Post by shiina on Jul 7, 2011 14:14:16 GMT -5
Morgan and Kayla left a few hours after Ben got home. We, of course, stopped talking about vampire things once he got home. I had to plan the right time to tell my parents about what had happened. I knew it had to be soon, but I also knew I wanted to tell my mom first so she could help me tell Ben to avoid upsetting him. Ben had a tendency to overreact. Not that he did it on purpose, it’s just how he is.
Once Morgan and Kayla were gone, I went out to the go-kart path to clean up the mess out there. I hadn’t noticed before just how gruesome it really appeared. It looked like a crime scene; a very large, still slightly wet puddle of blood and drops of blood scattered all around. What had I done? Did I attack her that violently? I stood in shock for a while, and for a moment I even began to hate myself.
At last, I gathered myself together and cleaned it up. Even tainted by dirt and mud, it was hard for me to resist the blood. It took effort, but I was able to keep a substantial amount of control over myself and resist licking every last drop of blood off of the leaves and twigs the way a common dog would. Once I finished, I looked around with pride at my nice, clean dirt.
I could hear Ben building his trophy case when I got back inside the house. I laughed to myself quietly as I began working on my chores. The noise ended and Ben popped into the kitchen as I was unloading the dishwasher.
“No, no, no,” He said, “Don’t worry about your chores! Go, go, I’ll take care of it.” He shooed me away, picking up where I had left off.
“Thanks,” I said with a grin.
I fluttered into the computer room and sat at my computer desk. I grabbed the phone and punched in Morgan’s phone number.
Randy answered, as he tends to do a majority of the time. As this was only the second time I had called Morgan, I identified what I suspected would become normal; it seemed Morgan died of a new ailment each time I called. Today she angered an ancient mummy by being uglier than it was. According to Randy, the mummy was jealous and ate her.
If only he knew it was actually an out-of-control vampire that had eaten her.
Then there was the already familiar shouting in the background; high-pitched and loud enough that I could hear and Identify it clearly, even with the phone held as far away from my ear as possible. When I heard the other end of the phone go quiet, I decided it was safe and put the phone back to my ear. But too soon, for the moment the phone was back to my ear, Morgan screamed once more, with a violent “Get out!”
“Ow,” I complained.
She only giggled.
“Hey, you know what you can do the next time he bothers you, right?” I clacked my teeth together loudly, “Bite him!”
She laughed, “No, I don’t think I’d like to have anything in common with him.”
“I didn’t say you had to change him.” I whispered.
“I don’t quite want to be charged for murder either.”
I sighed dramatically, “Fine, suit yourself.”
“By the way,” She said. I could tell by the tone of her voice that she was about to ask one of her semi-pointless but rather thoughtful questions. “Is it true that vampires and werewolves are natural enemies?”
I thought for a moment. “You know what,” I finally said, “I really don’t know. Do you want to come back over here for a while to help me check? We have tons of books about vampires since my mom and Ben are both humans and don’t know much about vampires. Real books on it, ones that aren’t open for humans to buy or read.”
“Definitely!” She chirped.
Not five minutes later Morgan was ringing my doorbell. I opened the door to find that she had already changed dramatically from when she left my house an hour or two before.
The vampire change refined a person’s features in some ways, and it took about a day for everything to take a full effect. The change began in the way a person looked, their hair becomes healthier and shinier, and their teeth become whiter and straight, as well as they may grow taller, and may become leaner than they had been, all along with many other different changes. The changes in appearance wear off a few days later, and only a few of the changes become permanent.
After appearances, their physical abilities change, and they‘ll become stronger and faster, and they‘ll have more stamina. This adaptation was one of those from the days when vampires were savage, and hunted humans for food.
The only reason the adaptation had not yet vanished was because once vampires no longer needed to hunt for food, and blood was provided to them by an underground organization of humans that now worked with hospitals widespread, many still hunted for sport for decades, until about six years before I was born when a law was passed against it. All the same, there are always criminals who break the laws, and ultimately get caught and sent to a special prison by the Council of Lords, and always cases of lost control like me, an accident that nobody can be blamed for, especially considering my age.
Morgan was taller now, almost as tall as me. Her skin was paler, but it wasn’t exactly tan before, and I could tell it would even back out to her Irish pink after the vampiric blood settled. Her normal frizz was not present, and had been replaced by sleek, flowing waves that had already grown longer, now past her butt. Her hair grew fast before, but now she was a vampire and it grew even faster. Her green eyes were bright with a soft beauty.
“How did you get here so fast?” I asked, analyzing the beads of sweat on her forehead and her heavy breathing, “Scratch that, I can tell you ran, why though?”
“I had to get away from Randy and the Rentals.” She panted.
“Wow,” I laughed, and moved aside, “Well, come on in.”
We went into the room where we keep our books. Or more like closet. We hadn’t unpacked our books from the move yet, since we had other priorities, and because we didn’t really need them all that often anymore now that most vampire things had gotten to a ‘been there, done that’ point for my parents and I. The books sat packed neatly in boxes piled in the corner in front of our big, empty bookshelf.
