Chapter 39
CHPATER THIRTY-NINE
JULIANA THE DEMON HUNTRESS
I will never forgive you, for as long as I live all my lives.
Vampire Falls. Season two, episode seventeen – “Dead Moon”
My Trip to San Diego Comic Con and Megan Nicole Jefferies. ROUND THREE.
I open my eyes. The lid is on but thankfully it’s not as dark in here as a real coffin would be, I don’t think. I can actually see everything clearly, including the skeleton I’m sharing with who’s facing away from me.
“Rude.”
I try to rearrange him but I can’t quite manoeuvre my arms, so I just frown at the back of his head instead.
I reckon it’s a he. I’ll call him Frank.
My left bum cheek is going numb, so I roll onto my side until I’m kind of spooning Frank.
Not that I’ve ever spooned anyone before.
Great, so my first experience of intimate spoonage is with a life-size plastic skeleton. Brilliant.
“Have you done this before?” I whisper to Frank, putting my arm over his waist.
He doesn’t answer. He’s such a good listener.
I peer at the side of his skull, where his ear would be.
I wonder if it’s an anatomically correct skeleton but never listened properly in biology, due to it being on a Friday which is the day after Vampire Falls episodes drop on Netflix.
My hand twitches. The desire to grab my phone and check how many bones a skeleton has is overwhelming.
I wonder if I’m addictedto my phone. My hand twitches again, desperate to check the signs of being addicted to your phone.
God, this is boring. I wonder how long we’ve been in here.
“How long’s it been?” I call into the ether.
A pause, and a headshake. I can tell when people are shaking their head or rolling their eyes at me without looking. It’s a gift.
“Thirty-eight seconds.”
“What?!” I turn to Frank, shaking my head. “It’s been at least five minutes.”
“Sounds like you can’t hack it,” says Charlie Chamberlain, his voice clear but turned down a few notches.
I glare in the general direction of his voice, which happens to be the back of Frank’s head.
“I was merely assimilating information,” I respond.
“Will you be assimilating information for the duration, or will you be competing in more of a quiet way?” he asks.
“I’m sorry,” I snap, “I didn’t know they’d made you the chief invigilator.”
“They did actually.”
“Well, good for you, I guess. Something else to stick on your bulging UCAS form.”
“Um, hi?” Rashawn clears his throat. “Do you guys, like, know each other?”
I turn and look at the other side of my coffin. I’d forgotten Rashawn was here too. I open my mouth to respond but Charlie Chamberlain gets in first.
“We’re friends.”
“Used to be friends,” I correct him.
There are a few beats of silence before his voice materialises again.
“Used to be friends then,” says Charlie Chamberlain.
I turn back to him quickly.
“Why did you roll your eyes when you said that?” I say.
“How could you possibly know I rolled my eyes?”
“Well, did you?” Silence. “Knew it.”
“Maybe you should stop talking to save oxygen in your coffin,” says Charlie Chamberlain.
“Guys, focus,” says Rawshawn. “You used to be friends but now you’re not? Is that correct?”
The way he says it sounds so final and simple, and I wonder why I’ve spent so much time turning it over in my head when that’s what it is. We used to be friends but now we’re not. I wait for Charlie Chamberlain to answer.
“Correct,” he confirms.
“So what happened? You’re both here, so you must have that in common,” says Rashawn.
“He’s only here because of Sadie,” I say.
“Who’s Sadie?” asks Rashawn.
“His sister. Who is adorable, despite her bloodline.”
“Right,” Rashawn says. “And the sister is a Faller, but you’re not, Charlie?”
“He used to be,” I spit.
“I’m capable of responding for myself thank you, Eliza.” He clears his throat. “I still watch the show.”
“No, you don’t,” I snap.
“Just because I don’t watch with you, doesn’t mean I don’t watch it, Netflix police.”
I frown at him. Well, not him, at Frank.
“OK, I think we’re starting to unpack something interesting here, guys.” I imagine Rashawn looking at us over his glasses. “You used to watch it together?”
“He’d never heard of Vampire Falls until I showed it to him.”
“Right, so you’re his sire? That’s big, guys.”
Sire is what fans call the person who introduced them to the show. I try to shrug but the coffin is making my shoulders numb. Charlie answers for me anyway.
“She was. Sired over a tray of chicken and chips.”
I swallow. I was certain when we’d stopped being friends, he’d erased all memory of our friendship, including his entry into it. I can’t believe he remembers what he was eating that day.
“Chicken and chips?” asks Rashawn.
“Never mind,” says Charlie Chamberlain.
