Blood Orange Soda: Paranormal Romance (22 page)

My phone beeps in my hand and I raise it to see that I’ve reached my first mile. I’ve just run a 6:50 mile, which sounds fast to me. I don’t know much about running, and I push onward towards a long uphill climb. At this stage, the path drops off and I have to run along gravel on the shoulder of the road. I move with the flow of traffic, and cars blow by me as their tailwinds carry me forward, occasionally stumbling on the ruts in the gravel.

Seeing Shelby’s parents makes me think of my own parents. What would their marriage have been like if my dad hadn’t transformed into a blood-thirsty Vampire? And am I really making the right decision to transform? Is Weezer making a better decision to wait longer?

Another car blows by me and I hear music blasting and teens laughing and shouting: “Gladiator!” out the windows, followed by another burst of female shrieks and laughter. The tailwind from the car pulls me along and I sprint with it down the hill. I can see heads in the back window looking at me. It’s a car full of girls from my school, and I realize I have an audience. The car slows enough for me to catch up and as I approach, they pull onto the shoulder of the road, rolling along slowly.

“What are ya running from?” a girl in a letter jacket asks from the back seat. They must be soccer girls. They’re all sweaty, with knee-high pads wrapped around their shins.

“Not running from anything.”

“Wanna ride?” the driver asks, lowering the volume on the stereo. The girl riding shotgun looks in the side mirror and adjusts the headband in her strawberry-blond hair.

Pacing myself with the car I say, “No, I only live a mile from here. Thanks, though...”

The girl with the letter jacket leans out the back window, her brown hair waving like a flag in the wind. “You’re fighting Bao next week. You’re the Gladiator.”

“Yep.”

“Hope you win. He’s such a Juicer a-hole!” she shouts.

The label Juicer catches my attention, and I stumble on the gravel. “Say that again?”

“He’s a total a-hole!” she says, yelling into the wind.

“I know. What did you mean about Juicer?”

The driver accelerates the vehicle. I can see she’s testing my speed and stamina. I increase my pace.

“Bao, he’s a Juicer,” letter jacket girl says. “He and his friends party on Soda.”

I’m running faster now, almost at my top speed, because I desperately want to learn more about Bao’s partying. “He’s drinking Blood Orange Soda? How do you know?” I ask between breaths, my arms pumping as I run.

“Everyone who parties knows who the Juicers are. They’re the ones with muscles and all the rage!” she shouts back as the car speeds off the gravel and back onto the pavement.

Slowing myself, I walk through a cloud of dust as I watch the car pull away. If she’s right that Bao juices on Blood Orange Soda, then I might not have any edge over him in this fight. And if his friends are juicing too, this fight could be a total disaster.

By the time I walk through the kitchen door, my mom is finishing the dishes before she leaves for work. She seems pissed off at me when I set my backpack down next to Kira’s. She’s pissed because this is a change in our normal routine. Usually I’m home after school, or at least by dinner, so we can all have face time before she leaves. Mom’s arms are crossed, her purse draped over her shoulder. She already looks tired, and her night shift hasn’t even begun.

“Where have you been?” she asks, looking back at the clock on the stove.

“I went to Shelby’s house after school.”

“Why didn’t you call?”

“I didn’t want to wake you up.”

“You could’ve called your sister.”

“I sent her a text—”

“Not until you were already late,” Mom says. “I’m happy you have a girlfriend, but you need to be home in the afternoons.”

“Sorry!”

“What were you doing at her house? Were her parents home?”

I know where this is going, and I can’t blame her for bringing it up because I was in Shelby’s bedroom, after all.

“Yeah, her mom and dad were home,” I explain. “I went to her house to check out the backyard. We’re playing a gig at her party next weekend.”

She nods as if it at least sounds plausible. I notice that she’s lost her energy again. The spark she regained from the blood transfusion is totally gone now. Her alabaster skin has lost its glow, and her eyes seem to stare through me into some distant place that holds her transfixed.

“Mom, are you feeling all right?” I ask, reaching out and resting my hand on her shoulder.

She blinks with a forced smile. “Yes, I’m perfectly fine. Honey, there’s meatloaf in the oven. Remember to get to bed at a decent hour.”

She kisses me on the forehead and walks past me. I turn to see her closing the door and she winks at me through the door’s windowpane. Ordinarily a wink like that might mean that everything’s cool, but knowing my mom’s condition, I’m left feeling sad.

I need to eat! I’m famished and thirsty at the same time, and I open the refrigerator door and find a cold Soda waiting for me next to a milk carton. Cracking open the twist top, I chug the drink like it’s the last bottle of liquid on the planet. I finish it so quickly, so easily, that I reach for another bottle behind the milk carton. Do I dare drink two? I’m already feeling a surge of adrenaline, and I’m twisting off the cap and drinking a second bottle of the “juice,” as the soccer player girls call it. Every little bit has got to help me, right?

This bottle I drink slower than the first because my body is no longer starving for it, and I’m feeling lightheaded. The aroma of meatloaf radiates from the oven and I grab a dishrag from the sink, lifting the pan out onto the stove when I accidently burn my right thumb on the pan. Ouch! I drop the f-bomb loud enough that Kira shouts down from her room.

“What happened?”

My singed thumb throbs. “Nothing, I touched a hot pan!”

“Nice one!”

“Thanks for your concern,” I say to myself.