Morgan and I sat on the floor flipping through the books looking for anything about werewolves. Every now and then we would pause to laugh about something one of us found in a book. Finally Morgan showed me one book.
“Look. Doesn’t it look like you, me and Kayla?” She said, showing me a picture from a book entitled Vampire Legends and Lore.
The picture was of three girls in stone age clothing standing in a circle, or technically a triangle, as Morgan would point out pickily, with their arms raised to the heavens and glowing light all around them. It was just a drawing like you’ll find in history books a lot, not very detailed, but it did look a lot like the three of us. It went with a section in the book called ‘The Three Fates.’
I stared at it closely, “It does.” I whispered in shocked awe, “A lot.”
I read into it a bit once Morgan had moved on to the next book she was curious about. It said that the Three Fates was an old prophecy of three women with these amazing powers that passed the power of even the whole Council of Lords. Their last claim to power was said to be in the time of Neanderthals, when an evil tyrant was threatening the world, and it was prophesized that they would appear when the worlds next Controller, which was the name for a vampire that had become corrupt with the power of mind control, began to rise in power.
That was pretty much all the book said about the Three Fates; it was just a small paragraph. It was one of those books that had a little bit of one thing and a little bit about another, and held hundreds of different one-paragraph briefs on different legends. I looked back at the picture. It really was a near-perfect rendition of Morgan, Kayla, and I from what detail could be seen. Maybe a few years older. It baffled me.
I was still studying it when Morgan caught my attention. “I found it!” She chimed.
She handed me a book called Vampires: Friends and Foes of the Dead and on the page she had open it explained that vampires and werewolves are, in fact, natural enemies. I smiled and laughed.
She took the book from my hands and hugged it to her tightly. She laid down on the floor, “Now we know why Randy and I will never get along,” She sighed dreamily, “All the mysteries in my world are solved.”
“So how many licks does it take to get to the chocolaty center of a tootsie pop?” I asked.
She sat up straight, “Mystery added, kill joy.”
We all know that cliché ‘time flies when you’re having fun,’ right? Well, someone must have thrown a clock out a window at that moment, because, all of a sudden, my mom was almost home, Ben was fixing dinner, the sun was slowly setting, and Morgan had to leave, her Mom having impatiently called my house three times by then to let her know her father was throwing a tirade about her not folding the laundry. After some cleaning up in the book room and some sad goodbyes, as well as Morgan quoting Shakespeare “Goodbye, goodbye, parting is such sweet sorrow,” Morgan finally left and I went into the kitchen to see what I could do to help Ben with the raw chicken he was wrestling hopelessly.
I woke up to my mom’s voice again. I opened my eyes to see her turning around to leave the room. My heart began racing, but I refused to think before I spoke. If I thought, I would stop myself and tell myself I would tell her later. And that would happen every time until it was too late, and once she found out, she would be angry that I hadn’t told her.
“Mom, wait,” I said, then continued quickly before I had time to chicken out, “Something happened Saturday night.”
She froze and stiffened, afraid of what she, in no time, realized I was about to say. Slowly, she turned to face me, her face an emotionless mask.
“Morgan got hurt, and I…” I took a deep breath and tried to keep my voice from breaking. It betrayed me anyway, “I lost control.”
Her face darkened, “And the other girl?”
“She’s the reason Morgan survived. I found out she’s a vampire also.” I explained.
I heard the huffy sigh of relief that escaped my mom’s lips; the one that said so clearly without speaking, “Oh thank God, I thought you had murdered someone!”
Quickly, I tried to blink back the tears that were beginning to cloud my vision. My attempt only made them spill over, wetting my cheeks, “I didn’t mean to, Mom,” I whispered, choking back a sob as I spoke, “It wasn’t my fault, I tried so hard. I feel so terrible, I feel like a murderer.”
I silently pleaded for her to understand. I had just gotten her back; I couldn’t live without her love. Without her support.
She hobbled across the room and--like I had hoped she would--sat down on my bed with me, putting a warm, protective arm around me. She cradled me against her shoulder, kissing my head and telling me everything would be alright.
“I love you, Lily. Never forget that.” She reminded me for, I think, the third time since she had sat down.
I pulled myself out of her arms, wiping my eyes, “Thank you, Mom. I love you, too. And one more thing?”
“Anything.”
I pushed my hair back behind my ear, “Could you buy me a new alarm clock tonight?”
Once I was ready for school, I floated up the stairs of the bus happily, only to stop dead in my tracks in the middle of the isle when I saw that my usual seat beside Morgan was filled now by one of the guys that had desperately tried to get me to sit with him on my first day. Morgan was visibly trying to shrink away from him, but his hands were all over her, a flirty smile on his face.
“Please go away,” I heard her beg.
“Just give me a chance,” He said. He sounded like he was trying to sound sweet and friendly, like he was attempting to play the nice guy that could never get a girl, and who was inexperienced in all things having to do with relationships, but the expression on his face said otherwise, and showed what he really had in mind.
I suddenly jumped at the sound of the bus drivers cranky old lady voice, “Are you gonna sit down or what?”
