by Molly Snow
Stella’s face seemed to soften, but she didn’t look him in the eyes. “It was a dare. I mean, so what. It’s just, you’re not my type. And so what. You have plenty of… girlfriends, you know. Who cares.” She then looked at her friend. “Let’s go.”
Mrs. Wilson came over. “I’ll clean this little mess up. So sorry this fell over,” she said as if it was her doing. She bent over, giving a clear view of her backside.
Damien instead chose to watch the girl who asked him out, but who in fact didn’t really want to ask him out, compose herself and leave the store without looking back.
As he helped with setting back up the changing room, a piece of paper on the floor stared up at him, asking to be picked up. He unfolded it and read:
Paranormal Addicts Anonymous
Do you go bat-crazy over vampires? Believe in ghosts? Think werewolves are sexy beasts?
Come to our meetings down at The Shoreline County Grange, every Thursday. 8 P.M.
*
Lying in bed that night, Damien propped the Paranormal Addicts Anonymous flyer on his newly-waxed and red chest. He reread it by the dim light of his nightstand, the same nightstand which displayed a broken-in copy of Stephenie Meyer’s New Moon and the 1980’s Teen Wolf movies. Thursday would be tomorrow. Eight p.m. is a very risky time to be outside, however. With a heavy sigh he got up and locked his bedroom door, shoved his face against his pillow, and gripped at his mattress, preparing once again for the transformation.
THREE
This was truly the only place where Stella felt completely comfortable in her skin. This also happened to be the place she met Kit and Caleb. Sure, they saw each other around school, but it wasn’t until PAA formed that they started hanging out. Dimly lit by strands of Halloween lights in the shape of skulls, the inside of the grange hosted just seven members sitting in a circle of fold-up chairs. Beside them sat a table filled with fiction spotlighting ghosts, vampires, witches and Honey Boo Boo.
Gordon pushed his glasses up on his nose for the twentieth time since the start of their meeting, and went on with such conviction over his favorite subject. “Bigfoot is real, just as much as Nessie. My camera caught him less than twenty miles south of here in the forest by the beach. Check it out.”
He passed his camera around for all to see the saved digital image. Kit tilted her head and turned the picture every which way. By Kit’s scrunched nose and narrowed eyes, Stella was certain it was a fail. Stella leaned over her friend and peeked at it while Caleb also leaned over, studying it.
A tall blur. It was nothing more than that. It could have been anything really: a baby tree, a bear, a finger in the way of the lens. Stella shook her head at it.
Maggie, a heavyset blonde with an English accent, said, “That’s even blurrier than the UFO you supposedly saw last month. It’s not Bigfoot, I guarantee.”
“It is Bigfoot,” he insisted and blushed at confessing, “it’s not the clearest photo, I know. But what’s most important is what I saw with my own two eyes.”
“Maybe your glasses’ prescription needs updating,” she retorted. “You’re always coming here showing us your latest find, and they’re all bogus.”
“Are not! I swear. What else walks upright like a man and is that hairy?”
“A bear!” another said.
“Bears aren’t that ripped. This thing had a muscular body, just like Bigfoot.” His expression became intense, his eyes bugging out. “It’s got to be him. It’s just got to.”
Bigfoot. Zombies. Dracula. Did it matter whether Gordon believed he saw him for real or not? Almost every meeting was the same—all the arguments between those who believed versus those who didn’t. While Stella was one of the nonbelievers, she chose to stand up for him yet again. “What makes us a group is that we’re all obsessed with paranormal creatures and activities,” she said. “Some of us find the fun in the fictional aspects, while others believe wholeheartedly these things exist. If Gordon believes he saw Bigfoot, then fine.” She turned to him. “I think it’s rad.”
Gordon smiled and blushed again. “Thanks, Stella. When I go out searching for him again, you’re invited. Because I’ll go out searching for him again, and then get a better picture. You’ll all believe me then.”
Stella gave a wry smile. Gordon had a crush on her and she knew it. Chalk him up to another socially-inept boy who drooled over her ways. The fact that Gordon just turned sixteen and already got his driver’s license actually put him up a notch in comparison to a couple of the other guys whose mothers dutifully dropped them off.
