CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
LILA MURPHY
I just feel like everything around me is crumbling.
BUD LEROY
And I really want to unpack that with you, Lils, but everything around us is crumbling. This crypt is literally crumbling RIGHT NOW.
Vampire Falls. Season three, episode ten – “Kiss Your Death”
I wander aimlessly, my heart sinking further as Felix’s news snakes its way around the attendees and follows me through the hotel. There are a few tears, a few shocked faces mourning our precious weekend, but most people seem placated by Felix’s new venture.
Not me. I feel hollow, like my very core has been swept away by the death of this weekend, my convention, losing the competition to Vivian (Felix didn’t have to say it, but it’s obvious she’s the winner), and Roxy. All of it. I can almost hear my name floating away as I slope round a corner.
“Eliza! Eliza?”
I look round, realising that someone is calling my name rather than my feelings of desperation manifesting themselves. Fake McKinley jogs down the hallway towards me.
“Hey,” I manage.
A couple of Fallers run round the corner, shrieking that they’re about to miss their autographs and he pulls me out of the way. Their carefree laughter and excitement lingers in the hall, even as they disappear around the corner.
“Are you OK?” Fake McKinley says. “I’ve been looking for you.”
He looks down at me, his thick eyebrows pulled together. I heave a massive sigh and shake my head.
“I’m sorry . . . I . . . everything is . . .”
Another small group stampede round the corner and we step back, letting them past in a flurry of excitement. The noise and the fans and the corridor all press down on me, and I feel like there’s too many people but I’m all alone and I . . .
“Hey,” says Fake McKinley, his voice gentle and calm. He takes my hand and squeezes it. “Let’s get out of here.I know a place.”
I automatically start to protest, wanting solitude so I can really wallow in my aloneness, but the warmth of his fingers around my hand is nice because it’s a feeling other than the despair that’s about to overflow.
I nod, then follow him down the corridor.
He pulls his phone out, sends a couple of messages then puts it back in his pocket.
It feels like we walk the entire length of the hotel until we finally stop at some double doors, where everyone’s favourite independent adjudicator, Dimitri, waits.
“Hey, man,” says Fake McKinley, bumping Dimitri’s fist, “thanks for this. Appreciate it.”
“No worries,” says Dimitri, tapping the security panel by the door with a card attached to his belt.
Fake McKinley holds the door open and nods me through the doors, and chlorine floods my nostrils.
Our footsteps echo off the tiled floor and walls of a short corridor, then we walk through another door to a decent-sized swimming pool.
It’s such a shift in the environment I’ve been absorbed in over the weekend, that I forget my entire life has fallen apart.
Just for a second though.
“Come on,” he says.
I follow him round the pool to a row of white plastic sunbeds.
“Won’t we get in trouble, being in here?” I ask, checking the corners for cameras.
Fake McKinley shakes his head.
“Dimitri’s cool. He let me in the other day. The pool’s being repaired or something; it’s been off limits for months.”
“I didn’t even know there was a pool,” I say.
“You going to sit?”
I nod, and walk over, lowering myself down slowly.
I don’t need a comedy style collapse and trap situation right now.
The plastic is hard and unwelcoming, but the quiet and the still water calms the storm that was brewing inside me.
Mildly. Fake McKinley sits opposite me and clasps his hands together as he watches me settle.
“I’m so sorry you didn’t win, Eliza. You smashed the cosplay; the judges must have been out of their minds.”
“How did you . . .?” I say, frowning.
“I sort of overheard Felix talking about it after they screened ‘Music, Maestro’. I now have ‘Everyone Hates McKinley’ stuck in my head.”
“Oh . . .”
Normally the very mention of a song from the musical episode would be enough for me to launch into a performance, but oh is all I have right now. “
“Coffee with actual Viggo Rassmussen though; you must be pretty psyched?” asks McKinley.
I wait for that to resuscitate my soul, but there are still no signs of life. McKinley frowns and steps closer.
“Eliza, are you OK?”
“Yes,” I blurt, shaking my head.
“Very convincing,” he says, smiling. He leans forward, tilting his head. “Did something happen with Roxy as well?”
“How did you know?”
“I’ve never seen the two of you without each other for more than ten minutes,” he says, “apart from the time you got stuck in the chair.”
My heart twists at the memory, realising that Roxy had to leave me stuck in the chair because she was on the phone to Iris. I look at him and nod.
“But it’s more than that, right?” he says. I nod again. “I heard Felix’s news about the convention. I’m really sorry. That’s a lot for you.”
“Thanks,” I manage.
“It’s him as well though, right?”
“Felix?” I say, wondering why I should add Felix to my list of woes.
“Charlie.”
His name makes my stomach flip. I blink at McKinley, Charlie’s confused face when we nearly kissed last night blurring my vision. I bite my lip and nod again.
“What happened?”
“Nothing,” I say, shrugging. “Everything.”
“You want to talk about it?” asks Fake McKinley.
I blink at him again, then look down at my hands.
Do I? What would I say and where does it all start?
How did I let this competition get so out of control that I didn’t notice my best friend was going through a break-up?
Or, let’s be honest, was it actually me that was out of control?
For once in my life, I don’t think I have the words to even start exploring how I’ve messed things up so badly.
“It’s cool,” he says, taking my non-response in the way I need him to.
Fake McKinley holds his hand out and nods at a very appealing spot next to him. I take a deep breath, grab his hand and let him pull me across.
“Is it OK if we just sit?” I ask.
He nods, then shuffles round a little so he’s facing away from me and looks over his shoulder.
“May I suggest leaning?” he says, his smile open and inviting, just like his presence. “I highly recommend it.”
I nod and try a smile, then turn myself round so we’re facing away from each other, just like we did after I got myself stuck in a chair and he was having an anxiety attack.
I lean back against him, and his warmth gives my body the support to surrender to the fear that’s been clawing at me since I lost Charlie, since I was rejected from Bristol, since I found myself in Vivian’s voluptuous shadow, and since my argument with Roxy.
I’m so tired I can’t fight the sorrow of losing the most important friendships of my life any more.
“Surprisingly good, right?” says McKinley.
I nod, grateful he’s there, taking my weight, but I can’t stop a wretched sob escaping my heart.
It bounces off the tiles and the walls, so it’s like I’m crying in surround sound.
Suddenly, Fake McKinley’s brick wall of a back is gone and I’m all alone and I panic, crying harder, but a split-second later I feel him with me again.
Not back-to-back any more, but he puts his arm around me, pulling me into his shoulder as I cry and I cry and I cry – for the convention, for Roxy, and for Charlie.
For all of them.