“Young people taste best, children, babies. I try to stick to people who’ve lived a little. On occasion, though, I must admit, I have not been able to resist the tenderness of youth.”
“I’ve kissed a boy, but I’ve never touched it.”
“At school they used to call me the blow-job queen. I was a real slut.”
“I feel worse for my parents that I’m dying than I do for me.”
“My parents think that I ran away. They grew old thinking that I hated them that much.”
“You know what I wish?” Gina said.
“What?”
“No, forget it. It’s silly.”
“I bet it’s not silly. What is it?” Amy asked.
“To live.”
“Isn’t it funny that my deepest wish is to die?”
But they both didn’t laugh.
It wasn’t that funny.
Halfway through their last year at night school, it became obvious that Gina was going quickly. She became even thinner than she already was. Her skin translucent. And no amount of sweaters kept her warm anymore. She missed classes, so many the teacher informed Amy that Gina would have to take the semester over.
Amy never told Gina that. She just kept bringing Gina her assignments on the nights she missed school as though it was all going to be all right. As though Gina could catch up with a little bit of effort and extra care. Amy would patiently teach Gina everything that they had learned in class. She tutored her in all that she knew.
Gina would try to pay attention to the lessons for a while, and then fade from the effort after fifteen minutes.
Sometimes Gina would awaken and look at Amy like she wanted to ask her a question but didn’t know how to properly phrase it. Gina would move her lips, practicing saying the words aloud, but whatever she was thinking, she would stop herself, crinkle her nose, then shake her head and laugh as though she thought she was about to say something stupid.
Amy could not bear to see her friend suffer.
“I could give you a new kind of life, if you wanted,” Amy said slowly.
“Where I could live forever?”
“Yes,” Amy said. “And you wouldn’t know pain anymore. You’d be made whole, only in a different way.”
“You’d give me my deepest wish?”
“Of course,” Amy said. “You’re my friend. But you have to ask me to turn you. I can’t do it otherwise.”
“Does it hurt when you turn?”
Amy tried to remember turning. She remembered a stiffening. Her muscles cracking. Her body, her organs losing control. They had all failed and then restarted. A distinct feeling that her skin had been ripped off and burned and then numbness. And after the agony, it felt like she was floating on the warmest cloud of beauty, which slowly turned to ice.
“A little bit,” Amy lied. “But then you feel like you are supposed to.”
“We could be vampires together,” Gina said.
“Best friends forever,” Amy said.
Amy placed her hands on her lap and looked down. If she had tears left in her, she might start to cry. If it was the only way that Gina could have a life free from the half life she had now, and if it was what she wanted, Amy would help her friend. Her only friend.
“Would you do it if I asked you?” Gina asked.
“In a heartbeat,” Amy said. Although she didn’t have one of those.
Gina smiled. Relieved that she didn’t have to die if she didn’t want to.
“You know, I would kill you if you asked me, too,” Gina said.
“You would?”
“Yes.”
“It’s not easy. You’d have to cut off my head or burn me.”
“I know,” Gina said. “I looked it up on the internet.”
They didn’t mention the conversation again. Gina got sicker. Amy got busier with final exams. They saw each other less and less. Each one of them wrapped up in the difficulty of day-to-day survival.
Gina preferred to wear the long silk nightgown that had belonged to her great-grandmother, even though it was so thin that it offered no heat. That was why the hospital room was so hot. She wore a shawl, but it wasn’t enough.
Amy brought Gina the fleece robe from the closet. But Gina would have none of that.
“Ugh,” she said, pushing it back into Amy’s hands. “I wouldn’t be caught dead in that.”
They watched a movie on the television. Laughed at the funny parts. Caught up on the gossip of friends. The nurse came in to turn down the blankets and adjust the IV. She took one look at Gina and told Amy that she could stay the night if she wanted.
The nurse padded out of the room.
Gina looked at Amy. Her eyes were glassy.
“Do you remember what we talked about?” Gina asked.
“Remind me,” Amy said, even though she hadn’t forgotten. She had to make sure that Gina was serious.
“About turning me,” Gina said.
Amy nodded.
“I was thinking. You could turn me and then, once it’s done, I could kill you.”
Amy had never thought of that. She had assumed that if Gina turned, that would be that. She would never get her wish and she would be condemned to roam the streets of New York City for a hundred lifetimes. Only now she would have a true friend.
They looked at each other. Ready.
“Would you?”
“Would you?”
Amy let her face change. She bared her teeth.
Gina slipped her hand under her pillow and pulled out a can of hair spray and a Zippo. Amy could see the glint of a very large kitchen knife that lay there, available at a moment’s notice.
They eyed each other, waiting for what seemed an eternity for the other one to say the words, to give permission, to make the move.
One of them was going to live and one of them was going to die. But not exactly in that order.
And then, as if by magic, or by complete mutual understanding and love for each other, the absolute knowledge that they would never condemn their truest friend to their lot in life, they both moved at the same time as they put their weapons away.
Amy settled back into her chair and read a magazine and lived, as undead a life as it was.
Gina settled back into her pillows, closed her eyes, and died peacefully, in her sleep.
Sit the Dead
by JEFFREY FORD
Luke was in his room at the computer, looking at used cars. His cell phone rang. He answered with it on speaker.
“Darene,” he said.
“Gracie died,” she said.
He pictured the deceased, hairdo like a helmet, overweight in flowered stretch slacks. Her earrings were disco balls; her face, a half inch of powder and pale green lipstick. He’d met her at a barbecue in Darene’s backyard.
