Blood Orange Soda: Paranormal Romance (33 page)

Alex, Marcus, and Tandi join me, Weezer and Angel on the road, and we wait for Bao and Chao to step out of the shadows with their gang in tow. My heart pumps hard in my chest and I look at my crew, which actually appear as if they’re a legitimate gang. What we lack in size, we make up for in Soda courage. We have enough Juice flowing through our veins that we stand our ground with confidence, and that’s what matters most.

Not sure if it’s my imagination, but somewhere behind me I feel Shelby’s presence. Is she out there watching me? I turn and look to my left into the shadows of the trees. I can’t see her. She’s here, though, and I block her from my mind.

Bao saunters into the middle of the road and I meet him there, about a foot away. Chao walks out onto the road, too, as if he’s a referee. Angel and Weezer see this, and they join us.

“Kick Bao’s ass,” Weezer whispers into my ear. “You know you want to.”

Angel hugs me and I hold her tightly as she says, “I promise I won’t step in this time,” before she steps back.

“Okay, street fight!” Chao shouts, with nasty cigarette breath.

“Whoa, wait, no weapons, right?” Angel says.

Everyone nods in agreement. Bao and I stare at each other, both of us loosening up our limbs. He gives me a subtle nod, as if to say,
Give them a good show.

“How do we know when the fight is over?” Angel asks.

“It’s over when somebody is too bloody to stand up, or dead,” Chao says, looking back at his AF members. “Yeah?”

“What if somebody wants to give up?” Angel says with obvious concern. “Can he tap out?”

“If Darius wants to quit, he can any time!” Bao shouts.

The AF thugs hoot and holler while the kids on the train bridge above us chant, “Gladiator! Gladiator…Glad…i…a…tor!”

The fight starts without any official warning when Bao grabs my sweatshirt and spins me around so fast I tumble off the road. My hands hit first, stinging from the gravel, and I wipe them on my jeans as I stand again. Bao runs toward me just like Jack and I have practiced, and I leap over Bao, springing off his shoulders, landing on my feet. Everyone cheers! Bao looks around like a dog that ran past its ball. He can’t believe he failed to tackle me like a quarterback.

Bouncing on the balls of my feet, I wave Bao toward me. “C’mon, let’s do this!”

He lunges at me with his fists up. I hit him low in the gut and follow with three more blows to his ribs,
bam, bam, bam!
He closes in until he bear-hugs me to slow my burst of punches. People are shouting my name and Bao’s name as I struggle to get out of his hold. The last thing I want is for Bao to throw me to the ground with all his burly weight on top of me. To break free, I stand up tall, set my mouth on his neck, and lick him to break his concentration.

He lets go. “You freak! No biting! Damn it!” Bao says, wiping my saliva off his neck and onto his jeans.

“Sorry, I forgot, no weapons.” I smile.

Everyone cheers, and this rattles Bao enough that I know he’ll keep a safe distance. From here, the fight becomes dangerously real. We throw punches and kicks, pummeling each other back and forth with kicks to the ribs and shoulders. We’re evenly matched except I’m able to leap and fly over Bao whenever I need distance to catch my breath. The crowd is barbaric, shouting obscenities, and the glow of cell phones assures me this will soon be on Facebook and YouTube.

Are you not entertained? Of course you all are!

My exhaustion from the 5k run and all this leaping begins to catch up with me. My punches are slower, and my kicks aren’t as high. When I make another attempt to leap over Bao, he reaches up and lands a punch into my right kidney that sends me tumbling to the gravel again. This time Bao has knocked the wind out of me.

Everyone watches in silence. I’m rolling over on the dirt, my lower back radiating pain, and decide this is where it ends. I’ll give up, and he’s the winner. Bao walks over and stands above me, like he always does.

“Get up,” he says between breaths.

My pain is real. Gasping for air, I raise my hand and slap the path, tapping out. “I can’t. I’m done! You win!”

“Gladiator….Gladiator…Gladiator!” the kids from the tracks and tunnel chant. My fans want an encore, and I’m in no shape to deliver one.

Sitting up, I’m still too winded to even stand. Bao turns and scoffs at the crowd. This was supposed to be his fight. He’s the winner, yet they cheer for the beaten Vampire. I watch Chao walk out onto the road and hold up Bao’s hand as the victorious bully. And I struggle to my feet with Angel’s help.

“Gladiator! Gladiator!” echoes through the tunnel.

