CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
THE CURATOR
Remove anything from the Draíleabh Athenaeum and I will smash my favourite mirror and remove your fingers with the shards.
BUD LEROY
Wow. This librarian is strict.
Vampire Falls. Season two, episode four – “Return and Renew”
An important (and usually expensive) part of the convention experience is exploring the merch stalls. It’s ideal for perusing in between Q your timing is perfect. Cover for me while I go powder my nose.”
“What?” he says, watching Dorothy shuffle from behind the stall.
“Cashbox and card reader are back there. Curly, you help him.”
She waves a hand and trundles to the door.
“So, Dorothy’s a metalsmith as well as being a general badass?”
“I want to be her when I grow up, please,” I say, raising my hand.
“I want to be her when I grow up, please,” agrees Fake McKinley, also putting his hand up then looking round when someone stops in front of the booth.
“Hi, Toby,” I say, enthusiastically.
Toby barely looks up at me from the Sword of Skallion replica he’s holding.
“How much is this?” he asks Fake McKinley.
“The price is on that card,” he says.
“I’ve always wanted a Sword of Skallion, but mymum wouldn’t let me,” Toby says, staring at it for a good thirty seconds. He looks over his shoulder then nods at us. “I’ll take it.”
“Good for you, Toby,” I say.
He glances at me, unimpressed by my unintentionally patronising seal of approval. Toby pays for his shiny new toy and wanders off to another booth. Anticlockwise. We sit down while a couple of others look over Dorothy’s merch.
“So, what do you want to be when you grow up?” he says. “Besides Dorothy.”
“Not sure really. Was thinking of linguistics, but I’m not sure now.”
“At uni?” he says.
I nod. “What about you?” I say, trying to swallow the lump that always gets lodged in my throat when I think about post-summer. “What do you want to do?”
He leans back and lets out a long sigh.
“I’m trying to work that out right now, to be honest. I’m halfway through a course, which I think is useful and I kind of enjoy, but I’ve been offered another opportunity.”
“And you’re not sure whether to risk the opportunity or see out your course?”
“Exactly,” he says. “I know what my limits are, and this is way, way out of my comfort zone but has the potential to be awesome. I don’t want my limits to actually limit how I live my life. I feel like I should give myself a chance. I don’t know if that makes sense.”
“It does,” I say, nodding, as it makes perfect sense; too much sense almost. “So what course are you doing at the moment?”
He opens his mouth to answer but the deathly call of a Siren interrupts him. My soul deflates as I Iook up at Vivian. I smile at Sadie then glance at Charlie Chamberlain who’s looking right at me.
“Look who it is,” says Vivian, smiling at us. She picks up an ornate mirror and checks her perfectly applied lipstick. “This is so cute.”
I don’t know if she’s referring to the mirror or her reflection.
“Did you make all this?” asks Sadie, her eyes wide as she picks up a silver stake (suitable for killing vampire/wolf hybrids).
“No, Sadie, Dorothy made it all,” I say. “We’re just looking after it for her.”
“Cool. I want to make swords when I’m older,” says Sadie, her eyes sparkling as she looks at the rest of the weaponry.
“That seems to be the consensus,” says McKinley, smiling at me.
Sadie blinks at Fake McKinley then turns to her brother.
“That’s the man from breakfast, Charlie,” she says.
We all look at Charlie Chamberlain, whose cheeks are flushing.
“What? I don’t . . . I didn’t . . .” he says, his ears flushing.
“Yeah, remember you said to find out who he was,” Sadie says, nodding. “Subtly.” Sadie looks at me and shrugs. “I don’t know what subtly means.”
Charlie Chamberlain shakes his head and smiles at Sadie but in a not happy way. “Come on,” he says, putting a hand on her shoulder, “let’s go.”
Sadie says goodbye then rushes over to a stall and takes a red Jawfain hoodie from a rack. I turn to Fake McKinley who’s watching me.
“What?” I ask, checking my nostrils. “Why is everyone staring at me today?”
“Your friend was definitely staring at you.”
“He is not my friend,” I say, folding my arms. Fake McKinley shakes his head and smiles. “What now?”
“Nothing,” he says, smiling.
“I think perhaps this should be more of a silent business partnership,” I say, straightening Dorothy’s merch.
I read a text from Roxy. I sigh and sit back in the uncomfortable chair.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” I say, “just Roxy’s not done yet.”
“Is my company that bad?”
“Yes, actually.”
“Fair,” he says. “I’m certainly no Roxy.”
“Nobody is,” I say.
“How long have you been friends?”
“Since primary school. Mrs Spalding used to line us up for lunch according to surname, so I was always stood behind Roxy. One time, Ross Walsh put a daddy longlegs in her sandwich, and I stopped her from eating it. I threw her lunchbox at him, so I shared mine with her.”
“Brought together by the gods of the alphabet and sandwiches.”
“Don’t,” I say, shuddering. “I’m waiting for her to realise our friendship was a total fluke and she’ll leave me for someone better.”
“You don’t think that?” he says. My shoulders slump as I blink at him. “Why do you think that?”
He looks down at me, such sincerity in his eyes, and I suddenly have to offload before I internally combust.
“So . . . the plan was for Roxy and I to go to the same uni: Bristol. She’s studying forensic science, and I’m going to study linguistics.”
