to promise to cook him pancakes every day for a week before he’d help me tidy up. At the very least, he’s going to dangle the threat of telling our parents about Neon over me until next Saturday.
But instead Joel shakes his head. “Nah. They’ve got a lot on. I don’t want them worrying about this too.” He raises his eyebrows before turning to the door. “Just try to stay out of trouble – and no more surprise visitors.”
Neon wants to see more of our town, so after breakfast on Sunday I give him a tour. To be honest, there’s not all that much to look at, especially now that half the high street has closed down. It always feels quite depressing to walk past the spots where I used to spend ages picking out sweets or debating which toy to spend my pocket money on, and see only vacant plots in their place. The town feels quieter than it did when I was little. Sadder somehow.
Neon, though, seems delighted by everything we pass, from the faded red letter box outside the post office to the sign about a missing cat in the chip-shop window. We pass Every Book & Cranny again, but we can’t go in since Gio doesn’t open until eleven on Sundays. Instead, we stop by the pet shop, Bohemian Catsody. Tilly used to joke that the owner, Martha, and my parents were competing to find the high street’s worst pun. Neon is so amazed by the tanks of tropical fish that it makes Martha laugh out loud.
“Do they not have fish where you come from?”
She’s a small woman, probably around thirty, with blue-rimmed glasses and pastel-pink hair. My mums love her – she’s a romcom addict and one of our best customers at Every Book & Cranny.
“Yeah, but not like this.” Neon’s eyes dart about as he follows a tiny flash of electric blue round the tank. “They’re sobright.”
“I’d give you one to take home, but I don’t think it’d like the plane much.” Martha points to a small silvery fish with streaks of vivid blue and orange along its body. “This one would be perfect for you. It’s called a neon tetra.”
“No way!” Neon grabs my arm. “Let’s get some! Look, you can get ten for eight pounds! Is that a lot?”
I don’t have a fish bowl, enough money to buy one or the nerve to discover how Joel would react if I came home with ten new pets, so I say goodbye to Martha and drag Neon from the shop. Next, we take a walk round the park – the play area is full of little kids, which is lucky as I have a feeling Neon would want to spend hours on the swings otherwise – and then head to my favourite bakery. When Robbie, the owner, hears Neon speak, his eyes light up.
“Wow, your accent – that’s more New York than a yellow taxi.” He sets down a tray of white rolls and brushes the flour from his tattooed hands. “I’ve got cousins over there, been to visit them five or six times. Which area are you from?”
My shoulders tense as Neon and Robbie start chatting about Manhattan and Brooklyn and Queens. If Neon is exactly like I created him, then everything he knows about New York City must be based on my research. I’m nervous that he’ll say something completely wrong, and Robbie will realise Neon is no more of a New Yorker than I am. Luckily they mostly talk about baseball games and pastrami sandwiches, then Robbie throws in a couple of misshapen doughnuts with our order of two Chelsea buns. Neon digs into a doughnut the moment we’re out of the shop.
“Man, food is so much tastier here in the real world.” He takes a second bite, leaving a ring of powdered sugar round his mouth. “Weird that you have to pay for it, though. We take whatever we want in the Realm. It reappears a few moments later anyway.”
“So, how does it work exactly?” I ask, lowering my voice even though the street is nearly empty. “Since I decided you live in New York, is that what the Realm looks like for you?”
Neon shakes his head. “No, the life you gave me is more like a memory. Once we’ve been created, we enter the Realm with the personality and backstory that the person has made up for us. That way we can interact with characters from all sorts of worlds, even ones totally different to this. One of my best friends there is a centaur,” he says as casually as if he’d said they were Dutch or a Sagittarius.
“But what does the Realm actually look like, then?” I try to imagine a place where dragons and talking animals mingle with ordinary characters from literary novels like Mutti’s. It sounds totally chaotic.
“It changes all the time. Sometimes it’s like any other city, sometimes a dramatic fantasy landscape, sometimes futuristic. There are always really amazing sunsets – the romance characters love those.” Neon nudges a crumpled Coke can on the pavement with his toe. “And I gotta say it’s a lot cleaner than the real world.”
We keep wandering and a few minutes later arrive at the edge of Loch Ness. Its legendary monster has probably made it one of the most famous lakes in the country, maybe in Europe, but our part of it isn’t so remarkable: a long, wide stretch of water with pine trees on the other side. Even so, I really like coming here. Tilly and I used to walk Bella along the water’s edge all the time. We carved our names under one of the benches when we were ten:Tilly & Laurie forever!tucked inside an oddly shaped flower. It feels strange when Neon stops at the exact same spot.
“So this is home to the Loch Ness Monster.” Neon grabs a Chelsea bun from the paper bag and takes a large bite. “Ever spotted her?”
“Not yet.” I sit down on the bench, then spin round to look at him. “Wait, haveyou? She must live in the Realm too, right?”
“I guess she must, but I’ve never seen her. Sounds like she’s the secretive type.” He raises his eyebrows. “A bit like you.”
