My throat tightens. “No, it wasn’t. I’m here, aren’t I?” My fingers shake, and I clasp my hands together. I thought he might help me, expected it, even, because sometimes when we tentatively smiled at each other across the hall I got the sense we could be friends again if one of us took the first step, but I didn’t expect him to be waiting for me.
I wasn’t there for him, but he is here for me now.
And even though the hurt he caused me lingers under everything, I still ran to him.
It seems silly that we stayed apart.
He’s staring at me with a familiar look in his eyes. Too familiar.
“So what do you think?” He knows I’m asking about more than the ride. I want him to believe in me. I want him to build a trap for Bigfoot again if I asked him.
But he shakes his head, his face pinching as if he wishes he could believe with me.
I still need a ride to the airport.
“Please.” My voice cracks, and I look away. Henry’s approval meant more to me than I thought. “I can’t sit and watch him fade away. All I need is a ride to the airport and for you to not tell anyone what I’m really doing out there.”
He sighs. “Of course,” he says. “Of course.”
* * *
Dad looks genuinely happy when I agree to go on the trip, and it kills me.
“Who’d you decide to take with you?”
I hesitate before giving a half-truth. “Henry.” It’s not a total lie. I’m taking him with me as far as the airport at least.
“Henry?” He smiles a little, and a trickle of life shines in his eyes. “Good. I was hoping you two would reconnect eventually.”
“Yeah.” I smile back. It’s not a lie. Henry does seem to want to reconnect, and maybe after this trip, we’ll be able to. Still, I long to tell Dad the truth—that I’m only going for him, not to see the sights and have a good time with Henry. Dad would support me. He’d tell me to believe, no matter what anyone else thinks. Just imagining it strengthens me. But he’d also tell Mom. They don’t keep secrets, and she would never understand this. Like Henry, she never believed. I can’t risk her doubt stopping me.
People live inside a carefully constructed box they call reality and refuse to see anything outside of it, but unwillingness to look beyond that box doesn’t make it any less real.
Dad’s eyes close, and he drifts off as I stand there. The doctor said one month or less, but I have a week if I want to be back for Dad’s birthday. I’ve already started making arrangements for an after-dark party and sent out invitations to family and friends with clear instructions that it’s a surprise. I just hope they don’t contact Mom instead of me to RSVP. She won’t get it—she doesn’t know Dad could be fine by then, and I don’t want him to be disappointed on his first day of eternity. I know planning a party will make it so much more horrible if I fail, but I can’t let myself think like that.
I leave that night, after he’s gone to bed, because even normal goodbyes aren’t easy anymore.
Mom’s awake though, sitting at the kitchen counter with a mug of steaming tea. She’s never up this late, which means she’s waiting for me.
She gives me a tired smile, and I know it’s not simply because it’s way past the time she goes to bed. I recognize some of my own exhaustion in it. I wonder if I’m starting to let mine show too, if that’s why she wants me gone so badly: my mask was slipping, and she doesn’t want Dad to see.
But I have hope again now. I wish I could share it with her, but that would make her change her mind about me going, and now I need to go.
Her fingers curve and uncurve around her cup as we stare at each other.
“Be safe,” she says.
I nod, relieved to stay in familiar territory. We won’t get emotional. She’ll give me the generic motherly concern, and I’ll be on my way. I start to pull my suitcase toward the front door.
“Did you remember to pack your art supplies?” she asks, twisting in her seat to look at me.
I don’t want to have this conversation. She’s had all my life to encourage my art, but she’s choosing now to care? When I can’t draw anymore?
“You might feel inspired out there,” she says.
“Yeah,” I say, keeping my answer as vague as possible. My art stuff is upstairs under my bed where it belongs now. I don’t want it. All I want is to escape this conversation. “Bye, Mom,” I say before she can pry anymore.
She nods and goes back to her tea, and I finally make it out the door.
I tremble from both anticipation and the overwhelming desire to stay home and hold Dad’s hand forever as I drag my suitcase down the sidewalk to Henry’s house. But forever will never happen if I don’t go. Another year won’t happen. Maybe not even another month.
My suitcase wobbles up the uneven driveway to where Henry waits by his truck.
“Hey,” Henry says, grabbing my bag and tossing it in the back.
I climb in the passenger side without answering, and we ride in silence until it becomes too weighted.
“You think I’m delusional,” I say to the dark side of the road slipping by us.
“No.” After a long moment he says, “I think you’re sad.”
I want to be angry at his words, but there’s no hint of condescension in them, just honesty.
“I’m not,” I say. “I’m determined.”
Sadness only gets in the way. I have no room for it.
“Okay,” he says.
We go back to silence until we pull up at the airport and drive into the economy parking lot. “You can drop me at the terminal.”
“I’m walking you in.”
I huff as I push open the door and step into the warm night. “You don’t have to do that.”
“I know,” he says, pushing his own door shut behind him after clicking the lock.
He reaches into the back and lifts out my hot-pink rolling suitcase, pulling up the handle and passing it to me.
