The next class was math class, and Amy found herself slightly excited about seeing whether or not she could remember any of her trigonometry. She didn’t. Not one single thing. But it was exciting to learn it all over again.
After class, she made a decision. She would officially enroll in night school. She went to the front office, used a fake name and a fake social security number. She was given a schedule and a list of textbooks she’d need.
Amy was giddy.
She didn’t tell the clan about it. Every vampire in their group had their secrets. It was understood that you did what you needed to do to make the eternal life bearable.
For some it was going to prostitutes.
For some it was eating only animals.
For some it was keeping a night job.
For Amy it was finishing high school.
There was something that Gina liked immediately about Amy. It could have been her quietness. It could have been the way she wore vintage 1970s clothes. It could have been that Amy always had such an interesting perspective and point of view on things when she talked in class. Like she knew things about the world, and people. Like she’d seen things. Like she was sophisticated.
Amy liked Gina, too. Amy liked hanging out with Gina at the breaks between classes. Amy could tell that even though Gina was eccentric and didn’t have the best social skills, she had a kindness about her. Amy was certain that if she had met Gina when she was alive, she would never have talked to her; she would only have made fun of her. But at night school, with all the others who had had something happen to them to derail them from a regular teenage life, everyone had at last found the one place where they could all be the cool girl.
Gina was a benevolent cool, welcoming everyone, including all.
It was a sharp contrast from the cool girls Amy remembered from her day. She remembered that those girls were mean. Their hair flipped perfectly, their eye shadow always the perfect shade of blue, their boyfriends always the coolest boy in school. Amy suspected that if she looked long and hard at herself, she would discover that she had been one of those mean girls. She didn’t want to be that kind of girl anymore.
Here at night school, she remained quiet. Just happy to be included in the chitchat. Cheerfully chiming in when called upon. And sharing her homework with anyone who needed help.
It wasn’t too long before Gina asked Amy if she wanted to hang out. They went to the movies. They had sleepovers. They went to shows. Gina and Amy were fast becoming best friends.
They told each other everything.
Well, almost everything.
Gina told her that she was allergic to the sun. But she didn’t know how to explain that she was dying.
Amy told her that she was a little bit older than she looked. But didn’t know how to explain that she was a vampire.
Amy had moved into the twenty-first century. Cell phone, laptop, social network profiles.
Her relationship to killing altered because now she had a friend and socialized with humans. The other vampires in her clan had told her that would happen if she mixed. It happened to all of them after a while. It was inevitable. She hadn’t believed them. But in the end she had to admit that it was true.
She didn’t turn to only eating animals, or working in a hospital or blood bank to get her fix, like the others. She didn’t stop eating humans; they tasted too good to her. But now she ate less often, and only when people were already bleeding out, from a gunshot wound or a car accident or a stabbing or a suicide. She rationalized that those people were already dead, with no hope for life, the blood, just flowing out of them, going to waste. Feeding on them eased her conscience.
There was an older vampire in her clan who taught her how to find them, those on the brink. He taught her how to smell them from miles away. Showed her the special way to run so that it was almost flying on the wind. He had always been like that, ever since he’d turned. He called it a mercy to the dying. He said he felt like an angel.
He informed her that there was a property in vampire’s mucus that acted like a sedative. Amy had never known how to use it. Her victims had always been horrified and in pain. But he taught her how to hawk up a loogie in such a way that she could swish it around in her mouth with her saliva and spit it into the victim’s mouth so that they felt a pleasant warmth as they were being drained.
This kindness that she offered made her feel better about having to kill. It made her able to look Gina and the other girls they hung out with at night school in the eyes with no guilt.
It was Gina’s birthday. Gina knew that her time was coming to an end. And one thing that she had always wanted to do was go to the beach. But of course she never would be able to, because of the sun.
“Why don’t you go to Abe’s Tropical Paradise Tanning Spa?” one of the girls said during one of their five-minute breaks.
“You’ll come, too, Amy,” Gina said. “We’re both so pale, we could probably use two treatments of spray-on tan.”
Everyone laughed. Including Amy. But it made her miss the sun.
Abe’s promised a total paradise experience in the very comfort of your own hometown. No travel needed! Bring a beach towel! Swim in our marine-animal-free lagoon! Real imported Jamaican sand! Hawaiian-style tiki bar! Private parties available! Spray tan included!
“It might be a fun idea,” Gina said.
Everyone promised they would come. Especially Amy. She wouldn’t miss it for the world.
Gina’s parents knew that there wasn’t likely to be much longer, so when Gina asked for such an extravagant sixteenth birthday party, they gladly paid the $1,500 for Gina and her friends to have a private tropical experience.
All the girls packed beach bags and flip-flops and went downtown at night.
The lagoon area with tiki bar that served virgin margaritas had sand everywhere and a soundtrack of water lapping and bird calls. There were heat lamps that had no harmful UV lights in them. They just flooded the room with warmth. The only way you could tan up at Abe’s was to get spray-on tan. He still had some tanning beds, but they were in a storage room and he didn’t have a license for that anymore. People didn’t want the skin cancer. They just wanted the tropical experience.
Amy was the first to arrive. Abe let her wander around by herself, and she opened up doors and closets as she explored.
In one room, she found the old tanning beds. They looked like futuristic coffins.
Amy could not resist. She had never slept in a coffin. She had vampire friends who swore that it was the best sleep you could ever get. You were so sealed in, with such darkness, that they were sad that it wasn’t in fashion, or that having a coffin delivered to your home would call too much attention. It wasn’t like the old days, when death was a part of day-to-day life and coffins were common.
Amy wanted to try it out. She opened one of the beds. Lay down. And pulled the cover over herself. It was dark. She’d checked that the machine was unplugged, to make sure that it wouldn’t be accidentally turned on. Deprived of her sight, she found her hearing heightened. She could hear the heartbeat of everyone as they entered the spa. Two people. Now five. Now eleven. She could smell their sweat. She could pinpoint the person with the sweetest blood. She drooled for a second at the thought of the taste of the girl. But she would have to feed later, on a stranger. Rules were rules.