Chapter Nine
Eventually, I crawl into bed, but I don’t sleep well. My dreams resemble a flickering black-and-white horror movie. I’m in a cave swatting bats out of my hair, then fending off spiders with a can of spray paint. Finally, I end up on a windswept moor with a silver and gray wolf. He asks me to dance. I refuse. He retaliates by chewing on my toes.
My eyes snap open. It would be nice if my brain could take this seriously.
The temperature dropped in the night, and while the rain is lighter now, it’s still heavy enough to drum against the attic roof. Wrapping myself in a faded afghan, I climb out of bed and shiver my way across the cold hardwood to the open window. Sliding behind my desk chair, I grasp the splintered frame and push down.
Suddenly, a hand snakes up from the darkness, and I jump back just as four fingers clamp over the sill. Stumbling over my desk chair, I crash to the floor, feet caught up in the netting of my afghan. I claw frantically at the mess around my legs as the hand becomes an arm and then a head and then a torso. A body vaults into view, filling the frame, blocking the outside light.
I have two options. Run downstairs with a rabid vampire in hot pursuit or lurch forward, close the window, and pray that the mixture of screen and glass is resistant to fists. So far the intruder isn’t even scratching at the screen. For an assassin, he’s taking his time, and closing the window might buy me more. Muttering “Close and lock, close and lock” like a mantra, I spring up and rush forward, hitting the window and pushing down with all my might until I hear a satisfying snick.
My attack brings more than I bargained for. Startled by my sudden appearance, the intruder loses his grip on one of the frame’s sides. He swings backward like a saloon door, one hand clutching the upper eave of the window, one foot balanced on the outside cement ledge, and all other limbs dangling in space. The full glow of the streetlight floods his face, and I find myself staring into James’s face—James’s very annoyed, very angry face.
For one crazy, hurtling second I heave a sigh of relief; if forced to choose, he is the better option. But then again, I would also rather drown than be eaten by snakes.
Before I can figure out the next course of action, James begins to move, and move strangely. He swings his body back to and fro until he has enough momentum to bring his other foot back on the sill. Steady once again, he crouches in front of me, a particularly nimble gargoyle. So much for getting the upper hand.
“Let me in,” he says, the glass muffling his voice.
He’s soaking wet. His green shirt is plastered to his shoulders like a second skin, and beads of water race down his nose. I feel a twinge of sympathy, but then tell myself to snap out of it. Twinges of sympathy are better than being turned into an amnesia zombie.
“I don’t care to be mind-wiped, thank you,” I say through the glass. Little clouds of steam appear and vanish between each word.
“I’m not going to mind-wipe you!” he says. “I just want to explain.”
My eyes take in his frown, his narrowed eyes. “Don’t take this the wrong way,” I say, “but you seem a little angry. Why should I believe you?”
“Because I am telling you that I won’t.” I must still look skeptical, because he brings his palm up to the window, pushing down so hard that I can see the small traces of his heart line. “I swear.”
I check his eyes and body language for signs of deviousness, but there are none. I bite my lip, torn. This is the moment, I think. This is the moment where you can make a very smart choice or a very stupid choice.
“Sophie,” he pleads again when he sees me wavering. “You’ve known me my entire life. You have to trust me. I’m still . . . just, please.”
Memories of the last week’s conversations flicker through my mind. It had all felt so normal, just like Old James and Old Sophie. Before I can think about it any more, I open the window halfway.
I am going to make the stupid choice.
“Listen,” I say and then lean over to make sure that there’s no glass preventing him from hearing me clearly. “You can come in—but make any sudden movements and I swear I will run downstairs for the garlic. Marcie buys it in bulk. Already chopped, too, if that means anything.”
His face breaks into a smile that would be more appropriate on the face of a lottery winner than someone I just threatened with prepackaged foodstuffs. He yanks up the screen without the slightest hesitation. If he’d wanted to bust in without asking, that barrier would have bought me a whole .42 seconds—a grim thought. His hands reach for the window next, but I bang on the glass until he lets go.
“I want a verbal commitment.”
He dutifully parrots that he will under no circumstances fiddle with my mind. He caps it off with a Boy Scout salute.
“The salute was a bit much,” I say, pushing the window the rest of the way up. I sweep my hand back in a welcoming gesture. “James, you may come inside.”
“Aw shucks, Sophie, that’s swell. I sure do hope my manners are as nice as yours one day.” He ducks through the window and closes it behind him.
“I thought I had to invite you in.”
“Not really, no,” he corrects before stooping over to shake out his wet hair.
I dodge to the side to avoid an inadvertent shower. “I’m pretty sure that—”
“You don’t.” He stands up straight, surveying me as though he’s suddenly seeing me in a new, geeky light. “How many vampire movies have you watched?”
More than a few, if I’m being honest. In retrospect, I should have cried vampire that first day in the auditorium, but we’ll chalk that misfire up to general sanity. “Not that many,” I mutter. “And there’s a pretty big consensus on the invite thing, I’ll have you know.”
“Well, the consensus is wrong. And besides, if you thought I needed an invite to get in, why did you freak out at the window?”
It’s a valid point, but not one that I feel like acknowledging. “I didn’t freak out. I just thought you were the neighborhood pervert. He likes me. A lot,” I say as he starts to smile. “What?”
“Did you wear the cape just for me?”
“Huh?”
He points to my shoulders. “The cape.”
I look down. At some point in my terror I had seen fit to tie the afghan around my shoulders. Oh my God.
“It’s just something I wear sometimes,” I shrug, untying the knot at my throat in what I hope is an offhand manner. Self-conscious, I cross the room to sit on the bed cross-legged, tucking my feet beneath my knees until not even the pink of a pinkie toe is visible.
“You don’t have to sit all the way over there,” he says, raising an eyebrow in the way that always made me jealous back when I aspired to be an arch villain. “I don’t bite.”
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?”
“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.”
“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.
Vampire Crush Page 9