I turn to say goodbye, but he’s not paying attention to me. He’s yanking a dark-blue suitcase out of the back of his truck and popping out the handle.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“Coming with you.” He starts rolling toward the shuttle pickup.
My mouth drops open. “You can’t. You don’t have a ticket.”
“You told me what time your flight was. It wasn’t hard.”
“You said you were short on money.”
“We established that was a lie to stay close to you.” The way he says this makes us both pause and awkwardly look in different directions.
The moment goes on so long there’s no good way to break it until Henry takes off for the shuttle—apparently deciding action is the best way to end the standoff. His long legs make him hard to catch, but I do, and my suitcase clips the edge of his, tilting it onto its side so he has to stop and right it again. “I don’t need you to come with me. I can handle myself.”
He eyes me. “Of that I have no doubt. You were always the brave one.” He smiles a little, and I wonder if he’s thinking of one particular memory, like the time I decided to live in the wilderness for a week when we were eight. He packed up some peanut butter sandwiches and came with me into the woods behind our houses. We lasted a couple of hours before our parents found us and made us come home for dinner. Later I found out he told his mother where we were going before he left. Definitely not the brave one.
“Did you really expect me to drop you off and let you fly to a state you’ve never been to by yourself?” he asks. “I want to come. We should be doing this together.”
I should be doing this with Dad, but that’s not an option. I told myself all I wanted was for Henry to drive me and be my cover, but what did I really expect? How many wild ideas did I come up with as a kid that he tried to talk me out of only to join me later so I wouldn’t be doing it by myself?
I hesitate, which means I’m about to say yes because I never hesitate to say no.
“So is the team back?” h
e asks.
It feels that way. Even with the awkwardness between us and the things I’m sure neither of us has healed from, we still feel like a team, like we never spent a day apart. I guess ten years of friendship isn’t destroyed that easily, and the truth is that I don’t want to go alone. Henry’s been by my side for all my greatest risks, including the time I jumped out of a tree thinking an umbrella would let me float Mary Poppins style. This past year has been safe and boring because I haven’t wanted to go on adventures without him.
I eye him for a minute just to make him sweat.
“I guess,” I say. I need him. I might have been the brave one, but it was always because I knew he’d be there when I hit the ground and ended up covered in my own blood.
“Sweet.” He grins, and it pulls a warm, yellow brightness from me.
But I can’t be warm and bright when Dad is cold and fading.
We pull our bags up to the shuttle pickup and wait together.
* * *
We don’t get to sit together on the airplane—one of the disadvantages of not actually having invited your travel companion.
On the last leg of our flight, I’m stuck between a snoring woman and a chatty man.
“Are you visiting family?” he asks.
“No.”
“Work?”
“Nope.”
“Ahhh, fun then.”
The last one’s not really a question, which is great since I don’t know how to answer.
“Well,” he says, cracking open his second can of beer in the last thirty minutes, “you need to pace yourself. Everyone drinks all day long there. They even have drive-through daiquiri places.”
It does not surprise me that he knows this.
“Always assume that everybody around you is drunk. The pedestrians, the drivers, the bicyclists. The horses pulling those annoying carriages. All drunk. Remember that.” He burps a little and chugs the last of his beer as the flight attendants come by to collect the drinks before landing.
“Even the vampires?”
He snorts. “You’re one of those.” He leans in, eyes focusing. “Especially the vampires. Nothing worse than a drunk vampire. That’ll leave a mark.”
My heartbeat quickens as I struggle to look nonchalant. “And where would one find these drunk vampires? You know, so I can avoid them.”
He relaxes back into his seat. “With all the other drunks on Bourbon Street.”
Bourbon Street is party central for the French Quarter and already high on my list of places a vampire would be able to enjoy a discreet sip from an unsuspecting tourist. But it also presents a problem: How do I stand out when there will be masses of other tender morsels to choose from?
He’s closed his eyes, but I ask anyway. “Anywhere else?”
He cracks an eye open and shrugs. “I think there’s some kind of vampire souvenir shop in the Quarter. Buy something and they’ll give you the password to a secret vampire bar.” He winks.
“Thanks.” I try to hide my disappointment. I know all about the shop and the “secret” bar, but if I can find the same info on the first page of an internet search then it’s not very secret, and I won’t find real vampires in a tourist trap. Maybe, but I doubt it, and I’ve only got a week. I save the info for a last resort. I need something better than tourist traps and old legends.
The plane lands on the runway hard enough to jar me in my seat. Nobody panics, so I guess it’s normal. I haven’t flown much.
Henry’s standing in the aisle, pulling down my bag. “Ready for this?”
I don’t answer, but the man next to me slips out and lets me go on ahead of him.
“Don’t forget what I said, little lady.”
“Right,” I say, grabbing my bag and maneuvering it down the slim aisle.
“What was that about? Making friends?” Henry asks once we’re off the plane and into the overheated airport.
“Apparently this whole town is always drunk.” I don’t mention the vampire part of our talk.
His eyes widen a little. “Sounds interesting.”
