“Yeah, it really happened, and now the two of you are going to get married and have a million adopted babies and be sickeningly cute together.”
Rose giggles, blush still firmly in place on her usually pallid cheeks. “I’ll settle for a date, to start with,” she says.
Remember the Stars are, as always, good. They’re better than good, and Bette doesn’t say that about many of the bands she sees. Bette sees kind of a lot of bands, because she goes to see the bands she likes as often as she can, and they’re usually playing with two or three other bands, and if she likes one of those other bands she’ll add them to her ‘see often’ list, and it just branches and branches and branches off like that.
If more math involved concrete examples of this sort, Bette would probably be passing it without the usual pulling-teeth sensation that it takes to get through her homework. Who even thought of that as a simile anyway, ‘pulling teeth’? It’s fairly horrifying, as images go. Bette’s never had teeth pulled, but she remembers when Rose had to get a root canal and then that didn’t work and they had to just yoink the whole molar out. It had been totally revolting, a little rotten tooth in a Ziploc bag, and Rose’s eyes had both gone bruised-black like she’d broken her nose or something. Actually, it was all pretty excellent and cool, but still. That didn’t mean it hadn’t been totally revolting.
Bette’s shitty at math, which is funny, because she rules at chemistry. Chemistry is like math, if math had any kind of practical application whatsoever in the real world. Which, okay, it does, but not all that often. The branching good-bands tree in Bette’s head is the first time she can think of in the recent past when knowing how to count past four has been useful at all.
Remember the Stars are one of the best local bands. They’re too good to just be local, but Bette’s given up trying to find logic in the randomness of which acts hit it big and which ones stay at the level of playing tiny clubs.
The lead singer, Lily Green, flashes the still-side-stage Tommy and Michelle a giant bright grin as she steps up to her microphone. Lily’s hot, in a too-cool-for-you way that Tommy and Tommy’s loser friends all think is, like, icy and sophisticated and whatever but is actually kind of pretentious. That’s what Bette thinks, anyway, but Tommy says she’s just being a bitch because Lily is who Bette wants to be.
It’s true enough that Lily’s short spiky hair, dyed bright red at the front and black at the back, is excellently cool, and that she’s got three rings through one dark eyebrow and thick black eyeliner and mascara and her lips are pale pink and her skin is just a shade or two darker than Bette’s own olive complexion, and her clothes are always effortlessly stylish in a funky alternative way and, okay, maybe Bette has a tiny bit of envy going on, but that’s only because Bette knows in her gut that she would make an awesome rock star if she ever got the opportunity to prove it.
Lily’s got the charisma and the voice, but it’s the musicians who make Remember the Stars a cut above the other bands Bette regularly goes to shows for. The drummer, Will Cooper, is steady and reliable and solid, but then sometimes he gets a smirky little grin on his face and does some incredibly fancy and flashy riff on his kit that sounds like it belongs on a classic metal album. He’s tall, especially beside Lily (who’s short, but not quite as short as Bette, which is another thing Bette envies her for), with light brown hair and the kind of peach-colored skin Rose would probably have if Rose ever left her basement voluntarily.
Anna, the bassist, is possibly technically hotter than Lily, but she doesn’t do the flashy, show-off, frontwoman stuff that gets Lily noticed by every set of hormones in the room. Anna’s got blonde hair pulled back into a ponytail high on the back of her head, and deep red lipstick, and glossy red nails, and a little red dress that shows off her long, long legs. She likes to be barefoot onstage, and her toenails are red too. The guitarist, Russ, is the oldest member of the band—Bette thinks she heard Lily tell Tommy once that Russ is twenty-eight. He’s darker-complected than Will but has similar features; Bette’s not sure if they’re related or if it’s just coincidence. Tonight Russ is wearing a Nirvana T-shirt, which looks faded enough that he might actually have bought it while Kurt Cobain was still alive. Bette wonders if Russ has ever thought about the fact that at least half the kids who come to his shows weren’t even born when “Nevermind” was released.
