Post by shiina on Jun 20, 2011 22:10:16 GMT -5
It’s hard enough moving from a very rural area in Texas to a considered but still not very rural part of Virginia-boring Dinwiddie, Virginia, at that-when you were a normal freshman. The thing is, though, it gets twenty times harder when you’re a vampire such as myself being packed into a minuscule building with over three-hundred kids in my grade alone; and now multiply that estimated three-hundred by four to incorporate all the grades in the school, and you have Dinwiddie High, in all its sardine-packed glory.
Before you get off listing reasons why warm, sunny Texas isn’t a much better place for a vampire such as myself to live, I must tell you one thing. Hollywood is full of crap. Vampires aren’t bothered by sunlight at all, they need to breathe, they age, they need to eat normal food--though they can’t live off it alone-- they can eat as much garlic as they want, as long as they don’t mind having utterly disgusting kill-you-dead breath, they don’t have creepy red eyes that glow in the dark and make you feel like you’re being stalked by the boogeyman, and they bleed too. Vampires can even tan--I know I do.
There are a few differences between humans and vampires, though. Vampires’ senses are much more acute than humans’, vampires are much stronger, and much more graceful--and in my opinion much smarter, too--vampires need to drink blood to survive, and some vampires have special powers that others don’t, such as controlling elements, talking to animals, or--the rarest and usually most corrupting power--mind control; the power known for its ability to turn even the purest hearts dark and evil. The power to get everything you’ve ever wanted.
The power I had longed for since we moved to Dinwiddie. Not to take over the world or anything, but just to get my mom to decide for us to move back to Texas. But I had no special power. Not only was it rare that a vampire got any powers at all, it was nearly unheard of for a mere teenager to have a power.
I wanted to complain to my mom daily; bug her to death until she moved the three of us back--me, my mom, and my step-father. But I’m Lily Hilliker; I don’t complain.
Much.
“Please, Mom. Please.” I begged.
She finished up with the wet clothes she was transferring from the washer to the dryer then turned back to the kitchen, heading to the hallway and, no doubt to the stairs to escape from me. The way our new house was set up, we had a family room, which connected to the kitchen, and the laundry room set off from the kitchen, on the same end of the room where the doorway leading to the family room was. The kitchen table was the prominent eating place for us; we only migrated to the dining room, which a door on the opposite side of the lengthier turn of the kitchen led to, when we had company. Directly diagonal to the door to the dining room was a door leading down to the basement, which served as a place for entertaining.
The main room of the basement was equipped with various video game stations, a pool table, an air hockey table, a futon couch, and a dartboard. There was a small room to the side that was dark, due to dim lighting that we had yet to fix. It served as a restroom, and included a shower, which was normally reserved for washing dogs that I took care of for some extra cash from time-to-time, and a bright-pink toilet left over from my girly-girl phase as a child. The final room in the basement was the furnace room.
With grey walls, concrete floor, and lighting that wasn’t much better than in the restroom, the furnace room contrasted against the game room’s shag carpet and beige walls and all around cheery atmosphere very drastically. It was cluttered with boxes, and bits of scrap metal, old toys, broken bikes and bike parts, and other various items that served no purpose. I dreaded going in the furnace room to fetch milk or some frozen meat of some sort from the extra freezer/refrigerator we had in the furnace room for Mom; the dread in the air and creepy dullness of the room made the hair on the back of my neck prickle sharply, and every nerve in my body sat on edge, stuttering.
Back up in the kitchen, the hallway opened up right beside the door that opened to the stairs leading to the basement. The hallway was broad, and led to a restroom on the left, and the front door, which was straight ahead from the kitchen. To the left, a little ways past the bathroom door was the computer room, which held two computers, one of which was exclusively mine, as I so deemed it. Connected to the computer room was also my step-father’s home office and weight room, which he pitched a fit to obtain, claiming it would be necessary for him to have in order to complete tasks for work that he couldn‘t get done in the office. To this day I don’t believe he’s ever actually used the room to achieve any work other than a work-out.
In the hall, if you make a right, from facing the front door, you’ll see the actual living room, which has a contradictory name, considering if you go in the living room, Mom will kill you. If you make a second right in the hallway, you’ll find yourself facing the stairs leading up to the second floor, where my bedroom and the guest bedroom sat to the left, the bathroom was at the top, directly across from the stairs, and my parent’s room and what we called the playroom, even though it was basically just a second guest room were to the right.
“No,” my mom said, continuing on her way, “and you’re lucky we waited until summer to move instead of the middle of the school year like we wanted.”
“Well fine, but can’t I at least be home schooled?” I asked hopefully.
She reached the stairs and began to hobble up slowly and carefully, her MS giving her trouble. She was a human, unlike my real father and I. I was born a human--the child of a human and a vampire always comes out as what the mother is. My father had turned me without my mom’s permission when I was four. Two years later she divorced him, took me, and left the state. That was why we moved from Chicago to Texas, where my mom met my human step-father, Ben, and remarried when I was nine.
I stayed at the bottom of the stairs and watched her as she made her way up.
“Lily, my answer is no.” She said with absolute finality.
She made it to the top of the stairs and I heard her bedroom door close; or maybe it was the bathroom door, I could never tell.
