He lets out an angry laugh. “Fine. Well, if it’s so important for you to fit me into a box on one of your little grids, I’m an author and I’m coming to you with a work problem. I have not left my phone anywhere – other than with Nadiya.”
“Fine, then! That’s all I needed to know.” My reply is probably more prickly than it needed to be, and I push the door open.
Nadiya is in tears. I look from her to Dad to Rodney, then back to Aidan and the hotel’s security guy.
“It was there. On top of my bag, under the registration desk.”
“Okay, so tell me what happened.”
Nadiya sobs again, her shoulders heaving up and down – and I can’t bear it. This is my friend.
“Nadiya. Nadiya, it’s okay. Nobody’s blaming you.”
“Actually I am,” Aidan mutters sulkily.
I put an arm around her shoulders. “That kind of attitude isn’t helping.”
“Neither’s Nadiya.”
“Excuse me,” I snap, rounding on him – if he’s seriously accusing my friend of losing a phone which should never have been her responsibility, I don’t have to be nice. “Don’t you dare speak to our convention staff like that.”
Even Nadiya stops sniffing.
“Perhaps you can help by telling us why, precisely, you thought it was appropriate to leave your phone with a member of staff?” I add. “Especially if it has so much sensitive material on it – surely that’s your responsibility?”
Aidan rubs his face with the heel of his hand. “I left my charger at home. I was asking Nadiya if she knew where I could get one near the hotel and she said I could borrow hers. Seeing as there’s a plug right behind the table, it didn’t make a lot of sense to go all the way back upstairs. She said she’d keep an eye on it.”
“Oh, right. And because she offered to help you, this is her fault?” This is bad. It’s bad – but it’s not down to Nadiya.
Nadiya’s a mess. She keeps looking at Aidan and saying, “I’m so sorry. Aidan, I’m so sorry.”
“It’s just a phone,” I say…but one look at Aidan tells me this comment isn’t helpful. I’ve never seen him look so angry and he keeps rubbing his face and muttering “My agent’s going to tear me apart when I tell her” to himself. “I’ll have to scrap the whole of the next book and start again. I’ll blow my deadline by a mile – and that’s before I even have to deal with the studio guys. I swear, she’s going to kill me.”
My father has been listening to this quietly, one hand resting against his chin. “How would anyone know you had anything so important in your phone?”
“You mean anyone other than the everyone who happened to be in the breakfast room this morning and heard me talking? Gee, I don’t know.”
“Then maybe you should try keeping your mouth shut.” So much for me being Professional Lexi talking to a convention guest. This is pure, concentrated Crazy Lexi yelling at crazy-making Aidan; the Aidan who invaded the green room and made everything so complicated – and who, after all the effort I’ve made to let down my guard, has clearly reverted to Prick Mode. He gives me a look so dark that all the light in the room fades to nothing, and slams out of the ops office.
As the door bangs shut, Nadiya visibly flinches in her seat and squeaks uncomfortably. Behind her, Dad has his lips pressed so tightly together that they’re almost white. His whole face has assumed a general Sort this out, Lexi expression.
With another quick glance at Nadiya, I wrench the door open and chase Aidan down the corridor.
“Hey!”
I don’t know whether he can’t hear me or whether he’s ignoring me.
“Hey!”
He slows just a little, but he doesn’t stop and he doesn’t turn – it’s enough for me to catch up and duck in front of him though; I plant my feet and force him to look me in the eye. Everything about him is cold and unforgiving and suddenly he’s a stranger. But I’m not exactly in a warm and forgiving mood myself – not after that.
“What’s the matter with you? You were completely unfair back there…”
“Was I?” He cuts across me. “Was I really? What you said wasn’t exactly nice. Is this how you’d treat anyone else with the same problem?”
“Look… Sorry…but you aren’t anyone else though – are you? You’re you. And that’s the only reason Nadiya would have offered to look after your phone herself.”
“Do you have any idea how important the stuff on there is, Lexi? To me? To my career?”
“Important enough for you to be a dick about it, clearly. It’s just a shame it wasn’t important enough to keep it safe, isn’t it?” I draw myself up to my full height and stare straight at him. “You do not get to talk to my friends like that. I don’t care what’s lost. I don’t care what goes wrong. There is literally no circumstance in which it is okay for you to be that way to the people I care about when they’re doing you a favour. And don’t you dare tell me I’m not doing my job right.”
“Did I say that?” His voice has dropped to a hiss.
“You might as well have.”
“Oh, here we go.” He shakes his head angrily at me. “It always comes back to the clipboard, doesn’t it?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You know what I think, Lexi? I think you’re using this – the conventions, the work, all of it – as an excuse. You act like it’s a big deal, but the truth is you don’t know what you’d do without it. It’s easier to play the martyr than it is to actually go and figure out what you want. It’s easier and it’s a hell of a lot less frightening, so here you stay – a big fish in a little pond.”
I have never been so angry in my entire life. The inside of my skin burns and bubbles. “Right. Sure. This coming from the guy who hides behind a fake name,” I laugh.