“Yes ma’am.” I said, hastily plopping down next to some creepy, ultra-tall guy who just stared ahead like I wasn’t there.
I looked back at Morgan again, who was still being harassed. Her face was red, and I thought I saw a tear roll down her cheek. “Stop it Josh,” She pleaded.
As soon as she said that, his hand shifted, and I saw him grope her. As soon as he did, I began to shoot up from my seat, but before I could even stand, I heard the loud smack of Morgan’s hand making contact with his skin.
“What the heck, you freak!” Josh screamed, rubbing the bright-red hand-shaped mark already beginning to form on the side of his face.
The bus stopped in the middle of the road with a painful jerk that gave me whiplash, “Is there a problem back there?” The bus driver screamed even though the bus had already gone silent from the sound of Morgan’s slap.
“That chick’s psycho!” Josh screamed, shooting up from the seat beside Morgan.
Morgan remained seated, “This ‘chick’ ” She said in a voice that was all at once loud, declarative, and calm, “Had all the right to slap you after you groped me.”
“I did not!” Josh said, sounding childish.
“Wait a moment,” The bus driver’s old lady voice sounded, “You, the girly there, do you even ride this bus?”
“Yes!” Morgan said, her calm voice giving way to a whine, “I’m Morgan Smith!”
Josh seemed to recoil from her even more, “Ah, gross! I didn’t know it was you I was touching!”
“You pompous jerk!” Morgan shrieked.
The bus driver sighed, “Calm down, Morgan, I’ll take care of him.” I could see the bus drivers eyes peek up at them in the mirror, “Josh, get your butt up here. Now.”
Josh stomped up to the front of the bus, mumbling incoherently. I got a good look at him as he passed me. He was tall, with tan skin and buzzed, black hair. Probably Hispanic. The hand print on his cheek was already beginning to turn from bright-red to a nasty yellow bruise. Morgan had slapped him hard, probably putting in every bit of her raw vampire strength. Josh rubbed his cheek again.
As soon as Josh was past me, I slipped out of my seat and ran back to plop down next to Morgan.
Morgan covered herself, looking at me with mock horror, “Oh no, you’re not going to grope me, too, are you?” She said, “Ugh, he’s such a jerk. That hurt, too. What a masochist, I wanted to punch his stupid lights out.”
I put my hand on her shoulder, trying to use my touch to will her to calm down. “Morgan, you’re going to have to be a little more careful about hiding you-know-what. Most girls can’t smack a guy hard enough to leave a big hand-shaped bruise.” I whispered to her.
She blinked at me a few times, looking clueless. I blinked back hoping it would show my annoyance that she was playing dumb. “There is no way you forgot.” I said, “No possible way.” When I only got a few more blinks and a few more seconds of her blank stare, I whispered, “Vampire, remember?”
“Oh, right, crap!” She said, far too loudly. Some people turned around and stared. I smiled nervously, waving at them. They turned back around.
“That’s it,” I groaned, “I’m shutting up for the rest of the bus ride. If you speak about you-know-what at all, I will, depending on circumstances, either smack you, or kill you. For good this time.” I couldn’t have planned a worse time to say those words, for we were pulling into the school parking lot right as I finished. I sighed quietly and gathered my things.
We dressed out in my third period gym class for the first time since school started that day. The school gym suits we had to wear were almost ugly enough to turn me off the color blue forever. The shirts were a kind of blue-grey color with an assortment of sports equipment, the schools name, and my name. The shorts were just two shades darker and went down to my knees and were baggy.
My teacher, an older woman whom I don’t find important enough to name or describe, didn’t understand, apparently, when I told her over and over that ‘Lily’ is not just a nickname for ‘Lillian.’
Morgan ran up to me in the gym once we left the locker rooms, “Hey there, Lillian Hilliker.” She mused, jumping up and down, almost certainly to burn off some of the vampiric energy that must have built up in her during our first two class periods. Wasn’t she hyper enough before? Someone please spare me.
I opened my mouth to respond, but the teacher blew her whistle, shouting for us to line up. Morgan ran to her spot without saying goodbye to me, more scared of the teacher than she was of me. “She’ll learn,” I whispered to myself as I went to my spot on the floor.
We played dodge ball. After running and doing some stupid warm-ups, of course. We were playing boys versus girls, and the girls in our class were lazy, girly, wimps. Some ran, letting out squeaks as they were hit and sent to the out area. Others just stood in the back, arms crossed and doing nothing. Quickly, it was just Morgan and I against twenty-something guys. Even the girls in the back that had been pretending not to care about anything--and maybe they really didn’t--were hit and gone.
I dodged another ball then caught one that was heading to the spot I moved to. The guy who had thrown the ball I caught was out, and I threw that ball and hit the guy that had thrown the ball I had dodged. Another guy, one with ultra-dark skin and his gym shorts low enough that I saw far more than I enjoyed, scrambled for the ball I had hit the other guy with and threw it at me full force.
