I Heart Vampires

by Siona McCabre

  She just smiled at me, then turned back toward our teacher, who was once again swiveling in his little chair, waiting patiently for everyone’s attention.

  “Everyone got a partner?” he asked.

  The class settled down.

  “Good. Here’s what we’re doing.” He then proceeded to explain that we were going to be creating some kind of visual presentation on a specific aspect of the French Revolution. We would work in pairs for two weeks and at the end of that time we would do a presentation. The type of presentation was up to us, but the topic was assigned. To me, this translated as lots of one-on-one time with Paige in the next weeks, which would be incredibly awesome if I didn’t stink to high hell. And wear a ton of foundation. And have to avoid extended exposure to natural light. And want to drink her blood. Wow. It was going to be a long two weeks.

  ****

  I was staring into the deep, messy black of my locker when Malcolm popped up behind me.

  “Hey, I heard you and Paige are going to be working very closely together on a history project!”

  “It’s been six minutes since class ended. How do you know that already?”

  “These walls talk.” He shrugged.

  “You mean Celia talks.”

  Malcolm broke into a big grin and slugged me on the shoulder. Now, Malcolm was a fit guy, and it didn’t feel like he punched me hard at all, but he suddenly recoiled and grasped his hand. He sucked in air through his teeth. “Ah, man!” he groaned. “Are you wearing a brick under there or something? Jeez.”

  I had forgotten about that. Skin of steel. Sort of. How could I play this off? “Nope, no bricks today. Titanium. Maxim says it’s the new black.”

  Malcolm looked up from nursing his hand, and shook his head. “You are ridiculous,” he said. “Seriously, dude,” he went on, “I thought you were supposed to be sickly and all. Were you secretly working out? Why would you skip a week to buff up?”

  I shook my head and shrugged.

  “Don’t lie, you were just getting ready to make history with Paige this week.” He looked at me expectantly, teasing.

  “Nice pun, grandpa.”

  “Come on, that was a good one!”

  “Keep living in denial, my friend.” I smiled at him as I shut my locker, and we headed off to our next class.

  Later in math, I was secretly enjoying Malcolm’s angst-ridden performance at the board, as he tried to solve an equation. I was so engrossed in watching him, I’d almost forgotten about my condition, when I got a sudden and sharp reminder.

  Hunger. It came like a freight train and tunneled through my being, into my consciousness, where it traveled as a physical burning pain through my core, then my limbs, until every part of me felt like it was on fire. I started twitching in my seat, the adrenaline surging.

  Prey, everywhere. Unsuspecting. It would be too easy for me to just give in, let go, take part in the dark and disgusting feast I craved. I clutched my arms around myself, trying to hold it in, ease the pain, and contain my mad urge. I felt like I was tumbling on an icy slope, spiraling out of control.

  Malcolm, having finished his part of the problem on the board after several trials and even more errors, caught my eye. It was the only moment of clarity that saved me from ripping out the throats of my classmates, the kids I once played in the sandbox and ate Play-Doh with. He stopped writing on the board and looked straight at me.

  He knew something was wrong. He just didn’t know how wrong. Something about the agony in my eyes glued him to his spot in front of the class. There was an expression on his face I was having trouble reading through the sudden glaze of bloodlust that had gripped my body.

  Fear. Malcolm looked as though he was afraid of me. Afraid of something in me? Afraid for me? I didn’t have more than a split second to think about it before I had to bolt from the room.

  I could have reached the men’s room in a second flat, but what a dead giveaway. I had to slow myself down to a reasonable human pace. An agonizingly slow minute later, I reached the bathroom. I cordoned myself off in a stall and tried to regain composure.

  I closed my eyes. I took a breath. That didn’t help. I just ended up inhaling the pungent scent of every living being in the nearby perimeter. And I wanted to drain every last one.

