Perhaps Nicholas understands me better than I realized. Maybe he doesn’t want me to feel happiness. Maybe he really wants me to feel everything.
I unfold his note.
Do something you love, and do it for yourself, not for a clue.
A crisp hundred-dollar bill sits like a bookmark between the pages. I pull it out. The edges are perfectly pointed without a single bend or tear, like mine are the first human hands to hold it.
The first thing that pops into my mind is curling up in the brown leather chair at home, taking the heavy cream blanket usually draped over the back of the chair, covering my bare knees to fight off the air-conditioning, and turning on Underworld.
And, of course, Dad watches with me, and he feels well enough to sit up and gripe at all the gunfights in a vampire versus werewolf movie while I defend them and say they just don’t want to get their fangs dirty, and then my dad laughs like I haven’t cracked that joke a thousand times before. We never get tired of each other’s silliness.
But even if I were home, this wouldn’t be possible. The last time I turned on Underworld, Dad fell asleep, and his rattling snores underscored the moments we used to laugh at and pretend to argue about. I can’t stand the thought of doing that again—sitting there, wanting to cry but not, in case he woke up and saw me.
I drown the memory. Maybe one day I can resuscitate it, but not today.
Henry then. He’s here, and I’ve loved him all my life—the easy, uncomplicated kind of love some people might brand as soulmates, but what he feels, what I feel, is too much to handle.
The guilt tries to tell me I don’t deserve to love anything right now. Love’s a distraction. But I love Dad—that’s the only reason why I’m here. I love Dad. I repeat the words again and again, and slowly, very slowly, the fog starts to dissipate, replaced by that vicious, single-minded love until I’m whole, breathing deep, muscles ready for a fight.
But a fight would be easy.
I need to love something besides Dad, but I’m afraid to. Love for Dad is my fuel, and I burn through it so quickly I barely feel it. Nicholas is asking for more. He wants me to slow down and experience it, but once you let out an emotion like love, how do you hold back all the others? It’s like taking out one brick in the dam and thinking you’ll be able to put it back again despite the power of the water.
It’s why I don’t draw anymore. Drawings without emotion are flat. I couldn’t hold back the dam and still create something worthy of existing.
I know what I need to do.
Fifteen minutes later I stand across the street from my favorite house in the French Quarter—the one with mismatched flowers—holding an overpriced sketch pad in one hand and a stick of brand-new charcoal in the other. Most artistic people experience anticipation staring at an empty page—promise, even—but for me right now there’s only anxiety, a fear of what might come out once I start. Because I’m no longer strong enough to stop it.
I rub my fingertips against the infinite grain of the charcoal, begging it to be kind; then I press it against the paper and let the first dark line mar the innocent page. I move tentatively at first, then in quick, sharp strokes, capturing the wide stones and each slat of the shutters. I force myself to slow on the balcony, noticing the soft curves of the edges, fashioned like vines combined with the geometric rectangles and squares forming the rails. Each shape is unique, and yet together they create one glorious piece. I add in the dangling balls of fern and the planters blooming with flowers of every color. I almost add a girl standing on the balcony, waiting for someone to save her, but instead I sketch the trashcan on the sidewalk, sharing the same space as the quaint black streetlamp because it belongs there as much as the beautiful things, and it makes the picture complete.
Each pull of the charcoal against the paper drags a piece of me onto the page, and I worry there may be nothing left of me when I’m done. I may be nothing but a shell, walking around and carrying all my feelings on a few pieces of paper. But somehow that sounds good too—to have them out, to have them distant. Maybe then I’ll be free.
When I finish and stretch my arms out in front of me to take in my picture, I smile, and the ache in my chest opens as I do.
I wander and end up sitting next to the other artists who sell their emotions every day to make a living. I don’t know how they get the strength for it, but I join them there and try to steal some of their confidence as I stare up at the cathedral, fingers already stained dark from the last picture, a fresh cream page in front of me.