I did a matrix, hands landing flat on the floor and my back arched as it whizzed past right where my head would have been. When it was past, I sprang forward again, hearing the ball hit the wall behind me with a loud whump! Had that ball hit me, it would have hurt.
But as swift and agile as I was, Morgan was even more amazing. A ball came flying toward her knees, thrown by the same guy who had made me do the matrix. What Morgan did took my breath away.
As soon as she saw him throw the ball, she jumped in the air. The ball was flying so fast that right at the peak of her jump it was right below her knees. As soon as it was right below her, she did a tuck and roll, snatching the ball from under her and jumping up from the ground to throw the ball at another guy and got both out.
I went still, staring at her in shock. A lot of the other students in the room cheered, and the gym teacher’s eyes were bugging out of their heads. While I wasn’t paying attention, though, one of the guys got me square in the side with a ball, and I was out. I watched from the bleachers the rest of the game, as one by one the guys dropped like flies and Morgan won the game for the girls.
It’s hard to be a vampire in a human world, as Morgan was learning. Between the dodge ball incident, her ripping her locker off its hinges, her sneeze, which caused a hole in the wall, a broken desk, and the incident in the bathroom which I refuse to go further than mentioning, she was having quite a bit of trouble controlling, as well as covering herself.
We plopped ourselves down in our back seat on the bus. Morgan pulled out a pack of gum, offering me some after shoving a piece in her own mouth. I took four.
“Hey!” She said indignantly.
I started chewing a piece and put the rest in my purse for later. “You owe me after what happened.” I said.
She looked away, blushing, “Yeah, about the bathroom… sorry.”
“You should be,” I grimaced as a shudder ran through me, “So… Much… Toilet paper…”
She laughed at me, a nervous laugh. “I’m scared I’ll give away our secret,” She whispered, “So scared… I’m already close to it. Sorry.”
I put a soothing hand on her shoulder. “It’s alright, Morgan. We’ll find a way to fix all this. People can tend to be stupid anyway, I mean, we are in Dimwittie.”
“Dumbwittie,” She corrected, a smile playing on her lips that didn’t quite reach anywhere near her eyes, “Or you could say Dimwitted Dinwiddie.”
The bus came to a halt at my driveway. I grabbed my bag and stood up. Looking down at Morgan, I said, “I’m pretty good at figuring this stuff out, don’t worry.” And with that, I stepped off the bus and went inside.
“Mom,” I whined into the phone, “I suck at figuring this stuff out! What should we do?”
“Lily, calm down. You’re making something out of nothing.” She responded, “You have her in all of your classes, right? You’ll just have to keep reminding her until she gets used to it. It’ll wear off soon anyway.”
I blew my hair out of my face then used my hand to push the stray hairs back behind my ear. “Right,” I said, “Yeah, okay, I’ll do that. Love you, Mom. Bye.”
I hung up the phone and fell back on my bed. My cat, Fluffy, padded into the room and jumped up with me, curling against my side. I could feel her purring quietly, and once I began to pet her, she purred louder and I could hear the motorboat roar of her purr.
“I missed you, baby girl,” I told her. I looked at her open cat crate in the corner of my room. She must have arrived that morning and Ben put her crate in my room. She stood up and rubbed her head against my face, her silky fur soft and warm against my cheek.
After a while, I finally got the motivation to pull myself out of the bed. Fluffy padded lovingly behind me into the kitchen and sat, watching, as I unloaded the clean dishes from the dishwasher and put them away.
As soon as I finished, I scooped Fluffy up and carried her into the computer room with me. I started up my computer and turned to walk out. Fluffy began to follow me, but I turned back to her and ordered her, “Stay here, sweetie, I’ll be right back.”
I grabbed my homework out of my book bag and snatched up the phone from where I had left it on my bed. I was dialing Morgan’s number as I walked into the computer room. Fluffy jumped on my lap as soon as I sat in the computer chair. “Hey baby,” I said to Fluffy right as Morgan answered the phone.
“Whoa, Lily, I didn’t know you went that way,” Morgan giggled.
“Haha, real funny.” I said. “I was talking to my cat.” I scratched Fluffy’s chin to restart her purr engine so Morgan would hear.
“You have a cat?” She asked curiously.
I smiled at my baby, “Mom wanted to adjust to our new house and get settled in and all before having her sent down. Her name’s Fluffy.”
“I love cats.” She mused, “I want to see her!”
“Well, calm down, maniac,” I laughed, “You’ll get to.”
We fell into one of our random conversations about nothing. We ended up spending well near an hour talking about how many people on MySpace were from Alvin, Texas, where I was from. It was a lot more than even I thought, and I realized that I knew many of them. And with a dull shock, I also realized that I didn’t feel half as homesick as I had all summer.
Before I knew it, my mom was home, dinner was cooked, and Ben was walking in from work.
“Lily,” My mom called, “Come set the table.”
I sighed, “Coming.” I yelled back to my mom, then turned back to the phone, “I have to go, Morgan.”
“Oh,” She said, sounding heartbroken, as I was beginning to realize was her usual emotion when dealing with parting ways, be it the end of the school day, her leaving after being at my house, us getting off the phone, or me leaving for three minutes to use the restroom. “Bye.”
