CHAPTER FORTY
COX THE OBSERVER
The answers are right there in front of your stupid, distracted, mortal eyes.
BUD LEROY
(looks up from phone) What he say?
Vampire Falls. Season three, episode twenty – “It’s Always a Mary”
“What did he say though? He looked upset when he got out,” Roxy says, smooshing my face with a damp and cold sponge. “We could hear mumbling, but we couldn’t make out what you were saying.”
After the coffins, I looked for Charlie Chamberlain in the lobby, the coffee shop, the restaurant – but I couldn’t find him. I don’t know what I would have said to him anyway, but I figured something would come when I saw him. I’m not usually lost for words, as you know.
“Not much,” I say, not sure why I don’t want to tell her exactly what he said. “Just the usual Charlie stuff, I guess.”
“Charlie?” she says, straightening up and looking at me in the mirror. “You never call him Charlie.”
“I always call him Charlie. It’s, like, his name, Roxy. Have you bumped your head?”
“Sorry to burst your bubble, babe, but you always call him Charlie Chamberlain, like he’s a villain.” She dabs make-up into the crease of my nose. “Or a superhero.”
“Do I?”
“You do,” Roxy says. “Right, writing time’s over. Close your eyes.”
I click my pen off and close my notebook, but my fingers itch to get back to scribbling down the ideas that have been bubbling inside my brain for the last couple of days. I didn’t realise how much I missed that feeling.
I close my eyes and flinch every time the sponge touches my skin. For the Vampire Apocalypse party, we’re in the Taylor High soccer strip, but slightly bedraggled so we look like we’re in search of human brains.
“I wish Iris was here,” I say.
The dabbing stops and I risk opening my eyes. Roxy’s blinking at me, the sponge frozen in mid-air.
“Do you?”
I nod. “She’s much gentler.”
Roxy frowns and smears make-up over my eyelid without warning. I guess I asked for that.
“Right,” she says, rubbing strawberry smelling hair wax through her fingers. “I’m not spending ages on hair as we have headsets apparently.”
“What’ve headsets got to do with a zombie apocalypse?”
“It’s a silent disco, babe,” she says, tweaking my hair. “Should be cool.”
“Really?” I say, not convinced. She picks up the eyeliner. “I don’t think zombies wear eyeliner.”
“These zombies do,” she says, turning to me, the applicator poised in her hand. “Wings will look cool against the grey. Come on.”
I turn my face to her and look up.
“If we get to room together at Bristol, I can do your make-up when we go out, babe.” I daren’t move as she comes at me with the eyeliner wand. “Stop pulling away.”
“I’m not.”
“You are,” she snaps.
“It’s my reflexes. I can’t help my reflexes, Roxy.”
She blows a piece of backcombed hair out of her face then looks around.
“Try to relax,” she says, leaning over and picking something off my screwed-up duvet. “Hold this.”
She throws my Jawfain cuddly onto my lap and I squeeze him. Fiddling with his ears always calms me down.
“Keep your head straight, and close your eyes,” says Roxy.
I don’t think nodding is permitted so I just close my eyes and focus on Jawfain’s fur between my fingers.
“That thing’s like your comfort blanket. You’re nine.”
“Hey,” I say.
“Didn’t say it was a bad thing. He’s cute. I wish I had one.”
“I’ll get you one for your birthday,” I say. “We can be Jawfain twins. Where’d you get it?”
“Get what?” she says, lining my other eye.
“Jawfain. You got him for me when . . .”
I grip Jawfain’s ears hard as something falls into place. I look round at Roxy, causing her to smear a line across my cheek.
“For god’s sake, Eliza,” she huffs.
“Sorry, I . . .”
My voice trails off, retreating to a year ago.
Even though I’d been awake most nights leading up to it, I remember that afternoon.
I’d just woken from a nap when Dad knocked on my door and told me Roxy was downstairs.
I peeled myself out of bed and went down to find her waiting for me in the hallway.
She squeezed me tight, and we had a few tears together before she had to get back.
It was Mum’s turn to catch up on the sleep she’d lost at the hospice, so after Roxy’d gone, she wasn’t awake to tell me the gift bag I’d found right where Roxy had stood in the hallway wasn’t actually from Roxy, but from someone else.
“You didn’t get this for me?” I ask, knowing the answer.
Roxy glances at Jawfain, still annoyed, and shakes her head.
I look down at Jawfain, his cute face smiling up at me as if to confirm what I’ve just realised. I was so tired from the nights we’d spent at the hospice, and the next week was such a blur I mustn’t have thanked Roxy for the gift, so she couldn’t have told me it wasn’t from her.
And I couldn’t have known who it was actually from.