I’ll make Dad happy. I’ll go to New Orleans.
But I won’t be going for fun.
* * *
In the morning, I stand in front of a turquoise door I used to pound my fist against—five quick knocks—our secret signal as kids so Henry would know it was me. I even did it long after we’d outgrown silly knocks. Henry thought it was funny, and I would have done anything to see his huge goofy grin when he opened the door. I almost do it now out of muscle memory, but I stop myself just in time and ring the doorbell like an adult.
Sam, Henry’s younger sibling, opens the door. His eyes widen at the sight of me.
“Victoria,” he says. “What are you doing here?”
I open my mouth and shut it again, suddenly awkward.
“Sorry. That was rude of me,” Sam says. “Are you here for Henry? Or…”
“Yeah.” I smile back. I always liked Sam, but he’s three years younger than Henry, so naturally we spent our childhood avoiding him.
“Henry,” Sam yells. He turns back to me. “Sorry about your dad.”
“Yeah,” I answer. Sam nods, but he doesn’t insist on asking me how my dad’s doing like most people do. He knows better. Only another person who’s seen cancer firsthand can really get it. It’s a secret club nobody wants to be in.
Henry rounds the corner, and his mouth pops open at the sight of me. He recovers quickly.
“Hey.” He lifts a hand and waves, seems to decide that’s awkward, and drops it to his side. “Come in.”
Sam scoots away, examining us for just long enough that I am sure he knows all our secrets. He always was a perceptive kid.
I step into the foyer, still warm and cozy with yellow paint and a cherry wood entry table holding fresh gladiolas—his mom’s favorite. It’s a bit like coming home after a long vacation.
Henry towers over me, running a hand through his hair. He’s been doing that since he was a kid, but the confident way he carries himself now always makes it seem absentminded. He does it a second time, and I know it’s not.
SpongeBob blares from the family room, and I grin. “Grandma Nakamura’s still got control of the TV?”
He laughs. “Cartoons all day every day. Sometimes my mom steals the remote from her in the afternoon and turns on Dr. Phil, but then my grandma gripes about having to watch a pompous old white man pretend he knows better than anyone else until my mom gives up and turns the cartoons back on.”
“She’s not wrong.” I laugh, and my chest gets lighter. Both his grandmothers have lived with his family since we were kids—his white grandmother, Grandma Connor, and his Japanese grandmother, Grandma Nakamura. He always had the best peanut brittle and the best peanut butter mochi, and I was endlessly jealous, since I never knew my own grandparents that well. Dad’s parents died when I was young, and Mom’s live a vagabond lifestyle, traveling the world while running a company that makes all-natural cleaning products. Mom lived out of a suitcase most of her life, and sometimes I wonder if that’s why she wanted to be a lawyer—something stable.
“I’m a jerk for not saying anything to you when Grandma Connor died. I’m sorry.” I blurt out the apology before I can rethink it.
He shrugs. “You had your reasons.”
The words sting unexpectedly. Maybe he was glad I vanished.
“Right.” I glance back at the door. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be here.”
I step toward the door, but he steps with me. “I didn’t mean… Please stay.”
I pause. “Can we…? Can we talk somewhere?”
He leads me along the familiar path to his bedroom upstairs. The room hasn’t changed, and I wish it had. The walls are still dark blue and covered with posters of soccer players. He still has two bookshelves double stacked with books. The Underworld poster I got him for his twelfth birthday hangs on his wall. We weren’t even allowed to watch the movie yet when I gave it to him. The familiarity is uncomfortable, like my bones want to stay in this safe place forever, but my muscles jump with nerves.
He notices me staring at Kate Beckinsale in her long leather trench coat, outlined against a full moon.
“Still the only vampire movie I like,” he says.
It coaxes a small smile from me. I’ve made him watch many vampire movies over the years even though he’s never been a huge fan. “It’s Kate Beckinsale kicking ass in leather. What’s not to love?”
“True,” he says. “I can look past anything for that.” He plops down on his bed and watches me.
