Legend of the Virgin Vampire

Porter and Zero

I wasn't tired, but I couldn't face my mother yet. I didn't have a clue what I was going to say when she demanded the "explanation" she'd promised to extract from me before. So I went to bed before she got home from work, sometime around midnight. I pretended to be asleep when she came in and checked my pulse and looked me over by the light of her cell phone. I knew what she was looking for: the bruises. She wouldn't find any. I just had to hope she would buy that all those wounds had been dirt and grass stains. I didn't know.

At this point, it was starting to sound easier to confess to some drug use and take the punishment. Maybe I could convince her that marijuana sped up the healing process. But I didn't want to see the consternation in her eyes if I told her I was doing drugs. In some ways, me voluntarily getting high would disappoint her more than me involuntarily being turned into an undead blood-sucker.

I stayed awake all night, listening to mice crawling in the walls. Now that my neighborhood had gone to sleep and traffic had stopped, I could hear everything. I could hear the cops when they finally left Emily's house. I could hear the nocturnal animals outside. I could hear my mother breathing heavily as she slept, even though her room was on the floor below.

And my eyes. I finally started to get tired and I still couldn't sleep, because the moon was so bright. It was like trying to take a nap during broad daylight.

I think I did sleep for a couple of hours around dawn. But then traffic started to move again and I woke up. Then I did the cowardly thing: I left my mom a note and headed out to Porter's.

It wasn't even eight o'clock, and that idiot had already called me three times this morning. But that's how Porter did things. Balls out, all the time. Sleeping was for the weak. For people who were content to consume and never create. Losers who had no interest in Brazilian girlfriends.

It was two miles to Porter's and I walked the whole way. I wore a pair of aviator sunglasses that my uncle had left behind the last time he visited. They weren't cool, but they were better than baking my eyeballs. The sun had returned in full force and it seared any part of me that it touched. But I welcomed the distraction. Without the pain, I would have been forced to think about Emily.

When I arrived at Porter's house, his sister opened the door. Sidney. Sidney's a year older than us guys, very geeky, and very hot. You get this sense that no one's ever convinced her she's wrong about anything. Which, now that I think about it, she has in common with Porter. Must be the privileged childhood. You would never call Sid and Porter spoiled, it's just that they fully believe that they deserve every good thing that comes their way. You gotta envy that.

"Oh, good, Neo's here," said Sidney. I guess this was a reference to my glasses. She says things like this with just enough good humor so that you can never figure out if she actually hates you or not. "Come on in. Morpheus and Trinity have been waiting for you."

When I stepped into the kitchen, she said, "Want a croissant?"

"You made croissants?"

She gave me a look. "Yeah, right. Mom brought home a bunch from Le Fleur Bleu." She pointed to the box where it lay open on the counter. "Eat 'em or not. Whatever." Then she disappeared down the stairs to the basement, also known as Sidney's-private-pad-which-to-this-day-Zero-and-I-had-still-never-seen.

I approached the croissants. They smelled good. I picked one up and bit off a corner. Nothing. No normal food that I'd eaten since yesterday tasted like food. I'd probably never enjoy eating a croissant again.

To hell with croissants. I'd probably never enjoy pizza again.

Something smelled like food, though. Sidney. Her scent still lingered in the kitchen, and that was nice. Tempting, but not enough to scare me. I knew what it felt like to be really hungry. Like your veins were frying on hot asphalt. What I didn't know was how long it would be before it happened again. How long could I live on what I'd taken from Emily? And what was I going to do to keep from hurting someone else?