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 me between 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 of Vampire Falls in 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.
“Get your pointy talons off me; you’re cutting off my circulation,” I say, looking between my poor wrist and her face. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Oh. My. God,” she whispers, shaking my arm on each word.
I realise the common room has actually gone completely silent and it’s not just in my head. I look up at what Roxy’s gaping at.
“Oh. My. God,” I repeat.
Actual Damon Van Schwartz is standing on one of the benches by the common room doorway, in full Viggo Rassmussen costume. Guyliner, everything. I think I need to say that again, because I might be having an out of body experience.
DAMON VAN SCHWARTZ IS IN MY COMMON ROOM.
“I’d given up too, Lila. I didn’t think I had any hope left.
But hope is a funny thing; it’s a snuffed-out candle, leaving a curl of smoke in its wake.
That tiniest red dot just needs a little breath to reignite it and the flame flickers back to life when your back is turned.
It dances in the dark and says I’m still here. ”
He steps off the bench, puts his hand on his hip and walks past the year twelves, who may not be Vampire Falls fans but have seen him in Engine Failure or Only Ever, so they gape as he glides past, nodding at them, and even doing a few fist bumps.
I turn to Roxy, who stares back at me with an equal amount of what the fuck is happening written all over her face.
Damon Van Schwartz stops in front of the vending machine and breaks character for a split second when he spots me and winks.
He looks over his shoulder, just as someone else follows him.
Roxy and I look round, and she squeezes my arm, covering her mouth with her other hand.
Charlie stands in the doorway of the common room, dressed in Orion’s signature hoodie, just as he was the first night of the convention.
Roxy half gasps, half laughs. Charlie clears his throat, and I can hear the nerves in his vocal cords.
He walks to the middle of the common room, not looking directly at anyone apart from one person.
Me. I’m the one person.
I bite my lip and goosebumps bubble across my flesh as Charlie walks past Damon Van Schwartz who claps him on the shoulder.
“I’m back, Lila, and I’ve been thinking about you and what you said.
It’s all I’ve been thinking about, even when I thought there wasn’t a way back,” he whispers.
“I know I infuriate you because you say I think I know it all, but that’s because I do.
I’ve been dead a long time and I’ve seen a lot of stuff, before internet and TikTok were a thing. ”
My eyes brim with tears as I take his words in. My words, from the final part of the Vampire Falls fan fiction I scribbled down before breakfast yesterday. I look at Vivian, who has her hands clasped under her chin as she smiles back at me.
She did give it to him.
“I know that sunsets really pop in the fall because the air is clearer. I know how to kill and bury a Clopwyck witch, so she won’t reanimate and seek revenge. I know that my eyes are the exact same shade of green as my mother’s.”
I bite my lip, as Charlie conjures a small laugh and sob hybrid from inside my heart.
“But there are things I don’t know, things that I don’t ever want to know,” Charlie, as Orion, says, his eyes locked on my face.
“I don’t know how my soul would exist without the possibility of a sunset with you next to me.
I don’t know if the buzz I get at the sound of your name would be replaced with the numbness I had before I met you.
I don’t know how I would pass the lonely hours of wakefulness, without our conversations and your expressions on repeat in my head.
I don’t know how I could live a life, this life, without you in it. I don’t want to know.”
Roxy’s hand moves from my arm, and she pushes me up so I’m standing.
I fold my arms, conscious of everyone staring, but I don’t look away from Charlie – I don’t even want to blink because I don’t want to miss a single second of this surreal moment so I can play it over in my head for the rest of my life.
“I can’t not be us, Lila, I can’t not be around you.
I don’t know how to be me without you. That thought is what kept me swimming upwards from the depths of Halxja for eternity, or until Viggo found me. ”
He looks back at Damon Van Schwartz, who winks at us. Roxy moves away so I’m standing alone, everyone else in the common room forming a semi-circle around us, moving in as Charlie gets closer to me.
“Can we be us again, Lila?” Charlie says, swallowing a lump of nerves down as he pauses, then steps forward and takes my hand. “Whatever that looks like? Can we? Can we do that?”
Something falls from my cheek, and I realise I’m crying.
I wipe my face with the back of my hand and I blink at Charlie, more tears brimming over.
He bites his lip, waiting for me to answer.
Roxy is next to Vivian, who is ugly (finally!) crying right now.
I smile at my friends then look back at Charlie.
I’m filled with such overwhelming love for him, for our friendship, our past, our TV show and our lost years, that I feel like I’m going to burst. I take a deep breath and squeeze his fingers and fall deep into his eyes.
“Yes,” I whisper. “We can.”
Charlie smiles and pulls me into him. He puts his hand on my cheek, and I can’t remember if it’s from my scene or a real episode or who cares because right now everything else has disappeared and I’m pressed up against Charlie Chamberlain, his lips on mine, and I feel it everywhere in all of my body for the rest of time.
The common room cheers and he pulls me closer, smiling against my lips as we both try to ignore the audience for the most amazing and embarrassing moment of our friendship, until the cheering is drowned out by the guitar intro to Lila and Orion’s theme on the common room speakers.
We pull away for a moment in surprise, and I spot Vivian with her phone, still in tears but absolutely beaming at me as she turns up our song.
Because Lila and Orion’s theme will now for ever be Eliza and Charlie’s song.