Their music is rocky with a little more pop in it than Bette would usually listen to, but Lily’s smarmy charm carries them through the cheesier lyrics and the more obvious melodies. Mostly, Bette likes them because they’re fun. It’s impossible to associate Remember the Stars with anything more serious than nights out with friends and giggling and dancing around and having a good time, and Bette appreciates that. There’s too much depressing shit in the world as it is; she doesn’t need to spend her time listening to stuff that’ll make her feel even worse about the world.
The other great thing about Remember the Stars is that their fans—with the exception of Tommy’s little poser crew who like to spend their time looking disaffected off to the side of the stage—like to have big noisy happy dance pits at the band’s shows. Bette loves nothing else about life nearly so much as she loves throwing herself into a throng of people who will throw themselves at her right back, all of them jumping and pushing and laughing and letting all their energy and aggression out in a way that feels a lot more creative and satisfying than the fights Bette gets into at school. Contrary to what most of the people at her school think, she likes dancing a lot more than she likes punching asshole jock losers.
JAY
Jay walks a block and a half from the hotel to his bus stop, which is one of the brick-walled shelter sort with a seat and a trash can and half-faded tagging sprayed on the timetable. Jay’s heartbeat stutters (if he’s being honest, the truth is that it hasn’t gone back to normal since he walked away on the balcony) as he approaches the bus stop. Blake is already there, leaning elegantly against the wall. He’s got an honest-to-God top hat on now, the same subtle dark grey as his suit, and soft-looking light grey gloves on his hands. He straightens as Jay approaches, and nods hello.
Jay is an expert in the art of blanking people. It’s one of the core skills required to be truly cool; how will people know that you’re better than them if you don’t pointedly, icily ignore them? So he knows the power of his dull, deliberately unseeing gaze. He can make prom queens crumble and develop spontaneous eating disorders from the barest glance.
Blake just stares right back, demanding eye contact, and smiles a little. Eventually Jay gets bored with the contest, and breaks the moment by looking away.
“What.” Jay keeps his voice so flat that the word isn’t even really a question. “You’re going to follow me around until I go somewhere private enough that you can kill me, is that it?”
“My calendar has no appointments for tonight, apart from the party we’re already done with. Stalking someone as delightful as yourself sounds gloriously entertaining.”
“Delightful,” Jay repeats scornfully. “You can’t think of a better word?”
“Monotone, maybe,” Blake concedes. “A little inflection won’t be the death of you.”
“I think you’re generating quite enough inflection for the both of us.”
Blake’s eyes narrow and Jay smirks. If he’s about to get murdered by a bloodthirsty creature of the night, at least he’s going down getting in a few good jabs.
His phone buzzes in his pocket and he pulls it out, ignoring the way Blake’s still watching him unwaveringly. The message is from Michelle: u done w/ work yet?
y, he texts back, anything going on?
“Why don’t you just telephone each other? Or don’t those things come with that feature anymore?”
Jay rolls his eyes at Blake. “You’re hilarious. Couldn’t you at least pretend to be classy and mysterious, just for a little while?” It’s just Jay’s luck to get eaten by the lamest vampire ever.
“Only if you’ll wear a white nightgown
and pretend to be a blushing virgin,” Blake counters. Jay sighs, his phone buzzing with Michelle’s next message.
we r @ coffeshop nr natalies. usual people. u missd remembr the stars. meet us?
It vibrates again before he hits reply.
lily green hit on tommy.
That makes Jay laugh out loud, then shake his head in response to Blake’s quizzical expression. “A friend of mine. Someone in a band we like was hitting on him. Everyone hits on him. He’s got magic pheromones or something crazy like that.”
“What about you? Do you hit on him?” Blake asks. Jay shrugs.
“Yeah. Sometimes. Oh, what, you’re going to judge me for being slutty? You’re planning to kill me, what do you care about who I am?”
“You know, Jason, most people are significantly less blasé about their impending deaths than you seem to be.”
“I’m fifteen. That’s longer than I thought I’d get,” Jay tells him before turning back to the phone’s message display.
can’t, he writes back to Michelle. got plans.
k. c u @ school.
