Yes, I know. That’s what everybody says, but for me, it was true. Still, I missed the fun times sitting with Denise and Darlene in the back of Ms. Schlerman’s English class, floating on a cloud of percs and Vicodin. The trick was not to nod off. There was always a fine line between drooling and schooling.
You had to get your doses just right.
I started with the pills right after my sweet sixteen. Daddy was a doctor and everything that happened to me happened before the Internet took over and prescriptions were sent electronically. He always kept a script pad in his desk drawer and I was top of my game at forging his signature.
Every month like clockwork, I showed up at Jolly’s Pharmacy with a smile on my face and collected an obscene amount of pharmaceuticals.
I hear it’s not that easy anymore. The drug stores want your ID, your blood type, and maybe your first born. Since I currently don’t have any of those, I suppose I was lucky to be done with the whole narcotics thing before the big change.
Truth be told, I probably could have ended up an addict if it weren’t for a senior field hockey player named Sandy Rosenberg. Sandy was hot in that handsome, dyke sort of way that used to make me go all weak in the knees.
I was what you call ‘conflicted’ back then. I knew I should have been way more into boys, but there was something about Sandy that made me see rainbows.
I even joined the cheerleading squad because of her.
My mother, the gin-swilling cow that she was, told me that no daughter of hers was going to be seen jumping up and down in front of the bleachers with her skirt practically up her ass and her boobs flopping in the wind.
What would she tell her friends at the club?
I told her to go have another drink.
She probably did.
So, one Friday afternoon after Meadowfield High School soundly trounced the upper school at Drake Academy in field hockey, I painted my face, reddened my lips, and waited for Sandy outside the girl’s locker room. She came out with her gym bag slung over her shoulder, followed by this huge girl, Dottie Fishman, who almost everyone in school was afraid of.
“Hey,” I said to Sandy.
“Hey yourself,” she answered and slowed down.
“Oh brother,” grumbled Dottie Fishman. “Rae Parker. There’s nothing worse than straight bait.”
“Screw you,” Sandy laughed. They high-fived each other and Dottie lumbered away. Meanwhile, Sandy rested her shoulder up against the locker next to me and gave me the once over.
“I’m not straight bait,” I leaned in and whispered to her.
“Okay,” she said. “Why don’t we test that theory?”
Two and a half hours later, I was in the back of an ambulance leaving Fountain Park where Sandy and I parked her Jeep and steamed up her windows. Unfortunately, some moron smoking reefer plowed into us from behind and everything went all dark and red.
Later, I found out Sandy Rosenberg didn’t make it.
Death sometimes does that to people.
At the hospital, my little prescription drug habit was peeled open wide. On the surface I was a lily white high-school junior with blond hair, blue eyes, and a one-way ticket to Mount Holyoke.
Underneath that facade, my blood ran thick with every upper and downer known to modern medicine.
Doctor Daddy was livid. My mother tried to pass it off as a phase. She told him that every woman needed Mommy’s Little Helpers now and then, but he didn’t buy it. Neither did the hospital, the social worker, or the drug counselor they made me see.
Then there were my Sapphic tendencies. It wasn’t a secret what Sandy and I were doing at Fountain Park. This time, Daddy said it was a phase. My mother refused to say anything at all.
In the end, with my pill bottle empty and sweet thoughts of the gymnastics I performed with Sandy Rosenberg running through my head, I was packed off to a huge brick building on an estate in the most desolate and boring part of Vermont.
They called it ‘The Retreat.’
I called it jail.
Those first few days at The Retreat were the worst. It’s not that I missed the pills. I just didn’t want to be there. I wasn’t like everyone else and it showed. Most of the inmates wore black and had tongue piercings.
Number one, gross, and number two, gross again.
The counselors made us sit in a circle during group. For hours on end we were told to bare our souls about how much we still missed the drugs and how we were going to have to control our cravings once we were back in the real world. After all, we had no one to rely on but ourselves to monitor what we did and didn’t pop.
Shoot me, I thought. Just shoot me now.
