My father grabbed my mother by the shoulders. “Where is Zachary?” he asked, shaking her. She let out a frantic wail and started breathing in shallow, racked sobs. At the mention of my brother’s name, the blood in my stomach began to churn and suddenly my palms were wet with a thin sheen of nervous sweat. It felt unfamiliar and gross.
“He didn’t come home yet. He isn’t home from school,” she screamed. My brother coming home from school late was a fairly typical occurrence. Sometimes he stopped at the library to pore through insanely dense scientific texts. Sometimes he wandered into the scrubby pines to study the flora and fauna. Sometimes he missed his bus and had to walk because he was being bullied by kids who thought he was just a little nerd but had no idea that he was an elderly genius who could end their lives if they pushed him too far. But right then I started to worry that maybe that wasn’t the case today. I started to worry that something was really, really, really, really wrong.
“Is Zach one of the ones that …” I searched for the question I was trying to ask. “One of the ones that Turner Pike … could use?”
My mother, who’d been pressing her fingers tightly to her lips, lowered them as tears welled up and clung to her long lower lashes. “Zach is the only one that he could use,” she said in a raspy voice.
Before anyone could say or do anything else, I barreled out the door and down the walk, running as fast as a stiff, sickly, young, old vampire hopped up on too much rare blood could go, pumping my skinny arms and legs like I remembered doing once out on the prairie years before, when I thought a bobcat was chasing me.
I got to the corner, and before I could let my intuition choose the direction I would take off in, I saw two figures approaching from up the road. One seemed to be rolling and the other seemed to bob and skip. One was tall and broad and goofy and the other was short and scrawny and Zach-ish. All the adrenaline in me rushed out of a hole in the sole of my ratty sneaker and I crumbled to my knees, panting and shuddering with relief. I heard the slapping of rubber soles on the tar and when I looked up again, a long moment later, my baby brother was in front of me, with Eli Matthews right behind.
“Jane,” Zach yelled, “are you okay?” I put my hand out, and he took it and helped pull me to my feet. A happy zap jumped from my hand to his.
“I’m fine,” I said. “I was just catching my breath. Thanks.”
“Well, what the hell?” he complained. “You scared the devil out of me.” I laughed at him. It was so funny to see a little kid cursing and claiming you scared the devil out of him. I messed his hair and squeezed him to me, then held him out at arm’s length and shook him a bit.
“I’m the one who’s had the devil scared out of me!” I said. “And Ma and Dad. What were you two doing?”
Before he could answer, my parents came screeching around the corner in our old family Volvo. When they saw the three of us, my father slammed on the brakes. Zach and Eli glanced at each other uneasily. Despite the appearance that my entire family was made of lunatics, Eli didn’t turn and run in the opposite direction for some reason. The three of us piled into the backseat of the car and took the less-than-one-minute drive back to my house in silence. When we filed into the house, I could see that while my father had thrown on a wool peacoat, he was still wearing his flannel pajamas and his feet were bare. I didn’t even have the wherewithal to be humiliated.
Back inside the house, my parents never got a chance to speak before I started on Zach with the third degree. “Where were you, Zachary? Do you have any idea what time it is? Did you ever hear of a phone?”
“Jane, you sound exactly like Ma. No offense, Ma,” Zach said. “What is the big deal?”
Eli, sensing that the situation might be a bit more serious than Zachary comprehended, cleared his throat. “It was my fault, Jane,” he explained. “I was walking home from school and I ran into Zachary … Zach. He was telling me a little bit about his experiments and that he needed to get some stuff … chemicals … for his chemistry set, so I offered to take him to the hobby shop? You know, the place downtown? I figured he could pick up what he needed and I could walk him home. Mr. and Mrs. Jones, I should have had him call, or I should have called. I apologize.”
My mother’s arms were wrapped around Zach’s shoulders like she would never let him go again. She nodded silently.
“No. It’s Eli, right?” my dad asked. “Thank you for getting our boy home safe.”
Eli looked down, stepped on the toe of his sneaker with the toe of his other sneaker, and cleared his throat again. Then he looked up at me.