“Alright then,” Maggie conceded. “Stella, you are right. I may be the oldest of this group at nineteen, but this is one reason I believe you were nominated President.”
“Thanks, Maggie.” Stella formed the group herself, and there was no vote… but whatever. “Let’s take our first break. Fifteen minutes.”
Stella went straight over to the table of books, while her two best friends continued the conversation with Gordon. Quite a few stories were the same ones she’d seen over and over at the meetings, still circulating. She scooted them aside, and others picked them up.
At the bottom of the stash was a romance starring a werewolf. Maggie surely brought it. Stella shook her head. Another werewolf romance? Really? It was all Jacob Black’s fault, she was certain. Ever since he took his shirt off for Bella, and girls screamed with delight in theaters everywhere, werewolf romances were everywhere. Alright, Stella had screamed in excitement too... but internally; there’s a difference. So although she was shaking her head and making all sorts of jokes to herself over the book, a part of her couldn’t help but flip through the pages to see what it offered.
And, holy cow, it was steamy. And strange. Her eyes went wide. It only solidified her theory that those who were into werewolf romances were the most perverse of all erotica readers. Discreetly, she snatched up the copy for herself.
“What-ja choose?” Kit piped in, appearing at her side as quickly as an apparition.
“Just some lame romance.” Stella turned the book around and handled it in such a way as to hide the cover as much as possible.
“Not another zombie book? Thank goodness. I’ll be happy when you are completely through with that phase.” Kit eyed the table of options with a noncommittal glance.
It was cold out. Stella wrapped her cardigan tighter around her body. She had left her book contribution, Zombie Fallout 2, in Kit’s Volkswagen. Escaping from the meeting for a minute would also give time to stash her werewolf romance into the glove compartment. She could return before the break was over, and not have to awkwardly hold the book around for everyone to see.
Dusk painted the sky a strange purple hue. The bright moon was nearly full tonight, spotlighting her every step across the gravelly parking lot surrounded by wild bushes and trees. She approached Kit’s lime green beetle with a shiver at the back of her neck; not from the cold, but from a sudden sweeping fear. She paused in her steps, her Doc Martin’s crunching the rocks beneath her, and glanced around. A crunch sounded from behind, and she whipped around.
Her mind played a trick on her. A tall man-slash-beast with perfect white teeth stared back at her. Darn Gordon, she thought she saw Bigfoot of all things. “Hi, I didn’t mean to scare you,” he said.
The thing stepped closer, out of the darkness. His appearance was forming more clearly. No, no beast. Far from it. A tall guy, with dark hair and eyes. His perfectly straight teeth still glistened white. Her heart rapped against her chest. “What are you doing here?” She realized who it was. Damien’s muscles were just as beautiful as before, pronounced under another tight T-shirt. It wasn’t fair. Her traitorous thoughts needed to keep to themselves.
“I wanted to… come check it out…” He leaned over and picked something up. “Is this yours?” He pulled his find closer to his face to study it with quirked eyebrows.
Stella could feel the heat of her embarrassment flushing her pale cheeks. “None of your business.” She gra
bbed the book from him instantly. Her hands shook as she opened the car door and shoved the thing into the glove compartment.
She turned around to face him again, her hands still quivering. She balled them into fists at her side. “I hate being snuck up on. Why are you here?”
“Like I said. I wanted to check out the meeting.”
“How did you know there was a meeting?”
He scratched the back of his neck. “I may or may not have found it in the heap of what used to be a dressing room last night.”
“You know,” she stood there, still tense as all get-out, “you are definitely making a habit of seeing me in my most embarrassing moments.”
He smiled at her. It was the first time she saw him smile since the night he leaned over the counter at Dough-licious, taking her order. But this smile was different. Mockery maybe? “Is it really my fault?” he asked.
Good question. “Well, tonight is. This is my domain. You aren’t supposed to be here. You weren’t supposed to see that–that book, which is totally not mine.”
