“I’m all packed.” Milo had two duffle bags and a garbage bag of stuff in his hands.
“We should probably get going,” Jack said, taking a step towards the door. “You’ve had enough excitement for today.”
“Oh, haven’t we all?” I asked.
“Alice, I’m sorry about all of this,” Milo said sincerely, and that softness returned to his face. I hated him for it, because just then, I really wanted to hate him, and I couldn’t. Not when he looked at me like that, with his big, innocent eyes. “I know how much trouble this is for you, and I never meant for that.”
“Don’t be silly,” I shook my head. “None of this is your fault. You are entirely a victim of circumstance.
You don’t need to feel bad about any of this.”
“I’ll see you soon, okay?” Milo promised.
“Yeah, I know,” I lied. He looked at me expectantly for a moment, and then I realized what it was.
“I would hug you, if you know, I could. But you’ll get it under control soon. And then we’ll hug more than the Osmands. Okay?”
“Yeah,” Milo smiled sadly.
Jack held the door open for him, and gave me one last apologetic look as Milo escaped out into the hall.
“I’ll talk to you soon. Have fun.”
“I’m sure it’ll be a blast,” I told him.
Once the door shut, it hit me for the first time. I was alone in the apartment. Thanks to Milo’s complete lack of a social life, I could count the times I’d been home alone on two hands. About the only time was when I skipped school, and Milo went. Otherwise, he was always here. And he was never going to be here again.
A few minutes ago, I had managed to muster some pretty wicked anger for him, but it was all gone. The reality of everything was sinking in. There would be no one here to lecture me about bedtimes or home work, or to scoff at me when I watched reality TV, or make me elaborate meals. Nobody to paint my nails and listen to my stupid problems. There was nobody. For the first time in almost fifteen years, I was alone. My little brother was really gone.
Chapter 9
After becoming accustomed the subzero temperatures at Jack’s, I was dying in my own apartment. To beat the heat, I would drench my tank top and underwear in cold water, and then put them on. It was the closest thing I had to a lake in my backyard. Then I laid in front of the open window in my room, letting the warm breeze roll over me. This was little consolation for life at their house, but I did the best with what I had.
To pass the time, I amerced myself completely in Peter’s biography, although I wasn’t completely convinced that he had actually written it. Jack seemed sure of it, and he had been genuinely offended by me reading A Brief History of Vampyres. Still, it was hard to think of Peter wanting to write anything down. Whenever I was around him, he wanted nothing to do with expressing himself, but Ezra had said he had been a different man before the love of his life died.
Even now, or maybe simply because of now, I felt strangely betrayed at the thought of Elise, Peter’s girlfriend that had died a very long time ago. She was his one true love, or something ridiculous like that. It was completely unfair. Every part of my being claimed that I was meant for him, and because of her, because of a vampire that had died before I was even before, he refuses me. I will never be with him, and by the way things are going now, I’ll probably never be anything except a lone corpse in the ground.
So far in the book, Peter has yet to mention Elise, and I hope he doesn’t. Jack said he was very young when he wrote it, so he probably hadn’t even met her yet. He explained how he turned, what he could remember of it. Apparently, the transformation was something hard to articulate.
“My mind was an excited fog. It felt like I was waking up and falling asleep at the same time. My body was shifting and dying. There were times where I could literally feel my organs sliding about, as if my gut had been cut open and filled with eels. I couldn’t decipher dreams from reality, and I recall singing ‘Ava Maria’ repeatedly so I could hear my own voice. The sound of it meant that I was still there, that was still some part of me on this earth.”
Imagine, Peter writhing in a bed as his body died. His beautiful face contorting and twisting with pain, and through it all, he’s singing. I’m sure that he had an amazing voice, but it just seemed improbable that he would ever sing for any reason. For the most part, he tended to sulk about and glare at me with his piercing green eyes. There wasn’t anything musical about him.
