Chosen

by Barbara Ellen Brink

“Rise and shine! It’s a school day, kiddo.”

  Her mom’s voice was intruding into an awesome dream. She was playing guitar in a band and Brianna was lead singer. When she looked out at the audience she saw Lyle smiling back at her, dancing along to the beat. He started to climb up on stage like a crazed stalker but two huge bodyguards grabbed him and pulled him down. The bodyguards looked up and grinned at her. They both looked like Zach Efron.

  “Jael!”

  She opened her eyes a crack and peered through her lashes. Her mom had flipped on the overhead light and pulled open the curtains. Hands on hips, she watched her with a worry line between her brows.

  Through the window the sun was just beginning to wash over the horizon with a soft pink glow. She moaned and rolled over, tugging the blanket over her head. “Leave me alone. I can’t go to school today.”

  Her mom tugged the blanket back down and placed a hand over her forehead. “You don’t have a fever,” she said, as though exhaustion from being out late every night hunting vampires wasn’t a good enough excuse to skip school.

  “I might have a fever later.”

  “You can’t keep skipping school just because you’re the Chosen. Even vampire slayers need an education. You’ve already missed four days in the last two weeks.” Her mom sat on the edge of the bed and smoothed Jael’s hair back from her face, tucking it behind her ear. She bent and kissed her cheek, then got up and moved to the door. “I’ve got pancakes cooking. Hurry up.”

  Jael heard the door pulled closed. She forced her eyes open and sat up, dangling her legs over the side of the bed. The bright yellow walls of her room shone like fairy dust in her sleep-deprived vision. She rubbed her face and stood up, then groaned when she moved toward the bathroom. The muscles in her thighs were a bit sore after last night.

  If she weren’t so tired, she’d want to go to school. She hated staying home with nothing to do, and missed seeing and talking to Brianna everyday. But it wasn’t the same anymore.

  They used to be able to tell each other everything. Brianna knew that she worked out with her dad in the basement every night and weekends, that she was proficient in five different forms of martial arts and hand-to-hand combat, even that she could kill a scarecrow at twenty feet with a five-inch-blade after doing a double back flip. What she didn’t know–and Jael didn’t think she could tell her–was that she was a modern day vampire killer. A slayer of the undead. She could no longer truly share her life with her best friend. And who could she talk to about that–the school counselor?

  The drive to school was uneventful. Jael didn’t feel like talking and her mom seemed to understand for once; she turned on a soft rock station and hummed along, tapping her fingers on the steering wheel to the beat. Jael leaned her head against the side window and tried to steal a few more minutes of sleep. When they finally pulled into the school parking lot and up to the doors, her mom just smiled and gave her the token send off, “Have a nice day,” before driving off as though she had somewhere important to be. Jael felt a bit underappreciated. Nobody knew she was saving the world from bloodsuckers except her family, and they just took it all for granted.

  “Hey, Jael!” Brianna stood by her locker with the door open, rearranging things into an orderly mess. She flipped blonde hair over her shoulder in that absent-minded way she had, oblivious to the fact that it brought every boy’s attention her way. “Missed you yesterday. Glad you’re back.”

  Jael smiled and opened her own locker, two doors down. “Sorry I didn’t call you back last night. I was sort of busy right then,” she said with a slight shrug. A definite understatement.

  She had a different ringtone for every person in her phone directory and Brianna’s was a song from her favorite movie, A Knight’s Tale. Fighting a slippery, little, teenage vamp in a back alley was bad enough but right when she thought she had him cornered, he grabbed a metal garbage pail lid and slammed it against the side of her head, jumped up on a dumpster and tried to scale a twelve foot wall to get away. With her head still ringing, her phone started playing, We Will Rock You, and the pity she’d felt earlier for the little sucker drained right out of her.

  She’d grabbed hold of his baggy-butt jeans and yanked him down off the fence. He stumbled and fell against a dumpster, then rebounded like a jack in the box, going for her neck with a feral snarl. She dodged to the right, and landed a karate chop to the back of his neck. He went down on his knees and she slipped the stake out of her waistband. Blood-shot eyes glared up at her when she yanked his head back by a thatch of shaggy hair and planted the stake in his cold, dead heart.

  Just for a moment she’d felt regret. He slumped to the ground, an innocent looking young boy now, the fight gone out of him, his fangs withdrawn, his eyes closed in final death.

  Jael waited.

  If he were very old he would disintegrate within seconds to the state of decomposition normal for his originally dead body. She could tell approximately how old a vampire was by the odor. Vampires that had survived long enough that their bodies should have turned to dust, smelled like moldy socks, but a newer vampire, say perhaps a month or so undead, would smell like the rotting corpse they really were.

  The boy didn’t change and he had no strong odor. She pulled out the stake and stood there watching him for a good five minutes before she realized his death must have been very recent. Perhaps just days or hours since his funeral and burial. It was sad. She wondered about his parents and whether they knew he’d gone missing from his grave? Or perhaps he’d been killed by another vampire more recently and his parents didn’t yet know he was dead.