But the cathedral is too white, too perfect. How do I capture it when I only have darkness to work with? I roll the charcoal in my hand, tempted to toss it onto the cobblestones with the cigarette butts.
“What are you working on?”
The artist next to me has shuffled over, abandoning her stall of bright portraits. She must be at least seventy and wears bright-pink pants and a top with blooming red roses. Only a true artist would pick up on the slightest traces of pink in those roses and pair it with those pants. I can’t help but give her one of my sad smiles.
“Nothing yet.” I gesture at my blank sheet and then at the church. “This one might be beyond my talents.”
“My dear, talent’s got nothing to do with it.”
“No?” I point behind her at her work. “What do you call that?”
“Desperation.”
Her answer catches me off guard, and my mouth can’t form an answer.
She laughs at herself or at me, I’m not sure. “Don’t we all draw because we’re desperate to relieve something inside of us?”
“Don’t some people just want a pretty picture?”
“Do you?” she asks.
I shrug and go back to staring at my blank page and the cathedral.
She watches me.
“It’s too pure,” I say. “Maybe I need watercolor or something.”
Laughter cracks out of her so loud I drop the charcoal, and it hits the white page, leaving an ugly black scar.
I move to fold the ruined sheet back.
“Leave it,” she says.
My hand pauses, gripping the paper in the air like this is a major decision. One of the things I love about drawing is the control it gives me—if something doesn’t turn out the way I want, I can throw it away and try again. I like fresh starts.
“If you think anything is perfect, you’re not seeing it. Look for the shadows and build it from there.” She walks back to her stall.
I turn to the cathedral, searching for the splotches against the expanse of white, and then I begin to see them—the darkening behind the pillars in the front, the traces of shadows under each overhang and each decorative curve and corner of the stone. And finally I notice the other imperfections—the worn surfaces where the off-white stone has darkened, the way some of the slats and shutters have bent, the stains around the roman numerals of the white-faced clock.
Once I’ve captured every little imperfection, the cathedral glows off my page.
I hold it back from myself, and it’s perfectly imperfect. For a second I think God might like it too, even though we’re on the outs, but maybe I’ve been looking at him the wrong way. Maybe he’s an artist who smudges things and has to leave them because that’s the way they’re supposed to be. Doesn’t mean I like it, and it doesn’t mean I won’t look for another way, but maybe I’ve been wrong to abandon something Dad loves.
I smile, and the ache in my chest grows, taking up more space than ever before.
I glance around and find the elderly woman watching me again. I hold up my drawing in her direction, and she applauds.
And because the church was almost too much, I head to the river, the dull, murky Mississippi, and lean against the rail. This time it’s easy to start. I draw that rippling, endless water and make it stand still on the page for me, and then I move on to the bridge rising toward the sky. I spend hours capturing the peaked pattern of all the metal rods, losing myself in the monotony of the movements, h
oping the mindlessness will numb the pain.
Finally, I pull back and take in my work—the restless water, the bridge crossing the entire page with no end in sight, and the clouds. I don’t remember drawing them—two thick and heavy with unshed rain in the foreground and one fluffy and white in the distance, so, so far away.
And the sorrow inside me leaks out because I let my heart bleed into the sketches with each and every stroke. Tears break from my eyes and splatter the water drawn on my picture, smearing it, somehow making it even more lifelike. I gulp, fighting the incoming flood, but love and pain always walk hand in hand. Haven’t I watched Buffy enough times to understand that?
Be strong like Buffy. But maybe I’ve been wrong about what that means. What if it isn’t about not feeling at all? What if it’s about letting go of control sometimes, letting it all go—not just the pieces you think are okay—so you can be in control when it counts? If I want to win this game with Nicholas, I need to let go.
A few more tears travel down my face, dripping onto the picture.
They’re for my dad. For what might happen.
