Connor batted him away. “My tastes are way too discerning for anything less, Dad.”
“Ah, so it is guy trouble.”
When Connor didn’t answer, his father shrugged and turned back to the television.
“Okay, none of my business. But when you’re ready to spill, I’m all ears. And quite a bit of nose too, but your mother seems to love me anyway.” He tapped his nose and grinned at Connor. Connor had lucked out and not inherited quite as prominent a schnoz as his father.
“Thanks, Dad.”
He watched the rest of the episode before heading up to his room. Connor had already ordered everything for Prom the night before. He wondered if he should cancel now, and sat staring at his computer screen until it was almost 10 o’clock.
He should have expected the muffled static that came over the walkie talkie, signaling that Emery was home.
“Connor, you there? Can we talk? I know you’re not really sick.”
Shit. Connor had to work on his lying skills. He considered for maybe two seconds ignoring Emery and turning the walkie off before plucking it from his charger. “Yeah, Em, I’m here. And I don’t know what you’re talking about, I am totally laid up and miserable.”
“If that’s true, it’s not because you’re sick.” Static sounded over the line before Emery pushed on, “You saw me and Liz. What do you think happened? Do you think I’m suddenly back together with her and going to ditch you to take her to Prom instead?”
Yes. “Em...”
“Because I’m not. That isn’t what happened. Just…let me explain.”
“…okay. So explain,” Connor said, and held his breath waiting to find out that it was somehow even worse that what he’d imagined.
“She was just apologizing to me for how things ended. We talked about what a good thing it was that we’d called it quits, how we’re both better off, how we both want more than what we had, to be with someone who…” Emery trailed, taking a few breaths that came across the walkie as crackles. “Someone who makes our hearts race. And faces flush. Who makes everything better every day. I never had that with her. I hugged her because we’d finally put all of it behind us, so we could be friends again. That’s all.”
“Oh,” Connor said, as the sick feeling in the pit of his stomach dissipated into nervous flutters.
“Yeah. Oh. But then you ran off and wouldn’t talk to me.”
“I know.” Connor closed his eyes, squeezing the walkie tighter. “I’m sorry. I thought you’d done something stupid after all of our hard work setting that bear on fire,” he laughed miserably. “That was some primo bonding time, man, I could not stomach you going back to her after that.”
“So you did think we’d gotten back together,” Emery said, smile clear in his voice, even through the shoddy reception.
“I plead the fifth. So…how’d practice go the rest of the night? Mark isn’t pissed at me, is he?”
“No. Aurora is though.”
For more than just leaving early, Connor figured. But he couldn’t turn this reconciliation into something more. Not now. He couldn’t confess over walkies. They needed to shake this off, rediscover whatever it was they’d found the night before. Then Connor would tell Emery. If something was there, building between them, it would still be there tomorrow, or next week, or whenever he was finally ready to confess.
Besides, Emery didn’t lead the conversation there either. They just talked, like they usually would—friends who could discuss anything and nothing, and always make each other feel better. They talked for almost an hour that night before they said goodbye.
~
The next morning felt like déjà vu, what happened with Liz just an unfair detour that had made me anxious all the rest of the day and during practice, fearing that I’d screwed everything up for good, especially when Connor ran away from me for a second time. Whatever I was starting to feel for him, he felt it too, it couldn’t just be him being a good friend and not wanting to see me with the wrong person, not with the way he acted.
I sort of wanted to pull my hair out. At times we’d ease into our usual pattern, like nothing was different, but those typical silent moments that hit every conversation eventually, they stretched longer, both of us struggling to fill the void with something that wasn’t…well, I didn’t know what it might be if we let it go on too long.
It was strange wanting Connor, and being fairly certain he wanted me back, neither of us having a damn clue how to move from point A to point B. How did people do that? How did anyone do that? It wasn’t like this with me and Liz. We hadn’t been as close of friends, but Connor and I knew everything about each other, the most embarrassing stories, the most depressing and frightening.
He could list off every celebrity crush I’d ever had, including Chun-Li, which probably didn’t count to some people as a celebrity, but it did when Ming-Na Wen played her in the movie—first crush I ever had, and Connor still smirked at me whenever we saw the actress in something.
Maybe it should have been a hint when we watched the Mortal Kombat movie that, for once, I wasn’t thinking about Street Fighter and how badass Chun-Li was in comparison to Sonia Blade, but how attractive Linden Ashby was as Johnny Cage, and how much he reminded me of Connor. If Connor had some serious martial arts skills.
It wasn’t the first time my celebrity crush had switched sides on me, but I never told Connor when that happened. I always thought he’d think I was teasing him, like I was joking around or belittling that he liked guys if I mentioned that, sometimes, I did too. Usually, I did prefer girls. It was just starting to dawn on me that maybe, more than anything else, I preferred Connor.
Alec was no help. After lunch, he messaged me an emoji of two smiley faces kissing and a question mark. I deleted the message and texted back,
Any word on the hunters?
Spoilsport. No.
Let me know if there is. How’s Wendy?
Deep in the trenches following leads. Be sure and feed earlier this week.
Why? What for?
