When they calmed down and Kayla stopped fluttering her hand, she put it on her hip instead, “What do you mean, finally?”
“Ha. Evan has been planning that proposal for a year now. I think he was terrified he would pick the wrong ring. I’ve been with him to Tiffany at least three times now. Let me see which setting he finally went with.”
Kayla extended blue tipped fingers and flashed a princess cut stone offset with amethysts while Siona’s mouth formed a little “o” of womanly appreciation.
“He said it was custom.”
Siona nodded her head in silent admiration before confirming, “Yeah, it’s a mixture of a few different pieces he had been looking at. I’m so happy he went the extra mile to get it right. It’s perfect for you.”
Kayla took her hand back and admired the ring herself. “I guess this means we’ll have a wedding to plan in addition to taking on the city.”
“I can’t think of anything I’d rather do,” Siona said pulling Kayla in for a long hug. As they drifted apart, Siona continued, “This is a fortuitous sign for the day. I woke up feeling like something life changing was going to happen today. This was obviously it.”
Kayla gave Siona the side-eye, “It wasn’t about you-know-what?”
This time it was Siona’s turn to wave off Kayla, “No, I felt excitement run through me; the thrill of something new and good. Getting picked for you-know-what is a death sentence. Everyone knows that.”
Kayla picked a hair off her short white sundress and rolled her eyes, “We don’t know anything. The last girl who was picked just disappeared. The hotties came to town and when they left, all of her stuff was gone. Just, ‘poof’, never to be heard from again.”
“I’ve always assumed ‘poof’ was death,” Siona said joining her friend at the doorway to the rest of the house. Hefting the painting in her hands, Siona turned off the lights and shut the studio door.
Walking into the kitchen they each snagged a freshly baked chocolate chip cookie. Siona’s mom’s cookies always were the best. “For an artist, you have no imagination. Why take her stuff if she was just going to die? What? Are they running Storage Wars or something? Perhaps they’re hoarders? No, more likely the girl goes somewhere with that stuff.”
Siona held the screen door open as Kayla walked through, fishing her keys out of her purse. Siona dropped the painting in the back of the uhaul and joined Kayla back at the car, “You know I lack imagination. My best work comes from emotional memories. Mom always said I should have been a scientist. I only trust it when I see it. No flights of fancy for me.”
Kayla opened the driver’s side door. “Flights of emotion, flights of madness for painting, flights of weirdly accurate fortune telling - yes - but I’ll agree with you the airplanes of fancy elude you.”
Siona smirked, “That’s why you’re my bestie. I need you to be my clouds.”
Kayla squeezed Siona’s hand and started the car. “Alright, babe, one last hurdle and we’re free for life.”
Siona took a deep breath and nodded. After The Event, the weight that had hung over their generation of girls would finally be lifted. It would be the cherry on top of her Sundae.
***
Kayla parked her car at the high school amid a sea of girls in white dresses. The entire town was, at this moment, filling the bleachers of the football field and parking was probably an absolute mess around town, but female residents aged 16 to 26 were asked to park in the school’s parking lot. The administrators of The Event did not want any excuse for why a girl was not present.
Over the years, some families had moved away because of the tradition, but a surprising number stuck around. Oftentimes, young people would leave and escape to the city for a number of years. They would party, get an education, sow their wild oats but they always came back. It was as if it was the sacrifice itself that kept them coming back. The Event, the secret they all kept, tied them to this place. The community was close knit and Siona and Kayla found themselves hugging and calling out to friends and acquaintances. The town was protected, like a shield enveloped the town, as if it was under attack from an unknown force.
Siona had always thought these things were silly. If she had lived in any other place, Siona would discount them as fantasy - as too many horror movies watched and mystery books read. But Siona knew where she lived, knew the reality, but it didn’t stop her from feeling on edge at the moment, like someone was watching her.
When Kayla let out a squeal behind her, Siona jumped about a foot in the air. Turning quickly from one of her art students to assess the threat, Siona found Kayla already liplocked with Evan.