  Now they never would. He would disappear, turn to ash in the morning sun, and they would assume he had run away like so many teenagers were reported to do.

  “Jael?” Brianna was watching her with a puzzled expression on her face. “Are you all right? You seem sort of out-of-it.” She closed her locker, her history book in the crook of her arm.

  “Yeah, just tired. Up late last night,” Jael said, dropping her book bag in the bottom of her locker and sliding out the book she needed for first class – Trigonometry. Ick. She’d rather smell a rotting corpse on a warm night than solve math problems.

  “Okay…well… I’ll see you later, right?” She backed up a couple of steps, holding her gaze as though Jael would disappear again as soon as she let her out of her sight.

  “Sure.”

  Brianna smiled, then turned and hurried down the hall toward Mr. Stanton’s history class. Jael watched her go, feeling as though she was losing the only real friend she’d ever had, and there was nothing she could do about it. She saw Marti stop Brianna outside the history classroom to say something and then they both laughed and went into class together.

  Jael slammed her locker shut and twisted the combination lock. She couldn’t go on this way much longer. Kicking vampire butts at night and pretending to be an average girl during the day was taking too much out of her. She wasn’t cut out to live a double life. She wanted to be normal. If only she could be like Brianna, have parents that were nerdy scientists, a baby brother who was already taking college classes because he tested out of third grade and was considered a genius… Okay, maybe Brianna’s family wasn’t that “normal” but still.

  “Hey, Jael,” a male voice whispered close to her ear.

  She twisted around and was a tenth of a second from crushing the guy’s windpipe with the heel of her hand when she realized it was just Lyle standing there. She dropped her arms and blew out a confused breath.

  “You scared me,” she lied, a flimsy excuse for cover.

  “Sorry.” He backed up a step, as though sensing his near demise. “Just wanted to see if you were coming to the exhibition game against the Redville Scorpions tonight. Some of us are going out afterwards for burgers. Thought you might like to come along. Hang out. Have some fun.” He narrowed his eyes. “You live way out in the desert somewhere, don’t you? Like in a commune or something?”

  “What?
”

  “It’s cool. I don’t mind.” He smiled, and stepped closer, leaning in against the lockers with one hand. A wave of minty fresh breath wafted over her. He was always sucking on those Altoids. Curiously strong indeed.

  “Good to know,” she said, basking in the warmth of his gaze. The blonde basketball star could believe she lived in a cave in Afghanistan if he wanted to, as long as he looked at her like that.

  “So…?” He leaned closer, pinning her against the lockers with the heat of his eyes and another wave of peppermint.

  She smiled back. “I was thinking about coming to the game.”

  “Cool. I’ll see you tonight then,” he said, and pushed off from the locker. He winked and walked away to join a group of guys waiting at the end of the hall.

  Her arms and legs felt paralyzed as though she’d been shot with a tranquilizer dart. At least how she imagined it would feel to be shot with a tranquilizer dart. She forced herself to move, to look away from the group of guys and walk in the opposite direction. She couldn’t let Lyle know that he set her heart racing just by speaking to her and that her skin tingled with electricity at his proximity. He would think she was some crazy, stalker girl – someone to avoid, not date.

  The bell rang as she slowly moved toward the trigonometry room. Her legs refused to hurry, regardless of being tardy. She paused outside the door, listening to the sound of voices and laughter and scraping chairs as kids settled down for class. Mr. Winchester’s gruffy baritone rang out calling for attention.

  Jael suddenly realized the predicament she’d shoved herself into. Since when had she ever thought about going to a game, much less believe her parents would allow her to be out of their sight that long? She blew out a frustrated breath. Since a hot guy asked her out on a date–that’s when. She had to get into town for the game tonight. It was her only chance to be normal. If it were up to her parents and Uncle Seth, the only socializing she’d ever do would be with undead creatures in the dark of night.

  This was a once in a lifetime. She never thought Lyle would give her the time of day much less invite her out for burgers. Okay, maybe it wasn’t a real date; just a group thing. But it was a start.

  The door opened and Mr. Winchester looked over his glasses at her. “Are you planning on joining us inside, Jael? Or are you just going to watch through the window?”

  She felt her cheeks flame to an embarrassing shade of red. “Sorry, I was thinking about something.”

  “Well, come on in and think about math for a change.”

  A titter of laughter rippled around the room and she tried not to make eye contact as she took her seat and plopped her book down on the desktop. Mr. Winchester scraped a stick of chalk across the board, writing some incoherent formula that she didn’t understand, and managed to make everyone cringe and groan at the sound.

  Jael opened her book and propped her head on one hand, pretending to read the words and numbers on the page, but all she saw was the blue of Lyle’s eyes staring back at her. She so wanted him to kiss her, and tonight was probably her only chance for that fantasy to come true. All she had to do was get out of the house, make it to town, and get home again without anyone noticing that she was gone all evening. Simple. Right.

  Chapter 10

  Rumors rising