I shrunk into myself against the wall like a moody lump. Just a decoration made to appear like an angry teenage girl pressed against the wall and trying to disappear into the white paint, never to be seen or heard from again. “Where’s Lily?” people would ask. “In the wall,” would be the answer, “don’t bother her.”
And they wouldn’t bother me. They wouldn’t be able to find me; I would make sure of it. Lily the Lump. It has a nice ring to it. And under my new name, Lily the lump, I mean, I would be as full of angst and depression and annoying teenage hormones as I wanted to be, as I lived off the rest of my days as a hermit in the rafters of an old abandoned water tower in the middle of nowhere. Or maybe in a popular opera house in Paris, where I could make a living pretending to be a ghost and threatening people and maybe kidnapping an actress or two. A couple murders never hurt anyone, did they?
Just then, my cell phone went off playing one of my customized ring tones. I pulled it out and checked the caller ID even though I knew by the tone who it was. I knew that beautiful, hypnotic voice that flowed like silk as it sang it’s own, better version of “Sweet Home Alabama.” I flipped open my phone eagerly.
It was Hunter, my boyfriend, and probably the biggest reason I was so torn up about moving, even if I wouldn’t even admit it to myself.
“Hey, Teddy Bear!” I said immediately.
His laugh lifted my low spirit a little, which was exactly what I needed.
“Hi there, Bunny Rabbit. How’s the new house so far?”
I sunk back against the wall again.
“That’s all you’ve asked every time you’ve called in the past three months. What are you going to ask tomorrow when I get home from my first day at school here? ‘How’s the new school so far?’” I sighed, “Can we please talk about anything but this prison of a town I’m being forced to live in?”
“I take it you still have no new friends?” He asked.
The pity in his voice sickened me.
“Who am I going to befriend? I doubt there’re many Vamps here and there’s no way I’m going to be friends with a human.” I said quietly.
I had to keep my voice low in order to prevent my mom or Ben from hearing of my hatred for humans. Some hundreds of years earlier from that time was when the vampire race‘s ‘government,’ you could say, called the Council of Lords--a group of ten of the strongest, most intelligent, and most gifted vampires alive--passed the law making it illegal to be racist against humans. The Council is based in a castle along the southernmost coast of Côte d'Ivoire, only miles from the Liberian border, and guarded by thousands of Vampire Warriors.
It’s not like I thought my mom or Ben would turn me over to the Vampire Authorities or anything, I mean, I didn’t hate them, just the race in general, and I knew no matter what they loved me. I was just afraid it would upset or disappoint them, and I love them too much to want that shame. That was why Hunter was the only one who knew, because not only was he a vampire like me, but he was the vampire I trusted and loved most.
When he wasn’t being a complete pain in my tail and disagreeing with me.
“You live in a town where there’s almost no vampires now, Lil. You’ll have to get over that thing you have against humans sooner or later.”
“Who said I want to have this ‘thing against humans?’ I don’t,” I snapped, “but that doesn’t mean I know how to get rid of it either.”
He was quiet for a few long moments, and at first I thought I had upset him, and I imagined him flinching at the venom in my words. For a second I began to feel sorry for sounding so mean. So angry. He was just trying to help me, right? Too soon, though, he spoke again, in a careful, measured tone like a shrink.
“Well, you’ve never actually met any humans your age, and nearly all the adults you’ve met were stuck up their own butts. There are vampires like that too. I‘m sure you know who I‘m talking about, remember our sixth grade math teacher?” He was speaking slowly, and picking his words carefully. He knew how unreasonable I was when I got agitated. “Maybe getting to know some humans your age will show you they aren’t as inferior as you think they are.”
“I don’t think they’re inferior,” I said, far too quickly.
I could almost see his eyebrows raise and disappear beneath his shaggy, sand-colored hair as he asked, “don’t you?”
I hated it when he was right.
“Okay, well… so?” I asked, “Maybe they are. Maybe, for once, I’m right and you’re wrong.”
Or maybe I shouldn’t have said that because it just makes one more thing he’s right about, and one more thing I’m wrong about.
His voice portrayed his stunning smile so vividly through sound, I felt I could almost see it, as he responded in the most sickeningly optimistic voice I had ever heard, “trust me, Bunny Rabbit, everything will be okay. It always is, right?”
He paused and I heard his mom shout something about laundry in the background. “I have to go, Babe.” He finally said.
“I heard her. Okay.” I sighed.
“Bye, Lil. I’ll talk to you later.”
“Alright. Love you, Teddy Bear.” I whispered.
“You too, Bunny Rabbit.”
There was an audible click, and the line disconnected.
I sunk down to the floor and folded my arms on my knees, burying my head in my arms as a sudden wave of pure depression flooded over my body, replacing the blood in every vein with sadness, and I imagined my blood turning black as it ran through me. Every time Hunter called me, or I called him, we almost always ended up in one of our, as we both called them, “civil disagreements.” Talking to Hunter on the phone was a torture for me, almost as much as not talking to him was. Despite that, though, it was hard not to crave those painful conversations. Sometimes I just needed to hear his voice.
But at the same time, I needed so many other things. I needed the feel of his touch, soft and warm with a certain strength and supportive care to it, and the light in his beautiful eyes when he looked at me. I needed his arms to wrap around me, and his lips pressed against mine as my body melts against him. I just needed him back, to be with him, to see him, to breathe in the clean musk scent that clung to him, and look in his eyes and fall in love with him all over again. I missed him.