“Kayla, you scared me! Evan that wasn’t cool,” Siona reprimanded. She felt like a schoolteacher yelling at the young lovers but her excitement was slowly turning to a sickening sense of anxiety. Continuing down the painted pathway to the football field, Siona let out a scream of her own when two large hands encompassed her own waist. “What the…”
“Gotcha,” a deep voice whispered in her ear.
Siona leaned back quickly on instinct and it broke the hold of the hands around her body. Looking up into the muddled hazel eyes. Siona wasn’t exactly relieved. “Marcus, what the heck?”
“I just thought you might want a little help walking to the field.” Marcus leaned in and tried to slip a large arm around her waist again.
Siona swatted his hand away, “My body is sound, Marcus. I don’t need any extra hands or feet to get there. But thanks for the offer.”
Marcus gave a winning grin, “I just thought you might like a warm body to chase the nerves away.” He attempted to move closer once more but Siona sidestepped, negating his progress.
Eyeing him to make sure he stayed in his place, Siona brushed her heavy fall of hair over her shoulder. “To be honest, all I want right now is a little alone time. I just want to get through The Event and move on with my life.”
Marcus put his hands in the pockets of his low-slung jeans. Siona looked over and thought for the millionth time that she should find him attractive, but there was always something off about him. On paper, he had a lot going for him: Marcus was Evan’s best friend, he had been captain of the football team and now he was a student at NYU. That wasn’t even considering the fact that he was six foot tall, blond and buff. Honestly, Marcus was most girls’ dream guy; everyone’s except for Siona. It was too bad, since Siona was the only one Marcus seemed to want.
Keeping his hands in his pockets, Marcus moved closer, approaching Siona like one would a stray animal. “So you’re headed to the city, right? Evan says you have the U-Haul packed and everything.”
Siona tried to be polite; Marcus had never been anything but nice to her. “Yes, it’s all packed. After The Event, I’m good to go. My dad’s going to drive it into the city with me.”
“Are you considering the scholarship to NYU at all? Their art program is pretty famous.”
Famous didn’t actually mean all that much to Siona but she kept her mouth shut about that. “I deferred it. I can always go back to it in a year if I want but I’m happy with the connections I’ve made with the galleries over the last few years. I can support myself on that income. I’m lucky.”
Marcus shrugged, “You can always do better.”
“Yes, I probably can,” Siona agreed through gritted teeth, “but I don’t see any harm in letting it go the year.” Siona paused by the gate to the field. The buzz of the town crowded into the bleachers, straining her suddenly tense nerves. “This is where I leave you, Marcus.”
Marcus leaned down, close to Siona’s ear and whispered harshly, “Oh, you’ll never leave me Siona, you just don’t know it yet.”
CHAPTER THREE
On the field, Siona’s view was filled with rows of white fabric. Eyelet, lace, linen and smooth cotton, it was a veritable cornucopia of flowing whiteness with nary a stain in sight. Siona couldn’t help but be impressed by the pureness. In total, there were about 300 girls lined up on the field in alphabetical o
rder. They reached from goal post to goal post; Kayla was far away in the A section.
The orderly rows and matching clothing reminded Siona of Senior Night her last year of high school. All of the seniors in her class were called up one by one in their school colors onto the field and their accolades listed over the loudspeaker. Her mother looked out from the bleachers with tears in her eyes. Tonight, Siona was too far back to make out individual faces in the crowd, much less her mother’s. Panic started to overcome her, what if she never got a chance to see her mother again?
Trying to quell the emotion, Siona focused on the girls standing around her. Naming each one in her head and trying to remember what they were up to now, which girls were working or in school, which were still in high school on the cheerleading squad or tennis team. Many of the girls in her graduating class had deferred college until after The Event. It was both difficult to get away and stupid for your parents to pay for two years of college if your child wasn’t going to be around to finish the degree. There was enough needless college debt in the world already. Before Siona could let her thoughts travel in that deathly direction, a hush came over the crowd and Siona knew The Event had begun.
