“You lived our movies. It gave me courage to think of you out there.” He tries to smile. “Did you find one?”
I hesitate. I don’t want to tell him about Carter. I don’t want him to feel guilty that I almost died for him, but I don’t want one of the last things I say to him to be a lie.
“Yeah.” I try not to cringe as I answer.
He doesn’t notice, but something bright flickers in his eyes. “What were they like?”
“Sad,” I say, because I’m not thinking about Carter at all. I’m thinking about Nicholas, and the way we held onto each other in our little sea of shared grief without even realizing what we were doing. “He was sad,” I repeat, “and lonely.”
“You’re still human, then?”
“Yeah.” I shrug. I can’t tell if he believes I really met a vampire or not, but he doesn’t need to. “It didn’t work out.”
“Doesn’t matter,” he says. “We would have made a pretty cool father-daughter vampire team, though.”
I give him a wide smile, so real it breaks me in two. “I already had matching leather outfits picked out.”
And then I laugh, really laugh like before, and as I do, tears stream down my face.
He chuckles, and the rattle of death hangs onto the sound, but I keep smiling, and so does he. He lifts a shaking arm and brushes a tear from my cheek. “There’s my girl.” His smile goes softer, more real than I’ve seen it in months.
And I know now this is strength—showing emotions as you feel them, counting on others to be able to share the burden of them with you.
He’s dying. I can say that now without giving up. I’ve shifted my hope the same way Dad has, to something else, something less concrete that demands more faith. I’m strong enough now—I wasn’t before.
“Did you take pictures?”
I pull out my drawing of the cathedral.
He stares at it for a long time, and then he says, “You’re going to be okay, kiddo.”
I nod, even though I’m not sure how he can tell from the drawing.
He asks for Mom next, but I can’t find her, so I send Jessica instead.
“I think I saw your mom go out back,” Henry says from his place on our couch. He sits there all the time in case I need him. I don’t yet, but one day soon I will. He doesn’t push me to need him. He knows better than that now. Somehow, impossibly, we’re back to where we were before, and maybe even stronger. We’ve both hurt each other, but he’s still there on my couch when I wake up every morning, and I let him stay.
He watches me go out the back door, but over the edge of his comic, like he’s not really keeping tabs on me. Before, I would have hated that, but now it feels good to have someone I can run to when I need it.
“Mom?” I call.
No answer.
I step off the porch and onto our perfectly trimmed grass. I used to love freshly trimmed grass against the soft arches of my feet. I don’t take the time to enjoy the sensation, but maybe another day when I need to feel alive, I will.
I find her around the corner of the house where Dad built her planter boxes last year so she could grow fresh strawberries for her morning smoothies.
Her back is to me. Her shoulders shake, and for a second, I think she’s laughing, because the alternative doesn’t make sense.
“Mom?”
She freezes, taking two deep breaths before turning.
“What are you doing out here?” she snaps, but it lacks her usual bite.
Red laces her eyes. Her nose runs, and she wipes her hand across her face, leaving a trail of dirt behind. She’s been weeding the garden.
If I can hug the boy who led me all around New Orleans hunting something he never had, then I can hug my mother. I eliminate the gap between us and close my arms around her. She goes stiff under my touch. I can’t remember the last time we hugged. I always belonged to Dad and Jessica always belonged to Mom, and we were okay with that, but it seems impossibly silly now.
After a moment, she hugs me back, and then she begins to cry into my shoulder. I can take it. I can absorb her sorrow because I’m letting go of some of mine too, trusting that she can feel my tears on her and still be strong, like I can. Crying doesn’t make either one of us weaker.
When she pulls back, I grab my other drawing from my pocket. She unfolds it and stares at the simple little picture of a French Quarter balcony. Finally, she smiles. “This might be your best work yet.” She looks up at me. “You’re going to shine at art school.”
Just like that, I’m a little bit lighter. I’ve wanted to hear those words from her for so long, even when I told myself they didn’t matter.
