Nightlight (11 page)

“Um, do I know you from work?” I strained to remember if he was one of my co-workers. I strained to remember if I had a job.

“Goodness gravy, Belle—I sit next to you everyday in English!”

“I’m sorry—every face at school kind of blends into one conglomerate dull face except for the face of Edwart Mullen, the love of my life.”

He clapped his hands slowly, sinisterly. “Well congratulations to
you two,”
he said. “I hope you have a
really
happy life forever and ever in your sweet little house behind a neatly mowed lawn. What you two have is special—you know that?
Really
special. We’re all
very
jealous of your overwhelming love for one another.”

“Thank you.”

“To get on with my point, I’m Joshua. A Vampire. I don’t mean to be rude, but you two are trespassing on my grave property right now. I’m truly sorry about all this Belle—honestly I think you’re very attractive, even though you don’t wear makeup or pay attention to the fashions. To make a confession, I had every intention of asking you to prom the first week of school. But now I’m going to have to take your lives, unfortunately, to nourish myself.”

I balked. Another vampire? I guess it made sense; the states of the Pacific Northwest were known for their lenient monster laws.

Next to me, Edwart screamed and covered his eyes, likely visualizing his triumph over this flamboyantly costumed vampire. I relaxed, comfortably settling into the gravestone, ready to watch what every girl hopes to experience once: a real-life vampire fight.

“Not so fast, Josh,” I said from my seat. “Cut him up into little bits and burn them, Edwart!”

“What?
Why would I do that? Why would I ever
ever
do that?” he pondered and then gave me a sharp look. “No! I am not pondering that, Belle! I am hysterically yelling right now. I am experiencing the greatest fear I have ever felt in my life.”

Edwart was visibly shaking—I think that happens when vegetarian vampires haven’t eaten a bear in a while or something.

“Edwart, we don’t have time to have another DTR talk right now. There’s
another
vampire now, and I don’t think he’s familiar with Peter Singer’s
The Ethics of What We Eat.”

“Another
vampire?” he looked behind his shoulder. “Where’s the first?” he quavered, most likely from hunger. He gave me another sharp look. “NO! Stop that! I am not quavering from hunger! That doesn’t even make sense.”

“Come on, Edwart,” I cajoled. “He’s a vampire, you’re a vampire: get to work!”

“Stop, Belle! This is serious—this is not a good time to role-play.”

“Role-play?”

“Yeah, role-play. Like that time we role-played that I could lift Tom Newt’s car, or when we role-played that I could reach speeds of up to a hundred mph. Or the one where I had to wear vampire teeth and tell you how much I wanted to drain out all your blood when I first laid eyes on you.” He froze. “Whoa. Some of this stuff is starting to come together.”

I turned to Joshua, signaling that we needed some time to work this out.

“You know what?” Joshua said. “Even though I am a real vampire, which means by nature I am aloof and hot-tempered, I will give you guys some time. Don’t mind me—I’ll stand right here, silently seething and flashing my eyes.”

“So all this time you thought I was a
vampire?”
Edwart whispered furiously, pulling me a few inches to the left.

“Sure,” I said, “you know, the lion falls for the lamb …”

“What?”

“Sorry. It’s easier for me if I explain things in animal terms.”

“So you thought I was a … lamb?”

“No, a lion. Or, you know, you’re the shark and I’m the seal.”

He stared at me blankly.

“Okay,” I tried again. “You’re the giraffe and I’m the leaf.”

“Are you breaking up with me?” he asked quietly.

“Of course not,” I said tenderly. “Only if you’re not a vampire.”

“But I’m not a vampire.”

“But … you are kind of a control freak. In a vampire way.”

“You
made
me boss you around! And while we’re being honest, you’re my first girlfriend, and before I met you I was doubtful that I had the requisite mouth muscles to speak aloud.”

I felt my entire monster-hierarchy, with Edwart Vampires at the top, realigning dramatically. “But what about the time that we were talking about different kinds of blood and you kept talking about how each one has its own unique merits, just like different types of wine you said, and then you went on like a fifteen-minute rant about blood homogenization, and then you went into that elaborate mnemonic about the various steps to take while drinking blood? You know, the five S’s: suck, sip, swirl … swirl again … and then…”

“Simmer.”