I often tried to figure out why Peter had turned Jack. It didn’t really make any sense. They were opposites in nearly every way, and Peter was always running off on his own. He didn’t really seem to have the inclination for companionship, not like Jack did, and it didn’t make sense that he would turn someone knowing the attachment that they would create with him.
In the book, he says almost nothing of his mortal life. Only going as far to say that he was riding a horse that bucked him. The horse took off, and he was left dying on the side of the road. Then a stranger came upon, and seeing the shape Peter was in, decided that turning him was the only way to save his life. After that, Peter describes an intense feeling of loyalty and affection for the vampire.
“It wasn’t like anything I had ever felt before. In my previous life, I had a father, a brother, friends, and girlfriends. But no other bond had ever felt this strong. I could sense everything that he felt, as if I was feeling it for myself. He could speak to me without uttering a word, intimating everything with a just a glance. When he went too far away from me, there would be an awful panic inside me, as if I wouldn’t be able to survive without him.
“There was nothing carnal about it, however. It was as if I was an extension of him. Being away from him would be as painful as being severed from my own limbs. In the beginning, there was nothing I would do that would cause him displeasure, and no request I refused. Fortunately, he treated me with respect and dignity, like an equal or a brother. Many other fledgling vampyres did not acquire such a happy fate.”
That explained a bit more about what was going on with Milo and Jack, but it didn’t make me feel any better about the situation. I knew eventually that it would fade, as it had with Peter and Ezra, and Jack and Peter, but even in the book, Peter did nothing to illuminate a possible time frame.
He just spoke of his bond with Ezra, and then moved onto the first time he saw a young man turn into a vampire. He described it as a rather disturbing scene, and he did a very good job of painting a picture that I wasn’t excited to repeat for myself.
Meanwhile, I was lying in bed, reading a book and listening to Elliot Smith. As the sun set on the third day I hadn’t heard from either Milo or Jack, I was getting increasingly anxious. I had tried to spend a great deal of my time sleeping, but I had still made it a quarter of the way through Peter’s book. So far, he’d mostly just explained his encounters with other vampires, and giving some insight in the history of vampires, as he had learned through word of mouth. But there wasn’t any big shocking revelation that explained their existence, or that told me to how to fix the situation I was in.
Darkness settled in on my room, making it too dark for me to read, and I just rolled over onto my side, so I could stare at my phone, willing it to ring. I understood that Milo needed time to get the hang of being a vampire, and that his new jealous streak made it more dangerous for me to hang around Jack, but this was ridiculous. They both promised to talk to me soon, and it had been three days. Three horrible days. One entire day was spent consoling my mother when she learned that Milo had left without really saying good-bye. She was much more upset than I expected her to be. After crying a lot, she started drinking even more, and then just ended up yelling profanities at me and throwing things. That was a rather pleasant way to kill an afternoon.
On top of that, school was less than two weeks away. Once summer vacation drew to a close, I’d have to deal with curfews and school and all sorts of things that would keep me away from Jack and Milo even more.
I was going to spend the rest of my life cooped up inside this apartment by myself, and they didn’t even have the decency to call and give me one last blowout before deserting me for the rest of time. In some attempt at misplaced pride, I had been waiting for one of them to call or text me.
Either one would’ve been good at this point. But I was tired of waiting. I couldn’t stand the thought of spending another night suffocating in sweat in my tiny room listening to the same CD’s over and over again until I finally passed out of sheer boredom.
Hi. What are you doing? I text messaged Jack.
I vacillated between the two of them, but I felt that Jack was most likely to respond. Until this moment, they’d both always responded to my texts, but this was the longest that I’d ever gone without talking to either of them since I met them, and for Milo, that was fifteen years of talking to him pretty much every day. So this was a big deal.
Not much. What about you? Jack responded. It took him three minutes to answer, which was an unusually long time for him, especially since I knew he was awake. It was after ten o’clock at night. Even he never slept in this late.