“Do you regret not going?” I’ve been wondering ever since she mentioned wanting to see the street art in New Orleans.
She glances down at my picture again. “Sometimes, but not really. I wanted certainty more than anything. You’re braver than that, braver than me. Even if it doesn’t work out, you’ll know you took the chance. You’ll live your life knowing you tried. That’s the thing I miss.”
I’m not sure she’s talking about art anymore, but I don’t need to press her. She’s proud of me. I can feel it.
She moves to hand my picture back to me, and my stomach drops, because maybe they were only words and she doesn’t really want it, but then she says, “Find a place to hang it by my desk, will you?”
I take it back, feeling that warm yellow happiness spread through a tiny bit of space between my ribs.
I nod. “Dad wants to see you.”
She smiles and nods and blinks a couple of times to clear her eyes, then tries out a calm smile on her face, and by the time we walk back into the house, I know she has a well too. I got it from her, and knowing we share that helps.
I don’t know what’s coming next. But I do know
it’s gonna be just like this—hard, painful.
But in the end, it’s gonna be us.
—Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Twenty-Six
My mom asks me to sit by Jessica at the funeral since I’m the strong one, and I know what I have to do—but it’s not to build up my well again. I take Jessica’s hand, and we both sob, each of us taking turns squeezing the other’s fingers a bit tighter. We share our grief, spread it between us, carrying more when the other needs it, and other times breaking down completely. Sometimes we laugh through the pain too, like when they play the slideshow tribute and show the picture of me and my dad on Halloween when I was eight: he was Dracula and I was a bat. The laughing hurts—everything hurts, and will for a long time, but in that laughter is a promise, too, that even though I’ll carry this loss around forever, I’ll be able to feel other things as well.
The reception’s harder. Dealing with so many people who don’t share the entire weight of my grief is overwhelming. They expect smiles and bravery, but I’ve used all that falseness up.
I’m looking for an escape when Bailey steps in front of me. I flinch. I didn’t even realize she was here, and for a moment I brace myself, half expecting her to say something to hurt me, but that’s not who she is. Silently, she wraps her warm arms around me and holds me for a second before letting go and heading toward a group of friends I assumed didn’t care enough about me anymore to come. I give them all a grateful nod as I head for the door.
I don’t know if I can repair the damage I caused to my friendships, but Bailey’s hug gives me hope.
Finally, I find a quiet place to hide in the church parking lot between a tree trunk and the neighbor’s fence.
Dead leaves crunch behind me, but I don’t bother turning around.
A throat clears softly.
I look over my shoulder at Henry, chewing on his lower lip like always, glancing down at me and then away like he’s counting the knots in the wooden fence. He grips a small pink box in his hands.
“You realize this isn’t a birthday party, right?” I snort a little, like I’m cracking a joke, but the words ring out crueler than I intend.
&
nbsp; He ignores them and climbs into the dead foliage, kneeling next to me. “I want you to have this.”
“I can’t do this today.”
He holds the box out to me, hands steady as he waits.
I take it. What I want in this moment is to be alone in this one dark corner on an otherwise brutal sunny day, and if I take his box, maybe he will go.
He doesn’t. He shifts so he’s cross-legged next to me, pulling deeper into my collection of shattered leaves and lost sticks. He doesn’t realize all this brokenness is for me. I need a moment to wallow. I can’t have a whole person here with me. He does not fit.
I open my mouth to try to explain it, to at least tell him to go. He shakes his head like he knows what I’ll say before I say it. He used to when we were kids. We always tried to jinx each other by finishing a sentence at the same time. He always got me. He knew me better than I knew myself.
“I’m not a little girl anymore.” The words don’t make sense, and I don’t know why I say them. I haven’t been a little girl in some time.
“I know you’re not,” he says simply. He doesn’t ask me to explain myself. I don’t need to with him. The realization jerks me with some kind of emotion I don’t have the capability to feel in this moment, but I save it for later. One day I’ll bring it out and let it flood through me.
