Birth of the Vampire (The Vanderlind Realm) (4 page)

Chapter 5

Haley

In the early morning, when I was not still asleep but not quite fully awake, I had a wonderful dream. Or maybe it was a fantasy. I wasn’t sure where the line was drawn between the two. But in my head, I had a vision of going to Winter Formal with Tommy as my date. The dance was in a little over a week, but I had somehow found the perfect dress in silvery blue with a spray of spangles across the bust. It was floor length, so probably more of a gown, and it had a gossamer scarf of the same color that looped over my neck and trailed down my back.

Tommy wasn’t quite as clear to me in the dream. I only knew he was in a tux and looking handsome. All the other girls eyed me with envy as the two of us twirled around the dance floor. It was really something more out of a movie than an actual high school dance, but it was my fantasy, so I embellished as I saw fit.

I rolled over and checked my phone for the time. It was an inconvenience not having a clock in my room, but I wasn’t going to shell out the twenty bucks to get one when my phone could pull double duty. It was a quarter to nine. There were no messages and no texts, as usual.

I knew it was stupid of me to expect Tommy to call me first thing in the morning, but that didn’t stop me from wishing. We’d just shared one of the most intimate things two people could share. Was it too much to expect at least a text that said he was thinking of me?

After about forty-five minutes of staring longingly at my phone, I decided to take control of my own destiny and texted him. “Hey,” I wrote. “You up yet?”

I regretted the message immediately after hitting send, but that was the problem with cell phones. It was too easy to give in to impulse.

Rather than mentally beating myself up for a text I couldn’t take back, I decided to get out of bed and start my day. It was Christmas Eve, but I was on the schedule for a double shift at the diner. My boss, Debbie, tried to talk me out of it, but I actually wanted the shifts. I knew Kevin had the day off and would be around the house all day yelling at the television. I’d bought him a new pair of work gloves for Christmas and sent my mom a large box of chocolates. She was being treated at a facility way down on the border of Kentucky, so there was no way I would see her for Christmas. I didn’t have any shopping to do or really any friends to hang out with, so I figured I might as well work. I hoped people would feel sorry for me and maybe tip a little heavier, but you never knew how tight everyone else was on money.

While I was putting on my Darlene’s Diner uniform top and a pair of jeans, I heard Kevin banging around in his room. I knew he probably had a headache. I wondered if he remembered trying to sneak into my bedroom the night before. And why the hell was he trying to do it? I didn’t keep any money in the room. I knew if I left anything around the house, he would find it and spend it. I didn’t want to think about the other reasons why he might want to open my door in the middle of the night.

In the kitchen, I quickly fried up some eggs and bacon. Kevin would be much more amiable if he had a plate full of food set in front of him first thing. It sucked always having to dance around his moods and hangovers. But I had less than half a year before I graduated and could get the hell out of there. I had to keep focusing on grades and earning money. Keeping Kevin placated was just part of the deal.

I heard the back door rattle and in sauntered Kevin’s daughter, Ashley. She lived with her mom on the other side of town but would drop by to see her dad every once in a while. Especially when she wanted something. She’d been coming by more frequently lately, which was annoying, but I figured that had something to do with it being close to Christmas. I figured once she’d soaked Kevin for whatever gifts she could get out of him, she’d disappear until mid-February.

Kevin adored her.

“Hey,” she said, helping herself to a piece of bacon off the plate I was just setting on the table and not noticing my annoyed expression.

I would describe Ashley as being decorative. She was reasonably pretty with brown hair that she dyed blonde. She looked good on a guy’s arm, but she didn’t really have anything else going for her. She wasn’t interested in school. She didn’t play any sports. She didn’t have a job. She didn’t have any hobbies. She just seemed to fill her days by texting or talking on the phone and grooming. I had no idea what she was going to do with her life once she got out of high school, and I didn’t really care. All I wanted was to stay at her dad’s place until I graduated. That shouldn’t have been that big of a deal, but Ashley frequently acted like I owed her a favor.

After chewing the bacon slice for a few moments, Ashley spit it out into the sink. This was her idea of weight management. “I want the flavor, not the calories,” she would say to anyone who bothered to listen. I thought it was pretty disgusting, but I was the one who usually had to clean her partially masticated food out of the sink. “Ashley, that’s pretty gross,” I told her. “Can you at least just spit it into the garbage?”

She wrinkled her little nose, which was lightly spangled with freckles. “I don’t like the smell.”

“Well, I don’t like cleaning up your chewed food,” I grumbled, but I knew she wasn’t paying attention.

“Where’s my dad?” she asked. I could tell she was eyeing another strip of bacon, but I removed the plate and put it in the oven.

“He’s still upstairs,” I told her, wondering what she wanted. It had to be something pretty big, or she wouldn’t have shown up so bright and early.

Ashley trotted out of the room bellowing, “Dad!” as she charged up the stairs. I could tell by the slight babyish tone to her voice that she really wanted something.

I quietly moved to the base of the stairs so I could listen. I wasn’t proud of eavesdropping, and it was something I definitely intended to stop doing once I was out of Kevin’s house, but at that moment in time, I really needed to keep my ear to the ground. I needed to be able to anticipate Uncle Kevin’s moods and plan accordingly.

“Hi, Daddy,” I heard Ashley say, and I knew she had probably run up to him and kissed him on the cheek.

“How’s my little girl?” was Kevin’s reply. It really was obvious he adored her. But he never saw the side of her that I did. Maybe parents never really knew their own children. Not once they got to a certain age, at least.

“Good,” she told him. “I’m glad we’re on winter break.” I guess Ashley had decided that she’d made enough small talk because she immediately got to the point of her visit with, “Can I borrow your car tonight?”