Siona watched the shiver travel through the ranks of girls as the men came onto the field, following the Mayor to a podium on the fifty-yard line. When the chill reached her, Siona too gave a slight shiver in response. The men’s appearance made it all feel incredibly real.
“If the crowd would please sit down and be quiet, we will begin,” the Mayor’s voice cracked through the speaker system.
Siona heard rather than saw the shuffling of the towns people. She remembered from the last Event that there was little fanfare to the ceremony. For all its importance, people seemed to want The Event to end quickly. At this moment, Siona couldn’t agree more.
“The Event has begun. This is the tenth Event in which we give one of our young women, aged 16 to 26, into the care of the Vampires.” Here, the Mayor paused for a moment as if the words had been a tough pill to swallow. “In return, the Vampires will provide their protection.”
Siona felt the weight of those words, the unspoken question asking if a single life was worth the hazily understood protection of the town. It sounded like a question belonging to a philosophy class, one that should be debated in the safety of a classroom semester. Siona was willing to guess anyone’s first question would be ‘What are they being protected from?’ and the answer was “the town doesn’t know.” That made it especially hard to judge the value of the sacrifice.
“We will begin the choosing now,” the mayor finished, the reverberations of the mic echoed as it was fumbled around the podium. Siona snapped out of her mental wanderings and couldn’t help but try to lean around the girls in front of her, to strain to see what was going on, but her view was only of green grass, white dresses and the navy blue sky of a summer night.
The mic picked up the motions of the mayor swirling and sifting through the fishbowl of names. The Mayor was the father of sons, so he was able to do the choosing himself. Ten years ago, when Siona had watched from the crowded sidelines, the Treasurer had to handle the picking as the Mayor at the time had two daughters in The Event himself.
At the safe age of twelve, Siona had watched the entire thing with rapt attention. It had all the appeal of a car wreck or plane crash. It was an engrossing horror that a person was unable to look away from. At the time, it had been terrifying to think that in ten short years it would be her standing on the field. However, the view from the outside had been comforting in its statistical probability. Out of hundreds of girls, Siona thought, what are the odds that she would be chosen? Today, Siona was fully aware of the odds: 345 to 1. The newspaper had run the numbers earlier in the week.
Siona’s heart jumped into her throat as the man cleared his throat, “Kayla Anderson.”
The name didn’t relieve Siona in the least, her stomach dropped to the floor at the sound of her best friend’s name. Kayla’s belated scream spurred Siona to action. She started moving through the ranks of girls, first asking politely and then as the crying and screams of her friend moved closer to the fifty yard line, Siona began pushing and shoving girls out of her way.
It was like a nightmare, too many girls in her way with people moving in, blocking her path. Siona’s voice wasn’t working either, as she opened her mouth to call out. A hoarse noise that didn’t even carry its way to the girls Siona was shoving her way through. Finally, Siona burst out of the shifting crowd of women.
“I volunteer,” her voice was weak with adrenaline and nobody seemed to pay her any attention.
Lifting the skirt of her dress, Siona ran forward. “Volunteer...I volunteer. Wait, Stop! I’ll take her place. I VOLUNTEER!” Siona ended in front of the podium with a shout.
Two pairs of cool grey eyes snapped toward her and Siona’s breath caught in her throat; they were beautiful, unearthly in how handsome they were. The first, a man with long blond curly hair, looked like he would be more at home on a surfboard; his sun-bleached hair looked absolutely golden against his pale skin, though his face wore an expression of boredom. The other, a man with thick dark hair cut above his collar had an appraising look; the frosty grey eyes looking her up and down and then shifting to compare her to Kayla.
Siona was shocked that her first reaction was disappointment. Kayla was obviously more beautiful of the two women. Siona was angry at her mind’s knee-jerk reaction, like she had to be pretty to die today. Putting a hand on her hip, she glared at the dark haired man, but his reaction was only to nod at her in approval.
