by Gayla Twist
“Oh, really?” Mom looked up from what she was doing. “What are you reading?”
“Uh...” I had to start remembering that moms always have a follow-up question. It’s their way of showing they’re interested in your life. “The Grapes of Wrath,” I hazarded. It was the first title that popped into my brain.
“Oh. Yeah.” She nodded. “I had to read that in high school. I’ve got to warn you, it’s good, but it gets pretty darn depressing.”
“Okay,” I said, smiling. “I’m warned.” We fought sometimes, just like everyone else and their parents, but I really did have a nice mom. I felt pretty lucky about it.
Upstairs, I headed for the bathroom again to check my hair and add some lip balm to my smile. I didn’t know if I was more nervous about seeing Jessie or having him blow me off. He might never show up again, I told myself, even if he still wanted his watch. Remembering that I really should return it to him, I got it out of the pocket of his tux jacket then went over to my bedroom window and opened it.
There was a shadowy figure sitting on the edge of the porch roof, his legs dangling over the side, his head bent down. He immediately turned to look at me when he heard the window slide open. My heart sang in my chest. He was there! He was there! I took a deep breath and tried to calm myself. “Uh... hello?” I began.
Jessie got to his feet as graceful as a jungle cat and moved closer to the window. “Good evening,” he said, smiling at me, his face so brutally handsome it made me want to gasp. “Did you have a good day? Was there sunshine?” He settled again a few feet away from the window. “I have to confess, I do miss the sunshine.”
“It was nice,” I managed to tell him, although I was very unsure of my voice. There really should have been a law against being so good looking.
“So, how many questions did you ask me yesterday? A couple dozen, I think.”
“Not even close,” I protested. “Three at the most. Maybe four.”
He chuckled. “I think you might be trying to lowball me. I remember at least ten, if not twelve.”
He was teasing me! I felt all rosy on the inside. “I’ll agree to six, but no more,” I informed him. “And you’re getting the better end of the deal.”
“Fine, I agree. But in concession, I have a few questions of my own.”
I shrugged. “Go ahead.” My life wasn’t nearly as interesting as his, but if he felt he needed to know a few things, I was an open book.
“I was wondering if...” and then he stopped.
“What?” I wanted to know.
“Nothing. I’m just being an idiot.”
We sat there in silence for a few minutes. He was contemplative, and I didn’t want to intrude. I was happy just being with him. I wanted to soak in every second.
“I want to thank you for this,” he finally said, gesturing toward something he was holding in his hand. I hadn’t noticed before, but he had the laser copy photo of the castle I had given him. He must have been looking at it when I opened the window. “You look so much like her, it’s remarkable,” he went on, gazing at the photo and then back up at me. “When I first saw you in the library, I couldn’t believe it. For a moment I thought...” his words faded on his lips. After a long pause, he turned his face away and said in a bitter whisper, “But I know that’s impossible.”
“What do you know about Colette Gibson?” I asked.
“That’s funny,” he said, with a small, bitter laugh. “That’s the same question I was going to ask you.”
“She was my Grandma Gibson’s sister,” I told him.
“What is your grandmother’s name?”
“Great grandmother, actually, and it’s Lillian.”
“Lilly’s still alive?” he said in a wondering voice, mostly to himself.
“Did you know her?”
“Yes, of course. Colette and Lillian were two of our first housemaids after we moved the castle from Hungary. Of course, that was back when we thought there wouldn’t be any harm in hiring staff from the town.”
“Why did you stop?” I wanted to know.
“That was my fault,” he said, hanging his head. “I was so young and foolish back then.”
“I don’t believe that. What did you do?” I asked in a gentle voice.
“It was me that...” he began. “I was the one...” He stopped a second time. With a heavy sigh, he finally said, “I can’t tell you right now. I’m too ashamed. Would it be all right if I waited to tell?”
“Of course,” I replied, although my curiosity was piqued. “Should I ask you something else instead?”
