Justin sniggered. I had never been in a classroom before this moment and already I didn’t like it. Tracy rubbed her knee against Justin’s and they both smiled at my stymied response. I shot a glance at them and then looked back to Professor Lynn.
“Well,” I said, “I’m not a girl who likes to be controlled. The main character, Edna Pontellier, was controlled her whole life. That’s the book. The main character acts out against the social restrictions against her. She feels trapped. Now, if you are truly asking my opinion and not anticipating my failure in completing the assignment, I think it’s a dreadful book.”
Silence. Then chuckles.
“‘Dreadful’?” Tracy whispered in Justin’s ear, mocking me.
“You can tell all that from the first fifty pages?” Professor Lynn asked, his eyebrows raised.
“I’ve read the book before, sir.”
Now they weren’t laughing. I scootched down farther into the seat and crossed my left leg over my right knee. My legs looked long and spindly. Professor Lynn walked to his desk and then turned back to face me. “You’ve already read The Awakening?”
I have a first copy, first hardcover edition, in my home in Hathersage, you fool.
“Yes, sir. Three times.”
An hour later, I dropped my English books into my bag. After scanning the room for Justin, I walked toward the doorway.
“Miss Beaudonte?”
I turned. Professor Lynn held out a handwritten note on a piece of paper. I slung my backpack over my shoulder and walked toward his desk to retrieve it.
“Because you are so experienced with The Awakening and the rest of the class is not, I am going to assign you a few more written tasks than everyone else. It’s not fair, Lenah. Your literary experience puts you at an advantage.”
I nodded, though I was silently kicking myself. I could have easily pretended I had never read the novel if I hadn’t made a spectacle of myself and Professor Lynn hadn’t singled me out. It didn’t seem very fair. Though, what could I say, really? Before a few days ago, I wasn’t much educated in the business of justice.
I wouldn’t dare sully my insides with what you are.
My voice echoed in my mind. I took a deep breath and closed my eyes as a wave of relief flowed through me. I couldn’t access that kind of evil in my human state. Not yet, at least. It was with that thought I reached the door of the classroom.
“You think she’s pretty,” Tracy said in an accusatory way. I stopped walking immediately.
“No,” Justin replied, though I knew he was lying. I knew what a lie sounded like. I was brilliant at telling them.
“Yes, you do. I know you do. You were staring at her in class.”
“Professor Lynn was grilling her.”
“She’s a slut,” Tracy said. “And I heard she’s dating Tony Sasaki.”
“Yeah, great, she’s a whore. Can we go?” Justin asked.
“She’s been on campus for, like, five minutes. She skulks around with her sunglasses on and doesn’t talk to anyone except Tony. Freaky bitch,” Tracy added.
Heat circled and swelled under my heart. These human feelings, these hormones bubbling up under my skin…how annoying. I ran my tongue over my teeth expecting my fangs to come down. I waited—no fangs. I sighed.
“Can we stop talking about it? I have a scrimmage,” Justin said.
I gritted my teeth, threw on my sunglasses, and burst out of the classroom, purposely bolting directly between them. Justin’s eyes flinched, he gasped, just barely, but I heard it as I stormed by.
I descended the stairs as quickly as possible and stormed down the long hallway. Just before I pushed out into the meadow, I looked left. I was directly across from the art tower staircase. My anger rose in me so high that I wished for one horrible moment that I were a vampire again. That I had the strength of my coven to scare the life out of both Tracy and Justin.
Instead, I went up to find Tony.
“I don’t understand. What the hell is wrong with these people?” I asked.
Twenty minutes later I was watching the clock and pacing back and forth. Tony and I were alone in the art studio, which was nice because I could say whatever I wanted without censoring myself. I didn’t even care about my tattoo anymore. I peeked at the clock again. I had fifteen minutes before my next class: history. Now that I had to worry about the damn thing, the clock was everywhere—mocking me. I never had to even think about time before. I had as much as I wanted.
I had forever.