Chao seems agitated, and kids throw rocks from the train bridge at him and Bao. Alex and Marcus join in on the stoning. Marcus hurls a large rock that hits Chao in the head. Leave it to the Gamer to score a headshot!

Chao stumbles to one knee, his head bleeding. “Screw you! Screw all of you FREAKS!”

In one swift motion of rage, Chao pulls a knife from his boot and lunges at me, slicing me across my right cheek and shoulder. I stagger back as he stops and looks up at me with sadistic satisfaction. There’s warm blood dripping from my cheek, and I touch the gash. Everyone is silent and holding their phones. I pull off my hoodie and T-shirt and inspect the wound oozing blood from my shoulder.

“Oh, Darius!” Angel says when she sees my gashes.

“I’m okay,” I assure her, touching my cheek again, and inspecting my torn hoodie. I feel both wounds quickly coagulating and healing.

Somewhere on the train tracks somebody notices what’s happening to my body and shouts, “He’s a Vampire!”

The word echoes through the woods as if it’s a train horn. And then more kids begin chanting, “Blood! Blood! Blood!” I’m not sure if the crowd is cheering for me or for Chao.

They want blood?!

A gang boy from AF calls to Chao, “Stick him in the heart! Do it!”

“No, Chao!” Bao shouts, reaching for him.

Chao rushes me again with his knife. I block him, pushing him aside, and he falls toward Angel. At this moment everything happens in slow motion: Chao lands on Angel as his blade punctures her denim jacket on the left side of her chest before the knife falls to ground. Angel collapses, shrieking in pain.

What did I just do?

“God, Darius!” Bao says. “So sorry, Angel,” he pleads, before he follows Chao to the safety of their gang along the tree line. They’re watching curiously, like a pack of coyotes before they step back into the safety of the forest. What have I done? It’s Weezer who brings me to my senses when he steps in.

“Angel needs help!”

I run and kneel next to her in the dirt. Tandi sits and holds Angel’s head as Alex and Marcus stand guard with Weezer. Angel clutches a wide spot of blood on her jacket.

“Angel, it’s not that bad,” I lie.

She opens her eyes. “I feel blood everywhere.”

“We’ll get you to the hospital. Hang on.”

“I can’t breathe, Darius. I can’t breathe,” she says. Her eyes are wide and her body is in distress.

“Shhh, hold on,” I say, stroking her soft hair. “Weezer, pull the car up.”

Tandi is in tears, and everyone watches in silence. It feels darker now, and there’s no more ambient glow of phones. Nobody wants to record this moment for Facebook or YouTube. I watch Angel’s breathing slow and become shallower.

“Is she gonna make it, Darius?” Weezer asks.

“Get the car, Weezer!” I shout at him before he runs off.

There’s so much blood seeping across her T-shirt and soaking into her jacket. Putting pressure on the wound should help, right? But I’m wrong; Angel’s breathing fades into even shallower breaths, and her head turns to the side. I’m so angry I turn to accuse Chao of murder, but everyone from AF is gone. They’ve run off into the night. There’s only a silent audience at the entrance of the tunnel and up on the tracks, holding vigil. And I feel Shelby again—her invisible presence, watching, stalking from the shadows.

“Angel, stay with me,” I say to her.

She coughs. “I know I said I wouldn’t protect you—”

“It’s my fault. I shoved him,” I say to her in a whisper, as a salty tear stings my own scarred-over cheek wound.

“Sometimes things happen for a reason,” Angel whispers between breaths. “Right?”

That’s what Jonathan said earlier:
Everything happens for a reason.
Why does
this
have to happen?
This isn’t happening! I won’t let this happen!

I distract Angel from her pain while I wait for Weezer to fetch the car. “Angel, remember when we were together, how we’d grab those big straws from Starbucks so we could make smoothies at your house?” She nods. “Or when we would sit on my roof at night watching fireflies, and we’d count the falling stars?”

“Yeah,” she smiles through the pain, and I pull her hair away from her face.

Her eyes search mine. “Darius, I love—”

“Shhhh, no you don’t,” I say. “It’s the Soda.”

“I love you, Darius,” she says.

God! How could I have missed this? Our summer romance ended with her entering high school and me left behind, stuck with another year of middle school. I had broken up with her because I thought it wouldn’t be fair for her to date a younger guy. You can’t bring an eighth-grader to your homecoming dance or your winter formal, right? I realize in this moment that Angel wasn’t just protecting a boy from a bully; she was protecting the boy she loved. And now she is slipping away, right before my eyes.

