The Eternal Kiss: Vampire Tales of Blood and Desire

swallowed me. Smells of linoleum, oil, chalk dust, the janitor’s harsh cleansers, and the funk of miserable kids in scratchy clothes, repeating drills when the whole world was outside waiting, all closed over my head. I trudged toward the classroom, and nobody yelled my name.

* * *

They were a couple minutes late to fourth period, but Brother Bob had been delayed with something or another. It was rare that he wasn’t in the room on the dot, so I opened up my secondhand trig textbook.

Gwyneth slid into her seat next to me. Mitzi gave me a pitying look, tossing her blonde pigtails. I slumped down in my chair.

“There’s a party tonight,” Gwyn whispered. She’d gotten some gum from somewhere, and the perfume of Juicy Sweet touched my cheek. “Out in the Hills. Wanna go?”

“I thought we were—”

“Come on.” She grinned while Brother Bob lumbered to the front of the room. He was sweating, and his round face was red. The collar always cut into the crinkled skin of his throat. Gwyn called the look “choked turkeyneck,” and I agreed.

“I won’t know anyone there.” But it was a mumble, because the class had quieted. Bob’s little, moist, dark eyes raked the rows of seats. Mitzi wriggled in her chair. Trisha shoved her bookbag under her seat and fiddled with her hair ribbon.

“Jesus, just say yes.” Gwyneth’s blue eyes narrowed as she stared at the front of the classroom. Brother Bob gulped and stood up straight. The chalkboard was freshly washed.

“Yes,” I said.

“Quiet down, girls,” Bob said.

Then the fire alarm went off. It was a drill, thank God. Gwyn and I glanced at each other, grabbed our bookbags, and got out of there. I guess we were meant to skip fourth period after all.

* * *

We stopped off at Gwyn’s house. Her dad was at work and her mom was off somewhere, so there was only Marisa the housekeeper, who clucked at both of us as we tore in through the door, laughing.

“Did you see that?” Gwyn was laughing so hard she hic-cupped. It was a wonder she could drive. Her place was twelve minutes away from St. Crispin’s if the lights were right. Today they hadn’t been, but we were lucky.

Driving with Gwyneth was like playing roulette. You just knew sooner or later you were going to lose. She got distracted and rolled through stop signs, forgot to check oncoming traffic, and didn’t notice red lights sometimes until I pointed them out, usually by yelling Jesus Christ! and grabbing for the dash.

She was in hysterics from the fact that we’d rolled right past a cop at a stop sign, blithely disregarding the fact that it wasn’t our turn to go. The cop hadn’t even glanced or flicked his lights. He’d just been sitting there.

I was in hysterics because we’d come this close to getting pasted by a huge red Escalade. On my side, of course. Because nothing would ever happen to Miss Luckypants. But I just went along, laughing. At least hanging out with her was never boring, not since second grade when she fell out of the monkey bars onto me. And when I spent the night in her parents’ glass-and-white-stucco mansion, sometimes I would close my eyes and imagine it was me who lived here and someone else who just visited all the time.

Gwyn dropped her bookbag on a stool at the breakfast bar and swiped her hand back through her hair. “Hi, Marisa.” She tried to put on a serious face and failed miserably.

“Ola, Marisa.” I waved, hitching my bag up on my shoulder.

She sniffed at both of us, but opened up the fridge door. In under a minute there was a plate of sugar cookies and two big glasses of milk. Like magic. Round-faced, round-shouldered, and round-eyed, she wore a black dress that seemed to be a uniform. A clean, starched white apron never had the slightest stain.

I took a sugar cookie. She gave me her usual tight smile, one that didn’t reach her solemn dark eyes.

Our laughter drained away. Gwyneth dropped down on a stool, and Marisa pushed the plate a little closer to me. I took a gulp of milk, and my stomach eased up a bit.

“Rolled right past him,” Gwyn giggled, and then we were off and running again.

It took a long time for the giggles to fade, especially with Marisa restocking the sugar cookies and pouring more milk. “So what did Mitzi want? Other than to invite you to the shindig of the week.” I even managed to say it casually.

“Oh, just stuff. You know she doesn’t exist unless everyone around her is adoring her. It’s just sick the way they all stand around and valley each other.”

Yeah. It is. “You sure you want to go to this party?” With me was what I meant, and Gwyn gave me a bright little sidelong glance. She looked so healthy, the roses in her cheeks blooming. I’d torn all the pins out of my hair and I felt greasy. The uniform didn’t help.

“You can borrow my black silk shirt.” She wasn’t quite wheedling. But that black silk was her baby. She hardly ever wore it.

“Nah. You can just drop me off at my house. I don’t want to go.”

“You want to go to the Bleu again. The boring old Bleu.”

That’s where you wanted to go five minutes before Mitzi descended from on high to invite you. “No, I’ve got homework.”

“Please. It only ever takes you five minutes to do your homework. I’m driving, you’re coming with me. You have to. I can’t go deal with those squealing idiots all on my own.”

Why go, then? But I gave in. Oh, I played like I wasn’t going for a while, until she got irritated and threw a cookie at me. Marisa sighed and whisked the plate away. I finished my milk and picked the cookie up. I didn’t eat it though. I’ve got some pride.

But I did say, “Okay, fine. I’ll go. Jesus.”

Which made Gwyn all sunny again. She’s always like that when she gets her way.

* * *

Some guy’s house, up in the Hills. There was a keg, thumping music, and a lot of whooping going on. Someone’s parents were away—I think the ratfaced guy in the corner taking shots with a bunch of pimpled jocks was the host, but I never found out for sure. It was a warm night, the winds just starting up. Full moon like a big wheel of boiled cheese coming up over the coast, rising above the broken pleats of the Hills. It was a nice view, through whole walls of glass. As soon as we got there Gwyn went for a beer and I was left all by myself near the front door, staring at groups of kids I didn’t know.

I saw Mitzi in the corner, and she perked up when she saw me. When I say perked up I mean swelled up like a frog preparing to spit poison, and I suddenly got a very bad feeling about this.

The bad feeling lasted. I found Gwyn in the kitchen, her golden head together with Trisha Brent’s. They were giggling over something, and I began to feel a little lightheaded. There had to be a hundred people in here. One kid started barfing in the pool just as I passed the wide-open French doors out to the patio. I peered out, the madrona trees down the hill moving gently as the wind poured past me.

It felt good. I wanted to step outside, but the kid horking into the pool kind of destroyed the mood. I stood there, hanging onto one edge of the open door, and someone got a little too close.

When I looked up, it was to see Scott Holder.

Half the girls at St. Crispin’s were in love with him. Blue eyes. Blond floppy emo-boy haircut. Plays soccer and goes to Ignatius Academy, which is the closest thing to a sister school we’ve got. The end-of-the-year dances put Iggies and Crispies together, with the staff of both watching like hawks. Guess they don’t want any of the Catholic escaping.

He was saying something, those chiseled lips moving. I stared at him. He was still in the prep outfit Ignatius makes the boys wear, though he’d ditched the jacket and unbuttoned the shirt. The necklace—a single canine tooth on a hemp cord, its top wrapped with gold wire—was definitely not regulation. He grinned at me, showing those white white teeth.

“What?” I had to yell through the music.

He said my name. “Right? You go to Crispy.”