Sweetblood (9781439108741) (6 page)

In case you don't read French, that means: “French makes me sick. I'm going to the mall.”

Our city is not a monster metropolis like New York or Los Angeles, but it's big enough to have three high schools and a dozen movie theaters and two colleges and Crosstown Center, an indoor mall with forty-seven shops. The mall isn't exactly Rodeo Drive, but I decide to make a fashion statement anyway.

I put on my makeup. Lots of black around the eyes because I'm in a black mood. I go with the purple lipstick and I add a spot of red to the tips of my black nails. They want weird, I'll give 'em weird. I look out the window. Leaves are blowing from the trees—it's one of those cloudy fall days that can get cold in a hurry. I opt for a turtleneck (black, of course), my biker jacket with the chain epaulets, and a leather cap that makes me look a little like a goth Marlon Brando before he got old and fat. My boots would really complete the look, but it's a long walk to the mall, so I compromise with a pair of purple high-top sneakers. I consider sunglasses, but since I've done such an awesome job with the eyeliner and mascara I decide to let my eye-balls hang naked.

Before I step outside, I plug into my CD player and I stuff some granola bars and candy into my pockets and I test my blood sugar. The machine sucks in the droplet of blood, thinks about it, then tells me I'm alive, with a slightly elevated blood glucose of 147 mg/dl. Good enough. I'll need the extra glucose for the walk.

Crosstown Center is almost three miles from our house. It's a long walk, but better than sitting around waiting for my parents to come home with a new plan for turning me into somebody I'm not.

I decide to walk the railroad tracks instead of taking Cooley Drive. The tracks are only three blocks from home, and they go right past the mall. Also, I won't run the risk of my parents driving by and seeing me.

I used to play out by the tracks when I was little. Mark Murphy and I would make little houses out of cardboard and mud and set them up on the rails and populate them with tiny stick figures, then we would wait for a train to come by. I guess that was kind of a strange thing to do, but we were just little kids.

One time—I must've been about eight—I was out by the tracks by myself. I remember the smooth metal of the rail, warm from the sun, pressing against my cheek. Maybe I was playing at being an Indian, listening for the sounds of a coming train. I became very sleepy. I curled up on the tracks and drifted.

Sometimes an insulin reaction will sneak up on me like that. The next thing I remember is my mother shrieking, pulling me off the tracks.

“What's the matter with you?” she kept asking.

Well, gee, Mom, I have diabetes and I'm, like, eight years old. Gimme a break!

I understand why she was so upset. If I ever breed (which I definitely do not plan to do) I wouldn't want to find my kid asleep on a railroad track. But I hope I'd be cooler about stuff like that.

So for most of my childhood I was forbidden to go anywhere near the tracks, and mostly I didn't, but I'm not a little kid anymore and it really is the fastest way to get to Crosstown Center.

I walk between the rails, my sneakers hitting every other tie, the wind gusting, pushing me from behind.

Crosstown Center is crowded because of the big sale they always have between the back-to-school sale and the Thanksgiving sale. This year they're calling it Octoberfest. I don't know why they'd name a clothing sale after a German beer-drinking festival, but I guess any excuse will do for a sale. All the stores have tables out front piled high with whatever they most want to get rid of: a lot of ugly sweaters and skirts and shoes and stuff that even Mark Murphy wouldn't be caught dead in. There's some cool stuff, too, but only in midget and monster sizes.

I run into Fiona Cassaday and Marquissa Smith-Valasco sitting by the fountain in the central courtyard. Fiona makes me think of a fairy. She is thin and delicate-looking, with pale, translucent skin and hair the color of blood-tinged water. Her eyes are of a blue so pale that they look almost white, her hands are long and thin. She looks as if she's been drained by a very thirsty vampire.

“Hey, Luce.” Fiona is wearing a leather bomber jacket over a cotton dress with orange and purple stripes like a nightmare candy cane. Her thin legs are crossed, and her feet are encased in clunky-looking red boots. She is smoking a cigarette, which you are not supposed to do in the mall.

Fiona and I have only one thing in common. We are both
très
weird.

“Somebody's going to bust you,” I say, pointing at the cigarette.

Fiona smiles with her small teeth, all about the same size. “I
know,
” she says. She looks off to the right.

I follow her glance and see the security guard standing near the information kiosk.

“That's Steve
Monson,
Jimmy Monson's older
brother
.” Fiona has a way of stressing certain words. It's like she's
shooting
them at you. “He's a student at
Harker
.”

Harker College is one of the two colleges in the city.

The guard, Steve
Monson,
is broad-shouldered and erect. His uniform actually looks good on him, which is amazing because the Crosstown Center security guard uniform, with its two-tone pockets, matching epaulets, and short sleeves, is the depth of dork fashion.

“I'm waiting for him to make me put it
out,”
Fiona says. “Don't you think he's
cute
?”

“She's in femme fatale mode,” says Marquissa. Marquissa always looks as if she is about to collapse from terminal boredom. Her eyelids are huge and her thick lips never quite close. She has black hair down to her waist, so black it is like a hole in reality. I would kill for hair that black.