I have this idea that maybe the Soda and my transformation did happen for a reason. If my body can heal my wounds, could my body heal Angel’s wounds too? What if I mixed our blood? Sliding my lips across her cheek and down to her neck, I smell her sweet perfume and feel the slow beating of her pulse with my lips. She turns her head away, giving me easier access to her artery. She knows what’s about to happen, and she approves.

In the background I feel Shelby watching me. I look up and see her apparition on the road with us. She’s wearing a black dress with a veil over her face, as if she’s attending a funeral. I look around and realize Tandi and the others can’t see or hear Shelby.

“She’s dying, Darius,” Shelby says, with a dismissive wave of her hand.

“Get away, leave us alone!” I yell to her.

She approaches, each step feeling like impending doom. “Why waste your first bite on her?” she says. “Bite me, and I’m yours forever.”

She’s a deceiver, an angry and selfish kind of evil. Angel spoke truth when she said Shelby isn’t right for me, and I see now that Shelby’s attraction comes from a desire for power and status. Shelby wants to have it all. And if she can’t have me, she doesn’t want Angel to have me, either. I’d rather waste my first bite trying to save Angel than waste a bite on this unholy creature.

“No matter what happens, know that I love you, too,” I say to Angel, as I lean in and kiss her lips. She touches my face with her hand, our kiss lingering.

“No, Darius!” Shelby screams.

I move down to Angel’s soft neck again and sink my teeth in deep, savoring the exquisite warmth of her blood. Angel inhales as if she’s receiving the breath of life. I feel a surge of fury through my heart, and my memories of this girl flicker in front me like a movie—our evenings swimming at the rock quarry, how we watched fireworks from the branch of an oak tree, and kissing in the back row of the movie theater.

Opening my eyes, I notice Angel is silent, and Shelby is gone. All I hear is Tandi weeping, holding Angel’s head in her lap. I’m blinded by headlights as Weezer steps out of the car.

“How is she?”

I look up at him, and then over at Tandi weeping, and then down at Angel’s lifeless body. How is she? I don’t know.

“Darius, how is she?!” Weezer screams, demanding an answer.

I block the bright headlights with my hand, desperately wanting to give him good news, but all I can say is, “I think I killed her.”

When a fight goes viral, there’s no stopping it. There’s no way to prevent people from seeing and sharing the video. Imagine dozens from the same event, and you know how fast news can spread. The fight video between Bao and me spread quickly in the USA and also China. At first it was just among high school kids, Goths and Emos. But within a couple of days, everyone was talking about “The Gladiators Video.” Most of the footage that surfaced from the fight is dark and grainy. You can’t see faces, only figures fighting. Most of it ends right as Angel falls, and Bao and Chao run from the scene. A few clips show me kneeling next to Angel, but Marcus and Alex stand guard, blocking any good angle on the bite.

The punishment for fighting in our school district is severe, but the administrative staff waited ten days before disciplining Bao and me. Everyone thought it was best to get the funeral behind us. They knew I was an emotional wreck, more depressed than usual, and in no mood to explain the fight.

We were told to bring at least one parent or guardian to the sentencing meeting, and on a cold Monday morning in November, we’re sitting at a long conference room table in our school’s administrative office. Uncle Jack is to my left. Bao’s dad sits at my right, and Bao sits one seat beyond that. Across from us sits Officer Denny and Principal Campton, a no-nonsense drill sergeant with a crew cut.

My mind is still numb. And even though my stab wounds healed instantly, I’m still very sore from the fight. Bao has cuts on his face, and a black eye with stitches. Principle Campton lectures us about violence with a voice so monotone he sounds like he’s singing a song with no melody. We listen, and Jack rests his hand on my bouncing knee under the table. He’s both upset and supportive, and I know he feels responsible for the fight.

“Violence is not tolerated in this school district,” Principal Campton says. “You both know that,” he says, looking at Bao, and then at me.

We nod.

Officer Denny turns a page on his notepad. “I’ll need names of the other students.”

“All of them?” I ask.

“The ones who helped arrange the fight,” Officer Denny says.

Boa and I remain silent. There’s no way he’ll cough up names of his gang homeboys. That would be a death sentence. And I’m not interested in speaking either, out of fear of possible “revenging.”