Jay looks down at the message for a few long seconds, letting himself have a moment of regret that he’s never going to have a chance to hang with his friends again. Then he shoves his phone in his pocket and says, “fuck it.”
“Something wrong?”
“Maybe I’m not as blasé about dying as I thought I was. I know you don’t care, but I was doing pretty okay here. I’ve got a scholarship to my school. I bet there are a bunch of dumb kids that the teachers would love for you to get rid of instead of me.”
“Bargaining is horribly tacky,” Blake replies in a lightly scolding tone. “And my dear boy, it was you who introduced the idea of my killing you into the conversation. There are far too few truly interesting people in this world for me to waste them on so dull an end as dinner.”
Jay blinks, surprised for the first time in a long time. “Really?”
“Or maybe I’m just saying that to give you a false sense of security,” Blake says, holding his gloved palms up as if weighing his options. “Perhaps I take especial pleasure in dashing hopes.”
“As well as the especial pleasure you take in the sound of your own voice, you mean?”
Blake laughs, his head tipping back enough to expose a length of his own pale throat above the crisp line of his collar. “Quite.”
“So if you’re not going to bite me, what’s with the stalker routine?”
Blake smiles. Jay can’t help but shiver at the sight of the sharp, sharp points of Blake’s incisors.
“I don’t remember saying anything about not biting you.”
Suddenly Jay’s shoulder blades are slammed against the brick side of the bus shelter, Blake’s hands on his shoulders pushing him back hard enough to hurt. The back of Jay’s head bounces against the wall as well, stunning him for a split second and making him grunt in surprise and pain. The sound dies in his throat, strangled into a gurgle, as Blake’s fangs break the soft skin below Jay’s jaw.
Jay’s knees buckle but he doesn’t fall. One of Blake’s arms is curved around Jay’s side to his back, a palm splayed across his spine and keeping his body held close. Jay tries to struggle, to raise his own hands and push, but his arms and legs feel leaden and his head swims, throbbing with the pulse of his heart. All he can see with his head tipped back like this is a streetlight and some power lines, and they’re swimming in and out of focus. The sound of Blake drinking, delicate wet slurps, seems to fill Jay’s brain up and shove everything else out.
It hurts more than anything Jay can remember but it feels stupid that he should be trying to remember anything other than this moment, it feels stupid that he ever cared about school or music or friends or anything that isn’t the harsh wet-penny smell of his blood staining into his shirt and the way Blake’s jaw moves against Jay’s neck with each swallow.
Blake pulls away, moving his mouth down nearer to the slope of Jay’s shoulder, and bites again, even deeper than the first time. Jay’s eyes roll back behind his lids, lashes fluttering.
After a long time—or maybe not that long, because Jay’s still alive, there’s still blood in him, and he whimpers in protest as Blake pulls away—Jay is carefully sat down on the bus shelter bench. He tries to open his eyes, to say something, but everything’s starting to go gray and still.
“Blast,” he hears Blake says, somewhere very far away. “I truly didn’t intend… I didn’t know you’d be so sweet. I’m sorry, Jay.”
Jay wants to tell him that it doesn’t matter, that it’s just one of those shitty things that happen in life, but the gray around him is getting darker and, as he feels Blake’s arms lift him again and carry him away from the shelter. Jay’s eyes close completely and he’s gone.
BETTE
As usual the gym stinks, with an extra layer of vaguely alcoholic mint and lemon over the top of the sweat and airlessness and long-damp fabric scent that’s always there.
“It smells like some janitor went a little obsessive-compulsive in here,” Rose observes, waving her hand back and forth in front of her face.
“I heard they found a bunch of dead dogs in here on the weekend,” says Bette. “Torn apart, like some giant thing was going nuts and ripping into them, you know? It was a blood bath. That’s why it’s all scrubbed down now.”
Rose scuffs her sole against the sprung wood floor as she walks, making the varnish squeak. Nobody else has arrived yet. “Oh, sure, that’s so totally plausible,” she scoffs. “Where’d you hear that one, the elementary school playground?”
