Vampire Crush(30)
Author: A.M. Robinson

"How do they even manage to write down here?" she huffs.

"Girls can get very bendy when they are in love," I say, and know immediately that it was the wrong thing when Marisabel stops scraping, distraught.

"You think they’re in love with him? I’m in love," she cries before resuming her destruction of property with even greater fervor. "Have they been with him for fifty years?" she asks, now shouting to make up for all the scraping noises she’s making. "No! Have they hunted down rotten little squirrels when he asked, even though he knows that they have a fear of rodents? No! Did they change their name from ‘Mary’ to ‘Marisabel’ because he thought that it would be more ‘vampire’? No!" she yells one last time, stabbing the scissors into the wall so deeply that they hang there, quivering. After a few moments, she smoothes her hair and tugs them from the wall. "Forget that you saw that," she says far too calmly.

Time to take my chances with Ms. Kate. "Well, you seem to be doing better," I say, "so I’m going to – "

"Wait!" she yells. "Do you think that we’re good together?"

"Who? You and Vlad?"

"No, you and me," she says, straight-faced, but then rolls her eyes. "Yes, me and Vlad."

Vampires should not be allowed to make jokes. "I really don’t think that I’m qualified to say."

Marisabel’s eyes narrow. "Try."

"I think that you may have grown apart over the years."

Marisabel nods gravely. For the first time since I met her, she’s wearing pants, a pair of vintage jeans that are artfully worn at the knees. In spite of everything I know, she looks innocent, the girl-next-door who chose the wrong door to get next to. Biting her lip, she turns her head to stare once again at her work of calculated destruction and then traces the sharp peak of an engraved "V."

"Vlad was not always like this," she says wistfully. "When we first met, he was so charming."

I find it difficult to believe that Vlad has ever been charming, but Marisabel looks at me expectantly, and I realize that I am being held hostage until I give up some good girl talk.

"Well," I offer, "people can change a lot in . . . what? Fifty years?"

"Give or take a few," she replies. "The first year was nice. He was willing to risk a trip to Greece then. We couldn’t sit on any beaches, but I’ve never found anywhere else where the night air is so warm and delicious. We made a vampire there. We made him together." Marisabel frowns. "But then Vlad got mad and set him on fire."

I really hope this bonding session doesn’t end with an invitation to look at scrapbooks. "Sounds . . . romantic," I say, trying not to heave.

"It was! But then he started sneaking away every few months for ‘research purposes.’ I thought finding the girl was just a hobby, but then it became an obsession. I don’t understand why he couldn’t just be happy with what he had. When he came back, he was always in a terrible mood, muttering about dead ends and unhelpful records. And then there were the headaches. I’ve told him not to use his powers so often, especially when we have limited food resources."

I’ve been holding my breath throughout this entire speech; I hadn’t even thought of Marisabel as a source of information. Hopping up on the side radiator, I try to strike a pose that will help my casual probing look more casual; it involves a lot of leaning and resting things on my knees.

"It’s not fair that he’s brought you here to look for another girl," I say. "You’re his girlfriend."

She blinks at me for a few seconds before lighting up in delight to finally have someone’s sympathy. "I know! I think that I’ve been very understanding."

"Totally," I agree. "What’s so great about her anyway? Is she, like, some miracle child?"

"Supposedly," she says with disdain, while I struggle to keep my delight in check at having called it. "She’s said to be the great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter of some dumb baby of some musty vampire family named Mervaux."

"Let me guess. A half-vampire baby?" I ask, leaving off the ". . . who fights crime."

"No!" Marisabel says. "A plain old human baby. That’s what makes the whole thing so weird. Who cares about a human baby? People have those all the time." She pauses. "Well, I mean, not vampires. They never have any babies, which is good because child vampires are freaky." Suddenly, her face turns severe. "You’re not going to tell anyone this, right?"

"Oh, no way," I say quickly, shaking my head. I want to ask more questions about the connection between this child of the Mervaux vampire family and the Danae, but Marisabel’s burst of sharing starts to fizzle.

"I mean, I try so hard to be enough," she sniffs. "But he’s never happy. I’m starting to think that even if he finds her, that’s only the beginning. I would just like for this to be over. If Vlad could just see that this wasn’t going to work out, if he could just see that it’s not going to be so easy, then maybe he would give up." She sniffs again. "Maybe you could keep getting in his way."

I can hardly believe my luck – here’s the perfect source of information, and it’s offering to crawl into my lap. But there’s something fragile in Marisabel’s voice that keeps me from pouncing.

"Is Vlad really worth this?" I ask. "He’s kind of mean to you. Do you – "

I’m interrupted by the click of heels on tile. There’s no way that staccato terror belongs to a student. My eyes roam over the utter ruin of the bathroom stall; the last thing I need right now is a charge of petty vandalism. Holding a finger to my lips and motioning for Marisabel to climb up on the toilet, I push the door shut just as Ms. Kate rounds the corner. Clutching my stomach, I do my best to imitate a victim of cafeteria food poisoning.

"I thought I heard something in here," Ms. Kate snaps as she approaches me. "Hall pass?" When I hand it over, she barely even looks at it; years of practice have made her able to distinguish types of hall passes through the power of touch alone. "This is for the nurse," she says. "You are in the bathroom. What is wrong with this picture?"

Apologizing, I tip forward like I’m about to hurl on her ugly black pumps. "I thought I was going to be sick." I cast a queasy look at the door behind me. "Don’t go in there."

I don’t know if she believes me, but her expression of slight disgust tells me that she’s thankfully not willing to investigate. "Let’s go to the nurse, then," she says, walking me out the door and through the halls. She makes no move to leave me alone, not even when we hit the labyrinthine hallway that leads to a cluster of guidance counselors, speech therapy rooms, and the dreaded nurse’s office. If you’re truly sick, you can’t expect to receive much more than generic aspirin and an embarrassing pamphlet about your growing body.