Drain You

by Beth Bloom

  Naomi’s eyes bulged, her jaw dropped. She flung my hand off her shoulder.

  “Marry him?”

  She grabbed both my wrists, tightly, and started dragging me to the front door. I tried to struggle free, but my shoes slid on the hardwood floor.

  “Naomi,” I said.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, you just want him to be your boyfriend.” She was seething, still dragging me. Her hands were like a trap, and the trap had fingernails.

  “It’s not that big a deal!”

  And the fingernails were digging in.

  “Naomi!”

  She was going to rip my arms out of their sockets.

  Then we were outside, on the porch, Naomi forcibly wrenching me closer to the Lexus. Her face was red, livid. I was in literal shock. Tears were en route.

  I couldn’t fight anymore, so I just sank my body to the ground, to the dirt driveway, but she didn’t stop pulling me. I was weak, limp, trying to understand this and failing, failing, failing.

  “Naomi!” I screamed, starting to sob, grabbing onto bits of gravel, giving up.

  Then I heard, “Naomi.”

  She heard it too. She let go.

  James was halfway down the driveway, hobbling toward the house in the dark, hunched over. I squinted to make sure I was seeing it right. I was. He was covered in blood, the front of his shirt splattered, his hands stained.

  “James,” I said, getting up and moving toward him. “What’s wrong? What happened?”

  He didn’t respond, just held up a hand. His eyes lolled back in his head every few blinks. I glanced at Naomi, but she wasn’t by the car anymore. She was backed against the doorway to her house, repulsed and terrified.

  I said to James, “You didn’t come to the store, you didn’t meet me.” But I could see James didn’t want me tonight. His face told me I shouldn’t have come.

  Naomi cut in. “I asked her to go, but she wouldn’t listen. So if you’re going to tell her, tell her now.”

  I couldn’t keep up.

  James told Naomi, “She can stay if she wants.”

  “I’m staying,” I said. “You’re hurt.”

  Naomi screamed and beat a fist against the stucco wall behind her. “He’s not hurt, you idiot, someone else is!”

  Right then James’s knees buckled, and he fainted to the pavement. Naomi screamed again, and her face turned so white it wasn’t even green.

  “James!” I crouched down and rolled him onto his back. He was clutching his stomach, moaning in a muffled, distant way.

  Naomi shoved me backward and scooped James up so his whole weight was propped against her. “Get the hell out of here,” she said without turning around.

  “Stop, Naomi,” James said hazily. Then he managed to raise his head slightly. “Quinn, go home.”

  I said the only word I knew to say: “No.”

  He closed his eyes and said, “Fine. Just wait outside for a while at least.”

  A thought hit me: “Did Stiles do this to you?”

  He opened his mouth to answer, but Naomi interrupted. “I told you, you don’t know anything.”

  She was right.

  James allowed Naomi to turn him around, and they went inside and closed the door.

  I cried to myself and let the tears dry on my cheeks. Get a grip, Lacey.

  I crept around the yard to the garden. During my breakfast with Naomi yesterday morning, I’d noticed a small side door inside the pantry that led out onto the terrace. I tried not to step on Charlotte’s flowers but it was dark, so whatever, and if there were cacti, then whatever too. I had to be in there. I couldn’t not be in there. I got to the door. I tried the handle. Unlocked.

  Then I held my breath and slowly opened it. I slipped in and silently shut the door behind me and tiptoed farther into the pantry, into a nook rimmed with teas and organic snacks stamped with fancy fonts. I peered through the slats on the cupboard and could see James and Naomi in the kitchen. He was on the ground facing away from me, curled against some cabinets, while she crouched over him, stroking his forehead with a damp towel.

  They were already talking. I could hear every word.

  “…doesn’t make sense. You never get sick.”

  “I know…. It’s…something in the blood.”

  “Who was it?” Naomi said it very quietly.

  No answer.

  “James.” She stopped petting his head. “Who was it?”

  “No one. It’s never anyone, really.”

  Then he slumped over, facing toward the pantry, and I could see him for real.