“Yeah, whose is it?” He smirked.
“Caleb’s.” She said the first name that came to mind.
His lips parted into another smile, and he let out a laugh. “Am I supposed to believe that?”
“Sure.” She nodded unconvincingly. “No, I guess you weren’t. Just tell me what you’re doing here.”
Damien paused. There was something different about his brown eyes. They were intense, like he was holding back a major secret. Rather than revealing anything remarkable, he said, “I told you. I just wanted to check out the meeting.”
“You are a paranormal addict?” Stella questioned. It was hard spitting out those words, since they screamed contradiction to being a surfer-slash-all-around-jock.
“I have a confession to make.” He said his words slowly and thoughtfully.
“Okay?”
“I read New Moon within three hours of picking it up.”
“New Moon?” Reading? Finished in just three hours? It took Stella five days to finish that book. Three hours? “You’re kidding, right?”
“I wish I were,” he said seriously.
“Damien Cappernalli, paranormal addict,” she said aloud. “Does not make sense whatsoever.”
“Why not? You know my name, but you don’t know me.”
She laughed at that. Oh, she knows popular guys. They’re all basic carbon-copies of each other. His eyebrows went up as if waiting for her to continue with her analysis.
“I don’t need to explain,” she said. With that, she turned back toward the grange and sped up her steps to make it inside before him. Had she entered a parallel universe? Just what was he up to? All she knew was no matter what the true explanation would be, she wouldn’t like it. Damien was supposed to stay in his separate world from hers.
Maggie, on the other hand, was pleased with the new addition to the group, sitting right beside the beefcake. “Please, introduce yourself to everyone else, Damien.”
They were back to their circle formation. He stood up and confidently put his hands in his jeans’ pockets. “Okay. Hello, everyone.”
Kit looked at Stella out of the corner of her eye for the seemingly hundredth time. Stella ignored Kit, just as she had done the ninety-nine times before.
“My name is Damien, and I am a paranormal addict.”
“Hello, Damien,” all said but Stella. Maggie added, “It is important to know we aren’t like other addicts anonymous meetings. We won’t try to cure you of your obsession. We will support you in it.”
“Okay,” he said. “Well, my monster of choice is the werewolf, and I would like to learn as much about them as possible. So this sounds… perfect.”
Stella felt his eyes on her as she looked down to the concrete floor. Of all the books she had to choose from tonight, she just had to grab the werewolf one. Or was he just saying he liked werewolves to tease her? Maybe he came tonight to get revenge for the big dare gone horribly wrong. Stella suddenly looked up, compelled to say, “I like zombies.” And so she did.
Everyone turned to her, some surprised more than others over her interruption.
“Dead things,” she said. “Er, Undead things. With decrepit flesh.” Shut up, she told herself. “I can’t get enough of them.” That just came out sounding like she had a creepy attraction to them.
“Good idea,” Maggie said happily in her accent. “How about everyone goes around the circle and re-announces what their particular addiction is, so that our newest member can get to know us better. I have been a ghost hunter ever since staying as a child with my great grandmother in her haunted cottage in England. So, as the Ghostbusters would say, ‘I ain’t afraid of no ghosts.’”
Stella’s most comfortable place to be in all the world was quickly taken down, down, down to the innermost depths of discomfort. She had to consciously force her clenched hands to loosen in her lap the rest of the evening. Although she was President of PAA, she knew she couldn’t kick Damien out of their little circle unless she received a majority vote from the members. Seeing as how Maggie and the others were intrigued by the new unconventional member, she swallowed her pride.
“Don’t forget,” Maggie said all bubbly as the Social Networking Coordinator, “our first annual field trip is coming up!” She passed out the neon green flyers. “Hope to see you all there soon.”
Damien took his invite gladly. Dag-freaking-nabbit.
FOUR
Damien inspected his chest in his bathroom mirror. The redness was gone but the hairs were growing back. He couldn’t wax every night; bear that extra pain if it would just grow right back.
A cell phone vibrated on the counter, and he picked it up. Another text from Tyler asking what’s up and if he’ll be by the beach again anytime soon to surf. It would remain without a response, for now.