“Bye,” I said back.
After dinner, I went upstairs and took a shower. As soon as I got out of the shower, I went to bed. I was asleep instantly.
Once Morgan and Kayla were gone, I went out to the go-kart path to clean up the mess out there. I hadn’t noticed before just how gruesome it really appeared. It looked like a crime scene; a very large, still slightly wet puddle of blood and drops of blood scattered all around. What had I done? Did I attack her that violently? I stood in shock for a while, and for a moment I even began to hate myself.
At last, I gathered myself together and cleaned it up. Even tainted by dirt and mud, it was hard for me to resist the blood. It took effort, but I was able to keep a substantial amount of control over myself and resist licking every last drop of blood off of the leaves and twigs the way a common dog would. Once I finished, I looked around with pride at my nice, clean dirt.
I could hear Ben building his trophy case when I got back inside the house. I laughed to myself quietly as I began working on my chores. The noise ended and Ben popped into the kitchen as I was unloading the dishwasher.
“No, no, no,” He said, “Don’t worry about your chores! Go, go, I’ll take care of it.” He shooed me away, picking up where I had left off.
“Thanks,” I said with a grin.
I fluttered into the computer room and sat at my computer desk. I grabbed the phone and punched in Morgan’s phone number.
Randy answered, as he tends to do a majority of the time. As this was only the second time I had called Morgan, I identified what I suspected would become normal; it seemed Morgan died of a new ailment each time I called. Today she angered an ancient mummy by being uglier than it was. According to Randy, the mummy was jealous and ate her.
If only he knew it was actually an out-of-control vampire that had eaten her.
Then there was the already familiar shouting in the background; high-pitched and loud enough that I could hear and Identify it clearly, even with the phone held as far away from my ear as possible. When I heard the other end of the phone go quiet, I decided it was safe and put the phone back to my ear. But too soon, for the moment the phone was back to my ear, Morgan screamed once more, with a violent “Get out!”
“Ow,” I complained.
She only giggled.
“Hey, you know what you can do the next time he bothers you, right?” I clacked my teeth together loudly, “Bite him!”
She laughed, “No, I don’t think I’d like to have anything in common with him.”
“I didn’t say you had to change him.” I whispered.
“I don’t quite want to be charged for murder either.”
I sighed dramatically, “Fine, suit yourself.”
“By the way,” She said. I could tell by the tone of her voice that she was about to ask one of her semi-pointless but rather thoughtful questions. “Is it true that vampires and werewolves are natural enemies?”
I thought for a moment. “You know what,” I finally said, “I really don’t know. Do you want to come back over here for a while to help me check? We have tons of books about vampires since my mom and Ben are both humans and don’t know much about vampires. Real books on it, ones that aren’t open for humans to buy or read.”
“Definitely!” She chirped.
Not five minutes later Morgan was ringing my doorbell. I opened the door to find that she had already changed dramatically from when she left my house an hour or two before.
The vampire change refined a person’s features in some ways, and it took about a day for everything to take a full effect. The change began in the way a person looked, their hair becomes healthier and shinier, and their teeth become whiter and straight, as well as they may grow taller, and may become leaner than they had been, all along with many other different changes. The changes in appearance wear off a few days later, and only a few of the changes become permanent.
After appearances, their physical abilities change, and they‘ll become stronger and faster, and they‘ll have more stamina. This adaptation was one of those from the days when vampires were savage, and hunted humans for food.
The only reason the adaptation had not yet vanished was because once vampires no longer needed to hunt for food, and blood was provided to them by an underground organization of humans that now worked with hospitals widespread, many still hunted for sport for decades, until about six years before I was born when a law was passed against it. All the same, there are always criminals who break the laws, and ultimately get caught and sent to a special prison by the Council of Lords, and always cases of lost control like me, an accident that nobody can be blamed for, especially considering my age.
Morgan was taller now, almost as tall as me. Her skin was paler, but it wasn’t exactly tan before, and I could tell it would even back out to her Irish pink after the vampiric blood settled. Her normal frizz was not present, and had been replaced by sleek, flowing waves that had already grown longer, now past her butt. Her hair grew fast before, but now she was a vampire and it grew even faster. Her green eyes were bright with a soft beauty.
“How did you get here so fast?” I asked, analyzing the beads of sweat on her forehead and her heavy breathing, “Scratch that, I can tell you ran, why though?”
“I had to get away from Randy and the Rentals.” She panted.
“Wow,” I laughed, and moved aside, “Well, come on in.”
We went into the room where we keep our books. Or more like closet. We hadn’t unpacked our books from the move yet, since we had other priorities, and because we didn’t really need them all that often anymore now that most vampire things had gotten to a ‘been there, done that’ point for my parents and I. The books sat packed neatly in boxes piled in the corner in front of our big, empty bookshelf.
Morgan and I sat on the floor flipping through the books looking for anything about werewolves. Every now and then we would pause to laugh about something one of us found in a book. Finally Morgan showed me one book.
