Sweetblood (9781439108741)

by Hautman, Pete

  Sblood: Draco. Where he’s from.

  2Tooth: Why not ask him?

  Sblood: He’s not here. unless he’s lurking. do you lurk, D?

  “I’m not following this,” says Mark. We are sitting next to each other in front of his computer. Our shoulders are touching.

  “Draco is this so-called vampire that drops in on the chat room.”

  “I thought you were all vampires.”

  “Draco’s more serious. All these guys talk about drinking blood, but I think Draco might actually do it.”

  “That’s pretty creepy.”

  “Not to a vampire.”

  Mark is looking at me. “This is a guy you think you met?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Isn’t that kind of scary?”

  “A little,” I admit. “But it’s also kinda cool.”

  “What was he like? Did he look like Bela Lugosi?”

  “Actually, he looked more like Elton John.”

  “Wow. That is scary.”

  I laugh out loud at the comical expression on Mark’s face. He shushes me, pointing upstairs. That really sets me off; I clap my hands over my mouth and laugh through my nose, making a truly gross snorting sound, which gets Mark going too. A few seconds later we calm down just in time to hear footsteps from upstairs, followed by his mother’s voice.

  “Mark? Is that you down there?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What on earth are you doing up at this hour?”

  “Studying?”

  There are three long silent seconds when I imagine her standing at the top of the stairs trying to figure out if the snorting laughter she thought she heard was really the sound of her son studying. Just when I am sure she is about to march down the stairs she says, “Well, it’s after midnight. Go to bed.”

  “Okay, Mom.”

  We listen to her shuffle back to her room.

  “She’s got ears like a bat,” Mark whispers. His face is only about nine inches away from mine. He has little lines at the corners of his lips, and his eyes are the soft brown of chocolate pudding. His head is a planet, pulling at me. What would happen if I let go? If I let myself fall toward him and our lips smashed together? He kissed me once before, but I was in a coma. Not a very good kiss, at least from my point of view. I wonder if he is about to try again.

  The thought sends a panicky jolt through my body. I stand up.

  “I better go,” I say.

  I am standing on the street in front of Mark’s house and my heart is going about a hundred beats a minute. Am I having another insulin reaction? I don’t think so. I cut back on my long-acting insulin after the incident at school. If anything my sugar is a little high. I don’t want to risk another bout of hypoglycemia, not after the last one. But why is my heart pounding?

  I think about Mark’s face, and our shoulders touching, and his chocolate-pudding eyes. I’m not breathing. I suck in a lungful of cool night air and tell my heart to slow down. It doesn’t work. Going home and climbing into bed and sleeping seems impossible. I’m so awake right now my eyes feel like they’re about to pop right out of my head. I should go back and make Mark talk to me. But I can’t. Why not? I don’t know. I start walking. Walking and thinking, thinking and walking, listening to the tock tock tock of boot heels on concrete.

  I don’t know where I’m going, but I’m sure I’ll find out soon enough.

  21

  Adrift

  It is 1:00 A.M. The Sacred Bean is quiet. No blue-lipsticked women playing music and only a handful of customers at the tables. I order a latte from a curly haired barista. Shall I take my latte with sugar, or aspartame? I wonder where my blood glucose is at. Probably high, since I’ve cut back on my insulin. On the other hand, I walked half an hour to get to the Bean. Just to be on the safe side, I stir in a couple of sugar packets. I carry my latte to a table in the back and open my book and read and sip and read some more.

  The Stranger is about a man named Meursault whose mother dies, and he goes to her funeral but he just can’t seem to get into it. It isn’t real to him, or at least it isn’t important. She’s dead, so what’s the point? He sits for hours by her coffin, which I guess you have to do in France, then finally he gets so bored he lights a cigarette, which you are not supposed to do even in France, but it turns out it’s okay because the undertaker smokes too.

  I wish I smoked. I would smoke right now if I had a cigarette. I would smoke a whole carton.