“Lily?” A man’s voice called, along with footsteps around the corner. It was my step-father, Ben, “I thought I heard you,” he said when he turned the corner and saw me, “what’s wrong?”
Ben was tall, though he seemed even more so now as he stood towering over my curled up figure. His skin was a rich tan color, and his hair a light brown. He had dimples accented by dark stubble when he smiled. His dark brown eyes looked almost black, and always seemed dead, but at the same time more alive than anyone’s I had ever seen.
“Nothing,” I assured him, “Hunter called. We talked,” I waved the phone nonchalantly, “I’m happier than I was before.”
He lowered himself down to sit beside me, putting a gentle and supportive arm around my shoulder, “then you must have been pretty upset before he called. You look like you’re about to cry, sweetie.”
The scent of his coconut shampoo drifted to my nose, and I breathed it in deep, the scent both exhilarating and depressing to my senses. I looked away from his face as I made up my mind that Hunter was right. “Ben,” I whispered.
“Call me Dad,” he said quickly.
I paused for a second, my head snapping to look at him crossly. My anger quickly began to build inside of me, and I did my best to repress it. “Ben,” I said again, finally.
“Please call me Dad?”
"We've been over this," I told him, once again agitated, "You know I love you like a father, but calling you dad would be way too hard to get used to." I took a deep breath and exhaled in a sigh, "Now just listen." I paused again for any objections, and when he said nothing went on, "What would you say if..." I stopped again for a moment, my stomach churning with nerves, feeling like I was about to puke, "If I was... Well, if I hated humans?"
Ben told my mom, of course, and my mom decided it was all the more reason to send me to school with them. So when I woke up the next morning, you can bet I wasn't in the best mood. That's why I threw my alarm clock at the wall so hard that it sprang apart like a deck of cards dropped to play fifty-two card pick up when it began to buzz. This particular Thursday was not going to be the best.
The water was too hot when I took a shower that morning, and by the time I got out, my skin felt raw and burnt. It wasn't, of course, and cooled down after a few minutes. I took a hairdryer to my head until my curls poofed out, then attempted to tame them with a curling iron and some anti-frizz gel. It didn't look all that much better.
"Lily Hilliker doesn't complain," I reminded myself in the mirror with a certain sternness before stepping out into the hall and down the stairs to the kitchen, where I could already hear, loud and clear, my mothers feet stomping around. I walked into the kitchen and pulled my cereal out of the cabinet on my way to the fridge. I pulled out the milk and put both the milk and the cereal on the counter to get a bowl.
"Morning mom." I said robotically as I simultaneously poured some cereal and milk into the bowl; an old signature of mine I had developed as a toddler.
"Morning."
"Please let me stay home!" She drove me to it?
With no real answer, she dropped my back pack next to my foot. I sighed and started eating my cereal. I considered dumping the cereal on my backpack, or "accidentally" knocking the whole gallon of milk over on it. But in the end, I decided I didn't want to die yet. My mom was frying up an omelet across the kitchen. If I dumped cereal and/or milk on my backpack, I would be sure to have an all-too-literal face-to-face meeting with her frying pan.
I put everything away and put my bowl in the sink then scooped up my book bag and purse. I migrated slowly into the hall and out the front door, stopping momentarily to look at the wall under the staircase where I had pressed myself the night before, wishing the wall would open up and swallow me. I still wished it would.
I was the very last stop on the bus route, and every seat I could see was filled. The air on the bus was hot and reeked of humans to the point where, even if there were any other vampires on the bus, I wouldn't be able to sense them over all the humans.
As soon as I stepped on, the bus went silent and everyone’s eyes turned to me. Finally, someone shouted, "Awesome, a new girl!" and the bus exploded back into a buzz of chatter. A few guys shoved whoever was next to them into the isle and tried to get me to sit with them as I walked by. I just shoved past, still looking for a seat. I finally found an empty one in the very back.
I plopped down in the seat only to hear an, "Ow, what the heck?" from a girl who was in the seat, crouched down and apparently asleep.
Until I sat on her, that is.
"Oh, Sorry!" I said, surprised. I scooted over a bit so she could sit up.
"It's okay," she assured me, pulling herself up and fixing her long, dirty-blond hair. Her skin was pale and pinkish, a tell-tale sign that she was Irish, and her dirty blond waves fell down her back almost to her butt. Her emerald eyes glinted with the same animalistic flame that was held by the eyes of shape shifters. Had I not known better, I could have easily mistaken her for one.
But I knew better. Shape shifters moved with the grace of an animal, and normally took on a slight similarity to their animal in terms of looks. And unless she was the worlds clumsiest and strangest looking animal, then she was no shape shifter. She was just another human. Not like it wasn't possible for a human to have shape shifter eyes. She wouldn't be the first human I had seen like that. Ben's niece-sorry, my cousin-had those eyes. I just thought she was a freak.
"I've never seen you before," The girl said, "Are you new?"
No dip. "Yeah," I answered quietly. I now had proof that humans were morons. "I'm Lily." I said.
She smiled, "I'm Morgan."
Morgan the moron. Even, better than Lily the lump.