You had a close call, dear boy, you’ll need it. Make it a Saturday night date. You’ll be busy with set strike Sunday, won’t you?
That was true, I hadn’t given it much thought, but we had to strike the set right after the matinee performance Sunday afternoon. That wouldn’t give us much time Sunday night.
Fine.
Alec sent the kissing emoji again. I deleted it—again. There had to be an easier way to shift from being best friends to wanting more than that. Preferably without vampire mentors getting involved.
The energy once we arrived at the auditorium that night for our final dress rehearsal should have tipped me off right away that, despite everything that had happened—maybe because of it—we were headed into Joke Night. It happened every year, every show; at some point, one of the dress rehearsals became a competition to see who could ad-lib the most or try to trip each other up. The idea was to have fun and be silly to make sure we didn’t peak too early during the run of the real show. Mark usually encouraged it, though he had warned us against doing anything too crazy with this show, given the odd nature of a play-within-a-play and having a completely rotating set.
Once the mood of all of the actors and stagehands became clear, the first thing we considered doing was switching what was usually water for our shared bottle of ‘whiskey’ with pickle juice. Then we thought of Sophie Thorp, who played Dottie. She didn’t take well to pranks.
“Ew, no you can’t swap the water in the whiskey bottle for pickle juice. Even if I know it’s there and avoid drinking it, it’ll still smell awful. No one would fall for that.”
So that was out. I didn’t care for food related pranks anyway, like the year we did Dracula and swapped out some of the plastic garlic for the real thing, and some of the corn syrup blood for ketchup. T
he stage smelled like bad Italian cooking all night.
For this year’s joke night, Amos, who played Selsdon, handed me a new pair of boxers so we could match. He also lost his pants at one point during the show, and he had two pairs of white boxers with hearts on them.
Most of the night was just all of us being more relaxed, knowing the show well enough that we could throw each other for an occasional loop and carry on regardless. A joke here, an exaggerated delivery there, and the nerves of opening night looming tomorrow faded into the background. The very idea that there had been a shooting at the school Monday, that I had been shot, was forgotten in lieu of goofing off.
Of course, someone always pushed Joke Night too far. Sophie might have escaped pickle juice in the whiskey, but Danny Fenton felt like he owed her one for her getting to smash a piece of pizza in his face during our Freshman play and wanted revenge. At one point in the show, he got to dump a plate of sardines all over her head. She wore a bandana to protect her hair, so she could slough off most of the sardines afterward and replace it with a fresh bandana.
Tonight, Danny glopped as many sardines as possible onto that plate, and had Connor cover it in goop. That plate was teaming when Danny snuck up the stairs with it, nearly dropping it in the process and ruining the whole effect, and then dumping it on Sophie’s head with an audible plop. She bit back a screech as the extra goop rolled down her neck, and proceeded to deliver her best performance for the part, since she was honestly ready to strangle him. Of course it only made the scene go more smoothly.
But the problem wasn’t Danny. Sophie would get over it, laugh it off, since she still kept most of the gunk out of her hair. Connor was the one who pushed the envelope. He made up a plate of his own sardines, just as messy and piled high as Danny’s had been. After the set was turned back around, just before Act III started, he ambushed Aurora and got her right in the face.
Even Mark gasped.
Aurora clenched her fists, looked at Connor all red in the face, and stormed offstage to begin ordering everyone into places for the final act. Connor looked to me for help backstage, but I just shrugged. Silent cold-shoulder Aurora was way scarier than her screaming. He was on his own.
He should have seen it coming too, because she was more diabolical than all of our friends put together. The show ended with all of us running through the various doors on and off the set, chasing each other with props, and then stopping when we got out front to pause, bow, and continue on, all to the Benny Hill theme.
After we’d taken our final group bow together, music still playing, all of us laughing and panting backstage, Mandy pushed Connor onto the leftover tarp from the fall musical Singing in the Rain. Aurora waited up high on the set piece above him, and poured the entire remainder of the bucket of sardines on his head. She’d made sure he wasn’t wearing his headset, but his buzzed hair, and black shirt and jeans, were soon covered in the sticky mess.
He stood there sopping wet in goo, mouth agape. Then he raised his hands in surrender. “Never mess with the empress!” he called.
“Damn right!” Aurora yelled back.
Connor laughed, wiping goo from his face. I couldn’t help falling over myself laughing with everyone else. He didn’t have to worry about Aurora’s wrath any more than this, it had been enacted, but he was still in no condition to walk across stage.
Mark came back and saw us when he heard the commotion. He bit back a laugh of his own, but couldn’t keep from smiling. “Will somebody hose him off before he wrecks the set? And clean up every spot of dropped sardine goop you can find. Come on, get moving! Gotta get you kids home before curfew!” He clapped his hands.
Mandy ran back to hook up the hose.
“I got it!” I said when she brought the hose forward, then went back to turn it on while I aimed. I let the nozzle pour water into the trench first to make sure the pressure was okay, then yelled, “Gun it!” and as soon as Mandy had it on full tilt, I turned it toward Connor, nearly toppling him over backwards.
“Dude, you so suck!” he cried through the barrage. It got all of the goop off of him at least, but left him even more sopping wet.
