Vampire Crush(23)
Author: A.M. Robinson

Considering earlier events, it’s a gutsy joke. "How long have you been waiting to say that?"

"Since I moved home," he says, taking a seat by the leg of my desk.

"Nice."

We lapse into silence. I lean my head back against the wall, keeping watch on him from the corner of my eye. He’s brought his knees up closer to his chest, and his hands rest calmly on top of them, patient and relaxed.

"You know, you don’t get a free pass here. If you want me to really trust you, you have to tell me everything. You have to answer all of my questions, no matter how stupid or invasive they are."

"Okay," he says without hesitation.

"I mean it," I say, looking at him directly. "No evasion."

"Okay."

"Fine, then," I say archly. "What did you do with the flip-flop you stole in third grade? I never found it in your yard."

He doesn’t miss a beat. "I dug a hole and buried it by the swing set."

"Are you serious?"

"Yeah. With my hands," he adds. "The neighbor’s dog watched me the entire time. I had to wash under my nails for weeks to get the dirt out."

"Okay. How did you become a vampire?"

He blinks a few times. "You go from zero to sixty, don’t you?"

"It’s the best way to get honest answers," I say. "Why? Backing out?"

"No. But I wonder if you’ll answer a question for me first."

If it has anything to do with my blood type, I’m going to kick myself. "What?" I ask, suspicious.

"What bothers you more?" he asks, leaning forward. "The fact that I’m a vampire or the fact that you have me here, sitting in your bedroom, after midnight? Because I actually think it’s the second one."

He flashes a toothy smile. In any other time, under any other circumstances, I would almost think that he was . . .

"Are you flirting with me?" I ask, stunned. "Now?"

I think I see a flicker of disappointment wash across his features, but it could just be a shadow. "Please," he says coolly. "I was just curious. And besides, I thought the whole vampire thing was supposed to be sexy. I just wanted to make sure you weren’t going to start giggling and twirling your hair."

"I think you’re safe. One, vampires lose a little something when one of them tries to snack on your neck, and two, I’m still not sure what you’re doing back. So spill," I order, frowning when all that follows is a few seconds of awkward silence. "I’ll get you started. Once upon a time, I met someone with really pointy teeth, and they said – "

"Okay," James cuts me off. "This isn’t easy, you know? What you’re going to hear isn’t one of my best moments. After my parents died, it was . . . hard."

"Was it really a fire?" I ask, bracing myself for a story of how the fire was a cover-up, of midnight vampire attacks and bloody handprints smeared across white sheets. Instead he surprises me with a short laugh.

"Yep. Just one of those random tragedies everyone reads about in the newspaper and everyone forgets three days later. Except for the people it happens to."

It’s hard to imagine that when I was cursing the day-to-day indignities of being a high school freshman, he was dealing with having his life suddenly ripped out from under him. Imagining James as a sudden orphan causes me to pull the afghan back up and wrap it, mummylike, around my shoulders. He’s stopped talking again, but for once I don’t poke or prod.

"Anyway," he continues so suddenly that I jump, "after my parents died, they had to figure out what to do with me. My grandparents had died long before I was born, and my parents didn’t have any siblings. If they had left it up to me, I would have taken my chances on my own, but I was sixteen, and legally that meant I had to be placed in a foster home."

A foster home seems so . . . clinical. "Were the people nice?"

James shrugs. "I guess. They lived in an old renovated farmhouse with acres of fields around it. Susanna bred some form of German shepherd, and Ian spent most of his time with old tractor parts. An old country bus picked me up for school. When I went."

"When you went?"

"Yeah. I probably skipped half the time, but I passed. Barely," he snorts and then opens his eyes. "You know, when you’re happy it’s hard to imagine not caring about anything. But I didn’t. Not myself, not my future, not anyone. Sometimes I imagined what it would have been like if we’d never moved, if we still lived next to you and your family, and if you and I still spent most of our days coming up with the perfect insults for each other. I’d stay up late at night, imagining conversations that could have happened on the way to school, in our backyards, over the phone . . . ," he says and then shoots me an embarrassed glance. "It was stupid – I had other friends, and you and I didn’t even talk that much after sixth grade."

I don’t know what to say. I feel like I should admit something personal as well – that when he kissed my cheek on the hammock I was just pretending to be asleep. That the day his family moved away I cried. Or, a little voice inside whispers, you could sit closer. That’s a sure sign of emotional solidarity. That little voice is right, and from the way James is still looking at me, I’m going to have to come up with something a little more supportive than a few jokes. Trailing a clump of covers, I scoot to the edge of the bed and then slide to the floor. Now there’s not as much space separating us, but even that measly six feet has taken on the proportions of a football field. Do I scoot over and loop my arm around his shoulders, or is leaning forward with a concerned expression, Oprah-like, okay?

I’m still wrestling with myself, eyeing the floor like it’s Mount Everest and wondering how the whole vampire thing fits into the equation, when James’s voice pipes up. "Comfortable now?" he asks with an off-kilter smile that says he knows exactly what stupidity I’ve been debating.

"The bed was too soft," I say in a rush, which makes him grin even more. The good news is that he’s smiling again; apparently all I need to do to make him feel better is tap into my inner social moron. "I’m so sorry, James."

He shrugs again. "Not your fault."

"But that still doesn’t explain where the fangs come in. My money’s on a certain girlfriend from the wrong side of the afterlife."

His expression turns cagey. "Possibly."

"You mean there are several choices?" I ask, and then resist the urge to bang on my chest. Where did that shrillness come from? Clearing my throat to evict whatever jealous-girlfriend type has come in and changed the wallpaper, I strive for something calmer. "I mean, the only logical choice is Violet."