“What?” Kevin said, obviously not expecting the abrupt change in topics.

“Blossom Coster is having her annual Christmas Eve party, and it’s going to be super cool this year. So Erika was going to drive us, but now her car’s in the shop. I asked Mom if I could use her car, but she’s got some stupid plans and is being really mean about it. So I was wondering if I could borrow your truck. And I promise I’ll be super careful.” Then she decided to cement the deal by adding, “Pwease?” in her best baby voice. I knew she was tilting her head down at him so that she could pout her lower lip a little and look up at him, widening her blue eyes for the total effect. I felt like gagging.

“Can’t,” he said without really even thinking it over. “Already have plans.”

“But, Daddy,” Ashley said, her voice instantly taking on an irritation whine.

I sprinted back to the kitchen and yanked Uncle Kevin’s breakfast out of the oven, shoving it onto the table. Then I scrambled for my boots, jamming my feet inside even though my socks bunched up awkwardly. I grabbed my coat and bag and then slipped out the side door. I tried to make as little noise as I possibly could as I pulled the door shut behind me.

I had my mom’s car. It was a beat-to-crap Honda, but it ran, and I didn’t have to share it with anyone. Not even Ashley. I knew as soon as she became convinced that her dad wasn’t going to let her use his truck, she would start kissing up to me to borrow my car. And that wasn’t going to happen. The first, last, and only time I let her use my car, it came back smelling of cigarettes; the knob was broken off the radio; and there was gum mashed into the passenger’s side carpet. Ashley played totally innocent, insisting, “It was that way when I got it,” but she also knew better than to ask to borrow it again.

At least she knew better for a few months. But I had no doubt that I was next on her list of suckers. That’s why I locked the doors as soon as I got in my car. It was a precaution I usually took anyway, but I didn’t doubt my cousin’s ability to slip in beside me and be annoying until I finally cracked under the strain.

The car doesn’t just go on command. Especially in cold weather. I had to let it warm up a bit. Fortunately, I had some cover from Uncle Kevin’s truck, which was parked closest to the house. There was some snow accumulation on the car, but nothing I couldn’t deal with by using the front and back wipers. I could stop and clear all the windows once I was a few blocks away.

Just as I was easing out of the driveway, Ashley came charging out of the side door. She was waving at me frantically and calling, “I need a ride. Hey, Haley. I need a ride.”

I had the radio on, but I could hear her easily enough. I smiled and waved at her, but kept on going as if I had no idea she was doing anything but waving me on my way. She’d managed to get to her dad’s house on foot, so she could find a way back without my assistance. After four or five blocks, I pulled over and quickly cleaned off all the windows with my ice scraper. There was no reason for me to get in an accident just because I didn’t want to get a shake-down from my cousin.

Back in the car, I looked at my phone again. It was probably the two-hundredth time I had checked it since waking up that morning. I pretended like I was wondering about the time, but I knew I was actually hoping for a text from Tommy. There was nothing, of course. It was just a few minutes after ten, so it was conceivable he wasn’t even awake yet, but I still felt my stomach drop in disappointment. Were we going to the party together or not?

As it was, I would be showing up to work almost an hour early. I tried to think of somewhere else to go, but Christmas Eve wasn’t exactly the day when I wanted to kill some time at the mall or hide out at the library. I figured I might as well ask Debbie if I could clock in early and maybe scrub some dishes or something. Waitresses don’t make a good hourly. We didn’t even make the federal hourly minimum wage. Our income was mostly tip dependant. But I figured an extra two bucks and a few cents was better than nothing, and there was always the risk I might actually spend money if I went anywhere else.

The restaurant was called Darlene’s Diner, even though the owner’s name was Debbie. She lived upstairs but spent most of her life behind the counter. I asked her about it once, and she said, “No one’s going to stop to eat at a place called Debbie’s Diner. It sounds too perky. People who eat at diners want a little grit.” She’d been running the place longer than I’d been on the planet, so maybe she was right. Or maybe her mother was named Darlene. With Debbie, it was hard to tell.

“What are you doing here?” Debbie asked, glancing at her watch as I walked in the back of the diner. “You’re not on the schedule until eleven.”

“I know,” I said, peeling off my winter coat and slinging my bag into my locker. “But I don’t have anywhere else to go, and I figured maybe I could clock in early and just do some dishes.”

Debbie frowned. She’d been a smoker for forty-five years, and her face definitely showed the wear. There were vertical wrinkles around her mouth—the kind that women only get from years of pursing their lips over a cigarette. She’d given it up when she turned sixty, but she still had a bit of the smoker stink about her. I guess all the nicotine hadn’t leached out of her skin yet. “Don’t you have any friends you should be hanging out with?” she asked, “When I was your age, I was always going to the mall with my friends. Or at least looking around for a little trouble. You need to live a little while you’re still young.”

I gave her a pained look. We’d had this conversation before. She knew I was a friendless loser, and I didn’t understand why she felt the need to keep bringing it up.

“I’m sorry,” she said after a moment of me just looking at her. “Of course, you can clock in. Just go ahead and scrub anything you want.”

Debbie was one of the few people I actually felt close to in Tiburon. She was kind of an old biker chick, with dyed platinum blonde hair and a small homemade india ink tattoo of a cross at the base of her right thumb, but I felt like she actually cared about my well-being. At least more than my Uncle Kevin or any of my teachers or social workers or any other random adult who drifted through my life without really thinking about me.

I punched in and then wandered around the diner for a few minutes, just looking around to see what could use a good scrub. There were only a couple of people taking advantage of the bottomless cup of coffee that was still offered. The brew was truly awful. I had suggested that the diner upgrade to a better coffee and start charging by the cup, but Debbie insisted that would drive off half her clientele.