Vampire Crush(24)
Author: A.M. Robinson

"I had other girlfriends, you know."

"I’m not saying that the only girl who would find you attractive is one with serious codependency issues. I’m saying that I’ve been English buddies with Violet this past week, and she’s said a few things that are finally starting to make sense. And then there’s the fact that she flipped in the lunchroom when she saw us talking."

"Okay, it was Violet."

"Did you lose a bet? Check the wrong box on a survey? Because she’s kind of weird."

"Funny," he says. "So I told you how Susanna and Ian’s farm was in the boonies, right? There were maybe three houses within a five-mile radius. Two of those were owned by old retired couples. The other one, the closest one, was deserted. Or so everyone thought."

"Dum dum dum."

"Yes, dum dum dum. Thank you."

"No prob."

"A few weeks after I moved in, I started taking walks. Sometimes I’d even go in the middle of the night, climbing out my window and down a tree like in the movies. One night I walked farther than I ever had before – anything to keep my mind off of reality – and I came across one of those rambling old country houses, complete with a wraparound front porch. For a second, just a second, I thought it was our old house. Or this house," he says, squinting up at the ceiling. "Honestly, other than its size, it was completely different. But it was enough to make me try the front door."

"Breaking and entering. Awesome," I say, happy when it makes him smile. I prefer it to the sadness, times infinity.

"The inside wasn’t nearly as rundown as I expected," he continues, "and there was an old couch against the wall. Newspapers were everywhere. Old, yellow ones. And stacked up in the far corner was what I thought was a pile of sticks," he says.

The emphasis on "I thought" makes me a little queasy. I almost don’t want to ask. Almost. "Let me guess. Not sticks?"

"No," he says flatly. "Not sticks. Animal bones and fur, from a lot of animals. More than could crawl inside for warmth and then die in the exact same place. I turned and ran for the door, but then there was Violet, standing with her arms twined around the pole of the porch and smiling. You know, I think I actually said hello. She looked like a doll, especially in one of those dresses."

"Anyone can look like a doll when their waist has been cinched to the size of a milk ring," I say peevishly and then feel foolish when James gives me a confused look.

"Anyway," he says, "Violet grabbed my arm and said that she was glad to meet me."

"And then she dragged you to the shed and bit you, right?" I ask, thinking that I’m being helpful by filling in the blanks. A+++ for me. I wait for a sign of affirmation, a mouth twitch, a blink, a head wiggle, anything, but nothing comes. "Right?" I repeat.

James suddenly finds his shoelaces fascinating.

"Are you kidding me? You mean it didn’t happen that night? You mean you went back?"

"After my parents died I couldn’t believe how normal everything was," he says before I can ask him how he could have been so stupid. "Even though I was in a different place with different people, it still felt the same. Susanna made dinner every night at the same time my mom did. She even used some of the same magazine recipes. Every morning I would wake up to the same dumb bird chirping, and every day I would put on the same clothes. And yet all it did was remind me how different everything was, how horrible. Nothing at Violet’s was the same. Not her, not the life, and not the rest of them. It felt like getting lost in a movie or book. It was an escape."

"But didn’t their extreme strangeness set off any warning bells?"

He gives me a withering stare. "Give me some credit. But vampires are supposed to be outside the realm of possibility, right? And besides, I didn’t see you jumping up and down in the cafeteria crying monster."

"True. But I didn’t see their animal-bone collection, either."

"Fair enough," he says. "The truth is I didn’t care. It felt like a dream, and I acted like it was a dream. One night Violet asked me if I wanted it all to last forever. I said yes. She bit me, she told me to bite her, and by that time I was so out of it that I did. When I woke up I thought, hey, at least nothing will ever be the same." His head thunks against the desk. "It was the stupidest thing I’ve ever done. You can’t kick me more than I’ve kicked myself."

"Couldn’t you have just dyed your hair purple and called it a day?" I ask weakly. When I think about the loneliness and grief that drove him to do this, I am suddenly choked up. I slide halfway across the floor to be closer, to let him know that I appreciate his honesty. When I stop, he lifts an eyebrow.

"Really? That’s the best sob story I’ve got. What does a guy have to say to make you move all the way?"

When I don’t answer, he scoots forward, closing the distance himself and leaving me to stare dry-mouthed at the inch between our knees.

"Do you know that all the blood in your body just rushed to your cheeks?" he asks. "They’re glowing."

My head jerks up. Without thinking, I clap my hands to the runaway body parts, which do feel a little bit warm.

"Whatever. It’s too dark to tell that," I say with false bravado.

"Darkness doesn’t matter. One of the few benefits of my new condition."

"What?"

"I can see body warmth, pools of blood. And right now, your cheeks are two giant beacons." He points at my face like I might not know which cheeks he means.

"I flush easily," I say.

"Uh-huh," he says, clearly a nonbeliever. Now seems like the perfect time for another subject change.

"So what other superpowers do you have?" I ask. "And if you say X-ray vision I am going to shoot myself."

He doesn’t respond. It’s obvious that the question makes him uncomfortable – he sits up straighter and shifts his weight from side to side. Apparently I am going to have to play a guessing game. "If Vlad is any indication, I would say that you have powers of persuasion."

"To an extent," he says cautiously.

"And you’re stronger?"

"Yes."

"And you have heightened senses."

"Yes."

"And you sparkle in the sunlight."

His lips make the "yuh" shape, but then he does a double take. "What?"

"You, uh, sparkle?" I try again. When his bafflement fails to disappear, I begin to ramble. "I mean, now that I think about it, I’ve seen you in the sun and there doesn’t seem to be any glitter action. But aren’t you not supposed to go in the sun?" Someone really needs to step in and universalize vampire lore, pronto.