A Beginner's Guide to Fangs

by Matthew S. Cox

  “Ugh.” I toss the headphones on the rug and rub my ears.

  Feels like I should lean over sideways and bump the side of my head to knock swear words out of my brain. Wow, those dudes get way too wrapped up in that game. Gotta be a guy thing. Some of the parties I went to, the boys would wind up clustered around a television screaming at football. I can’t see why anyone who doesn’t have a giant load of money riding on a sporting event would get that upset over losing. I think Holly Mitchell spent her whole junior year grounded after Jimmy broke her parents’ TV during a party she wasn’t supposed to be having. They’d gone away for a weekend ski trip, and came home to a dead screen.

  I sit cross-legged on my floor for a while, enjoying my room. It’s silly and juvenile, but I feel safe in here. Sam, my brother, is the same way. Whenever he gets the least bit stressed out, he goes to his room. That totally makes sense to me now. In fact, after meeting Hunter’s old man, I’m, really tempted to go hug mine. Having a good father shouldn’t make me feel guilty, but it kinda does. Especially since I know Hunter isn’t the only person in the world with an awful one, and some are way worse.

  Right. It’s not my fault.

  Sierra would’ve been better suited for this vampire stuff. She could sit for hours on video games. Not having to go to the bathroom at all would be the greatest thing ever for her. Two hours straight is about my limit before my eyeballs want to explode. At least playing alone. Co-op with Sierra is different. That’s less playing a game and more spending time with my sister.

  I stretch my legs out straight and tap my big toes together, muttering, “Bored. Bored. Bored.”

  My opinion that being a vampire is pure awesome may need a slight revision. It does have a downside: I’m awake when everyone else isn’t. Right. Time to develop a hobby, like building tiny ships inside bottles. Nah. Or collecting stamps. Nah. That sounds about as exciting as watching paint dry. Movies are an option. Probably a good option now that I think about it. There’s more on Netflix than one person could ever hope to watch. Maybe I should study journalism and become a film critic?

  I spend a few minutes searching the catalog, but get the blahs.

  My brain keeps going back to wondering how I feel about Hunter. It’s not as though Scott was my first boyfriend. I dated like six boys before I met him. Well, okay, one of those lasted a week, and the longest three months. Of those, I only even kissed Joey Parrish. Gawd. It’s so embarrassing to even think about now. Can’t really expect much for eighth grade, right? And yeah, calling them boyfriends is kinda stretching the term. It only really applied in the sense of them being boys and my friends.

  Hunter, on the other hand…

  Well, no secret why I never wound up in bed with any of the first six after two dates. At that age, holding hands was awkward enough, and kissing felt like we both risked getting caught and grounded for the rest of time. I dated Scott since our first year of high school, and our disastrous first try at sex didn’t happen until the summer between sophomore and junior year.

  Argh!

  I grab two fistfuls of my hair and suppress the urge to scream. Why is everything I try to think about constantly circling back to Scott? Probably has something to do with being the first person I’ve ever killed. Maybe I shouldn’t have stood there watching him burn, but I had to be sure he was dead for good. And yeah, to split hairs, I didn’t technically kill him. Dalton did that, but Scott’s such a dumbass he couldn’t even die properly.

  Before I know it, I’m out of my little sanctuary and walking around the house trying to think about something―anything―but Scott. I can’t attack the Hunter issue, as in, why the hell did I practically rip his clothes off on our second date, without my brain trying to throw in comparisons to asshole.

  In the living room, I stand there in the near dark staring at the black and white furniture. It’s only black and white because that’s how I see when there’s no actual light. To a normal person, this room would be pitch black. The rug’s neither cool nor warm, though the texture of the fibers is really soothing to walk on, especially with my amped up senses.

  It hits me that I’m dead.

  No, I mean, I knew that already. Vampiredom has a relatively steep entry fee. What I mean is, maybe I pounced on Hunter because I’m having a paradoxical reaction to what happened to me. Like, hey, I’m not an immortal teenager. Wait. Back up. I am an immortal teenager. I mean, Scott killing me and everything… what if that’s making me think that life is so damn fleeting and I’ve wasted so much time trying to cling to every rule and be the good girl and never do anything spontaneous? Not like I have to worry about saving myself for marriage anymore, right? If I’d just broken up without getting stabbed to death, and I ran into Hunter I probably would’ve taken it real slow and everything, like I always did.