Even less. I haven’t done anything in three days. I was trying to lay on the guilt, but I wasn’t sure if it would work.
You haven’t talked to Jane? Jack was suggesting that I hang out with Jane. Wow. Things were worse than I thought. After Peter, Jane was pretty much Jack’s least favorite person in the whole world. And he was encouraging me to hang out with her? Wow.
Not so much. But I guess I could. Great idea. I really, really hoped he called my bluff.
At this very moment, Jane was probably somewhere getting drunk or giving oral sex or something. So tracking her down to partake in that didn’t really sound like that much fun. If it were earlier, we might be able to do something more reasonable, like shop or drink coffee. But with only two weeks until school, I knew that for her, every night would be a blur of alcohol and debauchery.
I’m just pretty busy lately. Sorry. Jack replied.
Oh my god! He’s not calling my bluff. He’s really too busy for me. Okay. Great. My life as I know it is over. Fantastic.
No. I totally get it. It’s great. I’ll just do something else. That’s what I said, but I knew that I was going to spend the night in bed crying myself to sleep. Once I got motivated enough, I’d put on Tori Amos, because that felt like a good thing to listen to while I contemplated suicide.
No. Wait. Are you ready? Jack text messaged back, but it was too little too late.
Never mind. I’m good. I didn’t want a pity hang out. Even I had pride. I think.
Just be ready and outside in like fifteen minutes, okay?
I didn’t reply to that. With tears standing in my eyes, I couldn’t even decide if I wanted to get ready and go outside to meet him. I really didn’t want a pity hang out, even if I really did miss him.
It was stupid how much I missed him. I didn’t want to want to want him so much. But without him, I couldn’t figure out what to do with myself.
Almost grudgingly, I got up and pulled on a pair of jeans. I was wearing a white tank top, and I decided that was good enough. Pulling my hair back in a ponytail, I glanced at myself in the mirror. My face was horribly pale and washed out, so I quickly applied some eyeliner and mascara, and then ducked out the door, unsure if I was making the right decision or not.
When the black Jetta pulled up, I got my answer. It was absolutely the wrong decision.
Mae had come to pick me up. There was nothing wrong with her and I generally enjoyed hanging out with her, but it was a little devastating to see her pulling up. In the past ten minutes, I had gone from thinking Jack hated me to knowing it to thinking there might still be hope and then knowing it again.
I considered turning around and going back inside. What exactly would I achieve by hanging out with her? I’d just feel totally stupid and pathetic all night long, and I was just prolonging the inevitable. When a guy sends his sister to hang out with you instead of him, I think that’s the beginning of the end right there.
“Hello, love,” Mae said sheepishly when she had rolled down the car window. She leaned across the passenger seat towards me, looking guilty, and I knew that she thought the same thing as I did. Things were not good when Jack sent her in his place. “Sorry, Alice. I know it’s not quite what you hoped for, but Jack thought you needed to get out of the house.”
“You know what? I’m actually fine.” I nodded seriously and tears were stinging my eyes. “He’s um… he’s mistaken. I’m sure you have better things to do then baby-sit me, so I can just go back in.”
“Nonsense! You know how much I love spending time with you! So come on. Get in the car!” Her voice was light, but she was not asking questions.
“You really don’t have to do this,” I swallowed hard.
“I know.” She nodded towards the empty seat, so I sighed and finally relented. It still felt like a horrible idea, but I got in the car anyway. “It’ll be fun. You’ll see.”
“I bet,” I muttered, leaning my head back on the seat as she pulled away. “You know, the last time somebody came in place of Jack was when Peter picked me up to tell me that I wasn’t allowed to see any of you anymore. And we all know how well that turned out.”
“This isn’t like that,” Mae insisted, shaking her head. “Jack really wanted to see you. He just can’t right now.”
“What is he doing? Teaching Milo how to turn into a bat?” I asked, mockingly, and Mae scowled.