“I figured if I walked him home that I might see you. I needed to talk to you,” he said, turning slightly red on his neck. “I put a note in your locker, but I guess …”
“I got it. I just didn’t have the chance to get back to you yet,” I said. Zach rolled his eyes and my father pretended to inspect his cuticles. My mother, ever polite even in an insane situation, managed a smile.
“If you two will excuse us,” she said, “we have some things to take care of upstairs.” With a gentle shove, she shepherded my father and brother out of the kitchen, leaving Eli and me alone.
“So,” I said, “what did you need to talk to me about?” I really had no idea what to expect, but at that point, nothing would have surprised me. Maybe he wanted to confess to me that he was a leprechaun or a chronic bed wetter. Either of those would have been great news compared to the bombshells that I’d already had dropped on me today, but Eli couldn’t have known that. The look on his face was anxious to the tenth power.
“Well. I hope you don’t mind. It’s just, I can see … I can see that you’ve got a lot going on. I mean, I haven’t seen you in school in a while, but the last time I did, I could tell you had tons on your mind … and then when I didn’t see you, I guessed it was because of, y’know, stuff,” he blathered, but I knew exactly what he was trying to say. “Anyway, I figured that the last thing you needed to worry about was a project that I know you weren’t that psyched to be doing with me in the first place. So.” He took off his backpack and unzipped the main compartment, reaching in, then handed me a sheaf of crisp white paper. “So, I took the liberty of banging out this report. It’s a story, really. I wrote, like, a story from the perspective of a girl our age who went West with her family in the early thirties. It has a lot of details I researched. I mean, if you hate it, we don’t have to turn it in.…”
I tried to read the first page, but the words melted and floated away from me, and suddenly, for only the second time in nearly a century, a tear fell from my eyes and splashed on the page, and I could tell that more were coming. I didn’t need to read the words to know that I couldn’t hate it, because although the story was sure to contain many painful reminders of the girl I had once been, it also was a gift to the girl that I was now. It hadn’t cost an entire family fortune, but it also didn’t ask anything of me in return.
“Oh, come on,” Eli said, noticing my tears, “I didn’t mean to make you …” I was happy to be crying and I didn’t want him to ruin the moment by feeling bad, so I grabbed his hand and squeezed it, then looked up at him and did that thing where you’re laughing and crying at the same time and you look kind of mentally unstable.
I pulled him toward me and rose up on my toes to wrap my arms around his neck and hug him. It occurred to me that his willingness to hug me back might be because he was being glamoured by me, but it was hard to care because it felt so good. I told myself to concentrate on not thinking about kissing him, which by its very nature constituted thinking about kissing him, possibly twice as hard as I would have had I not tried to not think about it in the first place.
You know what I mean.
Anyhoo, the next thing I knew, he had pulled his face back from over my shoulder and mashed his mouth down on mine, hard—possibly twice as hard as he would have if I wasn’t trancing him, which I still wasn’t sure if I was.
“Ow,” I said, pulling my face away a bit.
“I’m
sorry,” he said, “I don’t know what I—”
“No, it’s okay,” I whispered. “It just hurt a little, but …” He put his mouth on mine again, softer, and a kiss bloomed between us that was warm and electric. Being the experienced kisser that I now was, it was a familiar feeling, yet completely different, and I wanted to explore every note and sensation. Then, my brain came back to a vaguely familiar feeling, accentuated by a vaguely familiar taste. A wave of panic crashed over me as I realized what was happening and straightened my arms to push Eli away. He looked as scared and confused as I must have, though he didn’t understand why. Me, on the other hand, I totally understood. When my thinking about kissing had caused Eli to smash his mouth into mine, the sharp wires of his braces had surely gone into his tender lip. He probably had no idea that he’d cut himself, but when we kissed a second time he must have passed the teeniest, tiniest trace of blood to me, and now my throat was tightening and angry welts were rising on my skin.