“Yeah, simmer.”

“Wasn’t there another one?”

“I think so—I have it written down on some little cards at home.”

“So then how are you not a vampire?” I asked, purposefully not inflecting my voice at the end of my question for a lawyer effect.

“Belle, I’m … I’m sorry. I’m not a vampire. I’m only a
moderate
blood drinker. I like my hamburgers
medium-rare.”

“Okay, we all set?” asked Josh, tossing another shriveled mole onto a pile.
How civilized
, I thought, to have a designated place for appetizer-refuse, just like a good host providing a bowl to put shrimp tails in.

“I guess so,” I said. “Get him, Edwart!”

“No Belle—I can’t fight a monster! I will never live up to your abnormal and perverse fantasies!”

That hurt. Plenty of teenage girls wished their boyfriends were vampires. Durkheim would blame the values of society for this. I pretty much agreed the problem came from some other place external to my brain.

“I’m getting the hell out of here!” Edwart said, beginning to back away. “If you love me, let’s go!”

“But Edwart!” I called after him. “We have to defeat this vampire! Are you just going to leave me alone here with him?”

“Isn’t that what you want?”

Well that proved it. A real vampire would have been sucking my blood as he said this. I watched as Edwart disappeared into the fog, this time not in a magical way but in a loud, falling way, signifying that he had tripped over a gravestone. Josh and I watched as he reappeared, hurdling over the gravestones as he jogged. Each time he fell, he
screamed, looked back over his shoulder at us, and clambered up to his pigeon-toed feet.

Josh and I sat there, an awkward silence quickly setting in. I took out my little Edwart-keepsake knapsack. I hated to do this in front of a stranger, but I needed some release. Determinedly, I began to burn the items one-by-one: my biology lab report, my stuffed Dracula, some firewood I chopped during our hiking trip, the chunk of hair I pulled from that waitress at Buca di Beppo. I felt better after that.

“Hmm,” I said cheerfully, “should we tell ghost stories?”

“I’m not sure you’re aware of the peril of your situation, Belle. You see—I am a hungry, amoral vampire, and you are a vulnerable, blood-filled mortal girl. Nonetheless, I would like to share with you one ghost story. I call this story,
‘The Tale of the Long Ago Locket,’”
Josh said in a shaky ghost voice.

I had definitely heard that story before. I hummed to keep myself from falling asleep.

“What’s the matter?” asked Josh. “Aren’t you interested? It’s a
really
scary story.”

“I know it is. I saw it on an episode of
Are You Afraid of the Dark?”

Josh glowered at me. “Most sad,” he said. “It’s too bad you know so much about ghost stories. Tell me, do you know what a mortal girl’s best means of survival is when a vampire advances?” he asked, advancing.

I yawned. “Yeah, I think I’ve seen that episode too.”

He leaned in close. “Run. The answer is,
run,”
he said, crouching down into pre-pounce position.

Suddenly, I panicked, rolling out of post-pounce position. This was wrong, all wrong! I was supposed to be bitten by Edwart and become a vampire myself! I wasn’t supposed to be bitten by some strange vampire and die! Everyone knows there is a fine, finicky line between eternal-life-as-vampire v. death-as-a-human.

“I hope you like dying.” Josh spoke calmly and confidently, like the way you might speak to your mashed potatoes.

As he took another step towards me, out of the corner of my eye I saw Edwart, bruised and battered after finally surpassing all those gravestones, fleeing out of the gate as Joshua leaned in to bite.

PARALYZED WITH FEAR, I STRUGGLED TO REMEMBER
the rules of fighting I learned from Cardio Kicks: 1) You go girl! 2) Work it! 3) C’mon, ladies, ten more reps!

None of those rules would work. Josh’s teeth were four inches from my throat and it was only a matter of time before he halved it, and then his teeth would only be two inches away. Then one inch. Then one-half … one-quarter … one-eighth … one-sixteenth … Suddenly, I remembered Zeno’s paradox.
As long as Josh kept moving towards my throat in half integrals, he could never reach it
.