He nodded. “Please.”
“What was your party all about when we snuck into the castle? Was it a birthday party or something?”
“Kind of.” Jessie still looked a little uncomfortable. “It was my maker’s day.”
My instant impulse was to ask, “What’s that?” but instead I just waited with an expectant look on my face.
“It’s kind of a misnomer, but in vampire culture, a maker’s day is the day you were turned into a vampire,” he explained. “You celebrate it sort of like a birthday with a party and presents, but there’s a lot more blood.”
I suppressed a shiver. “How old are you?”
“That was my eightieth maker’s day,” he said with a sigh.
My mouth dropped open. I couldn’t believe the creature sitting just a few feet away from me, who looked and acted every bit as young as any boy in my school, was ninety-seven years old. I put my hand to my cheek and just stared at him. “Wow.”
He ducked his head. “Yeah, well, I moisturize.”
I couldn’t think of what to say, and I couldn’t keep staring at him like he was a sideshow exhibit. Finally, I settled on, “What kind of presents do you get on a maker’s day?”
“It’s pretty obnoxious. Everyone always tries to bring the most ostentatious gift to prove they are the most generous. Kind of like a potlatch for vampires.”
I made a mental note to google potlatch when I had a free moment.
“The thing is, everybody’s so old, they sometimes forget who gave them what after a couple of decades, so there’s a lot of re-gifting,” he said, laughing. “You wouldn’t believe some of the gaudy jewelry that showed up.”
This made me instantly annoyed. With all the struggling people in the world, he was complaining about ugly, expensive presents. “Poor baby,” I cooed like I was speaking to a child. “Does the widdle vampire get too many expensive presents?”
“Of course, there is some pretty stuff too,” he said, looking a bit sheepish. “Would you like a couple of pieces?”
“What?” I sputtered. He had caught me by surprise. “No, that’s not what I meant. I just...” I felt flustered that he’d misunderstood me. “I meant you should sell the stuff, if it’s so ugly, and give the money to charity or something.”
“I’m sorry.” Jessie pulled back a few inches creating a bit more distance between us. “I didn’t mean to insult you. Are you offended?”
“No, I’m not offended,” I assured him, lightening my tone. “I’m just not used to vampires offering me jewelry. Or anyone offering me jewelry, for that matter.” I’d never actually received any kind of gift from a boy, and my mom couldn’t afford to get me anything beyond a simple gold chain.
“I didn’t mean to sound so bourgeois,” he told me.
“No, I’m sorry I teased you. We just live in very different worlds.”
After a moment’s reflection he said, “I could look through the things and see if there’s anything I think would suit you. If you don’t like it, then you don’t have to keep it.” He made the offer in a very offhanded way.
I was a little dumbfounded. It probably wasn’t good manners to try to shake a vampire down for jewels, but a part of me desperately wanted something. Not so much to have a valuable present, but to have a gift from him, a token to hold and think of him. And it was only right to give back his watch. “Okay,” I said in a small voice. “As long as it’s s
omething, you know, not valuable.”
For some reason, this made Jessie smile. “Do you have more questions for me tonight?”
“Only about a million,” I told him.
“Well, then I feel sorry for you because you only have about eighty left.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “Try ninety.”
Jessie waved a hand at me. “Proceed.”
“Okay... uh...” I did have a zillion questions but somehow, sitting so close to him, almost all of them flew out of my head. I forced my brain to focus. “At the party, there were goblets with blood and then coupe glasses with champagne.” He nodded, so I kept going, “That means there were both vampires and humans at your party. Who were the humans, and how did they get invited?”
“They were companions,” he said simply. I said nothing, just waited patiently for him to continue. “There are humans out there who want to be part of the vampire world. Or they fall in love with a vampire or become obsessed with our culture in some way. Anyway, sometimes a vampire will take on a human as a companion.”
“So a companion is a vampire’s human boyfriend or girlfriend?”
