One time Noah brought Emmy along. I wasn’t freaked or anything. I knew they weren’t dating anymore. Gossip knows no species, you know? I guess it must be pretty lonely to hang out with a human girl all the time and explain your business to her. They sat in the tire swing together and kind of draped their arms and legs all over each other. They didn’t make out or anything, they just sat there, touching.
“Do. you guys need some time alone?” I asked. Okay, I was a little freaked.
“It’s just something we do, Scout,” Emmy said, sighing. “Share ambient heat. It’s cold.”
“Are you kidding? It’s like ninety degrees.”
“Not for us,” Emmy said patiently.
“It’s not just that, you know,” added Noah. “Ever seen pictures of wolf pups? How they all pile together? Well, you know, some days, a bunch of us just sleep that way. It’s. comforting.”
I plunked down on one of those plastic dragons that bounce back and forth on a big spring. I bounced it a couple of times. I didn’t know what to say.
“So what are you guys gonna do in the fall?”
They just looked at each other, kind of sheepish.
Noah moved his leg over Emmy’s. It was just about the least sexual thing I’ve ever seen. “We were thinking we might go to Canada. Lots of us are going. There’s jobs up there. On, like, fishing boats and stuff. In Hudson Bay. The nights. are really long. It’s safer. There’s whole towns that are just ours. Communities. And, well. You probably heard, about Aidan?”
Aidan’s the kid from group who thinks he’s Van Helsing. Emmy sniffed a little and sucked on her cigarette.
“Well, you know, he was kind of seeing Bethany?”
“What? Bethany turned like a year ago! Why would he even touch her?”
They shrugged, identically.
“So they were messing around in back of his truck and all of the sudden he just fucking killed her,” Noah whispered, like he didn’t really believe it. “She trusted him. I mean, God, he let her feed off him! That’s like. I don’t know how to explain it so you’ll understand, Scout. That’s serious shit with us. It’s way more intimate than screwing. It’s a pact. A promise.”
Emmy and I glanced at each other, but we didn’t say anything. Some things you don’t want to say.
Noah’s voice cracked. “And he put a piece of his dad’s fence through her heart. And they’re not even going to arrest him, Scout. He got a fine. Disposal of Hazardous Materials Without Supervision.”
“It seems like a good time to clear out,” said Emmy softly. Her eyes flashed a little in the dark, like a cat’s.
“You could come with us,” Noah said, trying to sound nonchalant. “I bet you’ve never even seen snow.”
Well, you know what he meant by that.
“I have a scholarship. I’m gonna be a teacher. Teach little kids to do math and stuff.”
Noah sighed. “Scout, why?”
“Because I have to do something.”
Whenever people have more than five seconds to talk about this, they always come around to the same thing.
Why did it happen? Where did it start?
You know that TV show you used to like? And somewhere around the third season something so awesome and fucked up happened and you just had to know the answer to the mystery, who killed sorority girl whoever or how that guy could come back from the dead? You stayed up all night online looking for clues and spoilers, and still you had to wait all summer to find out? And you were pretty sure the solution would be disappointing, but you wanted it so bad anyway? And, oh, man, everyone had a theory.
It’s like that. They all want to act like it’s a matter of national security and we all have to know, but seriously, we’re way past it mattering. It’s just. wanting the whole story. Wanting to flip to the end and know everything.
You want to know what I think? There were always vampires. We know that, now. There’s still about ten of them who’ve been around since before Napoleon or whatever. They’re in this facility in Nebraska and sometimes somebody gets worked up about their civil rights, but not so much anymore. But something happened and all of a sudden, there were HRs and lists of common causes and clean camps and Uncle Jack’s billboards everywhere and Bethany lying dead in the back of a truck and oh, God, they always told us PCP makes you think you can fly, and I’ll never play soccer again and at the bottom of it all there’s always Emmy’s mouth on me in the dark, and the sound of her jaw moving. All of a sudden. One day to the next, and everything changes. Like puberty. One day you’re playing with an Easy-Bake and the next day you have breasts and everyone’s looking at you differently and you’re bleeding, but it’s a secret you can’t tell anyone. You didn’t know it was coming. You didn’t know there was another world on the other side of that bloody fucking mess between your legs just waiting to happen to you.
You want to know what I think? I think I aced my bio test. I think in any sufficiently diverse population, mutation always occurs. And if the new adaptation is more viable, well, all those white butterflies swimming in the London soot, they start turning black, one by one by one.
See? I’m not dumb. Maybe I used to be. Maybe before, when it couldn’t hurt you to be dumb. Because I know I used to be someone else. I remember her. I used to be someone pretty. Someone good with kids. Someone who knew how to kick a ball really well and that was just about it. But I adapted. That’s what you do, when you’re a monkey and the tree branches are just a little farther off this season than they were last. Anyway, it doesn’t really matter. If it makes you feel better to think God hates us or that some mutation of porphyria went airborne or that in the quantum sense our own cultural memes were always just echoes of alternate matrices and sometimes, just sometimes, there’s some pretty deranged crossover or that the Bulgarian revolution flooded other countries with infected refugees? Knock yourself out. But there’s no reason. Why did little Ana Cruz turn as fast as you could look twice at her and I’ve been waiting all summer and hanging out in the dark with Emmy and Noah and I’m fine, when I have way more factors than she did? Doesn’t matter. It’s all random. It doesn’t mean you’re a bad person or a good person. It just means you’re quick or you’re slow.
I went down to Narragansett Park after sunset. The sky was still a little light, all messy red smeary clouds. I’d say it was the color of blood, but you know, everything makes me think of blood these days. Anyway, it was light enough that I could see them before I even turned into the parking lot. Noah and Emmy, shadows on the swing set. I walked up and Noah disentangled himself from her.
“I brought you a present,” he said. He reached down into his backpack and pulled out a soccer ball.
I smiled something huge. He dropped it between us and kicked it over. I slapped it back, lightly, with the side of my foot, toward Emmy. She grinned and shoved her bangs out of her face. It felt really nice to kick that stupid ball. My throat got all thick, just looking at it shine under the streetlight. Emmy knocked it hard, up over my head, out onto the wet grass, and we all took off after it, laughing. We booted it back and forth, that awesome sound, that amazing sound of the ball smacking against a sneaker thumping between us like a heartbeat and the grass all long and uncut under our feet and the bleeding, bleeding sky and I thought: This is it. This is my last night alive.
I kicked the ball as hard as I could. It soared up into the air and Noah caught it, in his hands, like a goalie. He looked at me, still holding up the ball like an idiot, and he was crying. They cry blood. It doesn’t look nice. They look like monsters when they cry.