“So," Morgan the moron said as the bus rolled to a stop in the school parking lot. The school was so close I could have walked! "Where are you from?"
"Texas." I answered.
Morgan's eyes lit up, "So is Sarah!"
The girl in front of us turned around, her dark red-brown hair with blond highlights bounced, ultra short and ultra curly around on her head, "What?" She asked. She wore glasses with a thick dark red frame that matched her hair and had pretty blue eyes. She was beautiful except for one thing; she had the biggest mole I had ever seen smack in the middle of her forehead.
"Sarah, this is Lily. She's from Texas, too."
"Oh," Sarah said, sounding bored, "Okay." Before I knew it, she was up and at the front of the bus.
I was just adding and adding to my list of reasons to hate humans. Rude, stupid, annoying, incompetent, etc.
"Yeah, she doesn't like me much." Morgan said. Then don't talk to her! Jeez! Morgan shifted in her seat, pulling her ugly, tan tote bag up onto her shoulder. It had a small blue picture of the state of Virginia on it and had the abbreviation "VKA" on it. I didn't care enough to ask what it stood for. People were starting to stand up all around us. I suspected it was almost time to get off the bus, "She's my brother's ex." Morgan said.
"Oh." I mumbled without interest, looking toward the front of the bus. Sarah was talking frantically to some other girl with brown shoulder length hair, taking grinning glances back at me and Morgan. They both busted out laughing.
The bell signaling for them to unload the buses rang.
Dinwiddie High School was designed like a labyrinth. The main entrance, for one, held no relevance to the rest of the school, seeing as the whole end of the building where the main entrance was located was nothing but the main entrance. Therefore, very few students actually knew where the main entrance was, and nor did they, or I, care to know. Most students entered and exited the school through the door at the end of the gym hall, the door at the end of the math hall, or the door at the end of the social studies hall, seeing as those were the doors nearest the bus lot and parking lot.
The center of the DHS labyrinth was the library. A square hall surrounded the outside of the library, and from that hall branched off four more halls, and more halls from those ones, and so on and so forth. The maze was torturous, and all the halls looked the same. The white walls, blue and cream floors, and white ceilings, left the halls bland.
"Welcome to Hell, Lily." I mumbled to myself as I walked into my first class. My first period turned out to be okay, though. It was Photography class, and Morgan was in there too.
"Alright class," The photography teacher, Ms. Kimball, said, passing out heavy black camera cases, "I'm handing out your cameras. Now, these are school issued, so I don't want any pictures of..." She didn't want to use the word porn, I could tell, "No bad pictures, okay? And no foul body language." She handed me a camera last, along with giving me a warm smile, "Guard them with your lives."
She turned back to the class and fluttered to the front of the room to give us an introduction speech. Morgan was sitting beside me fiddling with her camera. She had apparently declared herself my new best friend. "Lily," she whispered. I looked over to see her camera pointed at me.
"Wha-" Click. I rolled my eyes as she looked at the picture.
"You're a vampire." She whispered with a chuckle.
I almost fell out of my chair, "What?" I whispered fiercely. She turned the camera to show me. My mouth was wide open, almost my entire top row of teeth visible, and my eyes were glowing red. I looked like crap.
"Delete it." I snapped.
"I like it."
I growled faintly, "I don't."
"Would you two like to share this conversation with the rest of the class?" Ms. Kimball asked us, hands on her hips.
I shrunk back into my seat, "No ma'am."
"Sorry." Morgan whispered, and I wasn't sure if it was to me, or Ms. Kimball, or maybe to both.
Ms. Kimball nodded and continued what she was saying. I tuned out most of her talking. She was tall and thin and had shoulder length, light brown hair. She spoke with a bit of an accent, then she gave us ten minutes to talk at the end of class.
"Kayla!" Morgan called across the room. A girl with long, straight, brown hair and wearing a dark orange, light orange striped shirt, a pair of jeans with a tiger face on them and one black net glove with a skull on it walked over. She sat behind Morgan. "Lily, Kayla; Kayla, Lily." Morgan introduced.
Kayla looked at me with huge, smiling doe eyes. There was a quiet sadness deep in the infinite brown, and a slight hint of knowledge buried in them that she looked upon me with. Like she knew something. Something secret about me. I also noticed the small flame of magic, of power buried deep inside her, contained and, as far as I could tell, hidden from even her knowing about it.
She was obviously special, and had so many characteristics of a vampire. But she smelled so much like a human, so much like the sweet, cherry red liquid pulsing through every human’s veins while vampire blood, looking exactly the same, had no scent at all.
"Nice to meet you." I said.
She gave me a warm smile, "You too." Then she turned to Morgan, "We still on for your house tomorrow night?" She asked her.
"Of course," Morgan beamed, "In fact," She looked at me, "I'm going to ask my mom if I can invite Lily, too."
I raised my eyebrows, "Really?"
Morgan fiddled with her camera, then sat back in her chair, putting her feet on the back of the chair in front of her desk, "Well, yeah, why not? I always like getting to know new people."
I decided then and there that she was way too trusting. I could have been the biggest female dog on Earth. I could have been a con artist, a thief planning to steal everything in her house while she slept, or a murderer. I could have been a monster that thirsted for her blood.