“Look. Doesn’t it look like you, me and Kayla?” She said, showing me a picture from a book entitled Vampire Legends and Lore.
The picture was of three girls in stone age clothing standing in a circle, or technically a triangle, as Morgan would point out pickily, with their arms raised to the heavens and glowing light all around them. It was just a drawing like you’ll find in history books a lot, not very detailed, but it did look a lot like the three of us. It went with a section in the book called ‘The Three Fates.’
I stared at it closely, “It does.” I whispered in shocked awe, “A lot.”
I read into it a bit once Morgan had moved on to the next book she was curious about. It said that the Three Fates was an old prophecy of three women with these amazing powers that passed the power of even the whole Council of Lords. Their last claim to power was said to be in the time of Neanderthals, when an evil tyrant was threatening the world, and it was prophesized that they would appear when the worlds next Controller, which was the name for a vampire that had become corrupt with the power of mind control, began to rise in power.
That was pretty much all the book said about the Three Fates; it was just a small paragraph. It was one of those books that had a little bit of one thing and a little bit about another, and held hundreds of different one-paragraph briefs on different legends. I looked back at the picture. It really was a near-perfect rendition of Morgan, Kayla, and I from what detail could be seen. Maybe a few years older. It baffled me.
I was still studying it when Morgan caught my attention. “I found it!” She chimed.
She handed me a book called Vampires: Friends and Foes of the Dead and on the page she had open it explained that vampires and werewolves are, in fact, natural enemies. I smiled and laughed.
She took the book from my hands and hugged it to her tightly. She laid down on the floor, “Now we know why Randy and I will never get along,” She sighed dreamily, “All the mysteries in my world are solved.”
“So how many licks does it take to get to the chocolaty center of a tootsie pop?” I asked.
She sat up straight, “Mystery added, kill joy.”
We all know that cliché ‘time flies when you’re having fun,’ right? Well, someone must have thrown a clock out a window at that moment, because, all of a sudden, my mom was almost home, Ben was fixing dinner, the sun was slowly setting, and Morgan had to leave, her Mom having impatiently called my house three times by then to let her know her father was throwing a tirade about her not folding the laundry. After some cleaning up in the book room and some sad goodbyes, as well as Morgan quoting Shakespeare “Goodbye, goodbye, parting is such sweet sorrow,” Morgan finally left and I went into the kitchen to see what I could do to help Ben with the raw chicken he was wrestling hopelessly.
I woke up to my mom’s voice again. I opened my eyes to see her turning around to leave the room. My heart began racing, but I refused to think before I spoke. If I thought, I would stop myself and tell myself I would tell her later. And that would happen every time until it was too late, and once she found out, she would be angry that I hadn’t told her.
“Mom, wait,” I said, then continued quickly before I had time to chicken out, “Something happened Saturday night.”
She froze and stiffened, afraid of what she, in no time, realized I was about to say. Slowly, she turned to face me, her face an emotionless mask.
“Morgan got hurt, and I…” I took a deep breath and tried to keep my voice from breaking. It betrayed me anyway, “I lost control.”
Her face darkened, “And the other girl?”
“She’s the reason Morgan survived. I found out she’s a vampire also.” I explained.
I heard the huffy sigh of relief that escaped my mom’s lips; the one that said so clearly without speaking, “Oh thank God, I thought you had murdered someone!”
Quickly, I tried to blink back the tears that were beginning to cloud my vision. My attempt only made them spill over, wetting my cheeks, “I didn’t mean to, Mom,” I whispered, choking back a sob as I spoke, “It wasn’t my fault, I tried so hard. I feel so terrible, I feel like a murderer.”
I silently pleaded for her to understand. I had just gotten her back; I couldn’t live without her love. Without her support.
She hobbled across the room and--like I had hoped she would--sat down on my bed with me, putting a warm, protective arm around me. She cradled me against her shoulder, kissing my head and telling me everything would be alright.
“I love you, Lily. Never forget that.” She reminded me for, I think, the third time since she had sat down.
I pulled myself out of her arms, wiping my eyes, “Thank you, Mom. I love you, too. And one more thing?”
“Anything.”
I pushed my hair back behind my ear, “Could you buy me a new alarm clock tonight?”
Once I was ready for school, I floated up the stairs of the bus happily, only to stop dead in my tracks in the middle of the isle when I saw that my usual seat beside Morgan was filled now by one of the guys that had desperately tried to get me to sit with him on my first day. Morgan was visibly trying to shrink away from him, but his hands were all over her, a flirty smile on his face.
“Please go away,” I heard her beg.
“Just give me a chance,” He said. He sounded like he was trying to sound sweet and friendly, like he was attempting to play the nice guy that could never get a girl, and who was inexperienced in all things having to do with relationships, but the expression on his face said otherwise, and showed what he really had in mind.
I suddenly jumped at the sound of the bus drivers cranky old lady voice, “Are you gonna sit down or what?”
“Yes ma’am.” I said, hastily plopping down next to some creepy, ultra-tall guy who just stared ahead like I wasn’t there.
