“What do you really mean?” Etta replied. The scent of him wrapped around her, pulling her to him despite his painful words. “Am I not pretty enough?”
“You’ve always been the most beautiful girl I’ve ever known.”
“Did you meet someone else?”
“No.”
“Then, what is it? What could it possibly be?”
“I don’t know,” he said with a sigh. “It just doesn’t feel right anymore.”
“We can make it feel right again. Just tell me what I need to do.” Etta hated the pleading tone in her voice.
“I need to figure it out,” he said. “Alone.”
“Please. We’re supposed to be together. Our mothers matched us.”
“I know.”
“We’re destined.”
“Destinies change.”
“Not ours.” Etta pressed her mouth against his. He let her. The soft pad of his bottom lip grazed hers and she tasted the chocolate he’d eaten before climbing through her window.
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
Etta woke to the sound of a bird tapping against the window. She thought she was back home in her bedroom and she’d roll over and see her diorama of Paris staring back at her, but the conjure woman’s living room sharpened into view.
“How are you feeling?” Madame Peaks asked.
Etta pressed a hand to her chest. The pain was gone. “Is it done?”
“Almost.” Madame Peaks motioned to the table. “You can watch for yourself. There’s a mirror jar. It’ll show you what’s happening inside your chest.”
Etta picked it up and thumbed the glass. Inside, a nest of branches interlaced with the flesh of a heart, and tiny green stems coiled around it, holding the promise of flowers. A sense of peace washed over her; the sadness of losing Jackson a bruise lightening, the soreness of it easing out.
“Be more careful with that one. Get to know it better.”
The image of him drifted into her mind, but it didn’t hurt this time. She’d seen the good and the bad, she’d remember how she’d drowned in him, forgetting her grandmother and Mama and her friends and her dioramas, forgetting herself. “I will,” she told the woman.
LETTING THE RIGHT ONE IN
By Patrice Caldwell
A vampire stands outside my window with a question on her lips.
I peer down at her. Her skin glows blackish-blue in the moonlight. She waits for my answer, hands in her jean pockets. Her backpack is thrown over her left shoulder.
The Prozac bottle I knocked down earlier rolls across the slanted floor of my room. My tattered copy of Dracula is strewn across my bed. More books decorate the floor, all illuminated in the same moonlight that colors the vampire.
My parents’ yells come from downstairs through the too-thin walls of this house that still doesn’t feel like home. I don’t think it ever will.
I glance back to my window to the vampire just outside. The heat from our kiss still lingers on my lips.
What am I going to do?
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
I met the vampire yesterday at the central library. Technically, it’s Mainville’s only library. I’d been a regular since we moved here nine months ago. In that time, I had read over two hundred books.
The genre didn’t matter, as long as it featured my favorite tortured souls: vampires.
I started with classics like Polidori’s The Vampyre and Stoker’s Dracula and Octavia Butler’s Fledgling. Then I moved to series like The Vampire Diaries and standalone novels like Sunshine, The Silver Kiss, The Coldest Girl in Coldtown, and Peeps.
I’d been drawn to vampires ever since I saw Blade with my dad years ago. Though some had found families, like Rose’s friendship with Lissa in the Vampire Academy books, they never fully fit in. They were all eternal outcasts. Black sheep.
Loneliness clung to vampires like a too-snug coat—just as it does to me.
Yesterday, the head librarian looked up from her desk at the front just long enough for me to wave. Then I immediately headed downstairs and took a right to where the R’s are. I’d just finished a reread of the Vampire Academy series and was moving on to rereading The Vampire Chronicles. I just needed to grab Interview with the Vampire and then I could be—
But when I turned the corner, I saw her.
A girl. In my section. A section in which I hadn’t seen anyone in the nine months I’d spent there.
Her hair was dyed the coolest shade of pink that perfectly contrasted with her dark-brown skin. She had my book—Interview with the Vampire—in her hands. She was browsing through it. Laughing.
“Are you checking that out?” I asked. My voice came out sharp. Who was I to be so possessive? This was a library, after all.
The girl quickly looked up, snapping the book shut. “You can have it. I’ve read it a few times already.”
Another Black girl who loved vampires!? Who was she? “What were you laughing about?”
“How surprised Louis is when he realizes that his family’s slaves know that he and Lestat are vampires. Oh, Louis.” She laughed again.
“No one listened to Black people. Not then and certainly not now,” I said.
“Exactly.” She cocked her head slightly and stepped toward me. Thick, coarse curls framed her face and stopped just past her shoulders. Even her slightest movements seemed incredibly graceful, like those of a dancer, aware and in control of every muscle in her body. She was maybe a foot taller than me, and her eyes were a dark brown. I lost myself in them.
She cleared her throat.
I blinked, snapping myself away from her gaze, the moment gone.
“I said you can have it.”
She held it out to me. I took a step toward her, but as if my legs lost their footing, I tripped, falling headfirst toward the ground. In a blur, she grabbed my arm. A jolt shot through me. Her skin felt ice cold. Lifeless.
I laughed, shakily. “I’m not usually such a klutz.” I pulled myself upright.
She tucked her hair behind her left ear, then smiled, averting her gaze to the ground. “It’s fine.” She laughed again, filling the empty space with warmth that sent shivers down my spine. “I am.”
“Yeah, right,” I said before I could stop myself. “I mean, you just don’t seem like the clumsy kind.”
She shrugged. “Some things never leave you.”