"Awesome, so we're on?" Kayla asked again.
Morgan nodded and then turned to face me again, "By the way," She fished out a piece of scrap paper and scribbled something on it, "Here's my number." she said, handing it to me.
I smiled and took it, "Okay." Sure, as if I'm going to call.
Before you get off listing reasons why warm, sunny Texas isn’t a much better place for a vampire such as myself to live, I must tell you one thing. Hollywood is full of crap. Vampires aren’t bothered by sunlight at all, they need to breathe, they age, they need to eat normal food--though they can’t live off it alone-- they can eat as much garlic as they want, as long as they don’t mind having utterly disgusting kill-you-dead breath, they don’t have creepy red eyes that glow in the dark and make you feel like you’re being stalked by the boogeyman, and they bleed too. Vampires can even tan--I know I do.
There are a few differences between humans and vampires, though. Vampires’ senses are much more acute than humans’, vampires are much stronger, and much more graceful--and in my opinion much smarter, too--vampires need to drink blood to survive, and some vampires have special powers that others don’t, such as controlling elements, talking to animals, or--the rarest and usually most corrupting power--mind control; the power known for its ability to turn even the purest hearts dark and evil. The power to get everything you’ve ever wanted.
The power I had longed for since we moved to Dinwiddie. Not to take over the world or anything, but just to get my mom to decide for us to move back to Texas. But I had no special power. Not only was it rare that a vampire got any powers at all, it was nearly unheard of for a mere teenager to have a power.
I wanted to complain to my mom daily; bug her to death until she moved the three of us back--me, my mom, and my step-father. But I’m Lily Hilliker; I don’t complain.
Much.
“Please, Mom. Please.” I begged.
She finished up with the wet clothes she was transferring from the washer to the dryer then turned back to the kitchen, heading to the hallway and, no doubt to the stairs to escape from me. The way our new house was set up, we had a family room, which connected to the kitchen, and the laundry room set off from the kitchen, on the same end of the room where the doorway leading to the family room was. The kitchen table was the prominent eating place for us; we only migrated to the dining room, which a door on the opposite side of the lengthier turn of the kitchen led to, when we had company. Directly diagonal to the door to the dining room was a door leading down to the basement, which served as a place for entertaining.
The main room of the basement was equipped with various video game stations, a pool table, an air hockey table, a futon couch, and a dartboard. There was a small room to the side that was dark, due to dim lighting that we had yet to fix. It served as a restroom, and included a shower, which was normally reserved for washing dogs that I took care of for some extra cash from time-to-time, and a bright-pink toilet left over from my girly-girl phase as a child. The final room in the basement was the furnace room.
With grey walls, concrete floor, and lighting that wasn’t much better than in the restroom, the furnace room contrasted against the game room’s shag carpet and beige walls and all around cheery atmosphere very drastically. It was cluttered with boxes, and bits of scrap metal, old toys, broken bikes and bike parts, and other various items that served no purpose. I dreaded going in the furnace room to fetch milk or some frozen meat of some sort from the extra freezer/refrigerator we had in the furnace room for Mom; the dread in the air and creepy dullness of the room made the hair on the back of my neck prickle sharply, and every nerve in my body sat on edge, stuttering.
Back up in the kitchen, the hallway opened up right beside the door that opened to the stairs leading to the basement. The hallway was broad, and led to a restroom on the left, and the front door, which was straight ahead from the kitchen. To the left, a little ways past the bathroom door was the computer room, which held two computers, one of which was exclusively mine, as I so deemed it. Connected to the computer room was also my step-father’s home office and weight room, which he pitched a fit to obtain, claiming it would be necessary for him to have in order to complete tasks for work that he couldn‘t get done in the office. To this day I don’t believe he’s ever actually used the room to achieve any work other than a work-out.
In the hall, if you make a right, from facing the front door, you’ll see the actual living room, which has a contradictory name, considering if you go in the living room, Mom will kill you. If you make a second right in the hallway, you’ll find yourself facing the stairs leading up to the second floor, where my bedroom and the guest bedroom sat to the left, the bathroom was at the top, directly across from the stairs, and my parent’s room and what we called the playroom, even though it was basically just a second guest room were to the right.
“No,” my mom said, continuing on her way, “and you’re lucky we waited until summer to move instead of the middle of the school year like we wanted.”
“Well fine, but can’t I at least be home schooled?” I asked hopefully.
She reached the stairs and began to hobble up slowly and carefully, her MS giving her trouble. She was a human, unlike my real father and I. I was born a human--the child of a human and a vampire always comes out as what the mother is. My father had turned me without my mom’s permission when I was four. Two years later she divorced him, took me, and left the state. That was why we moved from Chicago to Texas, where my mom met my human step-father, Ben, and remarried when I was nine.
I stayed at the bottom of the stairs and watched her as she made her way up.
“Lily, my answer is no.” She said with absolute finality.
She made it to the top of the stairs and I heard her bedroom door close; or maybe it was the bathroom door, I could never tell.
I shrunk into myself against the wall like a moody lump. Just a decoration made to appear like an angry teenage girl pressed against the wall and trying to disappear into the white paint, never to be seen or heard from again. “Where’s Lily?” people would ask. “In the wall,” would be the answer, “don’t bother her.”