“What is your name girl?” The blonde one asked far more warmly than he had appeared seconds earlier.
“Siona Radku.” Siona stopped and stood straighter to combat the waver in her voice, “I volunteer to be the chosen girl. I will take Kayla’s place.” Siona had spoken not to the vampires or to the Mayor, but to her best friend, tears welling in her eyes.
“No Siona, I can’t let you do this. I can’t.” Kayla whispered, falling to her knees as the Mayor loosened his grip on her.
Siona ignored the men surrounding them and rushed forward to her friend, gathering Kayla into her arms. “You will let me do this. You have Evan, you have love, and you have a great future as a writer. What do I have; a life as a starving artist? The world is in no need of another of those.”
Kayla brushed tears from Siona’s eyes, “You’re far from starving, but what this world needs is you in it. I need you in it.”
Leaning in close, Siona whispered in her Kayla’s ear, “Besides wasn’t it just you telling me that the girls don’t die? Don’t lose faith now. I was convinced I was headed out on a grand adventure.”
Kayla made a sound that was a mixture of tears and laughter, “You’re right. It’s a good thing you already packed all of your stuff.”
Siona allowed herself to hug her friend and for a moment, they relaxed into each other’s arms. When the Mayor took Siona by the shoulder, signaling her to stand. Kayla’s grip grew tight again and Siona patted her hand, “It’s ok. I got this.”
With a bracing smile for her best friend, Siona turned to look at the Mayor and speak into the microphone. “I officially volunteer to go with the Vampires.”
Her voice reverberated through the stadium and Siona felt the echo move through her body and her heart. The Mayor nodded at her, and after giving her shoulder one last squeeze, he opened his arm and guided her toward the vampires.
Standing directly in front of the vampires was an overwhelming experience. In her rush to the stage, Siona had assumed it was her perspective that had made the vampires loom so large. Now, standing next to the undead men, Siona realized that their bodies really were that big. The blonde one was slimmer than the dark haired vampire, but no less athletic looking.
The man extended his hand, “How do you do, Siona, my name is Valad.” Turning to introduce the other man he continued, “My associate here is Michael.”
Siona looked toward th
e dark haired vampire and held her hand out expectantly. Michael, she corrected internally.
“Hello,” Siona said wishing that her hand wasn’t trembling, waiting for his to connect with hers.
Michael was the same height as Valad, but a completely different build. The bulk of muscle was clearly visible beneath the dark grey suit he wore. It had to be custom, because it would have been impossible to find a jacket for shoulders that wide and a waist that cut. Professional athletes looked frumpier during press conferences than this man did, standing in the middle of a high school football stadium.
“Nice to meet you, Siona,” Michael finally grumbled out, taking her hand and giving it a gentle shake.
Both men had been warmer than Siona had expected. None of the icy hardness fairy tales would have her believe. The men weren’t exactly hot, but they were only slightly cooler than Siona’s own 98.6 degrees and their skin had been normal feeling. But what really threw her is that both men seemed to be breathing. Their nostrils flaring as the wind blew a gust from behind her. Valad’s face broke out into a genuine grin of a smile and Michael looked as if he was trying to hold his breath. Siona wondered if her run had pushed her deodorant to its limits.
In the middle of fighting the urge to smell herself, Siona suddenly realized everyone around her was quiet. Kayla was standing awkwardly at the edge of the stage and the Mayor was openly staring at the interaction between the vampires and Siona. She cleared her throat, ready to move forward to her death and doom; no one could say she wasn’t insane.
“So what now?” Siona looked expectantly at the vampires and the Mayor in turn.
The Mayor looked a bit lost, but Valad easily stepped forward to take control of the situation. “Now, you say good bye, Siona. It may be awhile until you see your friends and family again.”
Valad rubbed her back in a comforting manner but Siona only felt her body tense. Her heart dropped again as she realized this was for real. She was about to leave all she knew and loved.
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