“I’ve heard music before,” I said, still pacing. “Just not like that—in a listening room.”
Or on a stereo…, I thought to myself but decided not to mention it aloud.
Tony was sketching me, despite my reminder that he hadn’t yet taught me how to drive.
“Saturday,” he said, and turned up the radio on a counter to his left. “Saturday and then we can drive all over Lovers Bay.”
“Who do they think they are? Slut!” I scoffed. “I’ve never even had sex.”
(Okay, so I’d never had human sex.)
“Tracy Sutton and Justin Enos are, like, together,” Tony said from behind the cover of the sketch pad. “Tracy Sutton is a bitch. Justin Enos is a rich kid who happens to be good at writing papers. They’re going to hate you. You’re smart and just trumped them at their own game.”
He squinted up at me and then furiously started sketching again. A different kind of music was playing on the stereo in the art tower, something with a lot of drumbeats and repeating rhythmic sounds.
“You’re blushing, though, so maybe they should piss you off more often. Helps with the portrait,” he said, and reached for a peach-colored pencil.
I rubbed at my cheeks as I walked toward the windows. Students walked to and from the many Wickham buildings. I could tell it was close to eleven by the position of the shadows on the grass. Vampires are not innately able to tell the time based on the shadows cast by the sun. It is a talent grown of necessity. Many vampires have been burned to a crisp by miscalculations.
In the meadow beyond Quartz, boys ran up and down a field slamming one another in the head with a stick that had a net attached to the end. On the back of their jerseys was a number and their last names. Two of the Enos brothers were doing this ridiculous activity. One was Justin and one was Curtis, Justin’s older brother.
“What are they doing?” I asked, and pointed at the boys. Tony got up with a pencil in hand and bopped in time to the music over to the window.
“Lacrosse. It’s religion at Wickham.”
“Seriously?” My eyes were wide. “What is lacrosse?”
Tony laughed, and I could see that I was a bit too literal for my own good.
“When you get to the library, Lenah, please look it up. If you don’t know what lacrosse is, you’re going to be in trouble here. Not with me,” Tony clarified, “but with the dumb asses who care about that crap.”
“Lacrosse. Got it,” I said, and went to the door to gather my things. “You see,” I said, turning back to Tony, “I’m already in trouble. So far, just today, I’m a slut, a know-it-all, and ugly.”
Tony sat down and squinted at me. Then he shaded something on the page with the tip of his ring finger. He was seated again, sketching away. “Definitely not ugly,” he said, and reached for a charcoal.
Chapter Eight
At around 3:30, I finished my last class of the day. As I came out of Hopper, I put on my sunglasses and wide-brimmed hat and stepped into the grassy meadow that spread out toward Quartz. I headed to the library for work.
Instead of obsessing over Justin Enos calling me a whore, I tried to think of my new job, the prospects of the life ahead, and how many of my days would be occupied by my transition back into living, breathing life. Did I miss waltzing through my Hathersage home? Did I miss alleyways in London and other international towns, murdering and hurting innocent people as I went? No. I did not. Yet, I yearned for the faces of the coven. The men I had known for centuries. Th
e men I had trained to be murderers. My brothers.
Now that I was human, I had to think about dates and time. It was September 7. There were fifty-four days before the last night of Nuit Rouge. Fifty-four days before Vicken anticipated my awakening. Fifty-four days before the hunt for me would begin.
After taking my spot at the reference desk, I took out Professor Lynn’s assignment. It seemed simple: “Write a five-paragraph essay and discuss one way in which Edna is ‘awakened’ in Chopin’s The Awakening. Use SPECIFIC examples.” I had time after all. My shift was from four until six. I dove into research on a five-paragraph essay. I gathered some books from the reference section and already outlined an idea for the paper when a voice said, “Can I talk to you?”
I looked up. There stood Justin Enos.