And they wouldn’t bother me. They wouldn’t be able to find me; I would make sure of it. Lily the Lump. It has a nice ring to it. And under my new name, Lily the lump, I mean, I would be as full of angst and depression and annoying teenage hormones as I wanted to be, as I lived off the rest of my days as a hermit in the rafters of an old abandoned water tower in the middle of nowhere. Or maybe in a popular opera house in Paris, where I could make a living pretending to be a ghost and threatening people and maybe kidnapping an actress or two. A couple murders never hurt anyone, did they?
Just then, my cell phone went off playing one of my customized ring tones. I pulled it out and checked the caller ID even though I knew by the tone who it was. I knew that beautiful, hypnotic voice that flowed like silk as it sang it’s own, better version of “Sweet Home Alabama.” I flipped open my phone eagerly.
It was Hunter, my boyfriend, and probably the biggest reason I was so torn up about moving, even if I wouldn’t even admit it to myself.
“Hey, Teddy Bear!” I said immediately.
His laugh lifted my low spirit a little, which was exactly what I needed.
“Hi there, Bunny Rabbit. How’s the new house so far?”
I sunk back against the wall again.
“That’s all you’ve asked every time you’ve called in the past three months. What are you going to ask tomorrow when I get home from my first day at school here? ‘How’s the new school so far?’” I sighed, “Can we please talk about anything but this prison of a town I’m being forced to live in?”
“I take it you still have no new friends?” He asked.
The pity in his voice sickened me.
“Who am I going to befriend? I doubt there’re many Vamps here and there’s no way I’m going to be friends with a human.” I said quietly.
I had to keep my voice low in order to prevent my mom or Ben from hearing of my hatred for humans. Some hundreds of years earlier from that time was when the vampire race‘s ‘government,’ you could say, called the Council of Lords--a group of ten of the strongest, most intelligent, and most gifted vampires alive--passed the law making it illegal to be racist against humans. The Council is based in a castle along the southernmost coast of Côte d'Ivoire, only miles from the Liberian border, and guarded by thousands of Vampire Warriors.
It’s not like I thought my mom or Ben would turn me over to the Vampire Authorities or anything, I mean, I didn’t hate them, just the race in general, and I knew no matter what they loved me. I was just afraid it would upset or disappoint them, and I love them too much to want that shame. That was why Hunter was the only one who knew, because not only was he a vampire like me, but he was the vampire I trusted and loved most.
When he wasn’t being a complete pain in my tail and disagreeing with me.
“You live in a town where there’s almost no vampires now, Lil. You’ll have to get over that thing you have against humans sooner or later.”
“Who said I want to have this ‘thing against humans?’ I don’t,” I snapped, “but that doesn’t mean I know how to get rid of it either.”
He was quiet for a few long moments, and at first I thought I had upset him, and I imagined him flinching at the venom in my words. For a second I began to feel sorry for sounding so mean. So angry. He was just trying to help me, right? Too soon, though, he spoke again, in a careful, measured tone like a shrink.
“Well, you’ve never actually met any humans your age, and nearly all the adults you’ve met were stuck up their own butts. There are vampires like that too. I‘m sure you know who I‘m talking about, remember our sixth grade math teacher?” He was speaking slowly, and picking his words carefully. He knew how unreasonable I was when I got agitated. “Maybe getting to know some humans your age will show you they aren’t as inferior as you think they are.”
“I don’t think they’re inferior,” I said, far too quickly.
I could almost see his eyebrows raise and disappear beneath his shaggy, sand-colored hair as he asked, “don’t you?”
I hated it when he was right.
“Okay, well… so?” I asked, “Maybe they are. Maybe, for once, I’m right and you’re wrong.”
Or maybe I shouldn’t have said that because it just makes one more thing he’s right about, and one more thing I’m wrong about.
His voice portrayed his stunning smile so vividly through sound, I felt I could almost see it, as he responded in the most sickeningly optimistic voice I had ever heard, “trust me, Bunny Rabbit, everything will be okay. It always is, right?”
He paused and I heard his mom shout something about laundry in the background. “I have to go, Babe.” He finally said.
“I heard her. Okay.” I sighed.
“Bye, Lil. I’ll talk to you later.”
“Alright. Love you, Teddy Bear.” I whispered.
“You too, Bunny Rabbit.”
There was an audible click, and the line disconnected.
I sunk down to the floor and folded my arms on my knees, burying my head in my arms as a sudden wave of pure depression flooded over my body, replacing the blood in every vein with sadness, and I imagined my blood turning black as it ran through me. Every time Hunter called me, or I called him, we almost always ended up in one of our, as we both called them, “civil disagreements.” Talking to Hunter on the phone was a torture for me, almost as much as not talking to him was. Despite that, though, it was hard not to crave those painful conversations. Sometimes I just needed to hear his voice.
But at the same time, I needed so many other things. I needed the feel of his touch, soft and warm with a certain strength and supportive care to it, and the light in his beautiful eyes when he looked at me. I needed his arms to wrap around me, and his lips pressed against mine as my body melts against him. I just needed him back, to be with him, to see him, to breathe in the clean musk scent that clung to him, and look in his eyes and fall in love with him all over again. I missed him.
