A hand squeezes my shoulder, and I jerk. Great. Someone saw me. I twist and face Jessica, dressed in a posh black dress, and I know—I just know—she’s my answer. Standing there, dressed for a funeral, she’s God’s no.
He won’t help me. Or Dad.
Hope slips away from me like the last lifeboat on a sinking ship. And though I keep my face perfectly smooth, inside I’m drowning, grasping for anything to hold on to.
I almost reach for Jessica, but she’s already made it clear she can’t help. “What are you doing here?” I ask. Church is Dad’s and my thing. Jessica always stayed home with Mom.
She bites her bottom lip and glances away. To her credit, she doesn’t try to lie and say she’s here for me. I know why she’s here—to plan a memorial. Dad would want it to be here. She turns back. Harsh charcoal lines her eyes, but for me they’re soft and warm, and they invite me to lean into her and cry. For a second, we’re kids again. Close again. It’s the same look she gave me when I tried to follow her up a tree that I was too small to climb and inevitably fell, scraping away my skin on the bark. It’s a look reserved for an older sister comforting a younger one. But I don’t want it anymore. Still, if she just reached out and hugged me, I’d probably let her. I’d pretend I was little again—that I trusted her to make it all okay. But I step back so she can’t reach me.
“Dad would want you to help with the planning,” she says.
I shake my head, and Jessica sighs, moving away to mingle with the crowds of people. If I’m not on board with her plans, then she’s not going to bother. A few women gather around her. One pats her arm. Another rubs her shoulder. I try not to think about what she tells them, but I can’t help it. Does she give them a date for Dad’s death? Has she already reserved the church for the weekend after she expects him to go? My stomach rolls with acid. I need an exit—from this church, from Jessica, from the reality everyone expects me to accept.
A few people try to trap me and ask how my dad is on my way out the door. They do it every Sunday, and usually I smile and tell them he’s doing well, he’s a fighter, and we all have faith. But Jessica’s here telling everyone the opposite. I won’t be able to say those things without facing their pity. I mutter enough under my breath for them to let me go, and finally I’m outside, gulping down the hot summer air. I grasp the burning metal railing with one hand. My fingers tremble, and I lose my grip on my phone, sending it crashing against the concrete step below.
“Shit,” I say, and then repeat it again when I realize I swore in front of the church. I bend down, but someone beats me to it. I straighten immediately, holding out my hand for the phone, staring impatiently at the fingers gripping it, but they don’t budge. I reach for it, and the hand pulls my phone back slightly.
“Are you okay?”
I finally look up at his face.
Henry Nakamura’s dark-brown eyes study me. I can’t answer.
The memory of the last time we stood this close makes my knees shake. I want to pull myself into his familiar chest as much as I want to avert my eyes and run the other way. Every one of my muscles twitches in confusion—at least it feels that way.
Henry’s family has lived next door to us since the third grade. We met for the first time in the woods behind our houses. Jessica and I were hunting for fairy rings after Dad read us a book about them—well, I was hunting. It wasn’t long after vampires went public, and our closeness was already fraying. Jessica claimed she was too old to play pretend and stomped behind me telling me all the reasons I’d never find one. She’d convinced me to give up, to go back inside and play what she wanted, when Henry popped out from behind a tree with a broken branch in hand and a streak of mud across his face. He said he’d been exploring his new terrain and would help me keep looking. And we did. Jessica sighed and called us a few names, but we stayed out until the sunset came and lit the woods with its own magic, and we grinned at each other as our moms yelled for us from our homes.
The next day he knocked on my door and told me he found something he needed to show me. We tromped through the woods until we stopped at a clearing with a perfect circle of mushrooms in the center. Of course they were the prewashed kind from the grocery store. I knew he’d done it for me, but that made it special. We spent the whole day pretending it was real because we could.
We became inseparable—until about a year ago.