  I look up from The Stranger and check out the other late-night caffeine fiends. The scene is not so goth tonight. There are a few black-leathery types, and a few college-student types, and one older college-professor type. That’s fine with me. Even if Dylan were to show up, I’d probably ignore him. I go back to The Stranger. I know how he feels. I am on page twenty-three when I sense a presence. I stop reading, but I do not look up.

  “Hey there, baby bat.”

  Now I look. It’s Weevil, the tall, orange-eyelashed, snakebite-swilling goth.

  “You all alone?” he asks.

  “I have a book,” I point out.

  “Mind if I join you?” he asks, then sits without waiting for my answer. Tonight he is drinking espresso. He looks older than I remember. I’m guessing thirty. He holds his espresso delicately, pinching the handle between his long thumb and forefinger.

  He says, “So how you doing?”

  “Fine.”

  “Reading Camus?”

  I nod.

  “You ever listen to the Cure?”

  I shake my head.

  “They do a song about that book. It was on their first album.” He sips his espresso. His lips are thin and flexible; they grip the rim of the cup like soft, flat fingers.

  “How’d you get the name Weevil?” I ask.

  He laughs. “My real name is Andy Anderson. Wouldn’t you rather be called Weevil?”

  “Do you go to Harker?”

  “Not anymore.”

  “What do you do?”

  “This and that. You and Dilly gonna be at the Carfax this Friday? It’s Wayne’s annual Halloween costume party.”

  “I haven’t been invited.”

  “I’m inviting you now. I know he wants you to come. He likes you.”

  “I think he’s a little old for me.”

  Weevil laughs. “Everybody’s a little old for you, baby bat.”

  “Anyway, I don’t have a costume.”

  “I bet you do. It’s Bizarro Halloween. Everybody comes dressed like a mundane.”

  He waits for me to respond, but I’m confused and say nothing.

  “Look,” Weevil says, “for us, life is a costume party three-hundred sixty-four days a year, right? So on Halloween, we cover up the tattoos, yank the piercings, and wear khakis and pastels. It’s corduroys and penny loafers and sport coats and perky bows. It’s Lands’ End and the Gap and JCPenney and Sears. You must have something like that in your closet. Something your mother bought you.” He drains the last of his espresso and stands up. “Dare to be square, baby bat,” he says as he walks off.

  The chrysalis is dark gray, a capsule of smoked glass. I think maybe it is dead. Looking closer, I see orange stripes and flecks of white, and I realize that I am seeing the monarch butterfly folded within a thin, transparent capsule. Most of the gold dots are still present, but one of them has turned bright blue.

  I prick my finger to check myself for signs of life. My meter counts down, then delivers its pronouncement: 474.

  Too high, too high, and I’ve had nothing but that one latte since dinner. In fact, I ate almost nothing for dinner—just a spoonful of rice casserole and a little salad. I inject a few units of insulin—not too much this time—and crawl into bed. The latte gave me a stomachache. Maybe I’m pregnant; a Virgin Vampire. Maybe I’m lactose intolerant. My mind is spinning and stuttering with coffee thoughts. The moon, nearly full, comes in through the window and bounces off my glass table, casting a milky light on the ceiling, lighting up Rubber Bat and the Seven Sisters. I
wonder what they are saying.

  Halcyone: Is that you, Electra?

  Merope: Alas, Halcyone, ‘tis but I.

  Halcyone: Ah, the whine sister.

  Asterope: Whine not!

  Halcyone: What is this I see? A giant rubber bat?

  Asterope: We are under attack! Where are our other sisters?

  Merope: Lost forever, perhaps, for I cannot remember their names.

  Sblood: It is I who cannot remember.

  Asterope: An intruder! Who invited her?

  Halcyone: Not I.

  Merope: Nor I.

  Electra: Nor I.

  A chat room for the sisters.

  I close my eyes and my thoughts swirl back to Mark Murphy. Maybe he would like to go to Wayne’s Halloween party with me. The question then would be, since he always dresses like a mundane, would he have to dye his hair black and get his nose pierced? I smile in the dark, imagining it.