“Lily?” A man’s voice called, along with footsteps around the corner. It was my step-father, Ben, “I thought I heard you,” he said when he turned the corner and saw me, “what’s wrong?”
Ben was tall, though he seemed even more so now as he stood towering over my curled up figure. His skin was a rich tan color, and his hair a light brown. He had dimples accented by dark stubble when he smiled. His dark brown eyes looked almost black, and always seemed dead, but at the same time more alive than anyone’s I had ever seen.
“Nothing,” I assured him, “Hunter called. We talked,” I waved the phone nonchalantly, “I’m happier than I was before.”
He lowered himself down to sit beside me, putting a gentle and supportive arm around my shoulder, “then you must have been pretty upset before he called. You look like you’re about to cry, sweetie.”
The scent of his coconut shampoo drifted to my nose, and I breathed it in deep, the scent both exhilarating and depressing to my senses. I looked away from his face as I made up my mind that Hunter was right. “Ben,” I whispered.
“Call me Dad,” he said quickly.
I paused for a second, my head snapping to look at him crossly. My anger quickly began to build inside of me, and I did my best to repress it. “Ben,” I said again, finally.
“Please call me Dad?”
"We've been over this," I told him, once again agitated, "You know I love you like a father, but calling you dad would be way too hard to get used to." I took a deep breath and exhaled in a sigh, "Now just listen." I paused again for any objections, and when he said nothing went on, "What would you say if..." I stopped again for a moment, my stomach churning with nerves, feeling like I was about to puke, "If I was... Well, if I hated humans?"
Ben told my mom, of course, and my mom decided it was all the more reason to send me to school with them. So when I woke up the next morning, you can bet I wasn't in the best mood. That's why I threw my alarm clock at the wall so hard that it sprang apart like a deck of cards dropped to play fifty-two card pick up when it began to buzz. This particular Thursday was not going to be the best.
The water was too hot when I took a shower that morning, and by the time I got out, my skin felt raw and burnt. It wasn't, of course, and cooled down after a few minutes. I took a hairdryer to my head until my curls poofed out, then attempted to tame them with a curling iron and some anti-frizz gel. It didn't look all that much better.
"Lily Hilliker doesn't complain," I reminded myself in the mirror with a certain sternness before stepping out into the hall and down the stairs to the kitchen, where I could already hear, loud and clear, my mothers feet stomping around. I walked into the kitchen and pulled my cereal out of the cabinet on my way to the fridge. I pulled out the milk and put both the milk and the cereal on the counter to get a bowl.
"Morning mom." I said robotically as I simultaneously poured some cereal and milk into the bowl; an old signature of mine I had developed as a toddler.
"Morning."
"Please let me stay home!" She drove me to it?
With no real answer, she dropped my back pack next to my foot. I sighed and started eating my cereal. I considered dumping the cereal on my backpack, or "accidentally" knocking the whole gallon of milk over on it. But in the end, I decided I didn't want to die yet. My mom was frying up an omelet across the kitchen. If I dumped cereal and/or milk on my backpack, I would be sure to have an all-too-literal face-to-face meeting with her frying pan.
I put everything away and put my bowl in the sink then scooped up my book bag and purse. I migrated slowly into the hall and out the front door, stopping momentarily to look at the wall under the staircase where I had pressed myself the night before, wishing the wall would open up and swallow me. I still wished it would.
I was the very last stop on the bus route, and every seat I could see was filled. The air on the bus was hot and reeked of humans to the point where, even if there were any other vampires on the bus, I wouldn't be able to sense them over all the humans.
As soon as I stepped on, the bus went silent and everyone’s eyes turned to me. Finally, someone shouted, "Awesome, a new girl!" and the bus exploded back into a buzz of chatter. A few guys shoved whoever was next to them into the isle and tried to get me to sit with them as I walked by. I just shoved past, still looking for a seat. I finally found an empty one in the very back.
I plopped down in the seat only to hear an, "Ow, what the heck?" from a girl who was in the seat, crouched down and apparently asleep.
Until I sat on her, that is.
"Oh, Sorry!" I said, surprised. I scooted over a bit so she could sit up.
"It's okay," she assured me, pulling herself up and fixing her long, dirty-blond hair. Her skin was pale and pinkish, a tell-tale sign that she was Irish, and her dirty blond waves fell down her back almost to her butt. Her emerald eyes glinted with the same animalistic flame that was held by the eyes of shape shifters. Had I not known better, I could have easily mistaken her for one.
But I knew better. Shape shifters moved with the grace of an animal, and normally took on a slight similarity to their animal in terms of looks. And unless she was the worlds clumsiest and strangest looking animal, then she was no shape shifter. She was just another human. Not like it wasn't possible for a human to have shape shifter eyes. She wouldn't be the first human I had seen like that. Ben's niece-sorry, my cousin-had those eyes. I just thought she was a freak.
"I've never seen you before," The girl said, "Are you new?"
No dip. "Yeah," I answered quietly. I now had proof that humans were morons. "I'm Lily." I said.
She smiled, "I'm Morgan."
Morgan the moron. Even, better than Lily the lump.
“So," Morgan the moron said as the bus rolled to a stop in the school parking lot. The school was so close I could have walked! "Where are you from?"
"Texas." I answered.
Morgan's eyes lit up, "So is Sarah!"