  His thin, V-neck T-shirt was splattered with a dirty brownish maroon dye, and the dye had to be blood, but I’d never seen blood dried and dark like that. He still had my necklace on. My eyes froze on the small gold chain.

  But his hands were caked with a weird rust coloring, and his hair was too wet with sweat. He was still clutching his stomach and groaning lightly, but I couldn’t see any visible cuts on his body.

  Naomi stood and leaned against the counter. “So you were drugged?”

  I could’ve fallen straight through the floor. Drugs. Mystery solved.

  “She was out partying or something. I don’t know. She was alone.” James held his head in his hands. “There was no one else there.”

  He could’ve been describing that night he saw me: a girl all alone, wandering in the darkness, some empty part of the canyons where no cars drive. So this girl was drunk? Lost? Then she gave him drugs?

  Naomi broke into louder sobs. They were erratic, out of control.

  I was crying too—at her crying, at the blood, at this whole scene. Because I knew if Naomi was this freaked, then James was in real danger.

  “I have to…throw this up somehow. Get it out of me…”

  She crouched down next to him again.

  “Will it kill you?”

  I couldn’t breathe. Was that what I was witnessing, an overdose? Why weren’t they calling the police?

  “No,” James said. He pressed his cheek against hers. “You know it’d take more than that.”

  She said, “Okay. Okay, okay, okay.” Naomi’s words were my own.

  James felt at his throat, held a hand to his chest.

  “How’d you even get home?” she asked.

  “I started crawling.” He put his hand in her lap. “Then I managed to walk somehow.”

  “But…why were you feeding again so soon?”

  James bowed his head. I scrolled through every word I’d ever heard referring to drug use. Every weird verb or phrase any cool kid had ever said about some party pill or pot or whatever. Never ever the word feeding. James said nothing. He squeezed around his middle again.

  Naomi began to shake her head. At first it was slight and slow, but gradually her head moved faster, more frantic.

  “No. No. Because of her?”

  “I had to.”

  Every new sentence multiplied my confusion. Her who? This canyon girl who fed him pills and left him to die?

  Naomi said, “Why?” and then she whispered the word sadly into her hands a hundred times.

  James tried to prop himself up against the cabinet. “This way I don’t get the urge.”

  “Just shut up.” Naomi pushed James away, then straightened her dress to stand.

  “She matters to me.”

  “You can’t do this to people!” She flung a cup of pens off the counter onto the floor.

  “Give me a break, Naomi.”

  “You give me a break. She already knows Stiles, she knows something’s wrong with him.” Naomi glared down at James. “She’ll see it in you. She’ll tell everyone.”

  “No, she won’t.”

  “We’ll have to move.”

  “No, we won’t. I promise.”

  “Well, what are you going to say to her?”

  Then James started to gag, loudly. He grabbed onto the kitchen counter and pulled himself to his feet, leaning his whole body over the sink, coughing violently. I closed my eyes, heard th
e sounds of more coughing, liquid, gurgling. Finally I peeked again through the slats and saw the sink splashed with blood, parts of the countertop, some of it dripping onto the white tile floor. This blood was fresher, brighter red.

  My stomach turned. I covered my mouth.

  Naomi screamed noise. Then she screamed, “James!”

  He twitched and sank back to the floor.

  “What’s happening?” Naomi cried, bending down and wiping at his mouth and face where blood had splattered.

  “It’s okay, I’ll be okay….”

  “Go back to Cambridge. You can leave tonight. I’ll call Whit.”

  James nodded, pained. His hair covered his eyes as he hung his head, then nodded again.

  Naomi got up, went to the phone by the microwave, and dialed. A few seconds later she said, “It’s Naomi. Come home now, he’s leaving.” Then she hung up.

  I was close to passing out. Nothing held my body up but habit and a bulk crate of goji berry granola bars.

  James coughed again and said, “I want someone to be close to. You can understand that.”