I looked back at Morgan again, who was still being harassed. Her face was red, and I thought I saw a tear roll down her cheek. “Stop it Josh,” She pleaded.
As soon as she said that, his hand shifted, and I saw him grope her. As soon as he did, I began to shoot up from my seat, but before I could even stand, I heard the loud smack of Morgan’s hand making contact with his skin.
“What the heck, you freak!” Josh screamed, rubbing the bright-red hand-shaped mark already beginning to form on the side of his face.
The bus stopped in the middle of the road with a painful jerk that gave me whiplash, “Is there a problem back there?” The bus driver screamed even though the bus had already gone silent from the sound of Morgan’s slap.
“That chick’s psycho!” Josh screamed, shooting up from the seat beside Morgan.
Morgan remained seated, “This ‘chick’ ” She said in a voice that was all at once loud, declarative, and calm, “Had all the right to slap you after you groped me.”
“I did not!” Josh said, sounding childish.
“Wait a moment,” The bus driver’s old lady voice sounded, “You, the girly there, do you even ride this bus?”
“Yes!” Morgan said, her calm voice giving way to a whine, “I’m Morgan Smith!”
Josh seemed to recoil from her even more, “Ah, gross! I didn’t know it was you I was touching!”
“You pompous jerk!” Morgan shrieked.
The bus driver sighed, “Calm down, Morgan, I’ll take care of him.” I could see the bus drivers eyes peek up at them in the mirror, “Josh, get your butt up here. Now.”
Josh stomped up to the front of the bus, mumbling incoherently. I got a good look at him as he passed me. He was tall, with tan skin and buzzed, black hair. Probably Hispanic. The hand print on his cheek was already beginning to turn from bright-red to a nasty yellow bruise. Morgan had slapped him hard, probably putting in every bit of her raw vampire strength. Josh rubbed his cheek again.
As soon as Josh was past me, I slipped out of my seat and ran back to plop down next to Morgan.
Morgan covered herself, looking at me with mock horror, “Oh no, you’re not going to grope me, too, are you?” She said, “Ugh, he’s such a jerk. That hurt, too. What a masochist, I wanted to punch his stupid lights out.”
I put my hand on her shoulder, trying to use my touch to will her to calm down. “Morgan, you’re going to have to be a little more careful about hiding you-know-what. Most girls can’t smack a guy hard enough to leave a big hand-shaped bruise.” I whispered to her.
She blinked at me a few times, looking clueless. I blinked back hoping it would show my annoyance that she was playing dumb. “There is no way you forgot.” I said, “No possible way.” When I only got a few more blinks and a few more seconds of her blank stare, I whispered, “Vampire, remember?”
“Oh, right, crap!” She said, far too loudly. Some people turned around and stared. I smiled nervously, waving at them. They turned back around.
“That’s it,” I groaned, “I’m shutting up for the rest of the bus ride. If you speak about you-know-what at all, I will, depending on circumstances, either smack you, or kill you. For good this time.” I couldn’t have planned a worse time to say those words, for we were pulling into the school parking lot right as I finished. I sighed quietly and gathered my things.
We dressed out in my third period gym class for the first time since school started that day. The school gym suits we had to wear were almost ugly enough to turn me off the color blue forever. The shirts were a kind of blue-grey color with an assortment of sports equipment, the schools name, and my name. The shorts were just two shades darker and went down to my knees and were baggy.
My teacher, an older woman whom I don’t find important enough to name or describe, didn’t understand, apparently, when I told her over and over that ‘Lily’ is not just a nickname for ‘Lillian.’
Morgan ran up to me in the gym once we left the locker rooms, “Hey there, Lillian Hilliker.” She mused, jumping up and down, almost certainly to burn off some of the vampiric energy that must have built up in her during our first two class periods. Wasn’t she hyper enough before? Someone please spare me.
I opened my mouth to respond, but the teacher blew her whistle, shouting for us to line up. Morgan ran to her spot without saying goodbye to me, more scared of the teacher than she was of me. “She’ll learn,” I whispered to myself as I went to my spot on the floor.
We played dodge ball. After running and doing some stupid warm-ups, of course. We were playing boys versus girls, and the girls in our class were lazy, girly, wimps. Some ran, letting out squeaks as they were hit and sent to the out area. Others just stood in the back, arms crossed and doing nothing. Quickly, it was just Morgan and I against twenty-something guys. Even the girls in the back that had been pretending not to care about anything--and maybe they really didn’t--were hit and gone.
I dodged another ball then caught one that was heading to the spot I moved to. The guy who had thrown the ball I caught was out, and I threw that ball and hit the guy that had thrown the ball I had dodged. Another guy, one with ultra-dark skin and his gym shorts low enough that I saw far more than I enjoyed, scrambled for the ball I had hit the other guy with and threw it at me full force.
I did a matrix, hands landing flat on the floor and my back arched as it whizzed past right where my head would have been. When it was past, I sprang forward again, hearing the ball hit the wall behind me with a loud whump! Had that ball hit me, it would have hurt.
