The Year of Disappearances

by Hubbard, Susan

  “I’m fine. Thanks.”

  Mysty looked from me to Jesse and back again. Autumn turned around in her seat. “Jesse says you two had quite a talk last week.” She winked at me.

  She and Mysty both wanted to know what had happened. That meant Jesse hadn’t told them.

  I decided to be as honest as I dared. “I gave Jesse some advice,” I said. “Slow down and don’t drink.”

  Mysty’s blue eyes were skeptical, but Autumn said, “It worked. This whole week, he hasn’t had even one beer for breakfast. Or any other time that I’ve been around.”

  “He’s sure not driving the way he did,” Mysty said. “It took us two years to get over here. What’s up with that big fence around your house?”

  “It’s to keep out hunters,” I said. Many vampires gate their houses for security reasons. It’s not that we can’t handle intruders; it’s that we prefer not to.

  Jesse kept glancing back at me, his eyes full of devotion. He thought I was pretty. He didn’t have a clear memory of being hypnotized, only a sense of admiring me, trusting me, and thanking me for the opportunity to be a hero.

  Autumn and Mysty noticed the way he looked at me. Autumn said, “We going to the mall, or what?” She stared out the window, her eyes invisible behind sunglasses that always made her look bored.

  The mall near Crystal River was my second shopping mall; the first had been outside Saratoga Springs, NY. Both had movie theaters and Sears and such—but the Crystal River mall suffered from a pervasive retail malaise. “Going Out of Business” signs were on half the stores.

  Nonetheless, on a Saturday morning, this was where local teenagers came to parade. A long line waited at the Piercing Pagoda, and another snaked from the movie ticket counters. Autumn and Mysty headed for a clothing store. Jesse stopped walking, and I hesitated, not sure where to go.

  “Do you ever look up at the sky at night and wonder who’s looking back at you?” Jesse said. His eyes had a dreamy look. He tipped back his head and gazed at the mall ceiling, as if he were at a planetarium.

  “Yes,” I said. “Sometimes.” My father had given me a telescope for my fourteenth birthday.

  “Ever think about what it would be like to get out there in deep space?”

  “Yes.” I’d often imagined it.

  He shook his head. “I’d like to travel at the speed of light, so that when I came back, I’d be the same, but the rest of the world would be different. All my friends would be old guys, and I’d still be in my prime.”

  “It’s theoretically possible.” But not likely to happen in Jesse’s lifetime, I thought. And even if it did, not likely to happen to Jesse.

  Then Autumn and Mysty were there. Autumn had her cell phone to her ear, and she was saying, “Okay, okay. Whatever.” She hung up. “I got to go meet my parole officer.”

  From Mysty’s eyes, I knew this date came as news to her.

  “I can’t miss another one,” Autumn said. “We can leave you guys here and come back for you after.”

  Mysty said, “Great.” She looked down at her shoes, pouting.

  I wondered why Autumn couldn’t drive herself. She was old enough. But then I considered the possible reasons she might need to see a parole officer.

  “It’s not far,” Jesse said. “We’ll be back soon.”

  “Sooner if you stop driving like an old man.” Autumn punched his arm. Then she seemed confused, as if she’d expected him to hit her back.

  Mysty and I had lunch at a place called Friendly’s. Before I’d taken two bites of my tuna sandwich, she’d devoured a cheeseburger and eaten half of her French fries. She noticed that I wasn’t so fast, and she wondered if eating slowly kept me thin.

  “You haven’t lived here long?” I asked her.

  “Four or five months.” She dragged a French fry through a puddle of ketchup. “My stepdad, he moved us here. He got a transfer to work at the power plant.”

  “You like it?”

  She popped the fry into her mouth and tried to chew slowly. “It is so boring. I thought I’d die of boredom, until I met Autumn. And Jesse.” She blushed, and suddenly she looked much younger.

  So she thinks she loves him, I thought. And she thinks I’m competition.

  The server asked us if we wanted refills on our sodas. Without waiting for us to reply she dumped half a pitcher of cola and ice into our glasses, liberally splashing the table in the process.

