“I took more than I meant to again, when I drank from you last night. You’re right; I’m often single-minded in situations such as this.” Blake sheds his own clothing and busies himself with finding the perfect temperature for the water as Jay undresses with the minimum of movement possible.
“I didn’t stop you,” Jay points out pragmatically, breathing through a wash of dizziness as he raises his head. “So long as you don’t tell me how many of the people you’ve been, uh, single-minded about ended up dead in a landfill after you got away from yourself, it’s fine.”
Blake tilts his head to one side, inspecting Jay with a bemused expression as the warmth of the water begins to fog the room. Blake’s palm is cool and welcoming when he reaches up to touch Jay’s cheek lightly, like new sheets on a sick bed, smooth and soft on Jay’s flushed skin.
“You’re a curious boy, Jay.”
Jay doesn’t know how to answer that, so he lets Blake guide him under the spray of the shower. The water soothes the worst of the soreness across his neck and shoulders and Jay sighs happily, content to stand there with his eyes shut as Blake works shampoo through Jay’s hair. It smells subtly pleasant and unobtrusive, like Blake’s cologne. Under the shower those scents recede, though, because now it’s like Jay can tell between artificial smells and the smell of Blake, and ignore the ugly chemical ones completely, concentrating instead on the sharp, alluring smell of Blake’s skin, so close to Jay as Blake massages Jay’s temples with gentle fingertips.
He opens his mouth to speak, and opens his eyes to look at Blake, and what Jay means to say is ‘I’m dizzy’ or maybe ‘that feels nice’ or maybe even something completely awkward and stupid like ‘I like the way you smell.’
But what comes out in a whisper is “I feel so thirsty.”
As soon as the words are in the air Jay realizes how wrenchingly, overwhelmingly true they are. He’s thirsty like he’s never been thirsty before, not even that time he and Michelle and Tommy went to a club and took ecstasy and drank so much water they puked. That was just ordinary thirst turned up crazy, but this is a whole different thing. Jay feels like he might start crying if he doesn’t stop feeling like this soon. He feels so empty. So hollow.
“I’m not surprised,” Blake replies, pushing wet hair away from Jay’s eyes and giving him another of those long, closed-off looks, like Jay’s a Magic Eye picture or something like that.
The thought makes Jay giggle and sway woozily. He reaches out one hand to rest against the tiled wall of the shower but misjudges the distance and loses his balance. Blake steadies him, catching Jay in a close half-hug to keep him standing. Blake reaches his free hand, the one not holding Jay, up to move his own hair away from his own throat. Blake’s touch is always so careful that it’s only now that Jay notices the cruel, predatory points on the nail of each finger.
Jay rests his forehead against Blake’s shoulder. The water is still warm and constant on their skin. “I don’t want to become a vampire,” Jay manages to murmur but oh, it’s a lie, he doesn’t care, he doesn’t care about anything except not being hollow anymore, not feeling this dark lost place inside him yawn wider and wider.
“You won’t,” Blake assures him, something rueful in the tone. “That’s not what makes a vampire. It will help you feel better.”
And then Blake presses his fingers to his neck and tears the skin, that chill pale perfect skin, and the blood wells up and runs in rivulets, mingling with the water still falling, falling on the pair of them, and the blood dilutes as it travels down over the curve of Blake’s shoulder, paling to pink in the steady drum of water. Jay’s so mesmerized by the sight that he stares at it, transfixed, until Blake gives the back of his head a little push and guides his mouth down to the wound.
Then Jay’s swallowing, gulping, sobbing, clinging to Blake as close as he can because the blood is metallic and cold and terrible in his mouth, sliding down his throat, and it’s not just the hollow thirsty parts of him that are filling up, it’s all of him, every small sad space in his dreams and every hairline crack in his heart and all of it, all of it, like nothing will ever be wrong ever again if he can just stay like this and never have to move away from this moment and the feel of Blake against him, surrounding him, holding him as he shakes apart.
After, Blake wraps him in a white Egyptian cotton robe that begins to pink from the drops of bloodied water almost immediately, but when Jay mentions this Blake waves a hand and dismisses the concern.