I reach over to the sink and run cold water over my thumb, expecting that stinging, throbbing pain that comes from burns, but the pain is minor. Stopping the water, I dry off my hand and squeeze my thumb, feeling pressure, but no throbbing. The pan is hot. Steam still rises from the meatloaf, so I know my thumb touched a super-hot pan. I hold my thumb up for inspection, and it’s completely healed.

This is interesting. I forgot how Vampires heal faster than Normals because Vampire blood coagulates much faster. My transformation has progressed to the point where my body can heal itself. The question is, how
much
can it heal? I look across the kitchen at the butcher block of steak knives. Not a mortal wound, of course, just a thin slice along my arm…

Removing my hoodie, I toss it onto one of the chairs and roll up the sleeve on my left arm, high enough that my mom wouldn’t notice. I grab a sharp knife and dangle it over the inside of my forearm. My heart rate increases and I’m feeling reckless, with no fear. I take another swig of Soda and breathe twice to calm myself before sliding the tip of the knife along my pale forearm for a quarter-inch gash. I feel pressure, and the red blood emerges from the cut before dripping onto my mom’s kitchen floor.

There’s really no stinging, no pain. It’s as if I’ve cut into somebody else’s body. I set the knife on the counter and hold up my dripping limb. Most people would panic by now but I’m cool, almost in a trance, as I watch the blood thicken and the dripping slow to a puddled wet patch of red. I’m healing. I squeeze my skin to see if blood will pump out of the wound, but the gash narrows into a light scar before my eyes.

Reaching for the Soda, I drink the last few swallows and lean against the counter, watching my arm as Kira enters the kitchen from the family room.

“What happened? You cut yourself!” she says, looking down at the spatters of blood on the floor.

“No! I mean yes, but not by accident.”

She steps closer, eyeing the knife on the counter and blood on the ground.

“You cutting?” she asks. “I know an Emo girl from my school who—”

“I’m not a cutter,” I insist. “I’m a Goth, not an Emo…actually, I’m a Vampire!”

I hold up my arm. She approaches slowly and touches it. “You scarred?”

“Yep.”

“Wow, that’s freaky,” she says. “I wanna be a Vampire!”

“Wait your turn,” I say. “You know how invincible this makes me? I can jump, practically fly, and my wounds heal. There’s no way Bao can hurt me.”

“Unless he drives a stake through your heart,” Kira points out.

“Okay, there’s one way Bao can hurt me,” I acknowledge. “I don’t think he would do that.”

Most of my concerns and fears of Bao and his juicing melt away. This could be a tough fight for sure, but he’s a Normal. He’s not invincible. He will bleed. He will feel pain, and that should give me the edge that I need.

Kira opens the fridge and pokes her head inside, grabbing a carton of milk, then turns back to me.

“You’re not totally invincible. Now that you’re a Vampire, you could contract V2 just like mom, right?”

Leave it to my sister to be the buzz kill!

Of course there are pluses and minuses to everything in life. When I chose to transform, Mr. Striefland warned me that it wouldn’t solve all my problems. I transformed anyway. Now that I’m a Vampire and I have the strength and skills to protect myself, I’m realizing I’ve made myself vulnerable in a different way. Maybe that’s why my mom was cautious about me transforming in the first place.

There’s no turning back now.

Typing my journal notes for English Lit while sitting in bed, I follow tonight’s chatter on Twitter and Facebook. Everyone from my school is excited about tomorrow’s football game, and I notice cliques trash-talking others. Some people are really into sports and school spirit, but this is ridiculous. Scrolling from one friend to another, I see my name tagged in a couple of posts. I follow the threads, and somebody has posted my Facebook profile photo, the one of me flipping Bao the finger. And the photo is captioned: “The Gladiator.”

There’s an entire conversation here about me and Bao and the upcoming fight. People are choosing sides and they’re even betting. I click over to Twitter and type in #Gladiator and #DariusHunter and there’s more trash-talking there, too. Logging onto RenRen, I search Bao’s name and also mine and there’s more than a hundred comments, photos, and videos. My Chinese isn’t very good, so I copy and paste the posts into Google translate and learn that there are students in China planning fight parties. Somebody from Bao’s gang has promised to record it live for friends back in China.

Gulp!

My stomach aches. I close my laptop and lie back on my pillow, staring up at the floor joists in the ceiling. The spider that started its web last week has expanded it across two pipes now. It’s been busy but so have I, and I have a lot more to do. Mom needs help. Her spirit is different. She’s detaching.

Reaching for my phone on the nightstand, I hold it up above me as I search my contacts for Jonathan’s name. I hate calling people because it seems weirdly intrusive. I’ve called him a half-dozen times this week, but he never picks up.

“Hello?”

The man’s voice is deep, and it sounds as if I might’ve woken him up.

What time is it?

My clock on the milk crate shows it’s 11:30 p.m.

“Hello?” he says again.

“Jonathan Wurtz?”

“Yes, this is Jonathan,” he says, clearing his throat.

“You don’t know me. My name is Darius. You knew my mom back in college,” I say, stuttering between words.

“Oh? Who is your mother?”

This is the point of no return. Hanging up now, he’d never find out who I am, but for my mom’s sake, I go for it.

“My mom was your girlfriend. Her name is Virginia,” I say, allowing him enough time to remember her.

“Virginia Hunter? You’re her son?”

“Yeah, I found you online. I hope you don’t think I’m a total stalker for contacting you, but your e-mail address and phone number were listed on the
Chicago Tribune
website. I thought this was your work number.” I blabber on about how I shouldn’t have called so late.

“My work number rolls to my mobile number. What can I do for you, Darius? And how is your mother?” Jonathan asks.