I mostly suffered through group meetings in silence. The other girls saw me as a spoiled rich bitch rebelling against her parents. That was mostly true, except for the rebelling part. The truth was, I didn’t give a fig about my parents. They never bothered with me so why should I bother with them? Frankly, I bonded more with our cook, Flossie, who lived in our carriage house and was far more parental than my mother and father could ever dream of being.
When we had co-ed meetings at The Retreat, the boys just stared at me, some drooling and others hoping I would wear a skirt and sit like Sharon Stone in that movie where she played a nut job.
The whole thing was boring and stupid.
Then Celina Dowling showed up. Ms. Dowling was hired as a short-term replacement for the night nurse who had mysteriously tripped down an out-of-the-way flight of stairs and was found lifeless and bloodless by the janitor, Mr. Owens, who had crazy eyes that pointed in two different directions.
Celina Dowling was stunning like a cat. I can’t explain it any other way.
Sandy Rosenberg had been boy-pretty, but Ms. Dowling was in a completely different league. She was dark, and mysterious, and kind of exotic. If I ever had any doubts that I played on Team XX instead of Team XY, they were completely obliterated every time I saw her.
Besides, she was nice. I wasn’t used to adults being nice. I was used to authoritative teachers, dismissive fathers and drunken mothers, but I wasn’t used to adults who actually cared what I had to say. Even the counselors at The Retreat seemed almost bored by us. On the other hand, Ms. Dowling’s eyes lit up like the sun every time I uttered a word.
About a week after she arrived, I was called to her office after dinner. For some reason, I decided to dress for the occasion. I combed out my hair, put on the little bit of makeup we were allowed to have, pulled on a plaid skirt, white turtleneck, and a sweater. Okay, I admit it. I looked like a preppy schoolboy’s wet dream. I didn’t know why I dressed like that. I guess I thought Ms. Dowling would like how I looked.
It turns out I was right.
She didn’t waste one minute once her office door was closed and I was sitting in the chair on the other side of her desk. She had my file in front of her, but she wasn’t looking at it. She was looking straight at me.
“Rae?” she said. Her lips were plump and full. I didn’t know what kind of lipstick she was wearing, but it looked as though she had shoved a spigot into someone’s chest, turned on the tap, oozed out a little bit of blood, and colored her lips with it. As if she read my mind, she gently licked them, letting her tongue slowly move from side to side. “You’re very, very pretty.”
I crossed my legs, probably showing a little too much thigh a la Sharon Stone. “Thank you,” I said. I couldn’t pull my eyes away from her face. Everything about her was hypnotic and beautiful. I didn’t know what else to say, so before I could even stop myself, I murmured, “You are, too.”
Ms. Dowling smiled. “Yes. I know.”
I wasn’t sure if I was embarrassed or turned on. Our eyes were locked and it seemed like forever before I pulled them away and looked at the file folder on her desk.
“It must say a lot of really bad things about me in there,” I said.
“I wouldn’t know,” Ms. Dowling breathed out in a husky, seductive way. “I like to come to my own conclusions.�
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“Oh,” I smiled, no longer nervous and feeling just a smidge predatory. “And what have you concluded about me?”
Her cat eyes narrowed and she stood up. God, she was hot. Any thought of Sandy Rosenberg or butchy girls in general completely ran out of my brain forever. Ms. Dowling slowly glided around her desk until she came to stand right in front of me. I tilted my head up and parted my lips a little. She bent down and kissed me like I had never been kissed before.
When we came up for air, she said, “I’ve concluded that you are a likely prospect.”
I didn’t sleep the whole night.
For the next week, while the junkies were watching movies, playing Crazy Eights or doing some strange sort of art therapy after dinner, I was with Ms. Dowling in her office. We didn’t talk a lot, mostly because we didn’t have to. Her alabaster skin and cool, seductive touch was a novel’s worth of information.
By the time she told me why I was a likely prospect and what exactly she was, I wasn’t even surprised.
Somewhere down deep I think I already knew.