  “Jesse is a nice guy,” I said. “But I’m not interested in him.”

  She looked cheerful, but only for a moment. “He likes you,” she said. “When we were coming to pick you up, you were all he talked about. ‘Ari said’ this and ‘Ari said’ that. I mean, you got the guy to stop drinking.” She spoke as if I’d performed a miracle.

  “He’s stopped for a few days,” I said. But I had a feeling he wouldn’t resume, unless I told him to. And for a moment, I admit, I basked in my power to make a man do as I commanded.

  Her head tilted to the right, Mysty smiled. She knew what I was thinking. She really was a pretty girl, I thought, noticing her tanned skin and carefully curled hair. Everywhere we went, people stared at her. Even though we both wore jeans and T-shirts, hers fit better than mine.

  “I want you to teach me,” she said. “Teach me how to make Jesse like me. Teach me how to talk to him, the way you did that night.”

  I wasn’t going to try to teach her hypnosis, but maybe I could help her some other way. “You could teach me something, too.” I gestured toward two teenage boys in the next booth. Their eyes had been fixed on her since we walked in.

  She got the point. She winked at me.

  After lunch we strolled around the mall. From time to time Mysty pointed out clothes that would make me look “hot” and told me I should use my hips more when I walked; when I stood still, she said, I should keep most of my weight on one foot and bend the knee of my other leg, to emphasize the shapes of my calves. In between these lessons, she told me her life story and the stories of her parents and older sister. Her stepfather was inclined to drink when he wasn’t at work, but he was “a sweetie,” not “a creep” like her “real father.” Her mother was “an old hippie” called Sunshine who’d named her daughter Mystic Rose; now Sunshine worked as a clerk at a local drugstore, where people called her Sunny. Mysty had two stepbrothers living in Tennessee.

  Telling me her story was her way of letting me know that she trusted me. All I gave her back were generalities: a vague sense of my parents being separated, my mother breeding horses and bees, and some generic tips on how to handle Jesse.

  “Look into his eyes when you talk to him,” I said. “It’s amazing how few people really look into each other’s eyes. Look deep, and speak slowly. Tell him what you want.”

  Mysty treated this advice as if it were a revelation. As I spoke, she touched my arm with her small tanned hand to signify agreement and thanks. I moved farther away, so that she couldn’t reach me. Then I felt it—the familiar tingle up and down my skin that comes when someone is watching me.

  I looked around, but saw no one. A few boys were eyeing Mysty.

  My instinctive urge was to run away.

  “Tag,” I said, knowing how stupid it sounded. “You’re it.” And I ran off, down the mall. Mysty raced after me. After a minute I ducked into a side passage that led to a cash machine. She came after me, slapped my arm. “You’re it!”

  I put the index finger of my other hand against my lips. We stood still for a few seconds, catching our breath.

  Then Mysty said, “Ow!” She held out her arm. “Look, something pinched me, hard. I didn’t see anything, did you?”

  I hadn’t seen a thing. But I’d felt the presence of something approach us, pause, then go on. I looked at the bright red mark on her arm. “Maybe it’s an insect bite.”

  By the time Autumn and Jesse returned, Mysty considered me her best friend. She sat next to me again in the back seat on the drive back to Sassa, chattering about clothes, scratching at the
welt on her arm. “You think this is a spider bite?”

  “Who knows?” I said.

  The car’s air conditioning didn’t work. Even with the windows open the air was thick with cigarette smoke and the musky smell of Autumn’s perfume.

  Mysty reached over and touched my arm again. “Feel how cool you are!” she said.

  Autumn turned around, sunglasses on, her face impassive.

  “Feel her!” Mysty said.

  Autumn stretched out a hand and let her fingers brush my arm. “Cold,” she said.

  “How do you do that? You’re not even sweating, and it must be ninety degrees in here.” Mysty’s eyes were wide with wonder.

  For a second I considered telling them the truth: vampires don’t perspire, and our normal body temperature is lower than that of humans. Instead I said, “You know the old saying: ‘Cold hands, warm heart.’”