  Wait. Who am I kidding? He’s so awkward and fidgety and, okay―acts creepy―that I would’ve avoided him. Or there’s a good chance I would have. Or… I sink to sit on the sofa. Would I have? After the breakup, assuming no stabby business happened, I would’ve been a wreck. There’s also the whole USC thing. I never would’ve gone to Seattle Central Collage to enroll, and never would’ve encountered Hunter. In all likelihood, I would’ve never seen him (or any of my classmates from high school) ever again. Except on the off chance of a reunion.

  So, it’s pointless to even think of how I’d have reacted to Hunter if Scott hadn’t killed me.

  It could also be that looking into his thoughts and―okay, I admit that happened because he creeped me out and I wanted to make sure he wouldn’t do anything weird―saw how he really felt about me. All those years, and he only ever tried to talk to me that one time. After what happened with his dad, I understand where that came from. His having a girlfriend at all would’ve gotten him punished, plus he’d been terrified I’d laugh at him.

  Knowing for a fact that a guy’s not merely looking to score a one night stand helped a lot. And I really do find his honesty charming and his awkwardness cute. I even like that he’s starting to come out of his shell. So, okay. No regrets over what happened. I’m not a whore.

  I snarl.

  That’s what’s been bothering me. His damned father calling me that over and over―and me wondering if I am one because I’d initiated us making out. I’m not. That guy has major issues. Fortunately, those issues won’t be affecting Hunter, his little brother, or his mom any more.

  I look up, feeling much better about the way the night went.

  The living room is more than a little messy. Guess Mom and Dad have been major busy with work, and Sam had his friends were over again during the afternoon. Sophia usually goes to her friend Nicole’s house, sometimes bringing Sierra. The girls don’t often hang out here. I’m not sure how they worked it out that Sam brings his buddies here and the girls go elsewhere, if it’s some kind of treaty arrangement or merely the way stuff happened organically.

  A long T-shirt with nothing on under it isn’t the best outfit for housework, so I run back down to my room, grab a pair of sweat pants, then spend a while cleaning, which mostly involves picking up bags of Dorito crumbs and empty plastic cups. Before my life got turned on its head, I helped out a lot around here since Mom’s job sucks up so much time. Dad did his share of housework too, but he usually ends up late for deadlines and spends fourteen-hour benders at his computer wrangling program code. I don’t know how he can do that… sitting in one place for that long staring at letters and numbers on the screen.

  I’d maybe last three hours before that much screen time reduced me to a sloped-forehead cave-girl and I stormed around smashing anything remotely resembling a computer. Of course, anything worth doing is worth overdoing, as Dad likes to say. I turn picking up a couple bags of chips into cleaning the whole downstairs.

  Boredom is the enemy of filth, or something like that.

  Not like I can do anything really fun. Fun involves noise. And if I keep moving, I don’t think about being home with my family while simultaneousl
y lonely as hell. Once the living room’s back in order―except for crumbs that remain safe from a vacuum at four in the morning―I wind up flying around to dust the walls and ceiling in the stairwell, getting rid of some cobwebs that have been up there since before my first bra. I don’t know who got the genius idea to design a house like this. At the bottom of the stairs, I can stare straight up to the ceiling of the second floor.

  There’s literally no way to dust the upper corners without being able to fly, or using a fifteen-foot long pole. Look at bad-ass me. Powerful immortal. Destroyer of evil half-vampire ex boyfriends and slayer of… dust.

  Dust that I’m sure no one will notice is even missing.

  There’s even a small window on the wall at the level of the second floor, directly over the bottom of the stairs. As one might imagine for such a poorly placed piece of idiocy, it’s filthy. Guess I’m upgrading to windows.