“No, it’s not quite like that.” The way Jessie said the words, I could tell he was uncomfortable.
“So, what is it like?” I pressed.
“It’s more like... um... it’s more like...” he searched for the right words. “The vampire takes care of the companion with food and clothing and a place to live and sometimes even a little money. And in exchange, the companion allows the vampire to feed from her or him.”
I thought about it. “So, kind of like a servant then.”
Jessie nodded. “In a way.”
“Or a pet.”
“No,” he said a bit too quickly. “It’s not like that.”
“But the human is frequently in love with the vampire, and the vampire just thinks of the human as a walking snack bag.”
Jessie had the good grace to look slightly ashamed. “You’re right. I’m afraid that happens quite a bit of the time.”
“Does the vampire have sex with the human?” I asked. I knew a judgmental tone was creeping into my voice, but I couldn’t suppress it.
“Aurora,” he went to reach for my hand, but then stopped himself again. Dropping his arm, Jessie huffed in frustration. “I don’t have a companion; I have never had a companion; and I am not trying to make you my companion,” he said in a very firm voice. “Are we clear on this?”
“Yeah, but...”
“But nothing,” Jessie insisted. “You asked me a question, and I answered it. I didn’t say I condoned companionism. Please don’t judge me by the acts of others.”
He was right. I had been judging him. But the companion thing just sounded so creepy. “I’m sorry.”
“Well, I’m sorry I upset you. Most vampires don’t live their lives with consideration for humans in mind.”
“Neither do a lot of humans,” I observed dryly.
The evening’s conversation wasn’t going very well. I’d asked Jessie to tell me about his world and then got mad at him for the details. That wasn’t very fair. And I didn’t want to fight with him. All I did when Jessie wasn’t around was think about him or try not to think about him.
“It’s getting late. I should probably get going,” he said, moving his legs underneath him so he could get to his feet.
My heart sank. “You’re leaving?”
“I’m afraid so,” Jessie replied. “Besides, I’m sure you need your sleep.”
I knew it would do no good to try to persuade him to stay. And it was probably best that things ended right then although my heart was wildly protesting otherwise. “Thanks for coming to see me,” I managed.
“My pleasure,” he replied. He turned to go.
“Jessie?”
“Yes?” he turned quickly back to me.
I just wanted to see his beautiful face one more time. “Don’t forget your watch,” I said, extending the timepiece out the window for him to take.
He automatically reached for it, his fingertips lightly grazing the base of my thumb. I involuntarily shuddered as an electric tingle ran up my spine, and he pulled his hand away. “That’s okay. You keep it for now,” he said.
“But...”
“I want an excuse to see you again,” he said with a devilish chuckle, his eyes twinkling. “Even when you’ve run out of questions.”
The next thing I knew, he had evaporated into the night.
Chapter 14
“He wants to see me again.” My heart sang as I twirled around my room, the arms of Jessie’s tuxedo jacket wrapped around my waist in a simulated embrace.
“Aurora?” My mom tapped at my door.
“Just a minute, Mom,” I called back, leaping to my closet and stashing the jacket inside.
“What are you doing in there?” she asked, once I’d opened the door.
“Uh... dancing?” I confessed.
“By yourself?” She glanced around my room. “You don’t even have any music on.”
“I know. I was just goofing around.”
“Okay...” Mom said, although I could tell she wasn’t fully satisfied with my answer. “You’ve been spending a lot of time in your room lately. Is everything all right?”
“Yeah. Fine,” I told her.
“Are you fighting with Blossom or something?” she pressed.
“No, not exactly fighting,” I said. “Blossom’s got a new boyfriend, so... you know how that goes.”
“Oh.” My mom bobbed her head in understanding. “Got it.”
As usual, I couldn’t sleep, so I took the notebook I’d been using as my dream journal and flipped to the back. There I started writing down everything Jessie had told me about his world. After about an hour, my eyelids started to droop, and I turned off the light.