  “My uncle says that.” Mysty was easily distracted. She went back to scratching her arm. Jesse simply smiled, oblivious. But there was something wary in Autumn’s face, in the set of her mouth and jaw. She turned around again without saying anything. Once again, I found that I couldn’t read her thoughts.

  “Stop scratching,” I said to Mysty. “You’re making it bleed.” The streak of blood across her arm made me nervous. I forced my eyes to look away.

  “You can let me out here,” I said when the car reached our front gate. “Thanks.”

  Mysty said, “Ari?”

  I’d already opened the car door.

  “Can I call you?” she asked.

  “Sure,” I said. I stepped out of the car. “Autumn has the number.”

  They were watching me, and I didn’t want them to see the code I used to unlock the gate. I sent Jesse the thought Go now, and a second later he drove away. The last thing I saw was Mysty’s face in the back window, her mouth framing the words Thank you.

  The house looked less like a ruin now. The workers weren’t there—some sort of holiday was being observed. Labor Day, I think. Mãe and Dashay were finishing a late lunch in the kitchen, and I helped myself to salad.

  I sat down. Both of them stared at me. “You’re smoking?” Mãe asked.

  No, I told them. My friends were the smokers. The smell of their cigarettes lingered in my clothes and hair.

  Mãe said, “Friends? Those troublemakers we saw at Flo’s?”

  “Don’t be a snob,” Dashay said to her. “Who else is she going to be hanging out with?”

  “Are there any other ones around?” I asked. “My age, I mean. I’m the only one my age at Flo’s.”

  “I thought you knew the facts of life,” Mãe said.

  “I do,” I said, feeling confused. “Dennis taught me.”

  “That explains a lot.”

  She and I had mixed memories of Dennis. He’d been my father’s assistant and our close friend. He’d taught me how to swim and ride a bicycle, as well. But he was mortal, and sometimes he made mistakes. The last time I’d seen him, he’d asked me to make him a vampire—a request that shocked me.

  “Dennis is no expert.” My mother cleared a space on the table, carrying plates to the sink, and returned with a notebook, a ruler, and a pen. She ruled in the lines for a chart, then began to fill it in. I watched, fascinated.

  “You never saw Sara do the chart thing before?” Dashay made a face. “She’s always making little maps and such.”

  “I need my information to be organized,” Mãe said, still writing.

  By nature, her mind wasn’t organized—it enjoyed flitting around too much.

  “Next thing she’ll be making PowerPoint presentations at breakfast,” Dashay said. “And that will be the day I move out.”

  Mãe’s chart looked like this:

  I didn’t want to appear ungrateful, but I already knew most of the information. Well, I hadn’t known when the sects had begun or in which parts of the world they were popular, but I’d heard about most of the general preferences.

  Mãe heard that thought. “Okay, Ms. Know-it-all. What do most sects have in common?”

  I reread the chart, but it didn’t help.

  “Come on, Ariella, this is basic stuff. What do most vampires have in common?”

  “We have special diets?” I said.

  “Yes. What else?”

  “We need to be careful about sunlight and fire.” I felt more confident now.

  “True. And?”

  Dashay was trying not to laugh.

  I looked back at the chart. “Um, some of us are celibate. I think.”

  “Yes.” Mãe was relieved that the conversation was finally going somewhere. “Sanguinists in particular favor celibacy. Why?”

  “Because they think it’s wrong to have sex with mortals?” It was a guess.

  “Their tradition says sex is wrong, period,” Dashay said, glancing at my mother to make sure it was all right to butt in.

  Mãe said, “Trust you to come in right at this point,” but her voice was amused.

  “Remember, the first Sanguinists were priests,” Dashay said. “Maybe that should be listed on this pretty pretty chart.”

  My mother ignored her. “Even after they left the church, they favored celibacy. Of course, there were exceptions.”

  “Yes, but the girl doesn’t need to know about all of that.” Dashay turned to me. “What you need to think about is this: What do all of these sects have in common besides what you said?”

  I reached across the table for a bowl of mixed berries. I felt thoroughly confused.