“No,” I said, and looked back down at the outline. Really, I could not look at him. His eyes and mouth were unbelievably beautiful. He was still wearing his practice uniform and a pair of muddy sneakers. I wanted to touch the thick pieces of golden hair that stuck to his head in swirls and sticky mats. His cheeks still held a flush, and beads of sweat trickled down into his sideburns.
“I have, like, nine hundred things I want to say,” Justin tried to explain. Why did his lips have to pout like that? So naturally?
I picked up some books and made my way into the maze of Wickham stacks.
“I want to apologize,” Justin said, following me. I shoved a book into a spot on a shelf and continued on through the stacks. I focused on placing the four books in my hand in their proper places and then returning to my desk.
“What Tracy said was stupid and I shouldn’t have—”
“Save it, will you?” I said, and continued on. “Do you do that to everyone? Stand outside in the pouring rain and ask a girl about her sadness? Then make fun of her? Why even apologize?”
Justin stopped in the middle of the aisle. “Tracy’s just jealous. You didn’t deserve that.”
You didn’t deserve that….
The phrase rang in my ears, sending vibrations through my head and echoing in my mind. I shelved the last book randomly.
Then I turned toward Justin and crossed my arms on my chest. “You know what I don’t understand about people?”
Justin shook his head and his brow creased—he was genuinely curious.
“That they revel in the sadness of others. That they genuinely want to hurt one another. I don’t ever want to be that kind of person again and I don’t associate with people like that anymore.” My embarrassment revealed itself through a sigh.
“I’m not that kind of person,” Justin said, though the expression in his eyes said that he was confused.
At that moment I noticed gold, bold lettering out of the corner of my left eye. I turned my head to look at the binding of a book. The title read: The History of the Order of the Garter. I picked it up and placed it under my left arm. Justin took a few steps down the aisle and stood directly across from me. His chest heaved under his tight T-shirt.
“You’re really something,” Justin said. “I mean, the way you talk. It’s—”
“British?”
“No. I like listening to what you have to say. You’re smart.”
I don’t know if he took a step forward or if I did, but we were suddenly standing so close, Justin’s lips inches from mine. He smelled sweet, like sweat. I knew that his heart was still pumping quickly and his blood was running through his veins faster than usual. I wished I could stop these calculated, vampire thoughts, but as they say, old habits die hard.
“I’m smart enough to stay away from you,” I whispered, though I was looking at Justin’s lips.
Justin leaned forward and just when I thought he would kiss me, he reached underneath my arm to take the book. I took a breath. The scent of grass was embedded into his skin. He was dangerously close to my mouth. The instinct to bite. I waited for my fangs to lower. I opened my mouth, baring my teeth only slightly. The moment Justin pulled away, I shuddered and exhaled, shaking my head quickly, and shut my mouth.
“What are you reading this for?” he asked, and then flipped the book over and back.
“For history class,” I lied.
“So, can I make it up to you?” he asked. Justin handed me the book back. He rested his right hand on the stack and kept his left hand behind his back.
“Make what up to me?”
“For Tracy. And me. For making fun of you today,” he said, a hue of pink rising on his cheeks.
“How would you do that?” I asked.
“There you are!” said a high-pitched voice. Justin spun around. Tracy and the other two girls in the Three-Piece stood at the end of the row. Tracy’s hand was on her left hip. It was clear they had coordinated their outfits. They all had on different color spandex pants that clung to their small bodies and similarly matched tank tops.
I felt like an underdressed giant.
“Curtis said he saw you come into the library,” Tracy said, and slid her arms around Justin’s midsection.
I turned away from Justin and headed back to my desk, pretending the conversation never happened. I would not interact with Tracy. I would not be, dare I say it, the inferior one. The other two girls, who remained at the end of the row, stared me down. One of them, the shorter one from the morning assembly, Claudia, smiled at me as I walked closer.
“Nice tattoo,” she said. She turned to the other girl, Kate, and shared a devious glance. “Can we see it up close?”
Once Claudia was at my side, I leaned closer to her and whispered, “You have something in your teeth.”