When I’m done, I rip the three pictures out without the care I’d normally give one of my drawings, folding them once, twice, three times over so I won’t be tempted to view them again. Then I walk back to the bookstore and tuck them into the pages, but at the last minute, I pull the cathedral out and put it in my pocket. For Dad. Then I take the house. For Mom.
* * *
I only walk around the block before stopping back in the bookstore and slinking past Ruth to grab my book. I suspect she’s the one who changes out the notes, and I must be right. The sun’s still out, but my pictures are gone, and a new note sits in the pages.
Kiss someone in a thunderstorm in a graveyard. I’ll be in the Lafayette Cemetery at 10 p.m. if you’d like that someone to be me. Find me with a beautiful uptown lady.
I am so close. He knows I leave tomorrow, so tonight must be the last challenge, and I’m prepared to feel whatever I need to.
Ruth’s reading at her desk when I come back out.
“Are you the one putting the notes in? I was gone only ten minutes before I came back. No way he was that fast.”
She glances at me over the top of her book. “You’re a lovely artist.” She smiles and goes back to reading.
I laugh softly and then stop as I step back onto the cracked sidewalk outside.
If you kiss me right now, will I live forever?
—Byzantium
Eighteen
I’m not up-to-date on the required attire for kissing vampires in a graveyard, so I decide to recycle the white dress I wore the first time I met him. Tonight, I put on the heavy black eye shadow I bought and pair it with my favorite pink gloss. I let my hair stay long and in tangles.
“The note says someone,” Henry says in the doorway behind me.
I jump and glare at him in the bathroom mirror, and then flinch at the note unfolded in his hand. I left it on the kitchen table.
“It doesn’t have to be him.”
It could be me hangs unsaid in the air between us, but he won’t say it. I pray he doesn’t say it.
Kissing Henry is too much. He’s seen me fall backward off a swing and cry so hard I blew snot bubbles. I’ve seen him puke after eating too many hotdogs at my eighth birthday party.
And he knows about my dad.
Kissing Henry means something.
That’s hard.
Kissing Nicholas is easier, even though it gets harder each time.
But when I turn to move around him, the pull between us, the one we’ve ignored for so long, forces me to halt in front of him, my nose inches from his chest. His heart beats too hard under his shirt, and mine charges forward to match, and all I need to do is lift my chin.
But I need this one thing to be simple, and Henry’s a complex variable. The safer route to ensuring I get what I want is Nicholas.
I’m careful not to let our fingers touch as I take the note and leave him behind.
* * *
I love graveyards. Since I was as old as I can remember, I’d ask to stop at them anytime my family traveled, and Dad and I would get out of the car and search for the oldest headstone while Mom and Jessica stayed behind, probably discussing how weird we both were. Sometimes I wonder if Dad is really strange like me, or just pretending so I won’t be the odd one out. It doesn’t matter. Either way I love him for it.
I swallow the thought and focus on the graveyard as I approach, breathing in the always-wet air tinged with the faintest scent of citrus.
It’s glorious. A high wall surrounds it—the gray plaster breaking off in places, revealing the faded brick underneath. Small ferns sprout from every crack, and I run my fingers through the damp softness of them as I edge around the perimeter. A rusted chain weaves between the bars of the main gate, but I walk on until I find a smaller, unlocked gate. It creaks as I push through it like any graveyard entrance worth its salt would do.
In New Orleans, they bury their loved ones aboveground to protect against flooding, and it turns an otherwise simple graveyard into a miniature city for the dead. In a plain old Californian graveyard, I’d be able to look across almost the whole thing and spot another person. Here the tombs rise well above my head, creating a maze lined with the homes of the dead amid thick magnolia trees.
“Nicholas?” I take a tentative step deeper in, where the air turns thicker with a lingering fog and the smell of wet green things and dead leaves. I call his name again and get no answer from the living or the dead. Or anyone who’s both.
Find me with an uptown lady. I thought that was a role for me to play, but it could be a clue, and searching for him is part of the game.