It’s hard to look at him now for a lot of reasons. Some of them are still open wounds. But Henry’s also a hoard of memories involving my dad, like the summer we built dueling water balloon catapults, and we’d duke it out every warm evening when Dad got home from work. We never battled by ourselves. Dad made it more fun.
I stare into the glaring sun, trying to burn the memory away. I don’t need to focus on memories while Dad’s still here. Memories are for the lost.
“Sorry.” Henry admires his shoes. “Horrible question.”
“Yeah. It was.” I lock my knees.
His head jerks upward, and his eyes widen. And even though he grew out the bowl cut he had when we were kids and his black hair now kind of hangs in his eyes and hits the top of his cheeks, accenting the perfect angles of his face, the hurt, boyish look he gives me is still the same one he wore so many times before when I said something mean and careless. It hits me with the same guilt, too.
“Sorry,” I mumble, dragging my hands across my face. Henry’s not the enemy. Jessica’s not the enemy. Cancer’s my only true enemy, but it’s hard not to look for something tangible to scream at.
“Don’t be.”
He gives me the same soft smile he used to, and for a second I am carefree again, standing next to my best friend, knowing he’ll forgive me more times than I deserve, and I wish we could go back there, if only for a moment. He’d let me yell and rage and never judge me for it.
He waits, body leaning slightly toward me.
But where will we be when one of us walks away again? More hurt than before.
He rocks back on his heels, breaking the moment. Glancing away, he watches a woman walk by us in an over-the-top pink hat boasting an array of garish flowers. I half expect him to comment, make a cheap joke to lighten the mood, but that was always more my style than his. He just looks sad.
My phone still sits in his hand, dangling by his side.
“I thought you’d be in Tahoe.” I push the conversation to safer territory. Some of our senior class left for Lake Tahoe this morning—a last hurrah before we all go our separate ways for college. I know Henry’s friend group went because it used to be my group too. My friend Bailey—former friend, I guess—and I came up with the idea back when we were juniors, but I still didn’t get an invite. Maybe this isn’t safe territory.
“I didn’t have enough money saved up.” His eyes focus on some distant point behind my shoulder as he scratches his cheek absently. A lie. He’s never been able to look me in the face when he lies.
“That sucks.” I don’t know why he needs to lie, but it’s not my place to care anymore.
He nods—the same uncomfortable one I’m used to now. We’ve stepped back from whatever vulnerable edge we just teetered on.
I hold my hand out limply in the air, gesturing for him to hand the phone over. He hesitates. His chin tilts down, and he glances at the screen.
I freeze. The last thing I need is him seeing my creepy article about the fake vampire killer. He’s never really gotten my fascination, and I’m not in the mood for one of his snarky comments. But when he places it face-up in my palm, the screen’s black, and anyway, I have more important things to worry about than what Henry thinks of me. That coffin’s been buried.
I take a step down the stairs, leveling myself with him. Dad will be waiting.
“Victoria?” His voice is hesitant. He touches my shoulder for the briefest, softest second.
I stop. My heartbeat thuds in my throat.
He chews his bottom lip the same way he always has when he’s thinking about something. It almost makes m
e smile.
“Yeah?”
He sighs and frees his lip. “If I can do anything…” He gestures outward with his hand, like this encompasses the entire world. “I don’t know… I just want to be there for you.”
My mouth drops open a little. We haven’t said more than five sentences to each other in the past year. One of his grandmothers died, and I never reached out to him because I convinced myself he wouldn’t want me to, and my silence became another gap between us. Then my dad got sick and the hole of Henry’s absence was swallowed by a much greater abyss. Still, I’m ashamed I didn’t try harder to be there when his grandma passed, but I don’t think he wants to make me feel bad. I know him well enough to know he’s sincere—at least I think I do. But a lot can change in a year. Maybe they’re only words people say in these moments to fill the silence.
He turns toward me, and I’m so afraid he’s going to hug me that I turn and bolt for the parking lot.
* * *
“Dad’s doing pretty well today,” Mom says as soon as I step through the front door.