There wasn’t anything in her teeth, but Claudia whipped out a tiny mirror to check. I glanced back at Justin, who now had both of his hands occupied by Tracy’s hips.
Later that night, I ate dinner with Tony. I took a final bite of that night’s American Flair entrée: chicken breast with a kind of cream sauce. I couldn’t stop smiling while I was eating. There were so many tastes in my mouth. The woody flavor of thyme. The sharp pungency of oregano. And, of course, sugar.
As we finished up dinner, I recounted what had happened with Claudia in the library. Tony was laughing so hard, I could see his back teeth. He wore a baseball hat backward and the same white T-shirt from this morning except now it was covered in smears of charcoal and paint.
“That’s great! Claudia Hawthorne is such a bitch!”
As Tony finished chewing on a bone, I noticed over his right shoulder that Justin was walking into the Union with Tracy on his arm. They separated when they walked inside and the Three-Piece headed toward the salad bar. They sashayed their hips and although they were dressed in jeans and T-shirts, I wished I had changed out of the clothes I’d worn all day. Tony’s eyes followed mine, so he turned his head to look.
“Justin! Save us a seat!” Tracy called, and blew Justin a kiss. Claudia and Kate linked onto each of Tracy’s arms and they got in line behind the rest of the students waiting to pile their plates with salad.
“He’s on this kick to go snorkeling,” I listened to Tracy say.
“It’s still eighty degrees out,” Claudia replied, and flipped her hair over her shoulder.
“Yeah, but in September?” Tracy asked.
“August was, like, two weeks ago, Tracy,” Kate said, and grabbed a plate from the salad bar.
I looked at Justin to see his eyes sweep over the semicircular Union. He did a survey of the tables and when his eyes fell onto mine, he broke into a small smile. His eyes were happy, expectant. He made a beeline for our table.
“What did you do to the poor kid?” Tony asked, turning to me with a mouth full of chicken. As he took another bite, I noticed that his fingertips were stained with charcoal.
“What do you mean what did I do?”
“He’s coming over here.”
All I had time to do was shrug in response because Justin was next to us in a second. “What’s up, Sasaki?” he said with a casual nod to Tony.
Tony nodded back. Justin leane
d both palms on the table. “Can I talk to you?” Justin asked me.
“Didn’t you already? In the library?”
“Yeah, but I want to ask you something.”
Justin’s eyes did a quick stab at Tony and then back at me. Tony couldn’t see it because he was looking at me.
“Anything you need to ask me, you can ask in front of Tony,” I said.
Tony smiled at me but with both lips closed because he was still eating. His eyes were warm, and I knew I had done something right.
“Whatever. I didn’t get to ask you in the library. I really do feel bad about what I said. Would you want to come snorkeling with us on Saturday?”
Justin’s expression was calm, but there was an eagerness in his eyes. The phrase “snorkeling kick” echoed in my head, and I thought of the way Claudia flipped her hair over her shoulder.
“A full day of you and your nice friends? No thanks,” I said.
Tony scoffed and looked down at his plate to hide his smile. I had no idea what snorkeling was, but as usual I decided it was best if I didn’t mention this. I also noticed that at the salad bar Tracy kept throwing glances my way. Justin wouldn’t take his eyes off me.
“My brothers are coming, so you won’t be stuck with just me and Tracy,” he added. I appraised his expression and remembered the complex emotions behind the human gaze. The way that someone’s eyes can burn into you and mean something just for you—that’s what Justin’s look was doing; he was speaking to me without saying anything aloud. But he was holding back, I could sense it. He was looking at me casually but feeling something much more on the inside. My ability to read other people’s emotions and intentions told me this, and for that I was grateful.
“I’ll come if Tony does,” I said while raising my chin. Tony, who was munching happily on the remains of a salad, stopped chewing instantly. The corners of his mouth fell, and he grabbed for a napkin.
“Nice! Meet us in Seeker parking lot at one p.m. on Saturday.”
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