I crumpled to the floor and tried to reach for my bag. Frenzied, Eli snagged my pack and opened it for me. I pawed around inside vainly before my vision blurred and went dark. I remember thinking that I must have only taken in a small amount of blood and that if Eli could get to my parents quickly, they could help me and everything would be fine this time. But I couldn’t tell him. And I couldn’t breathe. And everything was black and what I could hear sounded far away. Then suddenly, it didn’t. I felt a cold pinch on my arm and I could inhale again. I opened my eyes and saw Eli, kneeling beside me, the cap of a syringe in his teeth, looking down in concentration at where he’d just injected me with medication. When he saw my eyes flutter open, an obvious sigh of relief escaped him.
“My hero,” I croaked. “Lemme guess. You took a first-aid class for fun?”
“Boy Scout merit badge,” he said. “Pretty sexy, right?” I smiled weakly at his joke. I didn’t want to drift off. “I don’t recognize this drug, though. What are you allergic to? Me?” I knew he was trying to make another joke, but the truth filled me with sadness. Basically, I was allergic to him. Because of how I now realized I felt, I was always going to want him to kiss me and he would always be helpless not to and there would always be the danger, however slight, of something like this happening again. And that would be just the beginning of our problems.
“It’s complicated,” I said, struggling to keep my eyes open and focused on him.
“How complicated could it be, Jane?” he asked, pushing my glasses back up my nose for me. “You could tell me anything. Anything. You know I would understand.”
“Well,” I sighed, “I hope you’ll understand that I need you to go home now.”
He frowned at me and shook his head. “Okay, that I don’t understand. Why?” he asked.
“For starters, I’m going to crawl upstairs and pass out for a while,” I explained. “Then, when I wake up, I’m probably gonna have a hell of a case of diarrhea.” Eli guffawed, thinking I was just trying to shock him. Boy, did I wish that were true.
“Can I help you up to your room?” he offered. I shook my head no, but I did allow him to assist me in getting on my feet. “Well, then I’ll see you tomorrow, I guess.”
I didn’t want to lie to him, so I just said, “Thanks.” I leaned back against the counter and clutched it with both hands to stay upright, as Eli picked up his skateboard. Part of me wanted him to leave as soon as possible, but another part of me wanted him to stay forever. I knew how dangerous wanting something to last forever could be. “But if you don’t see me tomorrow, will you promise one thing?” I asked.
“Name it,” he said.
“Don’t go out with Astrid on Friday,” I said, “or ever. She’s not good. Not good enough for you.”
Eli’s face turned a deep shade of crimson and he rolled his eyes. “You dummy,” he said. “I think I just said I’d go out with her to make you jealous. It was stupid. And mean. So, I guess I’m not good enough for me either.”
“Well, then I guess you’ll just have to stay home and not go out with yourself on Friday,” I said, my balance wobbling as I tried to stay erect. “I’m sorry, I really have to lie down.” Eli leaned in and kissed my forehead on what I could tell was probably a pulsating hive by the way he looked at it and cringed afterward. He went to the back door and let himself out, and even though I could barely stand, I hung on a little longer to watch him go.
fifteen
I pulled myself up the stairs on shaky legs, my backpack bumping as I dragged it behind me, and was surprised when I made it to the top. While totally embarrassing, my allergic reaction wasn’t as bad this time as I’d experienced in the past, maybe because of the mug of precious and rare blood I’d guzzled beforehand. I could already feel my skin starting to calm, thanks to Eli’s quick thinking. He really was a good egg.
I wanted to go straight to my room and lie down, but when I reached my parents’ door, I found myself knocking quietly and letting myself in. Ma was standing in the closet and my father was by the dresser. Their suitcases were open and half filled on top of the bed. I couldn’t help noticing that between the pieces of luggage, there were also two foot-long pieces of lumber that had been sharpened into points. Had my parents always hidden stakes in their room in case a day like this ever came? My stomach lurched a bit. My mother turned to me with a stack of boxes in her hands. Boxes I’d seen her stash away on a high shelf just a few short months ago. “Sweetheart, you don’t look so good,” she said.
“I’m fine,” I answered, though that was far, far, far from the truth. “Whatcha doin’?” Of course, I knew. I’d witnessed this scene so many times before, but never like this. Never with zero time to prepare.