“You have a choice,” she said that last night.
“I want to be with you always,” I told her.
“Always is a long time.”
“I don’t care,” I said. “If it means I’ll be with you then I gladly accept.”
She came to my room a little after midnight. I invited her in, anxious, and excited, and strangely calm. Once more she asked, “Are you sure?”
“Yes,” I told her. I had never been more sure about anything in my life.
“Good,” she whispered as she reached up and caressed my neck, “Because your life is now forfeit.”
I didn’t know what to expect when she bit into me with her delicate fangs. I thought she might be rough. Maybe I even hoped for it, but she wasn’t. She took my life into her with such practice and finesse, that when I died, it was nothing more than taking off a tight-fitting shoe.
When she brought me back into my new life, it was magical.
The next part, however, was awful.
“I’m starving,” I told her. “Oh my God. I’ve ravenous.”
We left The Retreat, speeding away in her red convertible as my stomach gurgled and I craved copper, salt, and hot liquid. She rested her hand on my knee, slowly making circles on my new, pale skin, with her delicate, beautiful hands.
“We’ll find food shortly,” she said. “I’ll take care of you.”
I believed her, but the cravings were mind-numbing. Twenty minutes before we got to our destination, I started to cramp up and retch. Soon, body aches began raging through me, wave after wave after wave.
“Please,” I begged her. “I have to eat. I must eat.”
It wasn’t until a little after three in the morning that we arrived. She parked the car around the corner and helped me walk the rest of the way. The house was huge and dark, but I could see every nuance as clear as if it were the brightest days of summer. There were mice running along the stone foundation and garden snakes hiding in wait for them. There were spiders everywhere resting in webs they had just spun, while little packets of just-caught meals feebly struggled in their silk purses.
We stood in the shadows, Celina and I. I could call her that now. Ms. Dowling didn’t sound right anymore after all that we shared—all that we would share.
My stomach cramped again, so I wrapped my arms around myself and listened to her as she carefully whispered secrets in my ear. Most I knew already. Some made me breathe a sigh of relief. She told me sunlight wasn’t our enemy after all, and neither was the Catholic Church, or crucifixes or holy water—unless I believed, which I didn’t.
Other rules were steadfast and had to be obeyed. I eagerly nodded my head, willing the cravings to sit in the back of my brain and patiently wait while the pain of hunger and the yearnings it brought lit my skin on fire.
“Remember,” she whispered sweetly. “This is your first meal in your new life. Savor it. Make love to it. Devour it.”
Gently, Celina pushed me out of the shadows and onto the big, circular driveway. By then, I was so hungry that I didn’t know if I could contain myself for another minute. Still, I had to follow what she said.
After all, there were rules for being what we were.
I walked across the asphalt and up the stone steps, my hands gently caressing the wrought iron bannister that lead to the enormous front door. As I stepped onto the landing, a light immediately went on, connected to a motion sensor. I turned and glanced back at my love.
She nodded and said, “Mirrors can’t see us. Motion detectors can. Damn this infernal century.” She barely mouthed the words, but I heard them as clearly as if she were standing right next to me.
My stomach gurgled again and another hunger cramp hit me with such force that I almost fell to my knees. Thankfully I didn’t. Instead I reached for the doorbell and pressed it.
Immediately I sensed movement inside. I listened carefully and could tell that it wasn’t heavy movement, but light and a little wavering. Soon, I could hear the whisper of slippers on carpet as someone descended a staircase. Seconds later, the doorknob turned and the door swung open.
A giant blood bag stood there, pulsing, and quivering, and screaming for me to puncture it with my fledgling fangs.
“What is the meaning of this?” my mother screamed, still holding her midnight martini glass as though it were a permanent feature of her hand. “It’s the middle of the night. You’re supposed to be in Vermont. Get inside here this instant.”
“Gladly,” I said as I felt Celina’s approval at my back. I glided across the threshold and into the house.
After all, the rules had to be obeyed. All I needed was an invitation.