“Open it,” he says.
My fingers are steel as I untie the white ribbon and lift the lid off the pink cardboard box. I’m proud of how strong I am. My fingers don’t start to shake until I pull out the pictures—me grinning with Joanie on the Pony, me jerking back from the alligator, me smiling in a room of gold. The photos slide from my fingers, and I press my chest into my knees, gasping, fighting to keep the summer air in my lungs.
I want to cry. I crave the release now after denying the need for so long. But the funeral has drained me.
“Why would you keep those?” My question comes out harsh and accusing.
But Henry remains steady. “Your dad thought you might want them.”
“My dad saw them?” I bury my face in my knees. “Oh God.” I haven’t cried out to God in a long time. I did it a lot when he first got sick. Now it feels right again.
“Wait, Victoria. Listen to me.” Henry’s hand rests gently on my back between my shoulder blades. I want to lean into his touch and yank away from it all at the same time. I end up going still from too many conflicting desires. He leaves his hand there and keeps talking. “I brought them back home because I thought you might want them someday. Your dad asked me if I had any photos of the trip, so I showed them to him. I should have checked with you first. I’m sorry.”
And then he says the most important thing of all. “He wrote you a note and asked me to give it to you later, when the time was right.”
My dad probably didn’t mean wrap them up like a present for his funeral, but I don’t care. He’d probably laugh at Henry’s timing. My shaking fingers scrape at the bottom of the box, pulling out a simple piece of binder paper folded four times over.
I start to unfold it. Slowly, so slowly.
“Do you want me to go?” Henry asks.
I’d already forgotten he was here. His hand on my back belongs there.
My voice is somewhere stuck in my throat, so I shake my head.
“I’m here,” he says.
I unfold the note.
“This isn’t my dad’s handwriting.”
Henry clears his throat. “He dictated it to me.”
I expect a flush of bitterness that Henry got to hear my dad’s note ahead of me, but instead I get a warm rush of comfort, an easing of the pressure. I don’t need to pretend anything with Henry. He already knows what the letter says. He probably knows how I’ll react to it.
“I need to read it in the sun,” I say, even though I know the thought is not rational. Dad was always telling me I needed more sun—that I was turning into a vampire simply by staying inside too much with my sketchbook. I can’t read his last words to me in the heavy shadow of a dying tree.
Henry holds out a hand for me, and I let him help me to my feet. We walk into the sun hand in hand, and I don’t let go for a long moment.
Finally, I release him and lift the note, blinking against the harsh glow of the sun on the white paper. Henry’s chunky black script blurs in my vision.
Kiddo,
Henry showed me the pictures of you on your trip. I loved them. I wish I could have gone there with you, but seeing you there is enough for me. Don’t hate Henry for keeping them. I can tell he’s worried. He knows how mad you can get. Keep that boy in line, but forgive him once in a while too. He’s worth it.
Kiddo, you are the bravest person I know. My fight’s done, but yours isn’t. I know this will be hard for you. But don’t stop fighting, for me and for yourself. Keep living, really living. I know you have it in you. I saw it in those pictures.
And I don’t want you to ever stop believing in vampires or God or unicorns or anything else in the world that gives you hope, even if you never get to see or touch them. Because that’s what belief really is, a hope in something outside of yourself, and hope can never be a bad thing. Even if you think it fails you in the end, did it really fail you if it carried you through the toughest parts of your life? I don’t believe so.
Thank you for hoping for me. Never think it was a waste. It wasn’t.
Keep hoping.
Love always,
Dad
Henry’s staring up at the sky. When I rustle the paper as I fold it back up, he glances down at me. His eyes glisten, but he’s not crying. He’s waiting for me.
I step into his arms.
I cry until I’m so empty it seems like I might float up into the sun and combust if Henry lets go of me. I actually move away from him to see if it will happen. Nope. I stand in the sun as he watches me, waiting.