He glares at me for a moment…and when he speaks, his voice is soft and it’s nearly the voice I know, the voice that has become so familiar. It’s almost that voice – but it isn’t.
“I might be hiding behind a fake name, but at least I picked it myself. I didn’t just use my father’s. And I’d rather be doing that than clinging onto a clipboard with a bunch of lists on it, hoping it’ll keep anything I can’t control away from me.
It hurts so much that I can barely breathe. Every muscle in my body wants to fold in on itself.
It hurts so much – and even as the words leave his lips, I know.
I know.
He’s right.
That’s why it hurts.
Because after all this, he does know me – and this is the time he picks to prove it.
He knows me – and right now I hate him, because with him I have nowhere to hide.
And I am falling in love with him and have been for months, and I am falling too hard and too fast to stop without it tearing me apart.
We stare at each other.
“I shouldn’t have been a dick to Nadiya,” he says, after the longest time.
“No. You shouldn’t.”
“Tell her I’m sorry?”
“Tell her yourself.”
He pauses. “What did you mean a minute ago – about Nadiya helping because of me being me?”
He doesn’t get it and I don’t know if I can risk any more hurt by explaining, after everything that’s been said. I look away, then back at him – because how can I not?
Something flickers deep in his eyes.
This is not how it was supposed to go. But I guess that’s life; things change and you have to figure out how to move things around to make it work. You can’t control people like you can a programme; can’t plot their emotions on a grid.
And just a moment too late, I realize he’s worth the risk.
Aidan Green, here, now, in this hallway and with the clouds gathering over our heads, is worth risking something – risking everything – for.
“Nadiya wanted to help you out. She wasn’t doing it for you. She was doing it for me – because everybody here knows how I feel about you.”
Say something, Aidan.
Don’t just stand there.
Say something.
Say anything.
We are locked into this moment, the two of us. Trapped in the middle of the electrical storm.
And it feels like it goes on for ever.
And it burns.
I have aged a thousand years before he says something, and I can barely hear what he’s saying over the ripping sound in my head. He has told me the worst truth about myself – something I’ve known for a long time, inside… And that is the exact moment – of all the moments in the whole, glorious span of eternity – that I decide to tell him how I feel?
Say something, Aidan.
Say anything.
“Nick and Ali asked me to go out and get dinner with them tonight. Maybe I should go.”
Over his shoulder, I can see one of the posters for the masked ball.
Tonight.
I guess that means he won’t be there.
I will not let my heart break. I can’t. Not when all I have to stick it back together with is Blu-Tack, and the world where I want to run for comfort is the one he created.
“Maybe you should.”
“Okay then.”
Rip. Rip. Rip.
I walk back to the ops room alone.
There, I find Dad crouched down in front of Nadiya, her hands in his. “Nadiya, nobody is blaming you. Not for a second – I want you to understand that.”
She looks at him and nods.
He carries on. “These things happen. We can be as careful as we like, but sometimes these things happen.”
Nadiya nods again. “I was only trying to—”
“I know. We all know. Now, I want you to think back over the afternoon. Is there any time – any time at all – somebody could have got near your bag?”
“No. I was there the whole time, and I didn’t…” She shakes her head…and then she stiffens. “Wait. There was the guy who fell over.”
Dad glances over at me, and on autopilot I pick up my clipboard and a pen and start writing as she talks.
“About half an hour ago – about quarter to five. This guy bought a ticket for the banquet tomorrow – and he dropped his change. And while he was picking it up, this other man came up and sort of…I don’t know. Tripped over him? It was really weird.”
“He tripped over him?”
“Right next to my bag.” Her eyes widen and she knows, we all know, that’s when it happened.
Dad’s voice is low and calm and soft, and he’s still squeezing her hands. “Think very carefully,” he says. “Was he wearing a lanyard?”
Nadiya screws her eyes shut like she’s trying to picture him, trying to remember.
“Yes. Yes, he was. He’s a member.”
I reach for the membership list. “Then we should be able to find him.”
“I don’t suppose you remember who it was?” Dad tries, but Nadiya shakes her head.
“Just…a guy. I’m sorry, Max. I wish I’d never offered Aidan my charger.”
Dad doesn’t say anything; he just nods as a strange ringing sound fills the room. It starts quietly, then builds and builds. Everyone looks at everyone else.
“Lexi.” Rodney glances up and nods at me.
“What?”
“I think that’s your phone, pet.”
“My phone?”
And sure enough, it is. With one tiny, feeble bar of signal, someone has managed to get my phone to ring. I yank it out of my pocket.
“Hello?”
“Lexi! It’s Bede. Nobody’s answering the walkie.”
“I must have left it in the ballroom. We’re kind of in the middle of a crisis here…”
“I know. That’s why I’m calling. You and your dad better come through to the main hotel lobby. Pronto.” And he hangs up. I stare at my phone, and then at Dad.
“Dad? It’s Bede. He says he needs us.”
“Can’t it wait?”
