Page 50 of Foes & Cons
What are you thinking? What are you thinking right now?
ORION FENIMORE
I don’t want you to go.
LILA MURPHY
So don’t let me go.
Vampire Falls. Season five, episode three – “Finally Here”.
Not only did I introduce Charlie Chamberlain toVampire Falls, I also pointed him down the fan fiction rabbit hole. I showed him some of my favourites then he found his own, which generally featured Lila and Juliana in variouslet’s-get-out-of-these-wet-clothestype scenarios. Anyway.
It was probably over a year of us being friends before I showed him any of my own fan fiction. I’d been writing it since I first watched the show, so the early stuff wasbad,especially when I insisted Roxy take turns writing it with me. Those chapters came across in an unintentional Jekyll and Hyde style, then Roxy retired from the fan fiction co-authoring game. But I continued to hone my craft.
My favourite (and my seventy-eight WattPad followers’ favourite) was a story where Orion’s mentor, who has fallen in with a dark magic crowd, uses him as a trade for some necromancy sorcery. Orion is pulled into another dimension and the rest of the gang don’t know where he is. This all happens while Vistoria Falls is under threat from a deadly race of witches called Death Witches (I know), Lila finds out she’s actuallyrelated to Viggo, and whenever Bud Leroy drank a pumpkin-spiced latte, he was able to teleport. It was quite the page-turner.
As it turned out, Charlie Chamberlain was also a fan.
My sixteenth birthday was the day my feelings went fromI-think-maybetooh-my-god-definitely. I was looking for my school tie when the doorbell went. Assuming it would be adult business and because I was, of course, queen for the day, I carried on tearing my room apart until Mum shouted up the stairs.
“Eliza! Charlie Chamberlain is here.”
I froze, mid-laundry-basket-emptying. Sometimes he and Roxy would call for me on the way to the bus but we’d usually text first, so I was surprised.
“Kaaaaay!” I yelled back.
I checked my hair in the mirror then as casually as I could (which was tough because the very mention of his name sent my adrenaline spiking at that point) trotted down the stairs and found him in the conservatory.
“Hey,” I said. Casually.
He looked round at me and stood up like I’d just called him in for a job interview. He was tall then but hadn’t filled out, so he seemed generally awkward in whatever space he was in.
“Happy hello day . . . happy birthday, I mean,” he said, a gift bag dangling from his hand clunking him in the chest when he waved at me. “Hello.”
“Thanks,” I said, peering at him when he cleared his throat. “You OK, Chamberlain?”
“What?” he said, his eyes darting around the conservatory, then finally resting on me. He shook his head then let out a long breath. “Yes, all good. OK.”
Rain pitter-pattered on the glass (it always rains on my birthday. My dad says the rain clouds match my soul. Love you, Dad) and Charlie Chamberlain watched the water trickle downthe glass. He stared at it for a minute or so, until it was my turn to clear my throat. He blinked, the spell cast by the rain broken suddenly. Even though we weren’t standing close, the energy was there between us, but it felt unsteady, like it hadn’t worked out what kind of force it wanted to be yet.
“Is that for me?” I said, pointing at the bag.
He looked at me, his brown eyes wide, then ran a hand through his thick hair, leaving it standing up in adorable, haphazard tufts.
“It’s silly,” he said, the tops of his ears pink. “Childish.”
“My two favourite things. Gimme.”
I sat on the sofa, yanking his blazer sleeve in a shameless excuse to touch him. He flopped down next to me, and I could feel the tension coming off him in waves. I closed my eyes and held my hands out, his sweet, fresh scent teasing my senses as I felt the bag dumped in my palms. I opened my eyes to find him inched as far from me as possible.
“You’re being so weird today,” I said, reaching inside and pulling out a square scrap book.
Two lone letters were scrawled across the front in the same font as theVampire Fallsgraphics.
F.F.
Faller Forever