  After retrieving the spray and some paper towels, I float up to it and attack the grime. The soft squeaking of the towel over the glass gets me thinking about the time Mom decided to teach me how to help her with window cleaning when I was like eleven. It had been the first real day of summer that year, and it was unusually warm, something like seventy-five degrees.

  I close my eyes and picture it. The breeze in my hair. My pink spaghetti-strap shirt. That had been a jean shorts day, and one of the few times Mom wore a sundress. It had to be a Saturday. Sierra would’ve been four, Sophia three, and Sam two. Mom had to keep running into the living room to check up on them as we went from window to window, at least until she finally asked Dad to peel himself off the computer. We washed all the windows of the downstairs that day and in violation of the bylaws of childhood, I thought it was fun. Not the cleaning so much, but doing something with Mom. How messed up is that? She’s always so busy with her job that I enjoyed doing housework with her.

  The memory of my attempt to help even more by climbing up to stand on the windowsill so I could reach the top pane makes me laugh. Standing tiptoe on a three-inch ledge hadn’t been a problem, but when I tried to get down, I stepped in the bucket, tripped, and took Mom with me on the way to the floor. She didn’t even get mad, and we both laughed like idiots. I did have to clean the puddle up though… and promise not to climb like that again.

  My imagined reflection of my younger face on the window in front of a bright sunny backyard trades places with my current face, reflected from a glass panel in front of grey trees. By the time I finish wiping, I feel like I had a dog and it died. Seven years ago, I’d been a dutiful little sprite, totally unaware that I’d wind up dead before being old enough to buy beer. Sierra’s that age now. Is she going to make it to twenty? Is Sophia? Or Sam?

  The daydream of our bright backyard evaporating to the cold and dark reality of my here and now slaps me with a weight like I’m a spectator at the funeral of that child I used to be. Crap. Here go my wild emotions again. I’m either going to start sobbing about being dead or wind up ambush hugging my family while they sleep, or stand here laughing at the absurdity of it all.

  Vampires? Really?

  I lean up to the window and extend my fangs, eyeing them in the refection.

  Yep. Vampires, really.

  Bah. The sun is overrated. I’ll never have to worry about getting wrinkles or gaining weight. No diseases for me, or jealousy that the ‘younger girls’ look hotter. I’m forever one of those ‘younger girls.’ Yep. Though there are many long years of coping with crippling loneliness ahead of me. But hey, I have super powers.

  And speaking of super powers…

  Calories mean nothing to me. “Hah―” Wait, no. That’s not right. Hahahahah! Evil Mastermind Laugh happens inside my head, so as not to wake anyone up. I saunter into the kitchen and fix myself a four-scoop bowl of vanilla ice cream with squeeze-bottle fudge, and carry my prize back to my sanctuary, where I nest among my minions.

  Every creature of the night should have an army of minions.

  Mine just happen to be stuffed animals.

  Thin Mints

  11

  Awesome. It’s raining!

  I slide out of bed a little after two. Another cool thing about being a vampire is I don’t suffer that hour-long period after waking up where I’m half-conscious. Oh, one downside about the Innocent deal. I do still sweat and stuff. Granted, not as much as a normal living person would, but enough to where showering remains a necessity.

  Aurélie mentioned some of us (vampires that is) can go months without touching soap. I’m guessing the Shadows fall into that group since they’re the deadest, but the feeling she spoke from experience hadn’t been lost on me. She is, after all, an Old Guard. A very old guard. Nearly four hundred years if I remember right. Rather than wasting energy making herself lifelike, she embraced the super-white motif with some cosmetics. Hence why she looks like something out of a historic reenactment of French Aristocracy.

  In the middle of the afternoon, the upstairs bathroom is wide open. Mom’s at work, no surprise there. The steady clicking of computer keys comes from Dad’s study. Video game sound shakes the walls of Sam’s room, but there’s no sign of the girls. Since my father isn’t running around in a panic, I assume they went to Nicole’s. On second thought, I peek in to Sierra’s room―aka my old room.

  In the two weeks since I relocated to the basement, she’s redecorated the space. Not a trace of pink appears anywhere. The spot of floor that had once held my bed has become her video game shrine. Her bed’s at the inner corner to my right. She’s also not here.