  But she couldn’t. Naomi’s tears were gone, her empathy was all dried up. She stared down at him in pure judgment. “Yeah, I get it. You want to ruin Quinn’s life just like you ruined ours.” There was a cold pause. “That girl’s dead, James.” Then, even colder, the words: “You killed her.”

  “Naomi.”

  “And Quinn’s either going to end up in a straitjacket or a body bag. This is your mess, you clean it up.”

  “Naomi,” James said again.

  And that’s when it happened: I fell. Hard. The shelf I was leaning against dislodged from its wall-hanging, and I fell into everything. Tin cans, cylinders of tea, boxes of cereal, couscous, a full spice rack, bags of dried fruit; all of it came crashing down in a heap on top of me.

  I scrambled to get to my feet, my heart flipping out. There’d be no need to sneak back out through the garden now. I knew I should just walk into the kitchen, give my regards to the horror scene in progress, and keep walking right out the front door. Except for the fact that I had no legs.

  And no one came to expose me. No one moved at all. A part of me prayed that Naomi would swing open the pantry door and reveal they’d only been rehearsing for a summer-school play, that this was actually just a low-budget cable TV candid home video prank show, and wow, what a hilarious comedy of errors this had all been. But Quinn, that’s just fake blood made from corn syrup! Anything. But a larger part of me knew that this was all for real. James puked blood and did drugs, and Naomi hated both of us.

  The silence from the kitchen was horrible. They were waiting for me.

  I pushed the door open. Light flooded into the pantry.

  “Of course. Aren’t you so happy now?”

  My eyes were on the ground, so I wasn’t sure if Naomi was talking to me or James. But then she said, “Quinn,” sharply. “Are. You. Happy. Now? Now that you know?”

  “I’m not happy.” I mouthed the words: I don’t know anything.

  James’s eyes were closed; he didn’t even look at me.

  I started to walk to James, but Naomi shouted, “You’re pathetic”—to me—“and you’re disgusting”—to him—“and I’m leaving.” She turned and left. Seconds later a door slammed.

  I looked over at James. He looked dead.

  But then he spoke. “Hit the light,” he said, gesturing at the wall switch. I went over and flicked it.

  The kitchen was dark now except for some weak moonlight coming in through a window above the sink. My eyes slowly adjusted, and the terror reasserted itself. Blood was splattered everywhere, James was groaning, and I was in a strange family’s house when I should have been in my own. This night was a nightmare.

  I tried to focus on James to calm myself because, despite everything, he seemed calm. He looked gruesome, but he looked calm. I went and knelt by him.

  “How long were you in there?”

  “Too long.”

  “You heard everything?”

  “I don’t know.” I paused. “I think so.”

  “Why are you still here?”

  “I don’t know.” I wanted to touch him but was scared to.

  “I’m not going to hurt you.”

  “I know that.”

  “But I do hurt people.”

  “Like tonight?”

  He was quiet. Then, “Yes.”

  “Is that girl really dead?”

  Again a pause. Again, “Yes.”

  “And you killed her for…pills?”

  “No.” He sighed and reached for my hand, but I held it away.

  “But you’re into drugs?” Everything was a guess.

  “No…no.” His voice was rasping. He shook his head. “I can’t say it like this. Let’s not say anything.”

  But we’d done that. We’d been doing that.

  James slid over, laid his head in my lap, and curled his legs up under him. Cautiously I fingered his hair, touched along the side of his jaw. I tried to steady his breathing but couldn’t, because he didn’t seem to be exhaling.

  “So. You kill people.” My head swam. “Is there…a reason?”

  “I need them.” His voice swirled.

  “Need them how?”

  “Quinn.” He put his hand over my hand and guided it down to his shirt. “This isn’t my blood.”

  “I…know,” I whispered.

  “I need the blood….”

  “For what?”

  “To go on.”

  “Like a vampire?”

  I didn’t say the word to mean anything. Vampires needed blood. Like in the movies. Books. Whatever.