“Great.” I beam at her, feeling a little lighter, like I’m not sinking, but she deflates me just as fast.
“Don’t let it get your hopes up.”
I freeze in the middle of kicking off my shoe. “Why would you say that?”
“I’m trying to protect you.” Her mouth turns down slightly at the corners. “I know you, Victoria. You like to pretend nothing’s wrong for as long as possible, but it’s time to let go.”
“You mean of Dad? I’m holding onto Dad, so why aren’t you?” My voice comes out hot and ragged.
Mom steps back as if I’ve slapped her. “That’s not fair.” Hurt turns her voice raw, and somehow I feel worse, but I don’t have room to feel worse—I push it away.
“Please stop.” I kick off my second shoe so hard it thuds against the wall.
I try to brush past her to Dad’s room, but she reaches out and wraps her hand around my forearm. We haven’t really touched since Dad got sick. There’s something about touching another person who shares your pain that amplifies it—makes it impossible to ignore—and we both prefer not engaging. Avoiding contact is our unspoken rule.
She’s breaking that. My eyes sting as pressure builds behind them. My anger gets choked off with the flood of our shared sorrow, and it takes all my strength to hold it together.
Mom clears her throat and looks away from me for a second, but she doesn’t let go.
“I want you to leave for a few days,” she says. “Go to Tahoe with your friends. You spend all your time in that room with your dad, and I know it’s where you want to be, but you need to take care of yourself, too. Jessica and I can handle things here for a while.”
“I’m fine.” I don’t know how she even remembers that trip. I gushed about it a lot when we came up with it, but that was forever ago. I pull away from her, and she lets me.
My anger comes back to evaporate the sorrow. They want me gone so they can sit here and plan the memorial. But what will happen to Dad’s strength if he’s trapped in a house with people expecting him to die? “I’m not leaving Dad.”
“It’s not a request. I’m your mom. I need to look out for you, too.”
I gape at her. She can’t. I spin away and practically run to Dad’s room.
He smiles as I enter. He looks brighter today, like he’s operating at 50 percent of his normal wattage instead of the 30 I’ve gotten used to.
“Hey, kiddo.”
“I’m not a kid, Dad,” I say, even though I want him to call me that forever.
He brushes my protest away with a hand. “Yeah, yeah.” He pauses to read my face. Pretending is harder with him. “What’s wrong?”
“Just fighting with Mom.” I give a weak smile. “She wants me to go to Tahoe. Get out of the house for a bit. Can you believe her?”
He beckons me closer and takes my hand. His skin is soft and paper-thin, like the old ladies at church who hold my hand the whole time they talk to me. I almost jerk away. Dad’s only forty-eight.
“I agree with her.” This time I do try to pull away, but his grip tightens. “We talked about it earlier.”
“You talked about it?” Hurt strangles my voice.
“Kiddo, you’ve been here for me since day one. It’s like you stopped your own life, and I don’t want that. When was the last time you even saw your friends? This will be good for you.”
I focus on the jumping puppies decorating the comforter and bite the inside of my cheek. “I don’t even like Tahoe.” Besides, none of my friends will even look at me now. My parents don’t know that though. I told them that Henry and I had had a falling-out—I didn’t mention that the rest of my friends went with him.
Dad’s quiet for a long time. When I look back up, he’s frowning at the television across the room. Brad Pitt’s face is paused as he sucks the blood from a rat. Mom must have turned on Interview with the Vampire for him.
He finally looks back at me. “Then go to New Orleans instead.”
“What?” Thinking about New Orleans opens a soft, vulnerable hole in my chest. It’s the place Dad planned to take me as a graduation present. It reminds me of all the things I’m not going to have now. We’d been planning the trip for the last couple of years. We picked New Orleans because Dad’s favorite movie, Interview with the Vampire, was filmed there and because the first North American vampire was spotted there at the Ursuline Convent in 1728, and rumor has it they still keep vamps locked in their third-story attic. Plus, one of the vampires that came out to the public after Gerald lived in New Orleans. We joked about finding him—about how we might come back home and Mom would be wondering how we’d gotten paler on vacation instead of tanner.
