But as Amy began to change her gait from skulking to running to go in for the kill, she gagged.
At first she chalked it up to the terrible human smells in the tunneclass="underline" the stale air, the body odor, the cigarettes, and the pee. But as she moved in, it was clear that it was the girl who stank. The rank rot smell was coming from her. Amy realized that something was wrong with the girl.
Gina turned around.
Amy doubled over and gagged again.
That was how they met.
“Hi,” Gina said, pulling out one of the earbuds and letting it dangle. The music spilled out a little louder into the tunnel now. Amy recognized the song. It was old, one that Amy used to like.
“It totally smells down here, right?” Gina continued.
Amy nodded. Her teeth were extended, so she kept her face hidden, placed her hand on the tunnel wall to steady herself as she tried to calm her frenzy and coax her teeth back down.
“I almost threw up last week,” Gina overshared.
Amy nodded again. It was difficult to be understood when her mouth changed. Usually she didn’t have to talk — she just ate.
“You going to be okay? I’ve got water in my bag if you need some.”
“I just need a minute,” Amy said as clearly as she could manage. “I’ll be fine.”
And she would. This had happened before, a stunted kill. It happened. Not all easy marks turned out to be easy. That was part of the thrill of being a hunter.
Composed, expression set back to normal, Amy stood up and turned to face Gina.
Amy noticed that Gina was very small and very thin and very pale. Even paler than her. Even paler than any vampire she’d ever known. Gina’s skin was more ivory than bone. Her veins so blue that they showed uncomfortably bright through her skin. Her hair was reddish once, but it was so lifeless and dead that it lacked any prettiness to it.
Amy knew one thing for sure. This girl was a dead girl. Not actually dead. But dead soon.
“You taking a class here?” Amy asked. It was the most normal thing she could think to ask of the girl who was supposed to be her dinner.
Gina nodded.
“I’m getting my high school diploma,” Gina said.
Gina extended her slender hand. Amy took it. The hand was as cold as hers. It made her shudder. She’d never felt a human with no warmth.
“I’m Gina,” the girl said. “And I love your boots. Even though I’m not so into the seventies.”
Gina was wearing a royal blue velvet dress with a high neck and many tiny little buttons. It was vintage 1910. It had a lace collar. She wore white patterned thick tights and vintage boots.
“I’m Amy,” Amy said.
Now that Gina had given Amy her true name, she would never feed on her. Amy had long ago decided that she couldn’t feed on anyone she humanized. She could only feed on someone she thought of as an animal. They were just human meat. If they were human, like she was once before, if they had a name, she couldn’t feed. Gina was no longer meat; she was now Gina, a human.
Amy was surprised to discover that they had been walking together, side by side, and that now they had arrived at the campus.
Amy knew that tonight she was not going to eat.
So she went with Gina to class.
That’s how come Amy finally finished high school. It was because of her chance meeting with Gina.
Amy as a human died and was reborn as undead in 1976. She didn’t want to, it just happened, in an alley in New York City. It was Independence Day and she was watching the tall boats come up the Hudson River. That night she was tripping on acid with her friends down by the Battery. She left the group alone to go find a bathroom. When she saw the vampire coming toward her, she laughed. She thought it was just a part of the trip. A great hallucination. He was cute, and she welcomed him coming close to her. He started kissing her neck. It tickled at first. Until he bit. Bit hard. Amy was still laughing when the blood was being drained out of her. Even though it hurt like hell. Even though there were explosions in the sky. Even though she was tripping like mad.
But before he killed her completely, he stopped sucking her blood. He later told her he was confused by her laughing. And also, he was hallucinating, too. He stopped and looked at her and saw every girl he’d ever loved. Every girl he’d ever killed. His mother. His aunts. His sister. His niece. His wife. And they were all doing the same thing as Amy. They were laughing. At him. And that was why he stopped. He felt remorse. He wanted to ask her why she was laughing. But he couldn’t do that if she was dead. He had to turn her to get an answer.
He let her go.
Amy fell to the ground. Rolled onto her side. She could hear the fireworks.
“Is it beautiful?” she asked. She hadn’t wanted to miss them, the fireworks. She had been hoping to get back to her group of friends before they started. But now she knew that something was wrong with her. She felt funny. She felt weak. She suspected it wasn’t the acid anymore. She suspected that she was in danger.
“I’m going to turn you,” he said. “I have to ask you if you want to be turned.”
“Yes, turn me, I want a better view of the sky,” Amy said. She thought if she was going to die, she wanted to do it while seeing colors light the sky.
He propped her up, bit his wrist, and dripped his blood into her mouth. She was reborn as she watched fireworks burst red, white, and blue.
Gina was a cold baby. Very cold to the touch. Her tiny hands and feet were always icy. She was always in the smallest percentile of normal. Just on the edge of being too short or too underweight.
“She just has poor circulation” was what the doctors said to reassure her worried parents. “Nothing to be done about it. Just exercise. Sunlight. Milk. She’ll grow out of it. Probably have a growth spurt in late childhood. Everything will be fine.”
Her parents likely realized that something was wrong early on, although they didn’t want to admit it.
Gina would come inside from playing with burns that blistered and cracked her skin. At first it was just on occasion, as though it were an accumulation of too much sunshine whose toxin would finally rise and explode angrily out of her. But then, by the time she was in first grade, it was confirmed that she was full-blown allergic to the sun.
Precautions had to be taken. Thick curtains everywhere in the house. The once warm, happy family was plunged into an eternal darkness. It suffocated them. Strained their feelings to the limit. Distanced them from one another.
To help ensure that no light seeped into Gina’s skin, clothing had to be UV-proof. Sunblock was worn like skin cream. Hats, dark glasses, long pants, long sleeves, long gloves became everyday parts of Gina’s wardrobe.
As a child, she looked eccentric and weird from the get-go. Knowing that she’d never fit in, by the time middle school rolled around, Gina had fully embraced being a freak. She wore vintage clothing, old vintage hats, dresses, and gloves. Although she longed for them, Gina had no real friends.
When they got to class that first night, Amy discovered that the book they were reading was The Crucible. Amy had read it right before she’d been turned, and she was surprised to discover that she remembered the book so well. She found herself raising her hand and making comments. Perhaps it was because she hadn’t been to school for thirty years and being in such a familiar environment made her kind of miss it. Back then, in 1976, she was more interested in smoking up and giving blow jobs. She was in the loser group. Part of the tough crowd. The ones that cut class, wore halter tops, feathered their hair, listened to heavy rock, and didn’t give a rat’s ass about school.
Perhaps it was the fact that over thirty years of feeding on humans had matured her, and so after all that time, she was finally ready for school. No matter how many years went by, she still felt sixteen inside. Which was not as fun as she thought it would be. She still had all the angst. She still had all the ups and downs. She still felt interested by things that other teenagers were interested in, even though she also now knew more about the dark side of life. More than she’d ever wanted to know.