I hesitate when he gestures to the space beside him.
“I promise not to bite.” He attempts to laugh, but the strain of trying to be casual ruins it, and it fades into a choking cough when I don’t join him.
The first fracture in our friendship happened here: eighth grade, sitting on the bed laughing as we read the same comic book together, and then everything shifted. He turned to me with something new in his expression, a look that caught my laugh in my throat, and when he leaned in slowly, I didn’t move away. We kissed. Then I left. Just got up and ran into the woods, because even though I liked it, even though I wanted to do it again, I knew it changed what we had already. What if it wasn’t perfect anymore?
By the time he found me, I’d told myself it would be okay. I wanted this change. But before I could say it, he blurted out apology after apology. He didn’t want to ruin our friendship.
We made a pact not to even consider dating each other until after high school. Afterward, any time we shared the smallest moment that teetered past the edge of friendship, we brushed by it without looking back. Well, I looked back. A lot.
Things would have been so different if I hadn’t panicked.
Or if we’d at least specified in our non-dating pact that we wouldn’t date other people, either. That might have helped too.
I take the smallest step back. This was a mistake. Maybe I can convince Dad to let me go alone. I need to go alone anyway. My plan is for Henry to pretend to go with me and drive me to the airport. Then he can go on his merry way to Tahoe. I’ll pay for him to go if he really can’t afford it. Nobody will know I went by myself.
He leans forward on the bed and rests his elbows on his knees, staring up at me with an open expression. He was always good at disarming people. It got us out of more than one scrape as kids—and for him it wasn’t even about manipulation. When he smiled, he meant it.
Even now his warmth is a hook in my chest pulling me toward him, but I fight it.
“Draw anything interesting lately?” His voice is light, conversational, like we’re just two old friends catching up at a coffee shop.
My eyes shift to his collection of my drawings pinned above his headboard. He’s the one who convinced me to apply to art school instead of doing something to try to make my mom happy for once. Henry and Dad—they were in cahoots on that one.
I thought he’d have taken them down by now, but I also thought he’d take them down when he started dating Bailey. He never did, and I kept telling myself it meant something. I was wrong. They’re not together anymore, but neither are we.
“No.” My answer comes out sharp, though I don’t mean it to. I’m rigid with the effort of holding myself together.
I don’t want to stand in this room that holds so many of our memories and think of Bailey. Especially since I miss her, too, even if it’s not the same as losing Henry.
I befriended Bailey first. She transferred the beginning of junior year and ended up in my art class. It was self-portrait day, and I was drawing an open field with high yellow grass and blue sky with wisps of rain clouds. My teacher had just finished scolding me for not following directions when Bailey came up behind me. “Well, I think it looks like you,” she’d said.
I hadn’t even thought about it being a self-portrait—I just didn’t feel like drawing my face. Bailey and I had been making friendly conversation for a couple of weeks, complimenting each other’s work, but at that moment I knew we’d be friends. She saw me in that picture before
I did. I invited her to eat lunch with me and Henry that same day.
To be honest, I thought she’d be mostly my friend. She was quieter and less adventurous than me, more like the brooding artist on the inside, with blond hair and a soft smile on the outside. But she played soccer, like Henry, and they bonded too.
Bailey and I would hang out and paint a sunset in the evening.
But she’d also meet Henry before school to kick a ball around.
We had other friends too, but Henry and I always felt like our own bubble within that group, and Bailey was the only one who ever made it into the bubble with us.
It felt different, but okay, until I started to notice less of those little awkward moments between Henry and me—those times when our fingers touched and we were slow to pull away, and that slowness said that eventually, when the timing was right, neither of us would pull away. I thought those moments were a promise.
I thought maybe he’d stopped so Bailey wouldn’t feel like the third wheel in our inevitable love story.
I thought that up until the point they told me they were dating—that they’d been dating for a month without telling me. That hurt worse. They knew it would hurt me. I had worried so much about Bailey being the odd one out, and then I was.