The girl in front of us turned around, her dark red-brown hair with blond highlights bounced, ultra short and ultra curly around on her head, "What?" She asked. She wore glasses with a thick dark red frame that matched her hair and had pretty blue eyes. She was beautiful except for one thing; she had the biggest mole I had ever seen smack in the middle of her forehead.
"Sarah, this is Lily. She's from Texas, too."
"Oh," Sarah said, sounding bored, "Okay." Before I knew it, she was up and at the front of the bus.
I was just adding and adding to my list of reasons to hate humans. Rude, stupid, annoying, incompetent, etc.
"Yeah, she doesn't like me much." Morgan said. Then don't talk to her! Jeez! Morgan shifted in her seat, pulling her ugly, tan tote bag up onto her shoulder. It had a small blue picture of the state of Virginia on it and had the abbreviation "VKA" on it. I didn't care enough to ask what it stood for. People were starting to stand up all around us. I suspected it was almost time to get off the bus, "She's my brother's ex." Morgan said.
"Oh." I mumbled without interest, looking toward the front of the bus. Sarah was talking frantically to some other girl with brown shoulder length hair, taking grinning glances back at me and Morgan. They both busted out laughing.
The bell signaling for them to unload the buses rang.
Dinwiddie High School was designed like a labyrinth. The main entrance, for one, held no relevance to the rest of the school, seeing as the whole end of the building where the main entrance was located was nothing but the main entrance. Therefore, very few students actually knew where the main entrance was, and nor did they, or I, care to know. Most students entered and exited the school through the door at the end of the gym hall, the door at the end of the math hall, or the door at the end of the social studies hall, seeing as those were the doors nearest the bus lot and parking lot.
The center of the DHS labyrinth was the library. A square hall surrounded the outside of the library, and from that hall branched off four more halls, and more halls from those ones, and so on and so forth. The maze was torturous, and all the halls looked the same. The white walls, blue and cream floors, and white ceilings, left the halls bland.
"Welcome to Hell, Lily." I mumbled to myself as I walked into my first class. My first period turned out to be okay, though. It was Photography class, and Morgan was in there too.
"Alright class," The photography teacher, Ms. Kimball, said, passing out heavy black camera cases, "I'm handing out your cameras. Now, these are school issued, so I don't want any pictures of..." She didn't want to use the word porn, I could tell, "No bad pictures, okay? And no foul body language." She handed me a camera last, along with giving me a warm smile, "Guard them with your lives."
She turned back to the class and fluttered to the front of the room to give us an introduction speech. Morgan was sitting beside me fiddling with her camera. She had apparently declared herself my new best friend. "Lily," she whispered. I looked over to see her camera pointed at me.
"Wha-" Click. I rolled my eyes as she looked at the picture.
"You're a vampire." She whispered with a chuckle.
I almost fell out of my chair, "What?" I whispered fiercely. She turned the camera to show me. My mouth was wide open, almost my entire top row of teeth visible, and my eyes were glowing red. I looked like crap.
"Delete it." I snapped.
"I like it."
I growled faintly, "I don't."
"Would you two like to share this conversation with the rest of the class?" Ms. Kimball asked us, hands on her hips.
I shrunk back into my seat, "No ma'am."
"Sorry." Morgan whispered, and I wasn't sure if it was to me, or Ms. Kimball, or maybe to both.
Ms. Kimball nodded and continued what she was saying. I tuned out most of her talking. She was tall and thin and had shoulder length, light brown hair. She spoke with a bit of an accent, then she gave us ten minutes to talk at the end of class.
"Kayla!" Morgan called across the room. A girl with long, straight, brown hair and wearing a dark orange, light orange striped shirt, a pair of jeans with a tiger face on them and one black net glove with a skull on it walked over. She sat behind Morgan. "Lily, Kayla; Kayla, Lily." Morgan introduced.
Kayla looked at me with huge, smiling doe eyes. There was a quiet sadness deep in the infinite brown, and a slight hint of knowledge buried in them that she looked upon me with. Like she knew something. Something secret about me. I also noticed the small flame of magic, of power buried deep inside her, contained and, as far as I could tell, hidden from even her knowing about it.
She was obviously special, and had so many characteristics of a vampire. But she smelled so much like a human, so much like the sweet, cherry red liquid pulsing through every human’s veins while vampire blood, looking exactly the same, had no scent at all.
"Nice to meet you." I said.
She gave me a warm smile, "You too." Then she turned to Morgan, "We still on for your house tomorrow night?" She asked her.
"Of course," Morgan beamed, "In fact," She looked at me, "I'm going to ask my mom if I can invite Lily, too."
I raised my eyebrows, "Really?"
Morgan fiddled with her camera, then sat back in her chair, putting her feet on the back of the chair in front of her desk, "Well, yeah, why not? I always like getting to know new people."
I decided then and there that she was way too trusting. I could have been the biggest female dog on Earth. I could have been a con artist, a thief planning to steal everything in her house while she slept, or a murderer. I could have been a monster that thirsted for her blood.
"Awesome, so we're on?" Kayla asked again.
Morgan nodded and then turned to face me again, "By the way," She fished out a piece of scrap paper and scribbled something on it, "Here's my number." she said, handing it to me.
I smiled and took it, "Okay." Sure, as if I'm going to call.