Blake leads Jay back to the bed and Jay goes willingly, happy to let Blake curl against him and hold him as he breathes. He still feels dizzy and sick and sore, but the sweet, humming feeling under his skin, like he’s finally alive and safe, hasn’t gone either.
“Does it always feel like that?” Jay asks softly, almost ashamed, glad that Blake’s spooned behind him and there’s no eye contact to go along with the question.
“Not always,” Blake answers, after a pause so long Jay wasn’t sure if he was going to answer at all. “Some, yes.”
“Some people, you mean.”
“Yes,” Blake confirms.
Jay is really, really glad he doesn’t have to look at Blake while they’re having this conversation. It’s naked and intimate in a way even sharing the shower wasn’t.
“Is my blood… does it feel like that? For you?” Jay asks. He thinks he might be blushing. He wonders if Blake can tell.
Blake is quiet for another long pause.
“Yes,” he answers.
“You didn’t… you’ve never reacted like I did. I know you say you keep taking more than you mean to, but I figure that’s just a really lame excuse for you being greedy. You didn’t go into a ridiculous emotional seizure like me.”
Blake laughs softly against the nape of Jay’s neck, holding him tighter. “I’m a lot older than you. I’m more used to how it feels.”
Jay snickers, quiet and wicked. “Yeah, you’re a cradle robber. You should change your name to Humbert Humbert. Blake Blake.”
“Better a cradle robber than a grave robber, which is what you are,” Blake retorts. Jay makes a strangled, outraged sound.
“That is so foul. You’re disgusting.” Jay rolls over to his other side, so they’re lying face to face. For a second his courage falters, but he figures it’s pretty stupid to get nervous after everything that’s already happened, so he leans in and plants a quick, wet kiss on Blake’s mouth.
“I like you. Let’s date,” Jay says, curling in closer and letting himself drift into sleep without waiting for Blake’s reply.
BETTE
Ever since they first started school, Rose has been laboring under the misapprehension that class bells are optional. That’s Bette’s latest theory, anyway. They’ve tried alarm clocks and a big glass of water before bed and less blankets and more blankets and every other possible thing they can think of, but Rose is still never, ever ready for school when Better gets to her and Tommy’s house in the morning.
Tommy’s alone in the kitchen, eating a piece of cinnamon toast with one hand and working a blender with the other.
“She’s awake, at least?” Bette asks hopefully, flopping down in one of the chairs around the table and stealing the last mouthful of someone’s abandoned coffee.
“I’ll be up in a second!” Rose hollers from the basement. “Tommy, is my book bag up there?”
“Yeah,” Tommy yells back. “Is Mom’s camera still down there? Can you bring it up?”
Tommy pours the DayGlo pink contents of the blender into a glass. “Raspberry and honey smoothie. Want some?”
The unfilled cavities in Bette’s teeth scream at the thought. “No, god. How do you not die of sweet overdose?”
Tommy shrugs and joins her at the table. “Never been a problem.”
“What d’you want the camera for? I thought you bought some amazing shit-hot webcam thing after Christmas. I don’t know why you bothered, ‘cause you and your friends are all too cool for conveying emotions through facial muscles.”
> Tommy raises one eyebrow and pushes his glasses up his nose. His phone makes a muffled message chime from his pocket, and he pulls it out as he replies to Bette.
“I wanna see if those condom wrappers are still there in the garden next to the train station this morning. They were there yesterday and I thought it would make a neat picture for the yearbook. The search for connection and intimacy in suburbia and how fleeting and anonymous and sad it is.”
“Or how modern teenagers have nothing better to do than photograph grody old condoms, and how sad that is,” Bette offers. “That’s disgusting.”
Tommy shrugs again, still looking down at his phone. “Michelle says the parts for the play got put up.”
“They’re up?” Rose comes up the stairs, tie hanging unknotted around her collar and her hair its habitual bed-hair shape. “Did I get anything? Am I a pirate? I wanna be a pirate.”
“She doesn’t say,” Tommy answers. “She’s Tigerlily, though. That’s the Indian Princess, right?”
“Cool.” Rose pours herself a glass of juice. “Do I have time to make toast, Bette?”
“Not if you wanna avoid detention.”
