Page 31 of A Flash of Neon
Mutti nods and puts her arm round Mum’s shoulders. Their eyes are glassy and it makes mine sting harder. I know Mum’s putting on a brave face for me and Joel. Owning a bookshop was always her dream, and she worked so hard to make it happen. There’s no way she’s happy to let it go, even if it gives her the chance to try something new.
I know I’ll start crying if I sit around talking any longer, so I offer to do the dishes. Memories from the shop flicker through my mind as I scrub our plates. I had my seventh birthday party in there – Mutti ordered cupcakes decorated like my favourite books from Robbie in the bakery. Another time, Tilly and I built a fort out of paperbacks in the children’s section. Mum was annoyed about it at first, but the customers didn’t mind. Some of them even helped us with the roof.
I’m so lost in thought that it’s a while before I notice someone outside. A person dressed in a long coat and hat stands on the pavement on the other side of our street, staring at the house on the corner where the little kid with the imaginary bunny friend lives. There’s something strange about the figure. Perhaps it’s a trick of the light, but I can’t tell what colour their clothes are. They seem to have no real hue at all, not even the palest beige.
“Joel?” I say, turning to look at him. “Joel, can you come here?”
My brother gets up with a panicked look in his eye. Mutti watches him curiously, but she’s listening to Gio talk about the book he’s reading and doesn’t comment. When I look back through the window, the person has disappeared. A shiver runs through me.
“What’s wrong?” Joel whispers. “Is it Neon?”
I shake my head. “Nothing, sorry. False alarm.”
He gives me a dubious look, but shrugs and sits down again. I shake off the unsettled feeling and tell myself I’m imagining things. Joel and I have had enough weirdness to put up with in the last twenty-four hours. We don’t need any more.
Sunday starts with my usual shift at Every Book & Cranny. Mutti comes with me to let Mum have a lie-in and gets me to sort out the filing cabinet in the back room before the customers start to arrive. Normally I would moan about that, but now I’m not sure how many more days I’ll get to work here. I try to commit it all to memory: the slightly dusty, papery smell; the tinkle of the bell on the door when someone comes in; even the chaos of the back room, which is crammed full of stock and paperwork and old T-shirts. All week my head has been filled with Neon and the unicorn and even that silly pink rabbit. For now, I try to stay in the real world.
While I rearrange nine years of paperwork, Mutti sits at the counter on her laptop. She’s already hard at work on edits for her next book, which is due out in a year. I hear a lot more sighing and muttering than typing, so it’s obviously not going well.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I can’t get anything out today.” She leans back in her chair and rubs her eyes. “Fancy a cup of tea?”
I sit back and realise my legs have gone stiff from crouching down so long. “Yes, please.”
Mutti makes us each a cup, then gets Mum’s emergency biscuits down from the top shelf. The back room is too cramped for us both to stand in comfortably and there still aren’t any customers, so we take our mugs up to the pulpit and settle into the cosy reading chairs there. The tea is exactly how I like it, nice and milky, and it actually makes me feel a little better.
“What do you think this place will be turned into once it closes down?” I ask Mutti.
“No idea, Laur.” She peels off the wrapping on the biscuits. “What would you like it to be turned into? What’s the town missing?”
I think for a moment. “Maybe an escape room. Or a karaoke place.”
Mutti laughs and passes me the packet. “Both great ideas. You should start a petition, see if you can get the community on board.”
“If I was going to start a petition, it would be to save the shop.” My heart quickens. “Do you think that could work?”
“It’s a bit late for that, ducky.” Mutti smiles sadly. “I love that you’d be ready to do that, though.”
I try to imagine the space around me with all the books gone, the cosy armchairs vanished, all my recommendations cards ripped up and thrown away. Most likely the place will sit empty for months or years before anyone rents the space for a new business, and that makes me even sadder.
“Is there anything bothering you?” Mutti looks at me as she blows on her tea. “Other than the news about the shop, I mean. You seemed a little far away at dinner last night. Joel too.”
I take a hasty gulp of my drink and try to come up with an excuse. Mutti dunks her biscuit into her tea and waits, not pushing me for an answer. Between promo for her latest book and edits for the next one, she’s been really busy over the past couple of months. It’s been a while since we had any alone time together. Of both of my parents, she’s definitely the one more likely to believe me about Neon. I decide to test the waters.
“Mutti,” I say slowly, “howrealdo you think stories are?”
She looks confused by my question. “How real? Well … I think they have a real impact, if that’s what you mean. They’re mirrors for how we see ourselves.” Her eyes start to shine – this is one of her favourite topics. “That’s why representation is so important. Especially for queer people, people of colour, disabled people, all sorts of marginalised groups. Stories can help people feel seen and included, or show them what they can achieve.”
“Definitely.”
We’ve had this conversation before. I’ve talked about it with Tilly in the past too, about how much she likes finding books written by British Chinese authors or shows with Asian actors playing the main characters. And I still remember getting really excited the first time someone gave me a picture book featuring a family with two mums.
“But I also think it’s important not to get too swept up in fiction,” Mutti says. “Things can be more black and white in stories than they are in the real world. It’s not a replacement for real life. Sometimes, when you and Joel were younger, I’d be so caught up in the plots I was creating that I’d miss things that were happening in our lives. I regretted that afterwards.”
I wonder if I’ve done the same. After I made Neon up, I spent so much time imagining his life in New York City that sometimes I hardly noticed the world around me. At times that was what I needed, especially when things were tough with Caitlin and Hannah. But I wonder how much I missed.
Before I can think about how to broach the topic of Neon, the door opens and a customer comes in. Mutti quickly finishes her tea and hurries back down to the till. A few more people come in after that, and there’s no chance to pick up our conversation where we left off.
Once my shift is over, I head home for a quick lunch, then cycle up to Tilly’s to see Neon and the unicorn. There are voices coming from inside the barn when I arrive. I push open the door and find the unicorn curled up in a pile of hay with Neon and Tilly, who are both hand-feeding her carrots like she’s a spoilt Roman emperor.