  James placed my hand inside his thin white T-shirt, over his chest, his heart. I felt nothing. I pressed my hand harder, felt around. Nothing. Stillness. He moved my other hand to the veins on his wrist. More nothing, more stillness. I reached my hand up to his throat, put two fingers there. The same. The same impossible thing.

  “Her blood was dirty. I didn’t know.”

  But his words didn’t register with me. Nothing did. “You’re not real.” I touched his face once more and then pushed myself out from under him. I said it again, “You aren’t real.”

  He leaned to look at me. “I am.”

  “So, what? You never age? You live forever, you drink blood? That room is your coffin?” I pointed to nowhere, some white room in the distance I’d never see again. I backed away farther, sliding myself across the kitchen floor.

  He just nodded, his head on the tile.

  “And Naomi?”

  “She’s like you.”

  “How? How long?” Everything was shaking: the floor, the room, my body, my voice.

  “Not that long.”

  “No way.”

  “I was coming to see you tonight.” He reached for me. “But then this…”

  “No.” No.

  I was floating now, up over our bodies, over the blood, over our mess.

  “You weren’t ever supposed to know.”

  I floated over the Sheetses’ house, the detached garage, the dead end, the Lexus, the street.

  “The girl was me,” I said to the cloudless night sky above the canyons. “I was her. You were going to kill me that night on the road. It was so easy. I bled for you.”

  I rose higher above Los Angeles, the Hollywood Hills, the 101.

  “I didn’t go near you.” His voice was far away from me.

  “You’re dead. You’re not here. I’m not here.”

  Below me, a hundred miles down, James coughed more blood, and the shape of a girl rose to her feet.

  “Libby’s in trouble,” he told me. “She’ll be worse off than me soon.”

  “I’m not here.”

  Floating keys floated into my floating hands. When I dropped down, I was inches from my mother’s car door, unlocking it, climbing in, starting the engine.

  Go home, I told myself. I looked over at the house, dark and quiet.

  Go home now. I saw
James’s old note on the passenger seat, a folded reminder of an earlier life. My face was still wet. I wiped at it. Tears, not blood.

  Go home now. Go.

  I turned the keys and went.

  Miraculously, I made it to my bed. I pulled blankets over my head until everything went black. Soon I was sweating and suffocating. And remembering. I had to recalculate every tiny hint and obscure detail into this new wretched equation. Every joke, every smile, every touch, was now a different thing, something unreal and dead. My memories were all corrupted, in pieces.

  I waited for the fear to take hold and disfigure every sweet vision I had of James’s face into something awful and evil. But the fear didn’t flood my mind as much as the loneliness. I felt lonely for James, for Naomi, for Libby, for myself. Loving James was seriously not okay, and I knew it. His whole life—existence, whatever—wasn’t real. My taste in guys had gone from lame to dystopian.

  But I still wanted him any small way I could have him. I tossed and turned under the covers but couldn’t shake it. He’d kill and drink blood instead of Diet Cokes. He’d sleep all day and never see the sun with me. He’d stay twenty forever and I’d age beyond him every year. Weirdly, I almost didn’t care. I felt lonely because after tonight I didn’t know if James would forgive me.

  I understood Libby plainly for the first time in weeks. If she thought she loved Stiles—a shiver at the thought—I could imagine her letting him do anything, forgiving him everything. If Stiles was the same…species…as James, then I guess I’d have no right to interfere. But it wasn’t like that. Stiles was twisted, perverted, and I didn’t need James to tell me he was slowly killing my best friend. He was sucking her dry. He was keeping her alive—for now.

  Naomi knew all this too.

  Stiles and Sanders and Dewey and Cooper. And James. They lived among us. Mythical movie creatures came to my video store, went to parties with me, kissed my neck and tasted the salty sweat there. They threatened me. They protected me. So I had to suspend my disbelief now. Everything was real—angel devils and devil devils—and I had to love and fight them both.

  Somehow sleep came easily for me. I left behind the land of the living—Morgan, my parents, bosses and customers, high school freshmen in party hats—and joined Libby in the world of the undead, where heaven was hell and hell held the immortal boyfriend of my dreams.