S is for Stevie
Who Must Pay His Dues
THE RIDGE ROAD Street Kings and the Vanguard Lane Lords of Pain were at it again.
Both suburban gangs in affluent Littleham, Massachusetts shouldn’t even have existed, but a long-standing feud over the strip of woods and a hill between the two streets created rivals out of the children who lived there.
Their beef had persisted for decades.
Nothing truly awful ever happened between the Street Kings and the Lords of Pain except for a few black eyes and maybe a row of stitches.
Scores were mostly settled over epic games of Capture the Flag in the summers with the losing team barred from the Ding Dong cart for a week, or with enormous snowball fights in the winters, after which the victors won exclusive sledding privileges down the wooded hill.
No one ever got hurt.
Then the July tornado came.
Tornados didn’t normally form in Littleham’s part of the world. However, this one not only formed, it swirled across the Connecticut River, straight through the south end of Springfield, up the mountain, over the other side, and totally wiped out Monson and neighboring Brimfield.
Littleham was spared much of the damage, but not the fallout after the storm. Town after town was left without electricity. That meant no Internet, no television, no video games, and worst of all, no air conditioning.
Nine-year-old Stevie Deluca was hot, sweaty, and alone. His mother had left three years prior with Mr. Rozell, their yard man, and his father was too busy playing the field to pay him much notice.
Hence, Stevie was a forgotten little boy, and a chastised one at that, all because he bombed his late-June initiation into the Vanguard Lane Lords of Pain. Now, none of the kids on the street would talk to him.
His former best friend, Isaac Bellamy, was the worst of the lot. Isaac had made it into the gang for stealing Mrs. Overton’s bra and panties off her clothes line and walking up and down the street wearing the huge undergarments and nothing else.
However, when it was Stevie’s turn to be initiated into the generations of Vanguard Lane’s Lords of Pain that came before him, he choked.
First, he refused the tree challenge in front of old Mrs. Emmerson’s house. Forty years prior, a boy rammed his c
ar into it, killing himself along with a hitchhiking escapee from the Somers State Prison whom he had mistakenly given a ride over the state line.
Stevie didn’t have a problem with climbing the tree, although everyone said it was haunted. He had a problem with retrieving the bird’s nest that was nestled high in its branches. There were still chicks in the nest, and Stevie wasn’t going to hurt them, no matter what.
Diana Quarterman, the tough, twelve-year-old, undisputed leader of the current Lords of Pain, called him a pussy. To add insult to injury, Isaac called him a pussy, too.
“You’re just a pussy-boy,” Isaac had said in front of everyone, mostly just to show off because he was now a part of the gang. “A wussy, pussy-boy.” Stevie burned inside when Isaac said that.
So much for best friends.
Judy Lanford, Diana Quarterman’s second-in-command, came up with an alternative test which was arguably worse than the first.
Stevie had to traverse the expanse all the way around Old Man Fishman’s house.
A hush fell over The Lords of Pain when Judy Lanford gave Stevie Deluca that impossible task. Everyone knew that Fury lived back there. Fury was a huge, black, Great Dane that was roughly the size of a Clydesdale. Fury was evil incarnate with great, gnashing teeth that could swallow a kid whole.
That day, when Stevie failed to complete a circle around Old Man Fishman’s house because Fury had lunged at him, almost breaking the chain that kept the dog from murdering small children, Stevie wet his pants.
Everyone saw the dark spot spread across his crotch and everyone laughed. Isaac Bellamy laughed louder than the rest. Then he pushed Stevie to the ground because he was bigger and stronger than his former pal, thus solidifying the fact that their friendship had come to an abrupt end.
Finally, in an absurd show of gravitas, Isaac chased poor Stevie Deluca home, throwing street pebbles at him and calling him names, because he failed his initiation into the Lords of Pain and was doomed to a friendless summer.
Stevie cried for three weeks straight, often staring forlornly out the window onto Vanguard Lane, watching the Lords of Pain play kick-ball or race bicycles, wishing he was out there, too. His wishing turned into an obsession, and his obsession turned into a base need, like food or water.
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