“Right . . .” coaxes Fake McKinley, but I think he knows where I’m going with this.
“That’s the plan. Or was the plan,” I say. He smiles at me, so I just go for it. “I didn’t get in. Roxy doesn’t know.”
“Shit, Eliza. I’m sorry.”
I haven’t spoken to anyone about this apart from my parents (who, by the way, are being equal parts patient and firm with me), because the moment I consider life without a daily guarantee of Roxy in it, my chest becomes incredibly tight, like there’s a Hexle Hag sitting on top of me, trying to suck my dreams out through my nose.
Fake McKinley squeezes my arm, but I can’t look at him.
“Is there anything else you want to do? Anything else you’re good at?”
I shrug and look around the room.
“This? But I don’t think I can make a living following Damon Van Schwartz around the globe.”
“What about the writing?”
“Writing?” I say, frowning.
“Roxy told me what a good writer you are.”
“Did she?”
He nods. “Our time spent together was mostly her telling me how much she wants you to win the competition or the things she loves about you. She sent me some of your fan fiction, but I’ve not read it yet. Sorry.”
It feels like he’s hugging my heart. I’m still amazed that Roxy and I fit together in the way that we do.
“She said you haven’t written any in a while.”
“I haven’t.” My head turns involuntarily in Charlie Chamberlain’s direction. “But I’ve had this idea for a new fantasy thing, a totally new character. I think.”
“That’s cool. I was always terrible at writing.”
“I kind of love it. The comments and reactions I got on Wattpad were so cool, and now with this new idea I just get, I don’t know . . . excited imagining how someone might feel about what I’ve made up, in my brain,” I say, surprising myself. “Other than this, I think it might be my happy place.”
“Could you study writing? At uni?”
“Maybe? I guess? My mum really wants me to do the uni thing because it ‘was the best time of her life’,” I say, sighing.
“You’re not into it?”
“I was when I thought it would be like an extended weekend with Roxy, but now I’m just kind of . . . numb about it,” I say. “I have a couple of other uni options, but I really don’t . . . my parents want a decision when I get back.”
“No pressure,” he says.
“Exactly. Dad’s not stuck on uni but he says I’m not allowed to ‘lie around like an unemployed herbert’.”
“Who’s Herbert?” he asks, laughing.
“No idea. But I know he’s right. I can’t roll myself into a duvet Swiss roll and exist like that for ever. As appealing as it sounds.”
He smiles at me, and despite the utter turmoil my soul is in right now, shovelling this shit off my chest takes the pressure off my lungs a little.
“My grandad used to say, find a job you don’t hate, as long as you spend the rest of your time doing something you love.”
“Sounds so simple,” I say.
“He was retired.” We watch someone pick up a bracelet, check the price, then move on quickly. “What about that course. The Vampire Falls writer one?”
“Gloria Hannigan?” I say, then shake my head.
“I’d never get on that, especially the residential.
They pay for the accommodation in Ireland, but you have to get yourself there.
And that’s if she even selects you.” I’ve looked at the course outline so many times, I could recite every step in the process to Fake McKinley and tell him how many Funko POP!
s it would cost to enrol (clue: a lot). I slide down in the chair, my back hurting.
“Anyway . . . where’s doing a writing course going to get me? ”
“Didn’t you say writing was your happy place?” he says, frowning at me.
“Yeah.”
“Is there any better place to get to than that?”
I open my mouth to tell him all the better places I can think of, but he smiles at me, knowing I can’t name any.
“That’s good,” I say, nudging him with my shoulder.
“I know,” he says, nudging me back. “I’m very pleased with myself.”
“Can we talk about something else now?” I say, suddenly feeling very drained.
“Yes,” he says, standing up, “because I’ve had my eye on these.”
He leans over the table, picking up two helmets that I recognise from the battle scene in the season three episode, “We Are All Of Blood”. Intricate snakes circle the eye holes and I’m again blown away by Dorothy’s talents.
“Put it on,” he says, putting one in his lap then holding the other over my head.
I couldn’t feel more like hiding inside a helmet right now so it’s actually the perfect thing. I nod and pull my hair out of the way, and he slides it on, the nose guard sitting over my nose. I peer through the eye holes at him.
“Oh yes,” he says, nodding at me then carefully putting his on.
We pick up swords and pretend to strike each other, then someone stops in front of our table, frowning at us over the top of their phone.
“Eliza?”
“Roxy!” I say, looking at her through one of my eye holes. “You’re back.”
“What . . . why are you . . .” she says, blinking from me to Fake McKinley, then around the room. She shakes her head and lets out a long sigh. “Please, just tell me that’s not stuck on your head.”
My heart lurches then I feel a release as Fake McKinley gently removes my helmet. Roxy smiles. Phew.
“Say goodbye to your friend. You need to get ready for the next part of the competition. There’s some paperwork, apparently.”
“But I’m minding the stall with . . .” I say, looking round at Fake McKinley.
He beams at me, still wearing the helmet, and holds his sword out in front of him.
“I release you, Eliza,” he booms. “You may depart with Roxy.”
“You two are so weird,” says Roxy, smiling at us both with the same fondness one might have for a one-eared, incontinent dog.