  “They don’t want vampires to breed!” Dashay reached out and brushed Grace, the cat, off the table. “They each have their reasons. Sanguinists think the world is overpopulated, Nebulists think it’s nasty to have sex, and the Colonists want the humans to breed because it means more food. But vampires having children? None of them think it’s the right thing to do.”

  “Why not?” I felt insulted, somehow.

  Mãe was watching me closely. “If a vampire and a mortal have a child, that child is likely to have health problems,” she said.

  Dashay said, “That’s only a part of it. These sects, they think the vampire blood is pure, and the world belongs to those pure folks.”

  A “half-breed” myself, I made an effort not to take any of this personally. “What about vampires breeding with vampires?”

  Dashay shook her head. “Can’t happen.”

  “Well, that’s what the lore tells us.” Mãe’s jaw clenched, a sign that she felt worried or sad. “Who knows? There’s been no research to speak of. All we have to go on are gossip, myths and folk tales, Internet chat rooms. Most vampires are like Victorians—they prefer not to talk about sex. Anyway, now you know why there aren’t other teenagers like you in Homosassa. You’re a rare breed, Ariella.”

  I felt—here’s that word again—dizzy. The conversation hadn’t convinced me of anything. “Let me see if I understand,” I said. “I shouldn’t ever have a child. Is that what you’re telling me? Because if I fall for a vampire, having children can’t happen, and if I fall for a mortal, the child might have health problems.”

  I wanted to ask questions. How severe were the possible health problems? Was I likely to be sick? I looked down at the well-intentioned chart, and I wished I’d never changed the subject.

  Then Dashay picked up a pencil. Mãe winced, but didn’t stop her. Dashay added another sect at the bottom of the chart: US. In the ORIGIN column, she wrote WHO KNOWS, and under LOCATION, she wrote SASSA. And for CHARACTERISTICS, she put a large question mark.

  “We are not part of any sect,” she said. “And what we do, whatever characterizes us—that remains to be seen.”

  I reached over and nudged Grace off the table again, thinking hard. For my father, being a vampire seemed such a complicated business, bound up in duties and ethics and obligations of all sorts. For my mother and Dashay, it wasn’t such a big deal. And for me?

  Something else the sects have in common: they all keep their distance from human
s. Even the Sanguinists, who believe in peaceful coexistence, don’t mingle much with mortals.

  “I have a question,” I said. “Why don’t we tell people what we are? Why do we go to Flo’s and not to Murray’s? Why aren’t we out in the open?”

  “Because exposure can be dangerous.” My mother spoke slowly, patiently, but she was surprised by the naïveté of my question.

  “Some vamps are out of the box,” Dashay said. “Mostly in the entertainment business. You can be a rock star or an actor and say you’re a vamp, and the mortals think, ‘Yeah, right.’ They don’t feel threatened by that, for some reason.”

  “Because they think it’s a pose. And they tell themselves that there’s no such thing as vampirism.” Mãe pushed her hair back from her forehead.

  I remembered the line from Dracula (we call the 1931 version simply “The Movie”): “The strength of the vampire is that people will not believe in him.”

  “If they don’t believe, then where’s the harm in calling yourself a vampire?”

  Dashay shook her head at me, as if I were being deliberately obtuse. “Because we have been known to bite.”

  “We try not to.” My mother’s voice tried to soothe me. “But the Nebulists have no qualms about biting. They seem to get away with it, by and large—if incidents come to light, mortals are usually blamed. The Colonists prefer to kill in batches—they say it’s more efficient, even claim it’s more humane.”

  “Has my father ever bitten anyone?” I’d wanted to know that for years.

  “Not to my knowledge,” Mãe said. “It would go against all his principles.”

  “Well, he had to bite the man who vamped him—otherwise Raphael wouldn’t be a vamp.” Dashay lifted Grace and set her outside the kitchen, shutting the door.

  Mãe and I exchanged a look, and a name: Malcolm, the name of my father’s old friend, who had turned on him, made him a vampire against his will. Malcolm had vamped my mother, too, after I was born.

  “Do we need to keep on talking?” Dashay yawned. “I want to wash my hair.”

  “Have we answered all your questions?” Mãe asked.