I nod, and neither of them need to quiz me any further. Last night was about the convention, about making sure Sadie got the ending she wanted, that we would remember the final night of the final convention being the best ever, so I didn’t really get a chance to talk to Charlie properly. It was impossible to talk properly over all the singing, and once Sadie had got her confidence, she dragged him up to sing practically every othersong of the night. Every time I looked at him, he was already looking at me, smiling. I’d planned on saying goodbye this morning. Saying more than goodbye; saying sorry, and all the things I wanted to say since I lost him.
I pull myself back up and reach into my onesie pocket, pulling out a folded piece of paper ripped from my notebook. I hold it gently in my fingers, careful not to tear or rip it as if I’m holding my very own heart. I look up and they’re both watching me. I hold it out to Vivian, who frowns but reaches for it.
“If you see Charlie, will you give this to him?”
“Of course,” says Vivian, gently putting it in her bag.
“Thank you,” I say, giving her what I hope is a genuine smile, and not aI-think-I’m-going-to-barfgrimace.
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
VIGGO RASSMUSSEN
Humans never fail to surprise me.
Vampire Falls. Season three, episode seventeen – “Signs of Life”
There is nothing worse than post-convention blues. Apart from being forced to listen to the football team’s playlist in the common room, whilst suffering a very serious case of post-convention blues.
Nothing has changed at school. Roxy and I sit in our socially assigned spot by the vending machine, and everyone else hangs in the sections they always hang in, no clue that we’ve had the best and most emotionally charged weekend of our lives and that I learnt more about myself over those few nights than I have in any of these classrooms. Vivian waves at me from her spot on the sofa and I wave back, taking a quick look around the common room before I turn my attention back to Roxy.
“You liked it though, right?” she asks.
She’s scrolling Vivian’s Insta, going over the photos from the weekend.
“Liked what?” I say.
“Liked what,” she repeats, shaking her head, then looks at me. “Midnight in Portland.I’ve been talking about it for the last five minutes. You watched it, right?”
I nod.
“And? What did you think?”
“I’m too blue to think.”
She shakes her head and looks down at her phone again. A paper aeroplane, courtesy of the lads in the corner, hits mebetween the eyes. Welcome back to reality, Eliza. I open it up to find an extremely graphic drawing of me and Viggo doing it. It’s actually quite good; I almost feel bad screwing it up.
“You loved it,” says Roxy. “You’re just too stubborn to admit how beyond right I am about it.”
“That is correct,” I say, putting my head on her shoulder.
I close my eyes for a few seconds and let the banter of the common room wash over me, before sitting back up and looking around, my eyes lingering on the football team in the corner.
“I haven’t seen him all morning, babe.”
I don’t answer because I don’t need to. The final convention has left me feeling empty, and I think the idea of Charlie was keeping me moving forward. But I’ve not seen or heard from him since karaoke, and I know this because I’ve checked by phone approximately sixteen thousand times an hour.
“Do you think Vivian gave it to him?” I ask.
“I don’t know, babe,” says Roxy.
I close my eyes and resume my previous head-on-Roxy’s-shoulder position and wonder if we can just stay like this for ever and then she wouldn’t have to go to Bristol, and I wouldn’t have to exist in a world that doesn’t have new episodes ofVampire Fallsin it. I must be falling asleep as the common room buzz gets quieter and quieter, like someone’s turning the volume down on each little clique, and the music too. I really am dreaming when Damon Van Schwartz’s voice floats across the common room.
“Don’t cry, Lila. Save your tears for when you really need them.”
But then Roxy says my name, and she doesn’t normally make an appearance in this specific dream. She’s usually in the one where we’ve robbed Tesco and we’re trying to get away on a rice pudding moped.
She grabs my wrist so hard it hurts. I gasp and look down at her fingers digging into me.