However, he did not move towards me in half integrals—he moved towards me in a single lunge. Abandoning logic, I settled for my krav maga training, picking up the bench to my left and throwing it at him. It crumbled upon impact.
Of course
. All the traditional glass benches in Oregon
had recently been replaced with safety glass benches. Thinking fast, I squatted and jumped high to intimidate Josh with my combat training. But Josh didn’t retreat. Instead, he assumed Warrior One pose. That was my idea! My only idea.

Well
, I thought,
I could always use those nunchucks I carry with me
. I pulled them from my socks and began to swing them above my head. I wondered if they could twirl so much that I would be lifted from the earth, but before I could contemplate where I’d fly, Josh struck me first, hard, in the stomach.

I flew backwards into a gravestone.
Thank God I’m not in a ballet studio full of mirrors!
I thought with relief. Then I heard the sweetest sound I could imagine: a deep, guttural “meow.” That’s when I knew I was dead. That sound—the only one I wanted to hear—was calling me to the only heaven I wanted to go to: Cat Heaven.

I opened my eyes to see a black cat rubbing gently against my legs. Never mind, I was alive. No wonder I thought it was an angel; the way it purred reminded me of the way Edwart mumbled.

That’s when I decided to
really
fight. I jumped up to kick Josh in the butt. I got kind of embarrassed mid-kick, though, so it ended up being more of a timid toe-tap. His butt cheeks jiggled, unscathed, sending me backwards into the empty grave he had come out of.

I was staring at the night sky, dazed, when Josh’s head blocked my view of the moon. He swiftly moved forwards, as if to attack, but then stopped. Had my toe-tap sent him the wrong signal? He stood up straight at the edge of the grave,
looking down at me. For the first time I noticed how tall he was. Actually, from where I was sitting, he seemed really, really tall. I like tall guys. The two things I look for in a guy is how tall he is and whether or not he’s a vampire. Pretty much all my crushes have been one or the other. One guy, actually, was both big and a vampire, but he turned out to be gay.

“Die!” he growled.

“Help!” I screamed.

“Shhh!” everyone at the burial next to us whispered.

“Sorry,” we said together. He pulled me out of the grave and we continued struggling in silence.

We fought for a while, occasionally forgetting which of us was the human and which was the vampire. At one point, he was wearing my dress and I was wearing his cape. I was about to bite, but then, for a second, I thought I saw something redeemable beneath those red eyes and that cape and that face made pale by white powder.

“Are you the boy who reads
Romeo and Juliet
every day at lunch?” I asked suddenly.

“No, Belle. Jeez Louise! I sit at the table behind you and your friends, with all my brothers and sisters.”

I thought back to the tables in the cafeteria: Edwart’s table, Jocks, Populars (my table), Arty Kids, Vampires. He must have sat at the last one.

Seeing me sit down and open a yearbook to finally sort this out, Josh continued: “Remember that first day in the cafeteria when we both reached for the cottage cheese at the same time? And then we both tried to pass it off like we were
actually reaching for the fries but really we were just waiting for the other person to leave so we could get the cottage cheese? Or the second day when I saved you from getting hit by a car in the school parking lot?”

He spoke like someone from a far, far away time, like middle school. It was so charming! His sentences were so long, I realized, I could easily run away. I could actually have run away at any point, but something kept me there, even when Josh turned away to yell into the darkness.

“Vicky!” he called. “How is the video going?”

“Got it all on tape!” a small female vampire said, running out from behind a tombstone. She was holding a camcorder. I could tell she was evil because she had wavy red hair, a weird smile, and she was wearing a shaggy fur poncho thing.

“I thought this would make a dramatic place for our home movie,” Josh gestured to the graveyard. “How would you like to be a movie star?” he asked me menacingly.

Before I could answer, Vicky rushed over to fix my hair and apply glue-in fangs in my mouth.

“What movie?” I asked incredulously. I hadn’t signed any release. My fight moves were copyrighted.

“It’s called ‘A Day in the Life of Josh and Vicky!’” Vicky said. “We started filming this morning when we woke up, and we continued throughout the day. It’s been really fun, especially when I filmed Josh doing his homework.”

I made a home movie once, right before I left Phoenix forever. I dressed up and danced in the ballet outfit I used to wear when I was a toddler. My mom loved it.

“I have an idea,” Vicky continued. “Belle, why don’t you say something on tape? How about ‘Great to meet you, Josh and Vicky! Thanks for not eating me!’”