I shake my head. “That’s our trip. We canceled it for when you got better.”
“I never canceled.”
“Dad.” I mean to say his name like an admonishment, the way Mom says mine when I’ve done something I should know is ridiculous, but it comes out more like a question. My heart’s pounding, and I’m not sure why, but then I realize this means he still had hope—even three weeks ago when Mom reminded him to cancel. He didn’t. He still believed.
“Find us our vampire.” He winks and tries to chuckle, but it becomes a dry rasp. He turns serious. “You’ll need to get one of your friends to go with you, of course.”
“I don’t want to go with anyone but you. I’m sure we can still call and postpone the flights and change the reservations.”
“Victoria.” Firmness isn’t something he’s had the energy for lately. “I want you to go. Take pictures. Live it for me and come home and make me feel like I was there.”
The small bit of joy propelling my heart vanishes, and it slows to a dull crawl. He may have had hope three weeks ago, but now he’s speaking like he’ll never see it except through me.
I want to refuse, run from the room, and bury my head under my blankets. But he’s squeezing my hand too tight for me to pull away. “Promise me.”
“I promise.”
“Good.” He lets go of my hand and leans back against the pillows.
I never thought a promise would kill me, but I can’t breathe. This is acceptance. Going to New Orleans is me saying my dad will never get to come with me.
Because he’ll be dead. I push away the truth as it tries to burrow its way through my lungs and into my heart. I fight it because I don’t know how to stop.
Getting up, I move my heavy limbs to the bedside table, pick up the remote with clumsy fingers, and press play.
Dad cringes as I sit back down, and I touch his shoulder.
“Did you take your morphine?” My voice is strong, like it belongs to someone else entirely.
He opens his eyes. They’re duller than when I walked in, but he shakes his head. “I want to be lucid.”
I nod. He wants to enjoy what little time he has left with me. That thought tries to sink in as well, but I’m still pulling walls up as quickly as the truth can de
stroy them. It’s a losing battle. I no longer have the thing that gave me strength before: hope. I try to get it back, racking my brain for any reason to still believe in medical science or miracles, but I don’t. Those possibilities have been taken from me—they would have already worked.
Claudia’s lying in the white canopy bed on-screen, unconscious with the graying skin of irreversible illness. And then Lestat wakes her, strokes her cheek as he leans over her and says, “I’m going to give you what you need to get well.”
And then he turns her. Heals her.
She comes back from death right before my eyes. She dies later, of course, but not from the plague. Human disease doesn’t touch the inhuman.
Find us our vampire. A joke. Nobody has seen one in almost ten years. After the reveal and disappearance, teams of researchers were formed to try to track them down again. People pored over myths and legends with new energy, trying to separate truth from fiction in an attempt to find one. Nobody has, but they’re out there.
What if my dad’s words weren’t a joke?
Claudia’s having her breakdown on-screen, crying and cutting her hair, despairing about never getting old. It’s a tense moment, but I can’t focus on it.
“Would you want to live forever?” I ask, bracing myself for the same response he always gives when we debate vampires versus werewolves.
Dad’s eyes are closed. I think he’s asleep, but after a minute he answers. “This is the wrong time to ask me.” He winces around his words. I get his morphine and give it to him, and this time he doesn’t protest. I note the time because Mom will want to know.
He didn’t say yes, but he didn’t say no, either.
Dad drifts off, but peace eludes him even in sleep now, and every so often his face twists into a grimace. Each time it does, my chest tightens until it becomes a painful throb I can’t ignore, pushing me to do something—anything. I can’t sit here and watch my dad die, but I can’t just go have fun in New Orleans or Tahoe and pretend nothing’s happening.
But what if I go for a different reason?
A new, tenuous hope builds in my chest like an expanding life raft, and I cling to it.
Vampires, Hearts & Other Dead Things Page 3