I am empty, but not broken.
Empty things can be filled again.
Acknowledgments
I have been drafting these acknowledgments in my mind for the past year, but now that I’m typing them, there doesn’t seem to be enough words to contain the love I have for the people who helped me achieve this dream. But I shall do my best.
Thank you to my wonderful agent, Rebecca Podos. I had a feeling from the moment I read your comment on my Pitch Wars entry that you were going to understand my weird little book about grief and hope, and I’m so glad I was right. Thank you for championing it and for being totally on board with my can-I-add-a-vampire-to-this brand.
Thank you to the amazing Sarah McCabe, who saw straight to the heart of this story and pushed me to dig deeper than I thought possible. It’s been an absolute delight to work with you. I’m always excited to open your edit notes because they never fail to get my mind spinning with new possibilities.
Thank you to the whole team at McElderry: Justin Chanda, Karen Wojtyla, Anne Zafian, Nancee Adams, Elizabeth Blake-Lin, Chrissy Noh, Devin MacDonald, Karen Masnica, Cassandra Fernandez, Brian Murray, Anna Jarzab, Emily Ritter, Annika Voss, Lauren Hoffman, Lisa Moraleda, Lauren Carr, Christina Pecorale and her sales team, and Michelle Leo and her team. Thank you to artist Jeff Östberg and designers Jess LaGreca and Sonia Chaghatzbanian for giving me the perfect cover for this story.
I’m so grateful for Pitch Wars—especially the 2017 and 2018 classes. This program helped me to become a better writer and gave me something just as valuable: a community. Thank you Dawn Ius and Kimberly Gabriel, the best mentors anyone could ask for. Your passion for my story kept me going. Thank you for being willing to tell me a thousand times that I can’t just say my character has emotion, and I need to actually describe a specific emotion. Who knew? I’m eternally grateful for your love and support. To Angela Montoya, my 2020 mentee, you’re awesome and talented, and I’m so excited to have another writing friend in my life.
I always thought writing would be me alone with my cat, and a lot of times it is that, but in reality it opened up a world of online friends I wouldn’
t want to be without. To my writing critique group, Jeff Wooten, Eliza Langhans, Melody Steiner, Ryan Van Loan, Brook Kuhn, and Emily Taylor, our monthly chats are always a delight—I’m so thankful for all your advice and support. A special thank you to Emily Thiede, a sentence wizard, who gave this book the extra shine it needed before querying. Tala Shannak, thank you so much for reading and cheering me on. Your kind words and love for this story were just what I needed. Jess Creadon, I am so thankful that we became friends because every writer needs that person they can turn to with any worry or excitement. I know I can always count on you for encouragement and advice.
This book would not exist without Portia Hopkins. How many friends will hop on a plane with you and take a weeklong trip to New Orleans to chase a book idea and do a tiny bit of vampire hunting? This book was only a concept before that trip. I’ll always remember buying tickets to visit the museum in the Ursuline Convent. The ticket lady looked at us and told us quite sternly that there was nothing supernatural inside, and if that’s what we were there for, we shouldn’t bother. I guess I looked like a girl in need of a vampire. Thanks for doing all the talking and assuring her we really did want to learn about the nuns, which was true in your case even if my motives were a tiny bit different.
Christy Cooper, thank you for being an unwavering support for me on so many levels. You always know just when you need to call me or when I need a surprise package of tea to get me through the week. Bailey Gillespie, I’ve lost track of how many adventures we’ve been on. Your attention to the little details in every single moment has rubbed off on me and made me a better writer. Thanks for not letting me die that one time. Stephanie Garber, thank you for always answering my many, many publishing questions and for being so generous with your time and advice. And thank you for giving the absolute best book recommendations. Cameron Wilson, thank you for our many chats about storytelling and for all your support and encouragement.
To my former professors, thank you. I would never have had the confidence to actually start writing without your kind words and the classes that fed my passion.
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