So at first I started talking to Zach just to distract him. I told him if he really wanted to bring me something before class, he should try hot chocolate and a croissant. That fit his theory just fine, so the next morning, there was my order, exactly as I’d requested. Like I said – the early signs pointed to “easily trainable”.
“Hmm,” I said, letting the hot chocolate scald away the taste of blood on my tongue.
“So you’ll go out with me this weekend, right?” Zach asked. “I figured we could start with dinner at Los Espejos.” He pronounced it “ezz-PAY-joe’s”, but I still recognised it as the Spanish word for mirrors. Olympia and Wilhelm had scouted out all the more dangerous places in town and this Spanish restaurant was at the top of the list. It was lovely and expensive, but the walls and the ceiling were completely covered in mirrors. Too risky, no matter how besotted my date might be. Our little “family” tried to avoid even walking past it.
“Meh,” I said with a shrug. “I’d rather have a hamburger at Big Burgers and Bowling.”
He clutched his heart. “You are my dream girl.”
So that’s how it started. And I’ll admit it: I kind of fell for him. Dating Zach fit the new take-no-prisoners attitude I was trying to develop. I figured if I could be a badass vampire, I wouldn’t miss my old life so much. It was nice having someone to distract me from wishing I could call my mom or kiss Jasper one last time.
Plus it was sort of exciting to have someone be that into me. He couldn’t keep his hands off me, no matter how many times I threw him into a wall or nearly broke his fingers. I admired his persistence.
On the other hand, it got harder and harder not to bite him. You have to understand, the blood we drink every day to stay alive comes out of a jar in the refrigerator. It is the very definition of gross. Vampires are designed to drink from living (or very recently dead) people; that’s what we’re hungry for. Olympia was trying to teach me to exercise self-control, but I wasn’t learning nearly fast enough to keep up with my relationship with Zach.
After three months, I started thinking about the future. By that point, I thought Zach was pretty hot. I figured it was almost definitely true love forever. And wouldn’t it suck (ha ha!) if I stayed sixteen and he got older and older? Wouldn’t it make more sense to turn him into a vampire while he was still my own age? Then we could really be together forever. Awesome, right?
But I still don’t think I would have done anything on my own. I would have waited at least another three months to be sure that I liked him that much. I mean, I’m not totally crazy.
Unfortunately it was only a month later when Zach spotted my teeth sliding out during one of our make-out sessions – this time in a closet that was apparently not dim enough.
“Whoa,” he said, stepping back. “What’s wrong with your teeth?”
“Uh – nothing,” I said, covering my mouth with one hand. I turned away from him, but he grabbed my arm and pulled me around.
“That is so weird,” he said, which was a much calmer reaction than I would have had. He reached out and touched one of my teeth with his index finger. A drop of blood immediately appeared on his skin, and I panicked. Was that enough to turn him into a vampire? That wouldn’t be fair! I hadn’t intentionally bitten him!
At the same time, I couldn’t stop myself from licking it off. He took his hand back and we stared at each other for a minute.
“OK, yes,” I said. “I’m a vampire.”
Zach let out a bark of laughter. “That’s impossible,” he said.
I let my teeth slide all the way out and held back my hair so he could see the marks on my neck. “It’s not impossible; it’s just lame. Here, check for a pulse, you’ll see.” I grabbed his hand and wrapped his fingers around my wrist.
I knew he wouldn’t find a heartbeat on me, but we were close enough to each other that I could hear his own heart speeding up as he held my wrist and stared at me some more.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I don’t bite. Ha ha.” I took my hand back, prying off his fingers. I was about to walk out of there and straight home to tell Olympia we needed to move again, when he finally spoke, in a wobbly, I just saw a pterodactyl kind of voice.
“What if I wanted you to?” he asked.
“Wanted me to what?”
“Bite me,” he said. He took my wrists again and pulled me closer, shaking back his hair to expose his neck. “Do it. I want to be like you. I want to be a vampire too.”
“Yikes, dude,” I said, trying not to look at his neck. “Care to think about that for half a minute? It’s kind of like proposing to me, only even more eternal.” I thought that would scare him off, but it didn’t. Which maybe should have been a warning sign, but at the time I found it endearing. So sue me. I was in love…or at least I thought I was.
“Exactly,” Zach said. “I love you. I’ll always love you. I want to be with you forever.”
I didn’t say yes. Not even with his neck right there waiting for me. Some little corner of my brain was going, Wait! Think! This is not a normal reaction! Run away! Unfortunately that little voice wasn’t yelling loud enough, although it tried its best for the next few weeks, during which Zach pleaded with me every day to turn him into a vampire. Even in my love-blind state, I started to find it pretty annoying. I kept thinking, Can we please have one date that doesn’t end with you shoving your neck in my face and pledging your undying love? Can’t we just eat pizza and maybe talk about our homework now and then?
Then one day he called me and told me to come over right away. I told him it would have to wait because I was dying my hair. He told me he was dying.
I said, “You too? What colour?”
And he said, “No, seriously dying. I mean dying.”
“Literally?” I said. “Could you wait until my hair is dry?”
He said he didn’t think so, because there was an awful lot of blood already and he was feeling kind of woozy.
That’s when I realised he was serious.
Thank goodness for vampire super-speed. I got to his house in about nine seconds flat. Zach was slumped against his bathtub, looking pale, as blood from a long cut on one of his arms pooled around his jeans and bare chest. There was a glass next to him half-filled with blood and a piece of paper with bloody fingerprints all over it. It was weird and gross, and yet my whole body started freaking out with hunger at the smell of all that blood.
“What on Earth were you doing?” I asked, standing in the doorway. I didn’t want to get too close to that smell.
“I love you,” he said in this whispery, trying-to-be-heroic voice.
“Answer the question,” I snapped.
“Well, I…I was going to write you a note in my blood to show you how much I love you…and then there was so much blood I thought I’d save it for you to drink.” He waved his hand at the glass. “But then it kind of…kept coming and…I think I did something wrong.”
“I’ll say you did something wrong,” I said. “You freaking nearly killed yourself, you idiot. Couldn’t you prick your finger like a normal person, instead of slicing up your whole arm and bleeding to death?”
“I didn’t mean to,” he said, sounding irritated and a little less whispery. “And don’t call me an idiot.”
The scent of all the fresh blood was making me dizzy. “We should wrap you up,” I said, “and get you to a hospital.” I grabbed a towel and knelt next to the tub.
“It’s too late for that,” he said, back to his dying voice.