My mother sighed sadly and put the boxes on the bed. “We’re leaving. Much sooner than we’d hoped, but it can’t be helped.”
“We could stay and fight,” I suggested. I couldn’t believe I was saying it. The old me would never have dreamed of such a thing, but the new me wanted to put an end to the running, at least for now. I was ready to try something different.
“Jane,” my mother replied, “we’re just not that kind of people.” Then she corrected herself. “We’re not that kind of vampire. This isn’t some novel or movie where the good vampires can beat the bad vampires if they’re just willing to take a risk. Zach is in danger, and as his family, we have to protect him.”
I swallowed, trying to force the sticky dryness down my throat. “How much time do we have left, then?” I asked.
“Your father’s called in sick for his shift at the plant. If we work through the night, we could leave by morning. We’ll take turns packing the car while someone watches your brother, so he’s never alone. You can get some things together, but only what you absolutely need. Then you should get some rest. I’m sorry you won’t have the chance to say goodbye to anyone, Jane.” She touched my arm to comfort me and I let her.
“I don’t want to say goodbye anyway,” I said, looking deep into her eyes, then at my father, who’d continued folding his threadbare T-shirts in silence. For the first time since I’d come into the room, he met my eyes and I could tell that he felt ashamed. I hoped he could tell that I’d forgiven him. All it took was two minutes of believing that my baby brother might be lost forever for me to understand why he hadn’t been able to face the possibility of watching me slip away. I went to him and put my face to his chest. He dropped the clothes in his hands, then hugged me so tightly, I thought my ancient bones would break. Finally, with some difficulty, I pushed myself away and took off my glasses to rub at my eyes, which felt like they were about to cry but had already run out of tears. I kissed my mother on her cool cheek and let myself out.
I stopped by my brother’s room and he was hard at work, mixing some formula and taking notes in a composition book. “Hey, kid,” I said, “what’s cookin’?”
“I just wanted to try something with the stuff I got today. I’m probably going to have to leave a lot of my materials behind,” he said with a melancholy air. �
��Ma told me everything. I’m sorry. It’s kinda my fault.”
I punched him on the arm, but softly. “Don’t you apologize or think for one second that any of this is your fault, okay?” I said. Then I brushed my hand through his crazy cowlick as he resumed stirring some bubbling liquid inside a beaker.
“Well, I want you to know that this is just a little setback,” he told me, “and even though it’s going to take a bit longer now, I’m still going to figure out a way for you to get better.”
“Just be careful,” I said.
“I know what I’m doing,” he scoffed. I knew he believed I was telling him to be careful not to blow up his room, and I was, but I meant it in a more general sense too. I wanted him to stop worrying about me and take good care of himself. I looked down and caught myself wringing my hands as I struggled to hold my tongue. Add a robe, slippers, and a Volvo and I could have passed for a miniature version of Ma. Well, might as well just go with it. I bent and kissed his pale little nose, which caused him to rub at his face furiously with the back of his hand. I loved that little old kid.
I went to my room, turned on my heat lamps, and closed myself behind the thick curtains of my canopy bed. I could pack the minimal essentials later, but just then, I needed to lie down for a little while.
I tossed and turned for what felt like a few hours, drifting in and out of sleep that was filled with dreams that turned into nightmares. I didn’t remember nearly dying of starvation and sickness, but if it was even slightly more unpleasant than how my night was proceeding, I was glad the memory was lost. Finally, I got up and clicked off the overhead lamps, allowing my eyes to adjust to the dark. The house felt still, but I was confident that one of my parents was watching over Zachary as the other tended to the errands that disappearing without a trace required.
I padded silently to my closet and opened it. I crammed two sweatshirts, two flannels, and two pairs of jeans into my backpack, along with a few pairs of socks and underwear from my drawer. I looked around to see if there was anything else I could or should take, but there was really nothing. I put on my sneakers and my glasses and sat down at my computer. I didn’t bother checking my email or surfing the Web. I simply wiped my hard drive, then opened the word-processing program, and typed the following:
Jane Jones Page 13