  There was a time when I was maybe eleven or twelve when I had fantasies about marrying Mark. I would be a famous anthropologist, and he would be a professional golfer. We would travel all over the world together, exploring ancient ruins and winning golf tournaments. I don’t know why, but I always imagined him with a mustache, and me with blond hair down to my waist.

  Now, of course, the idea of Mark plus moi is way beyond the weird barrier. How would we look at the Seward prom? Mark smiling with his long wrists sticking out of a powder-blue rent-a-tux; me in funereal black and scowling. The photographer would crack a lens.

  I look at my clock. Two thirty-four. Five hours until school starts. Am I going? I don’t think so. The question is, how to negotiate it with the parentals. Maybe I pretend to be sick. Maybe I won’t have to pretend. Maybe I’ll wake up and my blood sugar will be some strange unheard-of digital mishmash, like 4.7 π r2 bc. Or maybe I’ll wake up dead, victim of a latte overdose. Or maybe a freak October blizzard will blow down from Canada and bury us all in nine-foot snowdrifts. Maybe the river will rise and flood the city. I see myself adrift on a river lined with lockers. My hand trails in water, soft and warm. I hear voices from the lockers as I pass: Chaos. Disruption. Revelation. Eruption.

  I should just do what they tell me to do. Go to school. Be good. Do my homework. Be nice. Dress dorky. Eat meat. Act my age.

  I could be an actress. Is that what Little Miss Perfect Diabetic Sandy Steiner does? Is she onstage 24/7? Maybe inside she’s just as messed-up as me. Maybe she secretly thinks she should be like me. Ha. More likely she is a shape-shifter from the planet Dinglebat. I should take her to Wayne’s. Tell her it’s a diabetes seminar: Achieving Better Blood Glucose Control Through Creative Bloodletting. All you need is a vampire with a sweet tooth for the ultimate in diabetes management. I see Sandy with her little insulin pump trying to be perky and cheery in a roomful of goths. I think of Weevil drinking snakebite, his smile red with raspberry cordial. The girl with orange stockings and the boy with the bolt through his nostril. Wayne and his butterflies. The sound of a hairbrush on violin strings. I wonder how Gruber looks with a black eye. Maybe I should invite him, too.

  22

  Angst

  Have I ever had a morning when my mother’s voice is not the first thing I hear? I bury my head in my pillow. Her strident tones slice right through the feathers and into my brain. I hold out as long as I can, then finally ooze over the edge of my mattress and insert myself into my bathrobe and shuffle out to the kitchen. My mother is making oatmeal. My father eats oatmeal every morning for his cholesterol. Then he eats great slabs of animal muscle for dinner. Go figure.

  “I’m not going to school,” I say.

  “Aren’t you feeling well, Sweetie?”

  “I think I’m still recovering.” In fact, I’m feeling kind of rotten. I had to get up to go to the bathroom about five times in the middle of the night. I wonder what my blood sugar is this morning.

  “What’s this?” My father enters, stage right. He is all suited up today. Big important meeting, no doubt. Going to sell some widgets to some dingbats. “No school?”

  “Called off due to the plague of locusts,” I say.

  He actually looks out the window. No locusts. The corners of his mouth tuck in and he shakes his head. “Three days off is more than enough, Sport. Today you go to school.”

  “Seriously, I’m not feeling good.”

  He sits down before his steaming bowl of gruel. “No school; no computer.”

  I can tell from his voice and the way he won’t meet my eyes that he has gone into his stubborn mode. Nothing I say or do now will change his mind. I could be having a seizure. I could be bleeding out of my eyeballs. I could have a knife jutting from my chest, and they’d still hustle me off to school.

  I stomp up to my room to get my backpack. As I’m packing my insulin and syringe in my bag I try to remember whether I’ve taken my morning shot. I think back. I’ve given myself so many injections they all blur into each other. I’m pretty sure I already took it. I wouldn’t want to give myself two injections—that would lead to another hallway tussle with Gruber.

  I leave the house in a miserable black cloud. I don’t even bother to test my blood. I really am sick, I think, whether they believe me or not. There must be something wrong with me.