Rose grimaces. “Damn. Okay, let’s go.”
Tommy’s phone bleeps again as they leave the house, and he laughs out loud at the message. “Holy shit! Rosie, you’re Peter Pan.”
Rose’s eyes go wide and she takes the cigarette she was lighting back out of her mouth. “For real? Someone really dropped the ball on that one.”
Bette punches her hard on the arm. “Shut the fuck up. There are enough douchebags in the world to pull you down without you doing it yourself. You’ll be great.”
Rose makes a face. “Whatever. It’s just a school play.”
They stop near the train station so Tommy can take pictures of the litter on the nature strip.
“You know that film developing costs like a million dollars these days, right?” Bette asks, digging around in her bag for her sunglasses. She loves the warm weather but hates how bright the sunshine in the morning gets. Her sunglasses are this amazing pair of mirrored aviators she stole from a gas station. They make her look like a total asshole and she loves them.
“I’ll just do it in the dark room at school. Yearbook, remember?”
“You’re seriously going to… you can’t submit a picture of a bunch of condom trash to the yearbook, Tommy.”
He looks up from the viewfinder and gives her a puzzled glance. “Why not?”
“Schools have this whole… thing. I don’t know.” Bette frowns. “You just can’t.”
Rose makes a noise of agreement. “Yeah, they like to pretend that we don’t know anything about gnarly shit, like drugs and death and sex and stuff. I mean, we’ve still got the daylight rule in effect. That shit is messed up.”
The daylight rule is the dumbest rule Bette has ever known about, and Bette tends to think that almost all rules are dumb just on principle. The daylight rule says that daylight must be visible between male and female students at all times. No making out, no hugging. Not even any standing too close.
“If the whole school went gay, do you think the teachers would try to daylight rule them?” Bette muses aloud as they start walking again.
“Queen Victoria didn’t believe in dykes, you know,” Rose says, like it’s the obvious response to Bette’s question. “She didn’t see how they’d be able to have sex. So it wasn’t illegal to be a gay girl then. Just guys had problems with the law.”
“Jack the Ripper was in Victorian London, right?” Tommy asks. Rose nods.
“Yeah. That guy was seriously, seriously fucked up. He cut those women’s eyes and uteruses out.”
“Can we not talk about sick shit all the time?” Bette snaps, feeling grossed out. She’s got a pretty strong stomach, most of the time—she loves horror movies about gory stuff, anyway—but for some reason the Jack the Ripper story always sends shivers of disgust and fear through her. Those women had been prostitutes, selling their bodies just to stay alive and fed. Bette feels like there’s something horrifying and sad about someone taking those lives and then violating their bodies as well, like they didn’t even get to keep one or the other as their own.
When they get to school they check the Peter Pan list and sure enough Rose’s name is there on the top line beside the title role. Jenna Chamberlain got Wendy, which kinda takes the shine off Rose’s victory since she’ll have to hang around with Queen Bitch.
“I’m sure I got Tigerlily because everyone else who tried out is white,” Michelle remarks, joining them beside the list. “Which is funny, in a shitty way.”
“I can’t believe I got Peter Pan. Jenna Chamberlain’s gonna cut my head off with an axe when she finds out.”
“She can try,” Bette growls. She knows that she deserves what she gets from bullies, at least some of the time, because she’s a little shit, but it’s not fair the way they pick on Rose just for being weird and awkward.
The school bell rings, and Rose pats Bette on the shoulder. “There, see? We got here just fine after all, didn’t we?”
JAY
Jay says goodbyes to Blake and Timothy and Alexander and goes back to his own apartment when he wakes again. The room is airless and overwarm from having all the windows closed. He shoves the panes open and listens to the traffic outside, resting his exhausted forehead against the glass. He’ll need to take a load of laundry to the machines in the basement soon, which means he needs to find a bunch of quarters. The kitchenette in the corner needs replenishment, but Jay loathes grocery shopping and, given the choice, would rather go hungry for a few days in the name of procrastinating the task.
He opens and turns on his laptop, hoping that he remembered to pay the internet bill the last time it showed up. He’s pretty shitty at bills in general. All in all, Jay’s living-alone skills aren’t any better than any other teenage boy’s, except that unlike most other kids his age he actually has to rely on them to get through the day.