“There’s a lot that goes into turning, you know,” she told me seriously. “Plus, he’s been helping Ezra with the business. He was supposed to fly out to Tokyo yesterday, but…” She shook her head, tightening her lips grimly.
“But what?” I sat up straighter, interested in find out what her so strained.
“There just has to be something different in your blood,” Mae exhaled, exasperated. She was talking more to herself than me, which made it harder for me to follow. “There’s no other explanation for it. I don’t understand it. But there just has to be something that makes you all so eager to bond. Who was your father?”
“My father?” I wrinkled my nose. “What does he have to do with anything?”
“I’m trying to understand your ancestry, because there’s something so unique about you both. I’m wondering if we’ve been looking at this all wrong. Maybe you weren’t meant for him. Maybe you weren’t meant for anybody. Maybe you were just meant to be a vampire.” Mae chewed her lip, looking sad and faraway.
“Maybe we’re just a means to an end for you.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked. “An end to what?”
“It’s just that you both bond so easily. It’s unlike anything we’ve ever encountered,” Mae explained wearily.
“Milo’s just super possessive of Jack, right?” I leaned back in the seat and realized that I better just hurry up and resign myself to life of mortal celibacy. “Jack kind of told me the other day.”
“It’s already lessening,” Mae added hopefully. “These things just take time.”
“Why is that the answer to everything?” I scoffed. “All I ever get from you guys that everything takes time and everything’s complicated.”
“What else am I supposed to say?” Mae asked pointedly. “This is all very simple but you’re just too slow to get it? That this will never get better, no matter how much time we have? If that’s what you want to hear, I’ll be happy to tell you that. This is it, Alice. This is as good as anything is going to get, so don’t get your hopes up for anything else. You might as well just give up now.”
“If that’s the truth, then yeah, that’s what you should say!” When she said it, it sounded far more melodramatic than when I thought it, but it didn’t feel entirely false.
“Of course that’s not the truth!” Mae rolled her eyes. “Alice, the only constant in life is that everything is always changing. And that’s a little scary, but it means that things can’t be bad or h
ard forever.”
“And they can’t be good or easy forever either,” I countered.
“Exactly! Because if they were, we’d never know to appreciate the moments when they were good!”
Mae turned to me, smiling warmly at me. “You’ve just got to trust me on this one. I don’t know how yet, but things will end up the way they’re supposed to be.”
“Thanks for the blanket answer.”
“Look, let’s just forget about all of this,” Mae suggested cheerfully. “Let’s just go have a girls night!
Just the two of us.”
“We’re not going to your house?” I asked, and I felt an awful pang inside of me. I was hoping to at least catch a glimpse of Jack but that wouldn’t be possible. I couldn’t go there. I couldn’t see him.
Despite their repeated claims that I wasn’t being banished, I really was.
“There’s plenty of fun things to do in the Cities,” Mae assured me, ignore my question about her house.
“Its after ten on a Tuesday. How much do you really think is open?” I asked dryly.
“We’ll find something,” Mae insisted. “We’ll make do.”
We made do with a Wal-Mart that was open 24-hours, a Denny’s where she watched me eat, and a Blockbuster. Then we went back to my apartment, even though the whole point of the evening was supposed to be to get me out of the house. Mae had never been inside before, but she ooed and awed over all our secondhand junk like it was astounding. Then she painted my nails and played with my hair while we watched Silence of the Lambs. It was one of my favorite movies because it was so terrible, and I felt better knowing that I was forcing her to watch something so terrible. And despite my best attempts to hate everything about the night, she did manage to cheer me up a little bit. Of course, that went away completely when she left, when I was alone again.
Chapter 10
I wanted to run out and throw my arms around him. I couldn’t get out to his car fast enough.
When Jack texted me the next day and asked to hang out with me, I hated myself for getting so excited about it. Even though I felt rather ridiculous, I couldn’t help but spend an hour preening. If the Titanic were sinking, I’d be making sure the deck chairs all looked lovely.
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