I choose the path in front of me, the one with the biggest crypts. Many crumble with age, forgotten somewhere along the generations, or maybe there’s just nobody left to care. Others are clearly updated with recent years of death listed. I read the names and dates—the least I can do for them since I’m intruding on their evening.
I stop at one that lists five children, all dead young, and the parents many years later.
The next one shares a first name with my dad. I cannot bring myself to read the inscription. I turn away before the soft ground beneath my feet swallows me.
It is not a sign.
Moving on, I trace my hand along the cold, rough surfaces. I sense Nicholas here, listening, watching, enjoying his game, which forces me to face the parts of myself I’d rather keep hidden.
A shadow moves to my right, and I squeeze through the narrow gap between two tombs, almost freezing in the abnormally cold air trapped between them. I break free into another empty aisle full of names asking to be read. My skin crawls with the memories of the dead that must be buried here.
“Nicholas.” My voice comes out soft, singsongy, as if I’m the ghost begging to be heard.
I reach a corner darker than the rest, hidden under the heavy leaves of a magnolia tree blocking out the moon.
My first name catches my eye.
VICTORIA ANN FINES
A LOVELY UPTOWN LADY
One of the shadows resting against her tomb unfolds into a man dressed in black.
“Found me.”
I twirl toward him, playing the part he wants, and my white dress flares.
“You look like a haunted spirit.” He steps closer, mouth curling.
“You look like my shadow.”
“Do spirits still have shadows?”
“Probably not.” And I don’t know why, but this makes me sad, and that tiny trickle of sadness threatens to set free an entire stream I’ll never be able stop, so I say, “Are you going to kiss me or not?”
And this is both part of the game and not. I do want him to kiss me.
It dawns on me that I’m using Nicholas as a bandage in all this, a quick fix to prevent me from feeling anything real. I crave these moments of pretend.
But I don’t think he realizes or cares. His teeth flash i
n the darkness. “I’m waiting for something.”
“What?”
He points up just as the thunder rips the sky, and five seconds later huge drops of water pelt my skin and leave me gasping for air. My dress clings to my body as lightning flashes above, illuminating for the briefest moment the hunger on Nicholas’s face.
He reaches for me, fists clinging to the damp material on my hips. He tugs me forward, and I drift toward him like the ghost I am. And we stand there for a moment, his fingers folded in my skirt, the only part of him touching me, and I drink in the air, growing denser with moisture, thick with the lemony scent from the white blossoms dripping above us, and decide I can’t wait anymore. I close the gap between us until my wet body is flush with his, and we stand like that for another minute, my nose pressed against the wet fabric of his shirt before I finally lift my mouth for his.
As his lips find mine, his hands tighten on my dress, pulling it taut against the back of my thighs and butt, and suddenly it’s like we can’t get close enough.
He spins and backs us up, our legs tangling together. I gasp and tilt my chin up as he breaks away and runs his teeth down my neck. I’m pressed against the dead Victoria’s tomb, which seems so wrong at first but then fitting. Maybe this will be the moment he turns me. The moment I die so my dad can live, and I’m ready. Whatever comes next, I’m tired of being human. His kiss makes me feel like something more animal than girl. I can’t imagine what his bite will do.
But he doesn’t break my skin. Instead, he breaks my soul as he reaches my lips again.
There’s an urgency in the way our lips move and our hands grasp. He’s pouring something into our kiss that’s more than pure and simple lust, and I answer him.
The rain goes hot on my face.
I’m crying.
Just like that, my carefully crafted well shatters, and I become a swirling mess of the red lust for Nicholas’s lips, the comfortable honey yellow of being with Henry when we’re not fighting, the bright magenta thrill of lassoing Joanie, the hot-pink embarrassment of being covered in powdered sugar, the deep-blue cascade of grief I can’t hold back any longer, and finally, hope—blazing like the first green of oak leaves in the spring—that this will be enough for him.
Vampires, Hearts & Other Dead Things Page 22