The internet loads up without error, though, which is a welcome surprise. Jay hunts around in his dirty laundry until he finds the card he got at the dinner party, and types in the address printed on it.
Jenna’s profile page is a variety of shades of hot pink, with that twitchy animation effect on the background to look like it’s sparkling, and a photo of her wearing a whole hell of a lot of eyeliner and lipstick even pinker and glossier than the rest of the page. She looks cute in the picture, like she’s really enjoying herself and loves looking so pretty and hot.
Jay sends her a message, blowing on the dusty lens of the webcam built into the upper edge of his laptop screen while he waits to see if she’s around to reply. She is, and does, and soon she’s there in a window in his browser, sitting at her computer in a Hello Kitty camisole with most of her makeup off and her hair plaited into a thick braid behind her right ear.
“Hey, you,” she says, smiling and giving her own webcam a little wave. Jay’s internet connection takes a second to buffer the movement and so it looks slow and jerky, like she’s a puppet being made to dance.
“Hi.” He waves back. “How’re you?”
She makes a face. “My dad’s getting on me and Ashley’s case about something, as usual. I think it’s grades this time. Like he actually gives a shit how we do in school. He only cares where we’re going at all because the lady who runs his company went there too and he thinks it’ll give him suck-up points.”
“That sucks,” Jay agrees. Jenna shrugs one shoulder, which makes the fabric of her camisole shift and shimmer. Her shoulders are very thin, the ghosts of bones visible in the angular shape of her skin. Around her neck is a thin gold chain with a small locket hanging from it. The locket glitters with tiny, star-like diamonds, set around a miniature watch face. The second hand of the watch is unmoving, leaving the time frozen at ten minutes to two.
“Whatever, it’s parents. I did a shoe ad that should be out in a couple of months. For a magazine. I got to keep the shoes, too. They�
�re super-cute. So that was okay. They dressed me up like Marie Antoinette and made me sit in this giant mountain of, like, toy bunny rabbits. The sneakers are cool. They’re blue and patent leather, but cut like—let me get ‘em, I’ll show you.”
Jenna gets up—her boy-leg shorts match her camisole, and her legs are as slim and smooth as her arms and throat and face—and rummages around in a white chest of draws visible near the side of the image frame. After a second she comes back, holding up one of the shoes for Jay to see.
“Super-cute,” he agrees. She drops the shoe on the floor and raises her eyebrows.
“Are you mocking me? Because I can crush you like a bug, you know.”
Jay smiles. “No mocking, I swear. I mean that sincerely. Those are the absolute definition of a super-cute shoe. Look ‘super-cute’ up online and they’ll be the first hit.”
Jenna gives a long sigh through her nostrils and shakes her head. “You’re a bitch, Jason.”
“I guess like attracts like,” Jay counters, leaving his voice in the flat tone it naturally tends to. Jenna grins wolfishly.
“Yeah, that’s me. Maybe that’s what I should put down on my career day forms. I want to be a professional bitch when I leave school.”
“Well, you already are a model,” Jay points out. Jenna shakes her head dismissively.
“You’d be surprised. Lots of girls I meet at shoots are all —” Jenna makes her voice sound hollow and perky and more than a little manic. “Rainbows! Candy! And unicorns! And oh, isn’t this fun! It’s completely nauseating. Like, it’s a fucking job, guys, get over it. We don’t have sugar daddies and per diem allowances yet, quit acting like you’re a socialite already.”
“You’re very deep. Layered, even,” Jay replies. Jenna flips him off, then gives him what is obviously her best and well-practiced scowl.
“Jerk.” She drops the glare as quickly as she assumed it. “So what about you? What’s your idea of fun, when you’re not enjoying my goodies in hotel cloakrooms?”
“Well, right now I’m trying to think of how to tell you that hearing you refer to your ‘goodies’ has temporarily murdered what heterosexuality I used to have,” Jay answers in monotone. Jenna flips him off again. “I don’t know, I do normal stuff. I hang out with Michelle and Tommy, I see bands, I meet people. I’m not all complicated and mysterious like you.”
The Wolf House: The Complete Series Page 6