  So I sat there in the nasty stall, holding my breath and racking my brain for what to do next. I couldn’t go back to class, not in my current state. I knew I couldn’t hide in the bathroom forever. But I definitely could not feed. So I sat. And sat. And read some graffiti. And sat. And finally I had to let my breath go. I’d been there close to twenty minutes. I was feeling totally trapped when all of a sudden, I felt my whole body shifting from the inside out. It felt like a flutter of butterflies in my stomach that then flew violently through my veins, and before I knew it, I was a butterfly again! I had no idea how that happened, but I took the opportunity to escape.

  I careened over the bathroom stall and made a fast, jittery flight through an open window. When I got out of the building, I navigated my way toward a nearby wooded area, where I could set down without fear of being trampled or, worse, found out. I sat in the shade atop a fallen log and waited. I didn’t know how to turn into a butterfly, much less turn back into a vampire.

  I flapped my dainty wings and did a couple crazy circuits, hoping to somehow trigger an explosion that would release me from this state. But each time I just tired myself out and landed right back on the log. After about thirty minutes, I realized that maybe I should quit wasting my time trying to break free, and try to get to a better location before I reverted to my other state.

  I took off from the mossy wood and began my journey home. Because I didn’t seem to have a problem with the sun when in bug state (and because it was the shortest route), I took the risk of flying out in the open.

  It wasn’t easy. My perspective was all messed up and all the flapping was exhausting. I had to keep finding little areas to rest for thirty seconds at a time before taking off again. On top of that, I wasn’t exactly good at flying, so my jittery trajectory made me feel like vomiting. At one point I set down on the top of a stop sign and tried to throw up. My itty-bitty chest heaved, and my long spindly tongue shot out in front of me, but that was it.

  Once I caught my breath again, I continued on past the gas station, past the general store, until I was fluttering through Skor Park. I set down again on the gnarled roots of the first tree I saw. It was beginning to worry me that I still hadn’t changed back. While I took a minute to collect my thoughts, I heard the deliberate swishing of a pencil on paper. I hopped delicately around the tree to see a guy about my age sitting on a nearby park bench.

  He had straight brown hair and he was wearing a gray cloth jacket with random Japanese characters scribbled on it with a Sharpie. He had big noise-canceling headphones on, and he looked to be very concentrated on a sketch he was doing. There was something familiar about him. I had hoped I wouldn’t run into anyone on my way back, but at least he was completely oblivious and I was, well, a butterfly.

  Just then, my wings shivered. I hopped frantically behind the tree.

  Without any other warning, my normal body exploded out of its delicate little chassis and I was suddenly myself again! Naked. In a park. Well, that’s a little inconvenient. It had slipped my mind that the same thing happened the first time, probably because of the shock coupled with the relative privacy of my room. That meant my clothes were left on the grimy floor of the boy’s bathroom at school. Damn. I really liked those jeans.

  So there I was, trapped out in the open. The only thing that kept me from burning up was the shade of the tree. Obviously, I couldn’t make a mad dash for home—I would either burn to a crisp or be arrested for indecent exposure. This couldn’t get any worse.

  “Noah Vance?”

  It just got worse.

  “Uh…”

  I peeked around the tree to see the guy who had been drawing was now looking straight at me, a puzzled expression on his face. I
suddenly remembered where I knew him from.

  “K.J.?” Kyle James Tanaka. He had graduated from W. T. Whitehaven a few years ago, but made an occasional appearance when he was delivering pizzas. He’d been nice to me when I was an underclassman. I remembered him mostly for his art competition wins and ingenious pranks. A curious smile spread across his face.

  “Yeah…so…how’s it going?” he asked, clearly at a loss.

  “Um, been better?”

  He let out a full-bellied laugh.

  “I can imagine,” he joked.

  I chuckled nervously. After all, I’d never had a conversation before while butt-naked and hiding behind a tree in a public park. I was too distracted to even think about my hunger.

  “So, how have you been?” I tried to sound normal.

  K.J. shook his head, still with a wry smile playing on the edge of his lips. “I’m sorry,” he started, “this is too weird. I can’t get past the whole naked thing. What are you doing?”