I pretended to be fine, but it felt like spilling a cup of dirty brush water across a watercolor you’ve been working on your entire life. The picture you dreamed it would be is ruined—there’s no going back from that.
You have to throw it away and start fresh.
I even tried dating a couple of times after they got together to try to make things less awkward, but it always felt like staring at a poster of one of Monet’s water lily paintings when you know the real thing exists right beyond your reach.
It was so hard, and I didn’t have a best friend anymore to talk to about it. Henry said over and over again that it didn’t change what we had, but how could it not?
Henry’s face goes soft as he watches me struggle through my memories, like he can guess where my mind has gone, but he doesn’t press. “Sit down,” he says. The words are a gentle invitation. His eyes are focused on me, and every time I glance from the door to him, they’re still watching.
Dragging down a deep breath, I unlock my knees and step toward him. I didn’t expect this to be so hard. The bed bounces under my weight as I sit.
He sucks in his own quick breath.
I fold my hands in my lap so less of me touches his bed.
“So,” he says. “What can I do for you?” He pauses and seems to rethink his wording. “I mean… what do you want? Or rather, how may I help you? Yeah. Let’s go with that one.”
I swallow and look for strength in Kate Beckinsale.
There’s no easy way to tell someone you need them to cover for you while you go vampire hunting.
“You can tell me.” The softness of his voice reminds me of when we were kids and we found a wounded bird that crashed into their sliding glass door. We built it a little nest in an old shoebox and Henry cooed at it until it died. I glance out his bedroom window into the backyard. The rock we turned into a gravestone probably still sits at the base of the giant oak tree we used to climb.
I hope this doesn’t make him pity me. I couldn’t bear it.
“I need a ride to the airport.” I lead with the simplest thing. He doesn’t need to know why.
“Oh.” He almost looks disappointed. He probably expected one of the grand schemes I came up with as a kid. If only he knew this was my wildest idea yet. Part of me wants to tell him the real plan, and not because I need to tell someone—I need to tell Henry. I need to tell the boy who always backed me up.
“Well, I told you I’d be here for you,” he says.
“So you’ll take me?” I stop rubbing my thumbs together. If I know Henry’s nervous tics, he surely knows mine.
Too late. He eyes my hands, motionless once more in my lap.
“Why can’t your mom take you? Or Jessica?”
“Busy.” Short, one-word answers are best for lies.
“Where are you going?”
“New Orleans.” I should lie, but I don’t. He’ll remember the trip Dad and I planned. I talked about it enough, but I may have left out the part about looking for real vampires. Henry’s never been a believer, but I want him to see through me.
He does. He knows I’m holding something back.
“Victoria.”
It’s the way he says my name. It’s hard to explain, but someone calling your name for an order at a coffee shop is different from someone you know saying it. The way he says it opens up all the trust that used to be between us and promises that it could be there again if I reached out for it.
“This trip should have been me and my dad. It was a graduation gift. He wants me to take a friend and have fun.” I make my voice as firm and confident as possible, but I stare at my hands when I say it. “But I’m going by myself to hunt for a vampire. And I need you to cover for me.”
I don’t know about you,
but I was raised to fight back.
—True Blood
Three
His face tightens. He knows I’m serious and doesn’t know what to do with it. I want him to give me one of his solemn nods, accepting my plan without question. Instead, he gives a choked laugh. “Gotta find yourself an Edward, huh? I mean, I’m team Jacob myself, but you do you.”
He wants this to be a joke. He’s giving me a chance to laugh it off and back out of what I just said. I knew this would be most people’s reaction. It’s not like vampires are out there holding court and sending invitations. Teams of professionals haven’t been able to locate them, so why would I fare any better? But I had this glimmer of hope Henry wouldn’t write me off immediately. After all, he once helped me set a trap for Bigfoot in the woods behind my house based on my flimsy evidence of gouged tree trunks and snapped branches—some of which I broke myself to create more proof.
