Dream Date
Page 2
***
The next day came and I was ready for my date. To tell you the truth, I was actually excited. I mean, Melissa was perfect… just as long as this didn’t turn out like my dream. I shook my head, thinking, don’t think like Luke. He is an idiot.
I wasn’t excited about my brother having to drive us. I was old enough to drive, but my car broke down and my brother wouldn’t let me drive his. “You broke your car somehow, no way am I going to let you touch my car!” he kept saying.
When he finally dropped Melissa and me off, I told him to beat it. We were at the pizzeria. I gestured for her to go in front of me, but she just looked at her watch and then shook her head. “I’m not hungry,” she said.
“But I told you--,”
She cut me off, beginning to twirl the hair she had curled for the date. “I know,” she seemed impatient. “But it’s already 9:45.”
I blinked in surprise. “Look, I’m sorry I was late, but my brother couldn’t drive us till he got home from work. And I called you--,”
“I know,” she cut me off again. She sounded aggravated and then just sighed and said, “Let’s just take a walk.”
“Okay,” I said slowly. I began walking to the right, but she grabbed my sleeve and pulled me back gently. She tucked her curly hair behind her ear and said she wanted to go to the left. I stood on my tip toes to look that way. There didn’t seem to be many streetlights and looked like it lead to three or four alley ways.
This is weird, I thought. Wouldn’t you normally stay away from alley ways? I gazed at her as we began walking. She was wearing a purple T-shirt with a black leather jacket and skinny jeans, along with a lot of bracelets and hoop earrings. Just like in my dream.
She looked to the sky as she walked. I looked up to see what she was looking at. It was nothing. I mean, I could see the moon a little, but there were too many clouds to see it clearly. She didn’t seem to like that.
We walked for a while, just talking. I got hungry—I did expect to eat pizza first—but I didn’t say anything. The whole time we walked, she kept looking at her watch. After about the 17th time she checked her watch, I asked, “What time is it?”
“Huh?” She asked, pulling her brown eyes away from the watch and to me.
“Well, you keep looking at your watch. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you were late for another date,” I said.
She shook her head. “Sorry, it’s nothing.”
It got kind of awkward after that. She restrained from looking at her watch every few seconds, and I was just out of stuff to say. I looked up to the sky.
“Full moon tonight,” I commented as I pointed up. The dark purple sky clearing up and showing some stars and a little more of the moon.
She looked up and then back down at her watch. “Yeah I know,” she said, seeming distant.
I gave her a sideway glance. “Are you okay?”
She seemed surprised. “Yeah,” she said. “Just a little hungry.”
I stopped walking. “We can go back,” I said. “The pizzeria doesn’t close till about 11. What time is it?”
“10:18,” she said. “But no, that’s fine. I’ll get something in a few minutes,” she said.
I didn’t understand what she meant by a few minutes. My logic was, when you are hungry, feed your stomach before it eats you inside out. I could have sworn she mumbled something as we began walking again. I got worried. Maybe she said something like, “worst date ever” or around those lines. I wanted to smack myself. Be more entertaining, Jake!
“So,” I said, racking my brains for something to say.
She checked the time again and I felt a bit annoyed until she suddenly said, “Okay, I can’t wait anymore!”
I was surprised. “What?” I stopped walking. “Explain please?”
She brought me over to a bench and sat down, pulling me next to her. “Okay, I really like you, so I’m just gonna give you a heads up, so that you don’t end up like all the others,” she said.
Score! I thought. But then I thought the rest of the sentence through, fear replacing my happiness. “What do you mean?”
She inhaled and the exhaled. “I’m a creature of the night.”
I looked at her. “What?” My wooden stake seemed a lot heavier in my hoodie.
“I’m a creatur--,”
I didn’t let her finish. I immediately thought, Luke was right! Stake her! So I jumped off the bench and yanked the wooden stake out of my hoodie and went to plunge it into her heart… but something wasn’t right.
“What are you doing?!” she screeched. She knocked the stake out of my hand as she stood up.
“Trying to stake you!” I exclaimed, trying to figure out why it didn’t work. It wouldn’t even pierce her skin. Garlic, I thought. I grabbed the garlic out of my hoodie and un-wrapped the plastic around it. I then held it out to her. “Stay back!” I backed away a few steps.
Her brown eyes were large with anger when she rolled them. She ripped the garlic out of my hand and took a bite out of it. She chewed it up, swallowed, and then threw it somewhere behind herself. “You idiot! Garlic and a wooden stake? You use that to kill a vampire,” she said. “You need a sliver bullet to kill a werewolf!” she was screaming now.
I raised an eyebrow. “Werewolf?!” I’m pretty sure my voice cracked but I was too scared to think about it.
“Yes!” she said. Her watch began beeping like crazy. She looked down at it and smiled. “Finally!”
Her eyes sparkled as she looked up at the full moon, completely unexposed by the clouds. Fangs appeared and claws replaced nails.
I don’t know how I knew, but I took that as a signal to run. I ran down an old alley. Not only had I already made Melissa mad enough by trying to stake her, but she was gonna eat me anyway!
The muscles in my leg worked, trying to move faster and faster as sweat beaded my forehead. I stopped just before I hit the brick wall in front of me.
My dream replayed in painfully scary detail. I kept waiting for my alarm clock to start going off and wake up, but this was reality. And I was screwed.