“Perhaps The Kinnuix brought you this weekend, Charlie,” says Rashawn, referencing a destiny-spinning demon from season three, “and we’re all grateful it did otherwise DVS would literally be dead right now.”
I roll my eyes. Not Rashawn too. Surely the Charlie Chamberlain fan club has enough members.
“Are you rolling your eyes in there?” says Charlie Chamberlain.
Does he have the gift too? I prop myself up on an elbow.
“Damon Van Schwartz coughed on a mint, and Dr Cullen here intervened with a couple of claps on his back. It wasn’t a big deal.”
“I performed the Heimlich. Do you know how hard that is?”
“Oh, you performed it?” I do air quotes inside my coffin. “I didn’t realise it was a performance. Your greatest yet, no doubt.”
“It’s dangerous if you don’t do it right. You could break someone’s rib.”
“And thank goodness you did it right because you came to the rescue and made yourself the hero of the convention. Excuse me if I don’t give you a standing ovation but I’m lying down in a coffin.”
“Whatever, Eliza. Maybe just stop talking to me. It’s what you’re best at.”
“Oh,” says Rashawn, (probably) nodding in his coffin. “Now we’re getting somewhere. Why’d she stop talking to you, Charlie?”
I hold my breath, waiting for Charlie to say something, but after a few seconds Rashawn’s voice floats through the darkness again.
“I’ve over-stepped. So sorry, guys. Obviously sensitive. I’m studying therapy and counselling at uni, and getting carried away,” he says. “Message received.”
I turn towards Rashawn’s voice and take a breath.
“We just . . . grew apart,” I say.
“OK, I hear you,” says Rashawn, his voice soft. “But why the beef? People who grow apart don’t snipe like you two. There’s more, isn’t there?”
“I think we both just . . . changed?” Charlie offers.
I turn and glare at Frank.
“Excuse me – I did not change, Charlie Chamberlain. I am still the lovable nerd I was when we became friends. You’re the one who changed. You’re the one who swapped the Falls for football. And Vivian.”
“Vivian?” repeats Rashawn. “Oh, the impossibly hot redhead roller-skating one? This is making sense now.”
I turn back to Rashawn’s coffin.
“What do you mean, it’s making sense now?”
“Maybe I shouldn’t get involved, hun,” he says.
“You’ve been probing us for the last forty-five minutes; you are involved!” I point out.
“It’s been two minutes and sixteen seconds,” clarifies Headset Lady.
“What?” I wail. Is San Diego actually worth this? “Hell. This is actual hell.”
“Did you two hook up or something?” says Rashawn, his voice low.
“No!” we both shout in response.
“OK, OK, just . . . something happened. I can sense something between the two of you and it’s more than just change.”
“She pushed me away and she pushed me out.”
“You didn’t need us any more,” I snap. “You had a whole football team of bros and dudes just waiting to worship you.”
“Because you pushed me out. I literally had nobody.”
“Why’d she push you out, Charlie?” asks Rashawn.
“I didn’t push him out! I didn’t push you out, Charlie,” I snap.
“You ghosted me,” he says. “You ignored my texts and phone calls. You removed me from the Falls WhatsApp group. You blocked me on everything. I came round to your house and your mum said you weren’t there, but I could see the light in your room.”
“Because you blanked me, Charlie. You ignored my messages; you wouldn’t answer my calls.”
“For, like, a week,” he says.
“It was one of the hardest measures of time I ever had to exist through, Charlie,” I say, my voice wobbling. “Doesn’t matter that it was just a week.”
I don’t mention the devastation of him choosing Vivian over me, and I don’t tell him that I spent way more than a week crying myself to sleep. Or that I didn’t tell Roxy just how deep the crack in my heart was because I didn’t want her to know that our friend had hurt me so badly.
“Charlie?” says Rashawn, his voice calm. “Do you want to respond to that?”
“I’m sorry,” he says, but I don’t know if he’s just saying it because of Dr Rashawn. “I freaked out, OK? I thought everything would change and I’d lose you, then it did, and I did.”
I lie in the darkness, the pain of his looks of indifference compared to his face lighting up when he saw me still squeezing my lungs.
“You broke my heart, Charlie. I knew it would get broken one day,” I say, clasping my shaking hands together, “but I never thought it would be you breaking it.”
“So, you feel like Charlie broke your trust. Is that right, Eliza?”
I nod, and somehow they both know.
“I fucked up; I realise that,” says Charlie Chamberlain.
“I realised, like, a week later but you wouldn’t speak to me.
I tried to reach out to you, but you’d made up your mind and it was like we’d never happened.
Do you know how that made me feel? Do you know how lonely I was? You had Rox, but I had nobody.”
“You were fine with your new friends,” I say.