  At school everybody ignores me, like I never passed out in class or punched out the vice-principal. BoreAss is still prattling on about acids and bases and everybody is staring through him with varying degrees of incomprehension and no one seems to remember that seventy-two hours ago I disturbed their mundane reality with my hypoglycemic event. Maybe I’ll have another one, just to liven things up.

  Forget it. I’m too tired and cranky to pass out.

  Nobody says a word to me till the next class when Dylan—excuse me, Guy—sidles up to me and says, “Ça va?”

  “Ça va yourself. I’m not talking to you.” Actually, I’m glad to have somebody to take my crankiness out on.

  “Why not?” He is smiling but his brow is wrinkled, like he’s not sure if maybe he did something.

  “Two reasons. One, you left me all alone with a vampire. He could’ve sucked the life out of me.”

  “That’s just—look, you don’t really believe that stuff.”

  “The other reason is you didn’t call me after… after I ran into Gruber. I could’ve been dead.”

  “I heard you were okay.”

  “Oh yeah? From who?”

  “I don’t know. Everybody. I mean, if you were really sick we’d all know about it, right?”

  “You didn’t call,” I say.

  “Sorry.”

  “I probably wouldn’t have talked to you anyways.”

  “Oh. So, how come you never told me you had diabetes?”

  “Because it was none of your business, maybe?”

  “Does that mean you’re not interested in going to a Halloween party tonight?”

  “Why? Because you think I shouldn’t eat candy?”

  “How come you’re so mad?”

  “Now you think I’m crazy?”

  “I didn’t mean—”

  “My diabetes doesn’t make me a freak.”

  “I don’t think you’re a freak.” He is looking right at me with those blue eyes.

  “Good,” I say.

  “So, you want to go to a costume party?”

  “The bizarro costume party at Wayne’s?”

  “You heard about it?” He is surprised.

  “Weevil invited me.”

  “Weevil?” He is very surprised.

  “But I’m not going. I have to be on my best behavior or the parentals might stick me in an institution for angst-ridden teens.”

  “Really?”

  “I’m not talking to you.”

  Angst is my word of the day. Yesterday I overheard my father use the term “teenage angst,” presumably referring to me, so I looked it up. Angst describes a feeling of anxiety, apprehension, anger, foreboding, depression. There is probably a tarot card for angst. I can even use
it in a sentence: I am feeling very angstish in the face of Dr. Rick’s professional cheeriness.

  He seems to have turned up the wattage on his manufactured smile. I must not have been clear with him last time. Cheerfulness does not play well here in Lucyland, where we take our angst seriously.

  “I hear you’ve returned to school, Lucy.”

  “In a manner of speaking. I attended all of my classes today. But please don’t ask me what I learned.”

  “All right, you’ve got a deal.”

  “My father has promised to return my computer to me if I do okay in school the next few weeks. And stay away from scary chat rooms. And visit you.”

  “Will you be able to do that?”

  “What choice do I have?”

  Dr. Rick makes a note. I suspect that he isn’t actually writing anything in that green notebook. He’s just trying to look busy. I have used a similar technique in school.

  “What are you writing?” I ask.

  “Just making a notation.”

  “What does it say?”

  “It’s a note to myself.”

  “Can I see it?”

  Dr. Rick closes his notebook and goes stern. “Lucy, why are you here?”

  “Because I wrote an essay that my teacher didn’t like.”

  He smiles. “The one about the vampire? I thought it was quite good,” he says.

  Now I’m really surprised. It’s the first thing Dr. Rick has said to make me think he’s not completely brain-dead.

  “Well,” I say, “you’re in the minority.”

  “You’re a very intelligent young woman. No one doubts that. Your theory about the origin of the vampire legend is quite provocative. And disturbing.”

  “That’s me. Provocative and disturbing.”

  “Some people have a lot of trouble with that.”

  “They should get a life.”

  “They aren’t going to change, Lucy.”

  “So what am I supposed to do? Dress up like Cathy Cheerleader and write a stupid essay about how I want to be an airline stewardess?”

  “Do you want to be an airline stewardess?”

  “Not particularly.”

  “Do you ever wonder why you’re so angry?”