In Love With a Vampire

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Jim



“You like her…”

“And you like her…”

“What?”

Seth’s lips curled into a sad smile before a hefty sigh escaped his mouth. His face was etched with exhaustion and every once in a while, he would bring his hands to his eyes and rub them. He was currently seated on my bed, blocking my vision of the kitchen. I

thought about asking Seth to move a little so I could read Aunt Lory’s and the large man’s expressions but the boy looked so damned tired I bit my tongue.

“That must be exhaustion talking. You should go home, get some rest…”

“They never answered you, did they?”

I furrowed my eyebrows, my eyes slowly averting to roof girl’s still figure. Her appearance had gotten worse. Her skin was becoming loose and white. Her features hollow. If something was not done soon…

“What are you talking about man?”

“The hospital. They never told you why you guys aren’t at a f*****g hospital right now, did they?”

I threw my head back at the question. At some point, I had assumed that perhaps my father’s men were crawling the only three hospitals in Scanton and that Aunt Lory simply did not want to take the risk of them discovering that my father had come to harm under her roof. The more I thought about it, the more confused I got. Why did my father have a cure for whatever had poisoned roof girl? Why had they gotten into a fight with Aunt Lory and had Aunt Lory actually fought back? How had my father found me? What the hell had poisoned roof girl and wasn’t her situation dire enough to warrant actual medical attention?

“No, no they did not. Do you know something, Seth? Something you want to tell me?”

I watched as Seth closed his eyes and began shaking his head.

“I no longer know what is f*****g real and f*****g not man. The things I have seen or maybe I thought I saw…”

His eyes suddenly flickered towards roof girl, no not, roof girl but the person next to her, redhead. She was watching us, her eyes squinted, her jaw ticking. It was almost as if she could hear us. I shook my head at the thought, we were not within her hearing range. I averted my gaze back to Seth.

“What do you mean? What did you see? Did you see how roof girl got poisoned? Did you see what happened between my father and Aunt Lory? Seth? Seth!”

Seth slowly turned to look at me but I could tell his chatty mood had vanished. I shifted my gaze to redhead. She was still looking at us but her focus was on Seth. For some reason, redhead did not want Seth to tell me what was going on or what exactly had brought all of us here at this very moment. How she communicated this fact was what was boggling me.

Had they already formed some weird eye language?

A wave of fatigue hit me and I found myself leaning back into my uncomfortable make-shift bed. The pain in my lower body had lifted but I still felt a lot of discomfort each time I tried to move my leg. I groaned when it would not cooperate, even though it had been stuck in the same position for…hours? Minutes? I sighed, nothing was making sense. Why was it a hard choice? If my father could help roof girl, if he could save her life, what were those two waiting for?

Why was roof girl staying with Aunt Lory anyway? Exchange student? No. It would have been mentioned in school. Once again a sigh escaped my throat. Then it dawned on me. None of it mattered. At least not now. What mattered was roof girl getting better, roof girl surviving to give me a snarky, witty response. Roof girl surviving so that I could hold her once again and feel a sense of peace that I had not felt in ages…

“So I was right? You like her?”

I lifted my head and furrowed my eyebrows, annoyed partly because my head had conjured up the image of the two of us swirling across the ballroom and partly because I did not appreciate Seth’s intuition.

“You know what happened to me…You know there is no way I could ever…”

The words got stuck in my throat. I wound up allowing my head to fall back onto the surface of whatever it was I was lying on. Were we lying on cardboard pieces?

“That was over a year ago and nothing that happened was your-"

“Drop it, Seth.”

“I’m just saying that I have never seen you care about anyone else or anything else since Sara-"

“I said drop it, Seth!”

I could feel Seth’s eyes boring through my face. I ignored the heat coming from them. I ignored the anger that was currently constricting my chest. Everyone, for as long as I could remember, had been trying to understand what I went through. Some, like Seth, believed it was not my fault. Others were comfortable saying that I was a murderer. But no one knew, no one understood. I was on my own island, an island of pure torment.

“He threw himself off the roof…You did not push him, you did not tell him to jump. It was his decision Jim…”

I snapped my eyes shut and attempted to block out Seth’s voice. Something wet fell on the side of my face. When I opened my eyes again, tears trickled effortlessly from them. I felt weak, nauseated, enraged.

“You f*****g don’t know what you are talking about Seth! It was my fault! It was my f*****g fault!”

For a while it was quiet and I half expected Seth to jump to my defense again but he didn’t. I could not decide whether I was relieved or disappointed.

“Why don’t you tell him what really happened son? Tell him why that poor boy jumped to his death…”

I had momentarily forgotten about my father’s presence in the room. I pushed my weight from the hard, uncomfortable surface using my elbows. When I was elevated enough to see beyond my makeshift bed, I spotted my father on the ground, his face lifted so that he could look at me, a menacing smile on his face.

“I had no idea we were providing entertainment for you father…”

“Well son, when your hands and feet are bound and you cannot get off the ground even when you badly badly want to take a piss…you make do with what you got, and right now, all I got is a cowardly son with a heavy secret…Aren’t you going to tell him why the boy jumped? Aren’t you going to tell him what pushed him over the edge?”

An invisible weight was pressing against my chest. I tried to force air in and out of my nose but it was a struggle. I gasped as I tried to control this basic human activity. Someone came to my rescue and began rubbing my back in slow, calming motions.

“There there…Jesus Andrew, what is wrong with you? This is your son! Must you torture him like that?”

Aunt Lory?

“I was bored, you guys sure took your sweet time to decide the fate of the world…”

Fate of the world? The more Aunt Lory rubbed my back, the easier it got to breathe.

“Feeling all better?”

I bobbed my head before turning to face her. That purple bruise on her face had worsened.

“So, is roof girl going to be okay? Have you guys come to a decision?”

At that moment, Aunt Lory turned to face my father with a grim expression on her face.

“If this is a f*****g trick, Scanton will mourn the loss of its next mayor.”