She dressed to the nines every day, as if she had just stepped out of a magazine. And everything looked good on her. It was like she never had a bad day, or never woke up on the wrong side of the bed.
It was infuriating.
Smart, honor student, capable, morally upright (supposedly), Homecoming Queen, model good looks, everybody’s pal, probably volunteered at the homeless shelter and the humane society and helped match amputee puppies up with homeless vets in her spare time—I don’t even know. She was nice to everyone—even me.
And for that … I had a really hard time doing anything but faking a smile at her while screaming internally at the pain I felt for her goodness.
Because it’s really tough to be around someone better than you when you know, as a compulsive liar, you have some serious, serious issues to work on within yourself. “What do you even care?” I asked, still burning from the inconsistency in his response. I mean, I was a neighbor too, for crying out loud. “What does this have to do with you? Other than as a peeping Tom, I mean.”
“I—” Gregory started, and then stood there, his mouth hanging open, his eyes wide. He snapped his jaw shut. “She’s my friend.”
One of my eyebrows twitched. “Friend, huh?”
What did he take me for, an idiot? It was way more than obvious that he had a crush on her. His gaping fish face had told me everything I needed to know. I was surprised I didn’t pick up on it before. Why else would he be so freaked out because his neighbor was dealing with some tough stuff?
But … if the people bothering her actually were vampires … anyone would have reason to freak out.
I debated about calling him out on it, but the concern on his face was genuine.
No, I figured it would be better to hang onto that knowledge for later.
And I hated to admit it, but the idea that he had a crush on a girl irked me a little. It wasn’t because I liked him.
I didn’t. He was a chicken.
But he was also a boy who had given me attention and knew the truth about my life. It was hard to ignore the fact that there weren’t any others in that particular boat.
But I wasn’t going to let myself linger on that.
I was far more interested in getting out of this situation and getting as far away from it as possible. Hadn’t he seen what I had been through? How could he ask me to put my life on the line again?
Maybe he had no idea how much I had suffered.
Maybe he was asking me because he truly didn’t understand the danger.
His trembling hands told me a different story, though.
“You have to help,” he said. There was a note of defeat in his voice.
“I so don’t,” I said. “Sorry. I wish Laura the best with these possible vampires—or, like I said before, more probably people who just don’t like the sun very much. Or whatever.”
He made to interrupt me, but I held up my hand to stop him.
“Despite what you might be thinking after that little incident a couple of months ago, vampires are really rare,” I said with authority I probably hadn’t earned. Because, uh, I totally didn’t know that that was even halfway true. “So relax. I’m sure she’ll be fine.”
And then there was the bell, ringing just over our heads, making me almost jump out of my skin.
All of the doors around the hall were thrown open, and students started pouring out, making their way to their second-to-last class of the day.
I looked back at Gregory, whose face had fallen, his jaw tight. “Sorry. I’m just … I’m out.” My energy for this conversation—and the doors it threatened to reopen—had finally run out. Forcing my best approximation of a sympathetic smile onto my face, I gave him a cheerful wave before rounding the corner and making my way toward my locker.
That would be the last I would hear of it. I had been firm. Gregory may not know me very well, but I could be stubborn as a mule, and there was nothing that he could say that would make me want to help him, especially if vampires actually were involved.
I yanked open my locker so forcefully the door leapt from my hand and slammed the locker beside it. The girl two lockers down gave me a dirty look; I apologized out of the corner of my mouth and ignored the eye roll I got back. Shakespeare stowed, I retrieved my Psychology books—easily twice the size of Bill’s handiwork.
A nagging voice in the back of my head nagged at me for not offering more help.
I squashed it.
But who else could he turn to? I was the one with vampire connections, I was the one who’d faced them. I was his—no, Laura’s—only shot at beating them.
I forced it down again. I had made the right choice, damn it—and Gregory’s crestfallen face, echoing in my mind, was not going to convince me otherwise.
“What was that about?”
Fortunately I had expected Xandra to show up, because if I hadn’t, I probably would have reflexively whacked her in the face with my heavy psych textbook.
I glanced at her briefly before checking to make sure that the other girl a few down from me had walked away.
“Vampires,” I mouthed. No one could care less about what two girls were talking about next to their lockers, but I still didn’t want to draw any attention.
Xandra’s aquamarine eyes grew wide. “I thought we were past all that.” She shifted her own stack of books in her arms.
“Not my problem this time,” I said, closing my locker with more force than was probably necessary. “It’s really not.”
Was I trying to convince her? Or myself?
“I thought that if you got tangled up with the vamps again …” Xandra said softly, also looking around for unwanted eavesdroppers. There were none. “Didn’t Iona warn you?”
Iona was one of the vampires who had not tried to kill me. An eternal photograph of an emo teen, she had been nice, if somewhat infuriating to deal with on the other end of a text message. Her advice had been extremely useful, even if it had led me into the depths of a vampire party.