I punch his arm without thinking about it. And then decide to overthink it. Maybe I shouldn’t be sliding back into familiar gestures, but it feels so easy to pretend none of the weird stuff happened and we’re kids again.
I clear my throat way too loudly. “We need to stay sharp so we can catch a vampire, not end up as a first and second course.”
“Yeah,” he says, and I sense him holding himself back from telling me vampires don’t exist one more time. “But I actually think I’d be the main course and you’d be an appetizer.” He stares down at my pink rose-print sundress. “Or maybe you’d be dessert.”
“Did you just say I look like dessert?” I raise my eyebrows.
He flushes. My cheeks heat as I do the same. This is the type of half-joking flirting we had before Bailey—when we definitely weren’t kids anymore.
“So you arranged transport?” He scans the lines of cars picking up other travelers.
I guess we’re back to ignoring any attraction, which is what I want. What’s best for our friendship.
“Oops,” I say. I can play that game again. We did it for almost five years before I messed it up.
He sighs and pulls out his phone. “We can take an Uber.”
“They’re probably drunk.”
“It’s nine o’clock in the morning.”
“Not sure that matters,” I say, and raise an eyebrow.
He grins.
Fifteen minutes later, we’re cruising down narrow streets, the driver slamming on the brakes whenever pedestrians decide to jump out into the road, which is often.
“So how would it work?” Henry asks.
“What?”
“Turning into a vampire. What’s the… procedure?”
I shoot a look at our driver. “Maybe now’s not the time.”
“I’m sure he’s heard weirder conversations.”
Our driver nods. “You better believe it.”
“There,” Henry says. “So tell me.”
“Oh, you know, it’s like a whole big sucking thing.” I laugh. He doesn’t. The driver snorts though, and I’m starting to think he’d make a better sidekick than Henry.
“At least someone’s seen Buffy,” I say.
Henry sighs. “I’m being serious.”
“I’m not a hundred percent certain, but from my research, my best bet is I have to be bitten and then drink the blood of the vampire while my blood’s in their system.”
Henry grimaces like I’ve declared I’m going to lick the floor in a public restroom. “So you’ll be a vampire too.”
I squirm in my seat. I’ve accepted the fact that it’ll be easier to get a vampire to turn me here than to get them to fly home and save my dad. I certainly don’t want to count on a vampire’s humanity. If I find one, I won’t even mention Dad. It might ruin my chance. Plus, if I’m a vampire too, it will make it easier for Dad to adjust. I’d give up anything to save him. Besides, I’ve been dead inside since the moment they said “cancer.” Maybe being undead will help me feel alive again, but I don’t want to get into all that with Henry. He’d only try to make me feel better.
“That’s the plan,” I say lightly.
Henry stares out his window. His hands clench into fists periodically, and I hate to say it, but his reaction excites me. If he’s upset, part of him thinks it’s possible.
“I don’t think you’ve totally thought this through,” he finally says. “Be honest with me. No joking.”
I cringe. He knows I joke when I’m nervous and don’t want anyone else to see it. And of course I haven’t totally thought it through. Dad and I talked about finding a vampire on this trip and being immortal, but we always said it with a grin, like we didn’t mean it. Plus, Dad always chose werewolves. I chose vampires because I liked the idea in a hypothetical way, but in reality? I don’t want to think about it. It doesn’t matter.
“It’s the only way,” I answer, but he sh
akes his head in reply.
I can’t be as open as he wants.
Our car stops on a narrow street, and I jump out onto the cracked and uneven concrete, lifting my pink rolling suitcase because there’s no way it will roll anywhere on these sidewalks.
The hot, wet air immediately latches onto my skin like a film, and yet I don’t care.
“Good luck,” our driver calls. And when I look back at him pulling away, he winks like he knows something. I kick myself for not grilling him.
“It reminds me of Disneyland,” Henry says.
I smile a little. I had been trying to place the familiarity and couldn’t, but there’s a quaintness to the buildings and the streets that makes you ignore the cracks in the sidewalk, the suffocating air, and the garbage cans lined up for trash day. Beyond all that, the buildings rise two or three stories high, each one butted against the next, each with its own personality, from a bright and cheery yellow with a white balcony railing to a brick with an ornate curving black wrought-iron balcony draped in rich green plants. My favorite one has a balcony of cascading flowers, wild and tangled without any sort of symmetry. Our building’s a simple white with a single balcony off the second-floor apartment.
My fingers suddenly itch for a pencil and paper to capture the intricate curves of the balconies, and the feeling surprises me. I haven’t felt the urge to draw for so long now I’d forgotten the rush that comes with seeing something beautiful and knowing you can capture that feeling and hold it forever. Nothing’s been beautiful for so long.
Desire hits me, and I’m thinking in blues and greens and yellows like I used to, imagining the watercolors dripping on the page, but art without emotion is dead, so the second I let the colors flood my mind, the grief hits me too, turning me into a sea of blue, threatening to drown out everything else, including my hope.
Vampires, Hearts & Other Dead Things Page 5