Instead, he turned on the sink and splashed cold water on his face a couple times before staring at his tired reflection. His tongue traced each tooth. It was unfathomable how they could retract back up into his gums to let pointy ones descend almost every night. No wonder Anbesol was one of his new best friends. He opened the cap to the tube of medicine, squeezed a liberal amount onto a finger and rubbed his gums for a good few minutes. Felt good.
How did he get in this situation? And how could he get out? The books he read and the information Maggie so generously offered for more than a half hour after Paranormal Addicts Anonymous just added to the confusion. What was fact versus fiction on the matter? Was he born this way, as part of his Italian heritage? Too absurd. Did he get an infectious bite by a wolf? Yeah right. He would remember something like that happening, so no. Was he supposed to find his pack or be a loner on the prowl? And what the heck was all that imprinting nonsense? He sure hoped he wouldn’t fall in love with a one-month-old.
Imprinting, he wondered. Could he have imprinted on that Goth girl, now known as Stella, AKA President of the PAA? Is that why his heart did weird things when he was around her? But she’s so moody and klutzy. It would be crazy of him to fall for her. Besides, he was pretty sure she was this close to hating him. He saw how her knuckles turned white when her hands fisted at the sight of him actually entering her meeting and introducing himself as a new member.
The book Stella dropped at the grange’s parking lot flashed through his mind. A werewolf romance. He was certain it was rated M for mature, just like most of his video games. He smirked and rubbed his chin at the memory. Maybe this Stella chick could be into him, beast and all, and she was just a hard nut to crack. They could live as recluses together in a castle as dancing candelabras sang around them “Be Our Guest.” She sorta resembled that Belle cartoon chick. Big eyes. Long hair. A bit on the skinny side. He could make some mean stacks of pancakes and eggs, so no problem there in the long run.
“Dude,” he said to his reflection, “what are you thinking? She doesn’t like you.” He wiped his wet face with a fluffy white towel, then threw it around his broad shoulders on his w
ay out of the bathroom. “She doesn’t like you,” he said again with a shake of his head and a laugh of irony.
*
When Stella was a little girl, she dreamed of weddings just like every other little girl. The fairytale love story—dressed in all white, escorted by the most dreamy man in the world, who would of course resemble Eric off The Little Mermaid. That bubble burst when high school came. Now she wondered if she would ever marry. Sure she was only sixteen, so that’s a young age to define her life, but that’s what girls do. Define their lives. Especially at sixteen. Nowadays the fantasies about marriage never came. The future was dark, cloudy and drippy, and her conscience, like an annoyingly cheerful weather forecaster, had to constantly remind her “Better get those knickers on, because—brrrr!—it’s going to be a chilly one.”
And the fact that she had a werewolf romance clutched in her hands under her covers with a book light that came free with her mom’s Snuggie, meant she was at the end of her pathetic rope.
Normal guys couldn’t do it for her anymore? What if her mom saw what she was reading? “Horrifying,” would be the only word to describe the situation. And she knew her mother would be right to be so upset. Her daughter no longer resembled other normal daughters. Daughters who went off to soccer practice, not Paranormal Addicts Anonymous.
A sudden scratching at the window caused her nerves to nearly jump out of her skin. What was Kit doing here without a phone call first? And at such a crazy hour? Stella dumped her book into her end table’s drawer as quickly as possible and sat up in bed. The window was quickly scooted open, only the person was not Kit.
“Billy?” Stella’s breath caught. How did he find her? Her hands desperately clutched at her sheet, wishing she could disappear.
“Hello, my love,” he purred, and appeared over her in bed, so fast it was unreal. His light curly hair was without a strand out of place. His gray eyes deep and intoxicating. An icy finger trailed her cheek and she quivered at the feeling. Not out of pleasure, but horror.
“W-why are you here?”
“Because we’re meant to be together forever, Stella. I couldn’t spend another day without you. When you moved away, without a trace, I nearly killed myself. I thought I had lost you forever.”