“I don’t think it can…”
Waiting for us at the hotel’s main reception desk is a small group of people. Bede, the hotel’s security guard, the Brother and – looking half-ashamed and half-defiant – Andy from SixGuns. And sitting on the reception desk in front of them is a phone. I pick it up and turn it on, and the cover of Piecekeepers flashes up at me. It’s Aidan’s. I give Dad a nod, and turn to Bede.
“How did you do that?”
“It was all Damien actually.” He nods at the Brother and folds his arms as the Brother beams.
“Well, brother, I was just heading to the room party up on the fourth floor…”
I note Dad’s involuntary twitch at the mention of a room party, but he says nothing.
“And Andy here said he might have a scoop on the next Piecekeepers book – and would I be interested, seeing as I’d been talking to Haydn Swift about that very thing at breakfast?”
“He was eavesdropping?”
“So I told him I’d be interested, and he said he might be able to get hold of some information—”
Bede interrupts. “And then he came to find me. Me, you’ll note.”
The Brother shrugs wearily. “Brother, you were the first one I could find.”
Bede looks a little put out, but Dad? Dad looks furious.
“Andy. What were you thinking? Have you lost your mind? It’s unethical – never mind illegal – and most of all, it’s deeply, deeply disrespectful of what we’re trying to do at my conventions!”
“Dad!” Typical of him to put the emphasis on that.
“Oh, hush, Lexi.” He waves the end of his cane at me, then peers over my shoulder to where Rodney has just materialized. “Rodney, would you escort this gentleman to the ops room, please? I’m sure we can make him comfortable while we have a little chat in private.”
Rodney nods and clamps a hand the size of a boiled ham around Andy’s arm. “This way.”
The Brother turns as though he’s about to go, but I call after him. “Damien?”
“Lexi?”
“You got it right!” I clear my throat and pretend I didn’t say anything, hoping he’ll think he imagined it. Dignity and all that. “Thank you. It would have been such a mess, for Aidan…Haydn…and for Dad.”
At first, he narrows his eyes and tilts his head a little to one side as though he’s measuring me. I’m not quite sure what I should say – or whether I’m even supposed to say anything. And then he smiles and says, “The thing about conventions, little lady, is that we’re family. We fight and we try to outmanoeuvre each other and show off…but when it comes down to it, we’re all family. And family always sticks together when it counts. Tell your boyfriend I look forward to hosting him next year.”
And with that, he turns to shake Dad’s hand and admire his cane – and the two of them walk off practically arm in arm, with the Brother telling him that, funnily enough, this has given him an idea for a game to run over the course of New York.
Tell your boyfriend…
I can’t quite get the Brother’s words to stop echoing in my head. They bounce off my heart like a handful of spiked pinballs, punching holes in me every time they touch. I already regret everything that happened with Aidan in the corridor. I was angry because he was right, and I knew it. I love conventions, I love this world…but even I know I’ve been using it as an excuse not to let people in when perhaps I should; not to take the risk and see what else, who else, is out there. Throwing myself into schedules and planning and running around (running away?). Shrugging and saying that the people at college are fine, but they’re not my people… The truth, though – the truth I’ve been carrying inside and not wanting to see – is that I’ve been too scared to do anything else. I’ve never been brave enough to admit it because the rhythm of a convention, the routine of it, is like a comfort blanket I’ve grown up with and can’t let go. I mark time by the number of days to the next event, the number of emails I send, or crates of books and flyers I unpack.
Big fish, small pond.
Who do I want to be?
Who do I want?
I already know.
And he called me on it and I was already so angry with him that I didn’t stop and listen.
I couldn’t admit to someone else, anyone else, what I’ve known deep down for a while.
That I need to stop hiding behind my clipboard and my father’s name…and make my own.
Because I can be who and whatever I want to be.
It’s just that a little bit of me was kind of hoping he’d be around to see who that turned out to be…
There’s a decidedly unsubtle cough beside me. “Sorry to interrupt this…moment but, Lexi, the city needs us.”
“Samira. Can it not wait, like, five minutes?”
“Nope,” says Sam. “The guy in charge of the ghost tour won’t let one of the cosplayers on his bus.”
“Why not?”
“Because he’s dressed like the alien from Alien, and he’s just made one of the authors’ wives cry in the lobby. The cosplayer. Not the ghost-tour guy. Obviously.”
I give myself a moment to process this information.
Nope.
Going to need several moments.
Everything else can come later.
Everything.
Maybe I should go.
It hurts too much, and I don’t have time.
Sam is waiting, hands on hips.
“Come, my trusty sidekick!”
“No.” I fall into step beside her.
“My faithful—”
“Just no.”
The dress code for the ball is “black and white magic”. It might as well be grey…no, beige. Boring, bland and beige. I’ve been looking forward to it for weeks, the way some people look forward to their end-of-year party at school or their prom. I guess that’s what this is to me – or was, anyway. Because now? Now, it’s just not the same.
More than anything, I wish I could call Aidan and tell him he was right. I’m not sorry – not for defending my friend, not for one second – but I’m sorry that I took my doubt and fear out on him. I wish I could call him and tell him…but I can’t, because his phone’s in my dad’s pocket waiting for him to collect it, and that’s what started this whole mess spinning anyway.
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