Mandy turned the water off and I let the hose drip into the trench. My eyes hadn’t left Connor’s body since I started spraying him. With the goop, I hadn’t noticed, but soaked from head to toe in water now, Connor’s T-shirt clung to him like a second skin. He always wore baggier T-shirts, button downs over them or a hoodie, and changed facing away from other people, especially if he wasn’t wearing his arm. He complained about being too skinny, too scrawny, but he’d been hiding a toned physique like his dad under all those layers. I didn’t understand how I’d never noticed before.
Connor wiped the water from his face, still laughing, lifted his T-shirt up and out from his body so he could squeeze some of the excess water, and I watched droplets dribble down the toned muscles of his abs to disappear inside the soaked denim of his jeans. The smile dropped from his face when he caught me staring, but he froze there, shirt still lifted, eyes on me.
“It’s decided!” Aurora called, gathering the actors and crew to her only a few feet from Connor in the trench. We both turned, finally tearing our eyes from each other. “Cast party is after Saturday’s show, at my place. Everyone who comes either has to leave by 11PM—and remember we probably won’t even arrive by then—or stay over. The basement and two bedrooms are all ours, so bring your sleeping bags, kids.”
“Hey, umm…” I walked up to Connor while he remained dripping in the trench, waiting for at least some of the water to dissipate before he trudged across stage. His honey eyes made me lose my words for a full ten awkward seconds. “I mean, uhh…Alec said it might be a good idea to feed a little early, after the whole shooting thing. Maybe Aurora will let us take one of the bedrooms so we can do that after the show Saturday. We’ll be so busy Sunday…”
“Bedroom,” Connor repeated, flushing despite the chill of the water, and finally dropping his shirt to slap against his skin, still clinging tightly to him as he shivered. “Totally, good idea. I’ll ask her. Then we can relax Sunday. You know, after all the manual labor.” He gestured around at the set.
Relax. Right. If that was possible. I knew I wouldn’t be relaxing any time between now and then. “Awesome. Thanks. Yeah, let me find you a towel so you don’t soak the Thunderbird too badly on the way home.”
Another ten seconds passed. No words. Just us. Staring.
“I’ll, uhh…go do that,” I said, and dashed off to find a towel.
We’d been finding time for me to feed from Connor for weeks now. He bounced back quickly, even though this time I’d taken more in a single week than seemed healthy. My vampire blood over his wounds helped with that, but still. I should have worried more like I used to about hurting him. Should have worried about the hunters. About so many things. But all I could think about was how this time it didn’t feel like setting up a feeding schedule.
It felt like we’d just made a date.
Chapter 26
Alec
Alec watched the man like a predator on the prowl, though he had no intention of hunting him. His keen eyes always surveyed people like prey. It was how he had survived for so long.
The man was just as Wendy had described—5’10”, African American, blue eyes—beautiful. In truth, Alec had tracked him the moment Wendy first found and then lost the hunter, though he hadn’t told her that or anyone else. The other hunters eluded Alec, careful and meticulous in their subterfuge. This one doubted, and made mistakes because of his doubt. But he hadn’t missed Emery’s heart by chance or lacking skill. Wendy was right about that. He’d missed because of a final changing judgment call. Alec could use that, but he needed to know why.
At first he’d hoped the man would lead him to the others, but despite Alec never once allowing himself to be seen, he sensed that th
e hunter guessed at his presence. The way he looked over his shoulder, feeling Alec’s eyes on him, but didn’t attempt to lose him with any of the hunter tricks Alec was used to, spoke volumes—decibels. He wanted Alec to watch him. So for now Alec would remain in the shadows and keep this tidbit of information to himself. If he had spotted the other hunter, the one who had attacked Connor, he might not have been able to contain himself, but this hunter was different. This hunter had promise.
Alec faded into mist, invisible in the light of day, moving ever closer to peer inside the window of the new motel the hunter had moved to, on the other side of town from the one where Wendy had spotted him. He had photos of Emery and Connor spread out on the table in front of him. And one, Alec saw, of Wendy. This photo, the man plucked away from the rest and tucked into his jacket. Alec assumed that while the other hunters knew all of their faces now, they knew very little about Wendy, and this hunter wasn’t sharing anything he had discovered. He meant to bide his time, learn what he could, and keep it from the others until he was ready. A detective at heart seeking answers, not following the lies of those in charge leading him astray.
Good boy, Alec thought. I’ll keep your secret just a little longer if you prove useful.
~
I only had about a half hour between school ending and needing to get to the middle school for hair and makeup before the show. Mom would bring me dinner around 6PM. Most of the cast and crew scarfed down food in the makeup and hair room, as long as we were careful not to go near any costumes or eat while we were wearing them.
Connor had wanted to stop home too, change into black clothes for backstage since the ones that had been gooped and soaked last night were still in the laundry. He and the girls were over at his place while I was at mine, dropping off my bag and grabbing up a pair of comfy clothes to change into after the show. No cast party Friday night—at least not this year. Getting one parent to agree to have everyone stay over the whole night was lucky enough.
Life as a Teenage Vampire Page 21