I was in the forest again, but this time it was daylight, and I wasn’t frightened. Not at all. In fact, I was blissfully happy. Everything surrounding me was very green and lush. Birds were hopping around in the trees, and butterflies wafted past. I was with someone I adored, and he adored me. Our faces were so close together that, whenever I tried to look at him, I couldn’t see his whole face, I could only see his eyes. They were gray and beautiful, and they twinkled sometimes when he smiled. This time they were not filled with hate, but a much happier emotion. I wondered if it was love. Even though I wasn’t afraid, there was something unusual about the eyes. My dream shifted, and the eyes became distorted in a way I couldn’t quite figure out. The gray color was uncommon, that was for sure, but there was something else that was puzzling me. I began to focus on just one of his eyes, and it became larger and larger in a way that only makes sense in dreams, but still there was something odd. Finally, it came to me. Besides being magnified, his eye was inverted. I was somehow viewing it upside down. Then the dream shifted again, and everything went back to normal.
None of it made any sense to me, but I woke up in an excessively good mood. I quickly wrote down everything I could remember in my dream journal / vampire log and headed down for breakfast.
Mom looked up from her coffee as I entered the kitchen. “What have you got planned today?”
“I don’t know,” I told her as I hunted for cereal.
“I was thinking we could visit Grandma Gibson and then maybe do a bit of shopping.”
Mom had set a good trap. I actually wasn’t feeling up to a Grandma Gibson run, but the temptation to go shopping was strong. “This is going to sound awful,” I said, “but do we have to do the Grandma Gibson part?” I saw the hurt look on my mother’s face and quickly added, “I’ve visited her twice in the past two weeks, you know.”
“I know, honey. And I thought that was very sweet of you,” she said. “But I wanted to spend some time with you, and I really owe her a visit.”
“Okay,” I relented. “I’m in.” The guilt I would feel from not going wasn’t worth the mild inconvenience of going. Besides, if I was in an old age home, I’d want my family
to visit me as much as possible. The least I could do was suck it up and go see my great grandmother for an hour a week.
As we signed in, the lady at the front desk said, “Oh, I’m so glad some of Lillian’s family is coming to see her today. She woke up this morning and, I don’t know, she’s really been having a hard time.” Not exactly what I was hoping to hear. Grandma Gibson had been pretty lucid during my last visit.
It started as soon as we walked into the room. Mom tried to be cheerful with, “Hello, Grams. It’s me—Helen.” I hung back in the doorway, but Mom walked straight into the room.
As usual, Grandma Gibson was at her table, a deck of cards laid out in rows before her. “Helen?” she said, sounding confused.
“That’s right, Grammy,” Mom replied. “And look who’s back to see you—Aurora.” Mom gestured for me to actually enter the room.
When Grandma Gibson saw me, her eyes grew wide. “Lettie,” she gasped. “Where have you been? You didn’t go to meet him again, did you?” Her whole body was tense, her hands quaking over the cards.
My mother looked at me and almost imperceptibly shook her head. Picking up on her cue, I stepped closer and said, “Of course not, Gra... uh... Lilly. I didn’t meet him. It’s over between us. I’m never going to see him again.”
My words seemed to calm Grandma, and she became a little less rigid in her chair. “I’m so happy to hear you say that. I know he’s handsome, and I know he’s rich, but he’s evil. They all are. The whole family are creatures from hell.”
I opened my mouth to speak but then choked back the words because my impulse was to shout, “You’re wrong. He’s not evil. He’s wonderful. You just don’t understand him.” I had managed to stop myself but just barely. My mom would think I was nuts, but in all likelihood, Grandma and I would be talking about the same person. This realization made me feel a little sick to my stomach.
“It’s a beautiful day today,” my mother interjected. “Would you like to sit outside for a while?”
There were tears in Grandma Gibson’s eyes. She reached out to me. “Come hold my hand, Lettie, and let me look at you. I’m so glad you’re safe.”