But as swift and agile as I was, Morgan was even more amazing. A ball came flying toward her knees, thrown by the same guy who had made me do the matrix. What Morgan did took my breath away.
As soon as she saw him throw the ball, she jumped in the air. The ball was flying so fast that right at the peak of her jump it was right below her knees. As soon as it was right below her, she did a tuck and roll, snatching the ball from under her and jumping up from the ground to throw the ball at another guy and got both out.
I went still, staring at her in shock. A lot of the other students in the room cheered, and the gym teacher’s eyes were bugging out of their heads. While I wasn’t paying attention, though, one of the guys got me square in the side with a ball, and I was out. I watched from the bleachers the rest of the game, as one by one the guys dropped like flies and Morgan won the game for the girls.
It’s hard to be a vampire in a human world, as Morgan was learning. Between the dodge ball incident, her ripping her locker off its hinges, her sneeze, which caused a hole in the wall, a broken desk, and the incident in the bathroom which I refuse to go further than mentioning, she was having quite a bit of trouble controlling, as well as covering herself.
We plopped ourselves down in our back seat on the bus. Morgan pulled out a pack of gum, offering me some after shoving a piece in her own mouth. I took four.
“Hey!” She said indignantly.
I started chewing a piece and put the rest in my purse for later. “You owe me after what happened.” I said.
She looked away, blushing, “Yeah, about the bathroom… sorry.”
“You should be,” I grimaced as a shudder ran through me, “So… Much… Toilet paper…”
She laughed at me, a nervous laugh. “I’m scared I’ll give away our secret,” She whispered, “So scared… I’m already close to it. Sorry.”
I put a soothing hand on her shoulder. “It’s alright, Morgan. We’ll find a way to fix all this. People can tend to be stupid anyway, I mean, we are in Dimwittie.”
“Dumbwittie,” She corrected, a smile playing on her lips that didn’t quite reach anywhere near her eyes, “Or you could say Dimwitted Dinwiddie.”
The bus came to a halt at my driveway. I grabbed my bag and stood up. Looking down at Morgan, I said, “I’m pretty good at figuring this stuff out, don’t worry.” And with that, I stepped off the bus and went inside.
“Mom,” I whined into the phone, “I suck at figuring this stuff out! What should we do?”
“Lily, calm down. You’re making something out of nothing.” She responded, “You have her in all of your classes, right? You’ll just have to keep reminding her until she gets used to it. It’ll wear off soon anyway.”
I blew my hair out of my face then used my hand to push the stray hairs back behind my ear. “Right,” I said, “Yeah, okay, I’ll do that. Love you, Mom. Bye.”
I hung up the phone and fell back on my bed. My cat, Fluffy, padded into the room and jumped up with me, curling against my side. I could feel her purring quietly, and once I began to pet her, she purred louder and I could hear the motorboat roar of her purr.
“I missed you, baby girl,” I told her. I looked at her open cat crate in the corner of my room. She must have arrived that morning and Ben put her crate in my room. She stood up and rubbed her head against my face, her silky fur soft and warm against my cheek.
After a while, I finally got the motivation to pull myself out of the bed. Fluffy padded lovingly behind me into the kitchen and sat, watching, as I unloaded the clean dishes from the dishwasher and put them away.
As soon as I finished, I scooped Fluffy up and carried her into the computer room with me. I started up my computer and turned to walk out. Fluffy began to follow me, but I turned back to her and ordered her, “Stay here, sweetie, I’ll be right back.”
I grabbed my homework out of my book bag and snatched up the phone from where I had left it on my bed. I was dialing Morgan’s number as I walked into the computer room. Fluffy jumped on my lap as soon as I sat in the computer chair. “Hey baby,” I said to Fluffy right as Morgan answered the phone.
“Whoa, Lily, I didn’t know you went that way,” Morgan giggled.
“Haha, real funny.” I said. “I was talking to my cat.” I scratched Fluffy’s chin to restart her purr engine so Morgan would hear.
“You have a cat?” She asked curiously.
I smiled at my baby, “Mom wanted to adjust to our new house and get settled in and all before having her sent down. Her name’s Fluffy.”
“I love cats.” She mused, “I want to see her!”
“Well, calm down, maniac,” I laughed, “You’ll get to.”
We fell into one of our random conversations about nothing. We ended up spending well near an hour talking about how many people on MySpace were from Alvin, Texas, where I was from. It was a lot more than even I thought, and I realized that I knew many of them. And with a dull shock, I also realized that I didn’t feel half as homesick as I had all summer.
Before I knew it, my mom was home, dinner was cooked, and Ben was walking in from work.
“Lily,” My mom called, “Come set the table.”
I sighed, “Coming.” I yelled back to my mom, then turned back to the phone, “I have to go, Morgan.”
“Oh,” She said, sounding heartbroken, as I was beginning to realize was her usual emotion when dealing with parting ways, be it the end of the school day, her leaving after being at my house, us getting off the phone, or me leaving for three minutes to use the restroom. “Bye.”
“Bye,” I said back.
After dinner, I went upstairs and took a shower. As soon as I got out of the shower, I went to bed. I was asleep instantly.