Bette had heard it from Mrs. Johanson who lived in the next house over from Bette and her mom, a nice enough old lady who lived alone and treated Bette like she was still twelve years old. Bette had got home from her shift at the pizza place and there was a police car parked out the front of Mrs. Johanson’s.
When the cops left a little while later, Bette’s mom had gone over ‘to see if she’s all right’, which was a total crock; it was really because Bette’s mom was nosy and loved to stick her face into anybody’s business that she could. Bette had gone along too, because Bette was a naturally inquisitive and compassionate person who wasn’t going to trust her mother to pass all the gossip along properly.
Mrs. Johanson was crying when she answered the door, and she looked small and frail and old, older than she ever had before, but she made them come in and sit down in the kitchen like nothing was wrong. She made Bette’s mom a cup of tea with sugar and gave Bette a glass of milk and a cookie, which was seriously just ridiculous because Bette was practically an adult and had a nose ring. But the cookie was home-made chocolate chip, which was pretty okay. And then Mrs. Johanson told them why the police had been there.
They buried the bloodied collar and tags that the police had returned out under the trees along the back fence, where the afternoon sunlight lingered. It was nice there, and warm. Bette kind of hoped that, if ghosts were real, the ghost of Mrs. Johanson’s dog liked it there.
“You gonna try out?” Rose asks, sitting on the rickety bench that they usually sat on when they deliberately got ‘out’ in dodgeball. As far as Bette and Rose’s high school experience went, that bench was the core feature of the gym.
“Nah.” Bette points at her own neck. “This voice was built strictly for hardcore and screamo.”
“You don’t think it’s lame I’m trying out, do you?” Rose asks.
“Of course I do. Everything you do is lame,” Bette answers easily. “You couldn’t be cool if you died and they ground your body up and put you in the Icie Kola machine at the gas station store.”
Rose makes a face. “You’re fucking gross.”
“Language, Rosemary,” Mrs. Rush says, pushing the gym doors wide until they click steady in the ‘open’ position.
“Sorry, Mrs. Rush.”
“It’s good to see you here. I’m glad you’re trying out,” the teacher says warmly, walking over to where they’re hanging out. “Are you trying
out too, Elizabeth?”
“Bette,” Bette corrects automatically. “Nah, not me. Just here for immoral support.”
“You can handle the CD player, then.” Mrs. Rush points at the ancient boom box still over by the gym doors. “Let’s get everything ready before the others arrive.”
JAY
The first surprise is that Jay wakes up at all, and the second surprise is that he wakes up comfortable. The linen sheets on the hotel bed are a high thread count and smooth and white, save for a little smear on the pillow under his neck. The windows are open, letting beams of heavy, gold afternoon light in. There’s a big-screen TV on the wall opposite the bed, and a selection of tastefully bland framed prints, which is what tips him off that it’s a hotel room.
He climbs out of bed carefully and slowly, head and neck both aching hideously. There’s a dressing taped to his neck, the gauze an even darker red than the stain on the pillowcase, but when Jay stumbles to the bathroom and peels the bandage away the skin below is unbroken. Bruised a blackish blue, and marked with scar-shiny punctures in the two places where Blake bit, but not bleeding or torn or even scabbed anymore.
Jay looks… well, he looks like a vampire sucked out a bunch of his blood, actually. His skin is shades paler than usual and his eyes look feverish, glittering and shadowed. He’s naked, which—stupidly—makes him blush. Or it would make him blush, if he wasn’t impersonating chalk. It makes Jay feel embarrassed to think of Blake seeing how scrawny he is, skinny and bony and teenaged under his clothes.
After Jay’s had a drink of water and tried to tame his hair, he goes looking around the hotel room for said clothes. His shoes and jeans are folded on a shelf in the closet, and the shirt Blake was wearing is freshly pressed and waiting on a hanger. There’s no sign of Jay’s T-shirt but there’s a folded sheet of paper beside his phone and wallet on the topmost shelf.
Jason —
I apologize again for the condition I put you in. While losing control is inexcusable on my part, you should nevertheless take it as a compliment. If you still object to being described as delightful, I will instead begin to use the term delicious.
The Wolf House: The Complete Series Page 3