  “Long story short, I uh…lost a major bet.” For someone who is a terrible liar,

  this was torture. “You bet your clothes?”

  “Not exactly.” He nodded, almost as if he understood my current predicament. Just then I felt as though someone were jabbing little needles into my toes. I winced and glanced down—they’d slipped into some sunlight. I pulled them in closer to my body, away from the harmful rays. “Um, hey, K.J.? This is going to sound like a weird question—”

  “I love weird questions.”

  “Okay, do you happen to have a spare change of clothes I could borrow?”

  He looked up for a moment, as though all his thoughts were collected in a floating bubble above his head. He bit his lip. “You know, I may have something in my car. Some friends and I went to a gaming convention recently in Portland.”

  “Could you take a look?” I interrupted. “Please?” I didn’t mean to be rude, but I really didn’t have the time to hear all about his Portland trip.

  “Yeah, sure, wait right there,” he said. He laughed to himself. “As if you’re going anywhere.”

  He was only gone for minutes, but the anticipation was awful. I was also extremely wary of anyone else spotting me, so I just curled into a little ball at the base of the tree, waiting. Finally he came back with an armful of clothes. He tossed them next to me, careful not to look directly at me.

  “It’s just an old sweater and some track pants, but you can borrow them if you want.” I pulled them on as quickly and carefully as I could, making sure to cover every inch of skin possible. I stood up, fully clothed once more. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!”

  “No problem, just get them back to me when you can.”

  “I will for sure. Can you give me your number or something?”

  “Just find me on Facebook,” he suggested.

  “Cool. You are a lifesaver,” I told him gratefully.

  He shrugged, smiled, then took his seat on the bench and pulled out his drawing pad. “Peace!” he called out as I walked away.

  And with that, I mustered all my energy and raced my way through the shady parts of the street until I was safely in my room again. My mom was still at work.

  I picked up the landline and called her. There was a fifty-fifty chance that she would pick up her phone.

  RING. RING. The metallic tone just continued. Finally it went to voice mail.

  “You’ve reached Suzanne Vance. Please leave a message!”

  “Hey, Mom, it’s me. Any leads on, um, what we talked about? I could really use some good news right about now. Thanks.”

  I hung up. Using my last bit of will, I collapsed on my bed, weak and thirsty. I couldn’t sleep. I wanted to, but I couldn’t. And gone with my ability to sleep was my ability to dream. Just think about it for a second. No more dreams. Ever. No more nightmares. All gone. The only thing that remained was the fever of freakish thirst and the living nightmare that I was.

  I closed my eyes. I kept them closed for a long time. It was an admission of defeat. A good old white flag that said everything I had hoped I could pull off was just a sham. Ridiculous. Impossible. I was living in a delirium where I could pretend that everything would be okay. I still needed answers. I couldn’t even make it through a whole day of school. And worse, I could lose Paige forever. Not everything works itself out. Ironically, I had to wake up.

  Chapter 5

  I ended up wallowing in my thoughts until Mom got home from work. She gently knocked on my door.

  “Hey, honey,” she said gently.

  “Hi, Mom.”

  “How was the first day back at school?” Her voice wavered a little. I could tell she was holding her breath.

  “I killed that annoying kid, Gary. It was great.”

  “WHAT?!” She burst into my room, a ball of panic and fury.

  So much for sarcasm. “Calm down. I was kidding!”

  And then she did something she’s never done before. Ever.

  She slapped me. Right across the face, open palm. She stood there for a second, as if she suddenly couldn’t remember where she was. Then she started sobbing.

  I considered myself to be a fairly sensitive guy. I could tell when people were happy, sad, mad. Usually it was easiest to tell when they were mad. But that’s not my point. My point is that even though I qualified as a “sensitive guy,” I was still just a guy. So when my mother, who had just hit her newly fanged son in the face for the first time in my life, broke down into hysterics, I had no clue what to do.