“My dad’s team Jacob, too,” I say, because I don’t know how to cut through his doubt.
He laughs again, but it catches awkwardly in his throat.
I swallow. He doesn’t even try to hide his pity.
I bite the inside of my cheek to stop myself from breaking down. “Stop looking at me like that. Vampires exist.”
“Vampires don’t exist.” He says it slowly, cautiously, like I’m no longer a wounded bird but a feral animal he’s trying to tame. “That was a hoax, Victoria. Why do you think they vanished so quickly? They couldn’t keep it up.”
I cringe. We’ve been through this debate before, but back then it didn’t matter to me if Henry believed or not as long as he didn’t look down on me for it. Plenty of people were incredulous when Gerald first appeared—even when he stabbed himself and healed on live television, people called it an elaborate illusion. They accused the news team of being in on it for the sake of ratings.
But I remember the look on the anchor’s face when Gerald’s pale, torn skin melded back together—the pure shock of being confronted by something you’ve been told is impossible your entire life. Nobody’s that good at acting.
I twist toward Henry, leaning closer, forgetting for a moment about all the reasons to stay in my personal space. “Can you prove without a doubt that they don’t exist?”
“No, but—”
“My dad’s dying. The doctor said there’s nothing left to do but watch him. Clinical trials won’t take him at this point.”
Henry reaches out and grabs my hand off the bed. “Don’t give up yet. Miracles can happen.”
I jerk my hand out of his. “I’m not giving up. I’m going to look for a vampire. I know it’s a long shot, but it’s something.”
I’m used to slim odds. Science gave us slim odds the second they said pancreatic cancer, but it didn’t stop us from trying. I don’t know what the odds on miracles are, but it didn’t stop me from praying. The odds are I won’t find a vampire, but it won’t stop me from looking.
I hold my breath,
waiting.
He sighs. “I need to get dinner started.”
“What?” I expected more. “Your mom always cooks.” His mom makes elaborate meals every night. I’ve spent the last year missing her seafood Alfredo.
“Not anymore. Not after…” He trails off and stands, but this time it’s me grabbing his hand without thinking, and he drops down beside me again.
“Tell me.”
“She rarely ever cooks since Grandma Connor died from…” He stops, but we both know what word he left off his sentence.
“But that was over a year ago.” I regret my insensitive words, but Henry only tightens his hand around mine.
“I know.”
I can’t imagine a world where Henry’s mom’s not already in the kitchen, wearing her white and blue paisley apron that somehow always stays bright and crisp even though I’m sure she’s had it for as long as we’ve lived side by side. I’ll walk downstairs, and she’ll ask me to stay over like always.
I wish I could say I was only worried about him and his mom, but all I can think about is who I’ll be in a year if my father is dead. If I’ll be a pool of deep blue grief and no help to anyone. The thought makes me grasp harder at the wary hope inside of me.
I suck down a few short breaths. “Is that the real reason you didn’t go to Tahoe?”
“Yes.” He stares past me at the Underworld poster.
“You’re still lying.”
He sighs, rubbing a hand over his face. “Leave it alone.”
But he should know better than to say those words to me. I’ve never left anything alone in my entire life. “Tell me.”
“I didn’t want to leave you.”
“Me?” I jolt, moving instinctively away from him. The bed bounces, and a pained expression crosses his face. I open my mouth and close it again without forming a sentence. Why the hell would he need to stay behind for my sake?
A year of silence crushes the air from the room.
He runs a hand through his hair, muttering something under his breath.
“Listen,” he says, finally looking at me. “I know what it’s like to lose someone like this, and I don’t know, I just thought you might need someone besides your mom or Jessica to talk to….” He trails off and looks away. “I thought you might need me, you know, like you used to. Remember when you were, like, seven and your hamster died, and you came over here and hid under my bed, and your parents let you spend the night because you wouldn’t come out? I know it’s not the same thing, like, at all, but…” He stops and runs his hand through his hair again. “It was silly.”
Vampires, Hearts & Other Dead Things Page 4