  I trust a quiet Sophia more than a quiet Sierra, but I look anyway. Pink and white everything. Lots of stuffed animals and dolls. Drawings of unicorns on the walls. At least she hasn’t gone into the boy band phase yet.

  After a nice, relaxing shower, I wrap my hair in a towel and pull another one on like a dress before heading downstairs and leaning in to Dad’s work area. “Hey.”

  “Oh, good afternoon, hon.” He stops typing and smiles at me. “You’re up early.”

  “Ehh, not so early. Plus it’s raining.”

  He removes his glasses to scratch his eyebrow. “What’s raining got to do with when you wake up?”

  “Not the rain really.” I can’t help but smile at him sitting there in his goofy white polo shirt and beige pants. “It’s the heavy clouds that make it dimmer out.”

  “Ahh. That makes sense.” He smiles. “You look like you’re in a rather good mood.”

  “My mood’s approaching astrophysics for complicated.” I pad over and hug him. “I love you, Dad.”

  “Uh oh. What happened?” he asks.

  Still with my arms around him, I laugh. “Can’t I say ‘I love you’ to my dad without something being wrong?”

  “Yes, but you’re standing there with, I imagine, only a towel on. Normally, you’d be shrieking and slamming doors to keep from being seen like that, especially by your old man.”

  “Dad!” I giggle. “The towel covers way more than my swimsuits.”

  “But?” he asks.

  “Yeah. Something’s kinda wrong, but not with me.” I stand out of the hug. “One sec. Let me get dressed first.”

  “All right.”

  He resumes typing as I hurry out. Once back in my room, I whip out the blow dryer before getting dressed in a cute top Sierra got me last Christmas. It’s a black T-shirt bearing a chibi anime goth girl with her arms folded beneath the word Attitude. One standard pair of jeans, check.

  Tweep.

  I glance at my phone, or should I say mind control device. That noise (an incoming text) commands me to pick it up and look.

  Ashley: ‹We still on today? Are you allowed out?›

  Oh, yeah. I forgot. They wanted to hit the movies. And wow. Allowed out? I grin while typing, ‹I’m not twelve. I’m allowed out.›

  ‹I meant your uhh, allergy.›

  Duh. I type back, ‹Yeah. It’s rainy as hell. I’m fine.› I don’t mention even with the gloom, I’m going to have to feed ton
ight from being out in the daylight most of the afternoon. It’s for a good cause though: time with friends.

  ‹Cool. See you soon. Waiting on Chelle.›

  I set the phone back on the bed and head upstairs, skipping socks for now since shoes are banned in our house except for a small patch of floor by the front door. Dad again stops tying when I walk in.

  “So, what’s bothering you?”

  I drag a smaller chair over, flop down, and tell him about Hunter’s father. Dad sighs and shakes his head through most of it.

  “So, I am happy that I wound up having such an awesome dad.”

  He takes a moment to let what I unloaded on him settle, then looks into my eyes. “Sarah, you shouldn’t feel guilt over circumstances beyond your control. You didn’t choose your family any more than Hunter wanted a father like that. Yes, we have a comfortable life, but your mother and I both work hard to maintain that. The schooling we had, the work ethic… Heck, if I could win the lottery and spend every waking minute with you kids instead of churning out these stupid API modules, I’d do it in a heartbeat. You know your mother’s not thrilled at the hours she has to put in.”

  “Yeah, but―”

  “Please let me finish.” He smiles.

  “Sorry.”

  He leans forward and takes my hand. “There are a lot of people in this country who would call you privileged. You’ve never known what it meant to wonder if you’d have food at night, only if it was something you’d actually eat.”

  I let out a somber chuckle.

  “There are plenty of awesome dads out there. Far more than the ones like him. There’s plenty of people much more well off than we are, and a lot more who aren’t. You shouldn’t feel guilty for having what you have. Now, if you’re proud of it, and look down on those who have less, that you can feel guilty about. If you somehow thought, ‘well, I have an amazing dad, sucks to be Hunter,’ then you should feel ashamed of yourself. That you didn’t tells me your mother and I did something right raising you.”