The stake she’d given me to defend myself with had been even better.
The last time I had seen her was just days after beating Byron, when she had turned up at school and warned me that if I got involved with the vamps of Tampa again, I risked exposing my actual identity to Lord Draven, the vampire ruler of the city—another very good reason for me not to jump headlong into Laura Grayson’s apparent vampire problem.
“Yes,” I replied. “She did. And trust me, the last thing that I want is to cross … him,” I said. Xandra knew perfectly well who I was talking about.
I was terrified of doing that, if I was honest. Really terrified. I had looked him in the eye and lied, point blank, pretending to be a vampire. And he had bought it.
“He still thinks that you’re a … y’know …” Xandra said under her breath as we walked beside each other going down the stairs to the first floor. “From a different state? Like that you aren’t around anymore?”
“Well, if he knew that I wasn’t what I said I was, then I probably wouldn’t be around anymore, would I?”
Xandra’s face paled, but she nodded.
“Yeah … that wouldn’t be good.”
Understatement. Blood and chaos. Unbridled fear. Draven’s wrath, as I understood it, would be way worse than anything that Shakespeare could have ever come up with.
“So are these … people … bothering Gregory?”
I shook my head. I brushed a stray curl out of my face, finding that any tiny thing out of place right now was almost intolerable.
I didn’t feel right sharing Laura’s name. Xandra thought Laura Grayson was the worst thing to ever show up in her life. I figured Xandra, like the rest of us, was jealous of Laura, and of all of the attention she got. But I didn’t feel like dealing with her complaining about Laura, so I just shook my head. “Not him, no. It’s someone he knows.”
Xandra chewed on her bottom lip. “Do you think that it actually is vampires? Maybe one of the ones you know?”
I sighed. “I have no idea. But Gregory says they’re only showing up at night, so … maybe.”
“But that doesn’t mean …”
“That’s exactly what I said!” I snapped. A little more graciously, I added, “You’re right, it doesn’t. But he was so afraid …”
We walked into our Psychology class and found our seats toward the back of the room. Psych was one of my favorite classes. I enjoyed learning about how the mind worked and why people thought the way they did about different things. And for the last two months, I’d had straight As.
“So what are you going to do?” Xandra asked over my shoulder.
It should have been easy to reply. Of course I was going to stay out of it. I’d almost lost my life because vampires had forced their way into it. This time, I had a choice. Why in the world would I choose to put myself back into danger like that?
Why would anyone?
I thought of Laura Grayson. She probably would have if it were her, and I were in her shoes. That was the image of Laura. Pretty, outgoing, front and center in every part of school life. Brave.
Urgh.
I bit down on my thumbnail. Even in a hypothetical situation, Laura Grayson was a better person than I was. That was … irksome.
So why did she have to suffer through the same things that I had? Why would I subject such a good person to something so horrific, something so dangerous?
It’s because I wasn’t exactly a good person. I was a liar. And that was something that would probably never change.
Gregory was wrong. He had to be. There was no way that someone else I knew was being plagued with vampires like I had been. He was overreacting. And maybe he was feeling guilty about how he’d dealt with me when I needed help.
“I’m going to stay the hell out of it, of course,” I said, finally.
Xandra hesitated, and then leaned back in her own chair.
Maybe she could hear the uncertainty behind my words.
One thing was sure—a nagging thought that came to mind as I sat there, listening to the bell ringing down the hell: if anything happened to Laura Grayson, if she ended up missing on the front page of the Tampa Bay Times, or dead …
It would be on my head.
Her blood would be on my hands.
I had killed two vampires, and I had lost only a few nights of sleep over it.
But could I live with the death of a human on my conscience?
I sank down in my chair, my arms folded tightly across my chest, and proceeded to not take in a single thing that my teacher said the entire class period.
Chapter 4
I was beyond happy to get home after school. The last two periods had been torturous, and Xandra kept shooting me these looks that told me that she wanted to keep talking about Gregory and the potential vampires.
I just didn’t have the energy. So I said I had a ton of homework to do and a long list of chores before the weekend, and that I’d text her later. She walked off with a bit of a sulk on. At least she was polite about it, though. Mom and Dad weren’t home, so I made sure to enjoy the time by myself by having a killer party.
Just kidding. I prepared dinner with Spotify running on shuffle from my phone and was knee-deep in math homework at the counter when Mom walked in the door. After Byron, it took weeks for the paralyzing fear at being home alone to wear off. At first, I couldn’t believe he was dead, and so I kept expecting him to appear in the shadows at any moment. Cue Cassie stalking around the house with wooden barbecue skewers on hand at all times—too thin to do much good really, but a small comfort nonetheless.
Once I had convinced myself that he was really not coming back, I started to actually relax. I felt more and more as if my life was actually getting back to normal.
“Something smells good,” Mom said as she set her briefcase on the counter.