  I was offended. She just slapped me!

  I felt bad for her. She looked exhausted.

  It was one of those situations where I didn’t really even know what just happened.

  As I went over these bullet points in my head, I realized I hadn’t said a word in several minutes and it was starting to get painfully awkward. Not a single word had escaped my mouth, and my mother was still crying on my bed. On top of it all, I was so hungry I could drain a horse.

  When I thought about it like that, I started to get a little indignant. First she slaps me, and then she sits here tempting my overwhelming hunger. What was she thinking? What was I thinking? I should just walk away, I thought. But something about her tears kept me lingering. Sure, I was mad, but I also felt a little guilty. Even though I knew there was no point playing the “what if” game, I couldn’t help but think about what would have happened if I hadn’t gone to that party, or if I’d just gone home earlier or something. Then I wouldn’t have gotten the both of us into this mess.

  All things considered, I was the one who should be crying. It took all my willpower to suppress my anger and put forth an effort to make peace. Of course, by now I had been silently fuming and watching her cry for a good five minutes or so. It was way past awkward.

  Should I put my hand on her shoulder? Would she think I was trying to kill her?

  Say something!

  “Um…” Wow, Noah. Good one. Obviously that got no response. So I lightly tapped her on the shoulder. “Mom?” I winced as I said it, waiting for more hysterics.

  Instead, she turned to me, grabbed my shoulders, and made me look right into her glassy, swollen eyes. “I am so sorry. Noah, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to, I just got so scared.” She paused for a steady breath.

  I didn’t move a muscle, just waited for her to continue, somewhat relieved to be past the incoherent sobbing.

  “I’m so sorry I hit you. I can’t believe I did that. I’ll never ever do it again. It’s just, it’s terrifying.”

  “You mean I’m terrifying,” I pointed out.

  “No, no. Well…no, that’s not what I meant. You’ll always be my baby, no matter what you are, and I just want to make it all okay for you. That’s what a mother does, she makes everything okay, and when you said that you’d killed someone, it all fell apart for me. I just want everything to be okay for you.”

  My mom had always been there for me. She was the only parent I’d ever really known. I was having a really bad day, but I cou
ldn’t imagine what it must be like for her to watch her only child turn into a vampire. “Thanks, Mom. But it’s not going to be okay. This, this is not okay. My day today was not okay.”

  I needed answers to why this had happened to me. I needed to know how I could live like this forever—if I was really going to be a vampire forever. Before I was a vampire, I just let things happen. I let myself be mediocre. I watched Paige date another guy. Now that things had changed, I needed to change. I had to. I knew Mom would understand. I just hoped she could help me.

  “What happened?”

  “Other than wanting to tear someone’s throat out to satisfy my thirst and escaping to the bathroom with just enough time to turn into a butterfly and end up naked in the park? Nothing.”

  “A butterfly?”

  “A butterfly.”

  “Oh, Noah.” She shook her head sadly, and took me into a hug.

  “It’s fine. I just…I just have to come to terms with the fact that it’s all different now. I can’t play dress up and act as if my whole world hasn’t turned itself inside out.”

  “I know…I wish your father was here,” she said, barely above a whisper.

  I wouldn’t say it out loud, but I did too. We hardly ever talked about him. He disappeared from our lives when I was six. After a week went by, a month, a year, two years, and not a trace of him was found, we began to wonder what had really happened to him. Had he died or had he just run off? Either way, it was a cruel question—one we chose not to ask ourselves or each other.

  “Is there anything I can do to help?” She implored.

  “Well, sort of.”

  “What is it? I’ll do anything.”

  “I know this may be a tall order, but I think it would really help me if you could, I don’t know, try to go back to how you were.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean I know it’s hard on you, this whole thing that’s going on with me. But it’s even harder for me to see you so upset all the time. I don’t want to be the reason you can’t live a normal life. That would kill me. I need you to be my mom. I need you to try to live like a normal person. If nothing else, do it because I wish I could.”