“Shut
up
,” says Fiona, laughing. Fiona is
always
in femme fatale mode. Fiona has chased guys since the day she was born. She's caught a few, too.

Marquissa turns to me, “Speaking of femme fatale, I saw you talking to Dylan.”

“Dylan?” I wrinkle my brow, as if I'm trying to remember. “Oh yeah, he's in my French class.”

“He's hot,” Marquissa says.

I want to hit her, but I just glare. Marquissa is wearing a black leather trenchcoat. I think she must have stolen it, because those things go for a lot of money. I wish I had one. Marquissa thinks she is this deep dark goth, like she can make flowers wilt by glaring at them. But I knew her before she got her frowny black-leather attitude, back before she changed her name from Mary to Marquissa. She is so into the goth thing she even wears fishnet on her arms sometimes, which is kind of like a preacher wearing a yellow smiley-face button.

Let me be perfectly clear about one thing: I am not goth. I am Lucy Sweetblood Szabo, and just because I like to dress black and have an unhealthy interest in blood-sucking demons doesn't mean I am some goth fashion junkie who listens to Sisters of Mercy and sleeps with peroxide-soaked sponges to make her face whiter, and has so many buckles, chains, and piercings that she jingles when she walks. Well, maybe I jingle a little. But I'm just me, and anybody who goths me is in big trouble.

“So what are you
doing
?” Fiona asks me.

“Nothing. Just getting the hell out of the house.”

“Christ,
tell
me about it. My mom's been on the
warpath
lately.”

“My parents are over at the school having a meeting with Graham.”

“Graham?
Mrs
. Graham? What did you
do
?”

“I wrote this paper about vampires.”

“Vampires? Was it about
Buffy
? Graham
hates
TV.”

“No, it was about real vampires. It was kind of bloody.”

“Yuck.” Fiona frowns at her cigarette, shoots a look at Steve Monson, gets nothing back, drops the butt into the fountain.

“Anyway, it was mostly true stuff,” I say.

“What was?” She is glaring at Steve Monson, who is watching a pair of older girls walking into the Gap.

“The vampire stuff. So I don't see what they're so upset about.”

“Vampires aren't
real
,” Fiona says. “Maybe they think you've gone
nuts
.”

Marquissa is watching us talk, her heavily lidded eyes almost closed.

I'm not sure I want to get into the whole vampire thing with Fiona. She's the type who might just spread it all over
school and make me out to be even more of a freak than I am.

“They
already
think I'm nuts.” Now
I'm
talking like Fiona.

Fiona lights another cigarette.

Marquissa says, “Yes they are.”

Fiona blows smoke. “Yes
who
are
what
?”

“Vampires. They're real.”

“Yeah, right. I suppose you
know
one?”

“I've met a few,” Marquissa says.

Fiona and I look at her.

“These guys I know from Harker are into it. They read every book there is about vampires and watch movies and dress up and do rituals and stuff.”

“That doesn't make them vampires.”

“They drink blood.”

“
Real
blood?” Fiona asks.

“That's what they say,” Marquissa says.

“They aren't real vampires,” I say. “They're just role-playing.”

“How do you know?”

“If they were real you'd never know it. You'd wake up one morning with your throat ripped out.”

Fiona looks like she's about to barf. “
You
guys are
disgusting
.”

Marquissa smiles sleepily.

Low

The clouds are heavy and low as I walk between the tracks. I am staring down. My shoes are purple flashes against the dark brown of railroad ties; the wind is against me, cutting up under my jacket, sucking heat and moisture from my body. I am thinking about what Marquissa said about her so-called vampire friends.

According to Marquissa, these “vampires” get together to talk about vampire books and watch movies. Some of them dress up and even wear fangs. And they drink blood.

“You ever taste it?” I asked.

“Yuck!” she said, scrunching up her face.

“It's probably not really blood. I bet they just drink red wine or something, and they tell you it's blood because they don't want you to have any.”

“They say it's blood.”

I laughed, and Marquissa got all peeved. That was when Steve Monson finally came over and made Fiona put out the cigarette. He was all business and treated us like a bunch of kids. After that we went up to the food court, except I couldn't eat anything because I hadn't brought any insulin with me. I had to sit and drink Diet Coke and watch Fiona and Marquissa wolf down slices of pizza.

Now I'm starving, and still a mile from home. Sometimes it sucks being Undead.

I like my purple shoes. I do not have many nonblack articles of clothing. Maybe I should buy some other purple things. Purple underwear, maybe.

I listen to the
swish swish swish
of my arms swinging, leather on leather, and the
scuff scuff scuff
of rubber soles hitting railroad ties.

My head feels large. The wind fills my ears. My legs are like puppet limbs, loose-hinged and numb as wood. I am having some trouble staying centered on the tracks. I wish they were railings, waist high, something to hang on to.

I am moving very slowly now, as if time is coming to a stop. Something is very wrong. An internal voice says to me,
“Eat something.”

I step off the tracks and walk a few yards to a patch of low grass, moving as if through water; the air is thick and hard to breathe.

“Eat,”
says the voice.

I dig in my pockets and come out with a granola bar. I would rather have a slice of pizza. I sit down on the grass,
staring at the granola bar. When I blink, the wrapper flashes like a strobe light.