Mom was a tall woman with dark auburn hair cut tastefully to her shoulders, and penetrating eyes the same hazel as my own. She had a way of staring right through me, trying to penetrate even when I locked myself in ice.
Today, though, she was smiling. Shrugging her blazer off, she said,
“What’re you working on?”
“Just some math,” I said. She gave it a cursory glance—I mean, it was math; not that interesting—and walked to the fridge, where she took out a bottle of sparkling water and cracked it open.
Subtle. But I was on to my mom.
She was checking to see if I was lying.
She’d been doing it a lot this past month—going out of her way to verify I was telling the truth. At first, I was really mad about that. How could she not just trust me when I was trying so damned hard to be honest?
But just because I knew I was being honest, didn’t mean the rest of the world did. So, begrudgingly, I had to accept these little looks, these little assessments, until I’d earned her trust back.
It didn’t mean I had to like it though.
“How was work?” I asked.
“Fine,” she said, setting her bottle down on the island. She sighed. “I have this case right now that’s taking up all of my time, and I have to be honest, I can’t wait for it to be over.”
I smiled at her, tapping my pencil on my notebook. “That bad, huh?”
“Not bad, but my client’s a bit … persistent.”
“You mean aggravating,” I said.
Her eyes twinkled, but she only smiled in reply.
The timer on the oven went off, and I slid off of my stool and crossed to it.
Mom moved to sit on a stool while I pulled the roasted chicken from the oven. She helped me by carving it up while I grabbed us some plates and some silverware. Dad was working a late shift at the hospital, so it was just the two of us.
As we sat down to eat, we talked about our days. I told her about how Lindsey Brown had broken up with her boyfriend for all to see in the middle of the lunch room, and she told me about how one of the partners, Thomas Halstead, had almost flooded the break room when the coffee pot pretty much combusted.
“So … school’s going okay?” Mom asked, eyeing my notebook.
That cautious tone had crept back into her voice. I had so hoped that we’d gotten past that for the night. Being in her company was nice, these days—a welcome change to the strained relationship we used to have—but when she switched on her precise lawyer perception to pick apart my very soul, it was hard not to feel the mood crashing down around us.
She was, and had been, searching for something to catch me on. I think she was totally expecting to catch me in a lie. I don’t think she wanted to, but she was so sure that I was hiding something.
“Fine,” I said, pulling my notebooks back over to me and sliding them back into my backpack. “I got an A on my history pop quiz today.”
She nodded her head as she crossed her arms over her chest. She seemed impressed.
“And I finished that project for art class early, so my teacher’s letting me start working with the pottery wheel.”
She smiled at that. I knew that one of her favorite mugs was one that I had made for her in the seventh grade in art class. It was one of the few things about art class that I had liked.
“How’s Psychology going?”
“Still my favorite,” I said. “Xandra and I are both planning to do our next paper on Carl Jung, and we found some really interesting books about him in the library during study hall yesterday.”
She scrutinized my face. I wanted her to see the transparent honesty there, but I knew how hard that might be. I had been so good at lying that it would have been just as believable.
“I see you emptied the dishwasher,” she said. “And cleaned out the dishes in the sink.”
I nodded. It was true. She had no idea how much I actually enjoyed doing normal things.
Then again, I figure anyone would after crossing paths with vampires. Nothing like a threat to your life—and your parents’—by something from a Bram Stoker novel to impress on you the value of the mundane.
>
“Thank you for taking care of those,” she said finally. “It’s a big help. You’ve been a big help. Your father and I appreciate it.”
I shrugged my shoulders. “No biggie.”
Silence fell as we cleaned up after dinner, and I put the rest of the chicken on a plate for Dad to heat up when he got home.
“Hey, Mom? Would it be okay if I went up to my room and watched some Netflix? I’m exhausted.”
She had no idea. The conversation with Gregory was filling my brain to the maximum, and I needed some space from it all.
“Did you finish all of your homework?”
“Yep.”
“I know you did the chores down here, but did you finish cleaning up all of the makeup in your bathroom?”
“Before I left this morning.”
She nodded.
Even though she was starting to trust me, she was looking for a reason to say no to me. I could understand why, I really could.
“Did you want me to check your math for you?” she asked. “I know you were complaining about it last night.”
I handed her my notebook without a word—even if this was just another way of checking on me.
But how could I blame her? It was my fault that our relationship had come to this. And I wanted her to be able to trust me. After all of the lying …
I wanted a normal life. I wanted that connection with my parents, no matter how tough it was some days, feeling the doubt coming off her every question, nearly every word.
She skimmed through the problems. “Looks like you finally got it,” she said. I appreciated the falsely positive attitude, because I know she didn’t want to be outright accusatory.
“I did,” I said. “Thanks for your help last night.”
Mom looked at me again, tapping her fingers on her arms. She finally shrugged.
“All right, if you want to go relax for a while, I don’t see any problem with it.”
Someone Should Save Her Page 2