"If you say the chief-"
"The chief."
"Oh yeah. You're squeamish about me dating men in general, but you're willing to lay me at the feet of a vampire?"
"Well, I wasn't planning on sacrificing you on an altar," she laughed. "I have a feeling you won't feel the sting of loser Ronnie much longer," she promised when they parted ways that night.
13. No More Misfortune Needed
14. Sparklers and Sparks
There was something about the Fourth of July that excited Tilly. Holidays were stressful in the Nguyen house growing up. Stiff holiday dinners with coordinated formal wear, extended family, too many forks, and always an odd cold soup between courses. They weren't extremely wealthy, but the whole of the Nguyens valued money and status enough that the comfort in which they lived was exaggerated during Thanksgiving at her CFO Great Uncle's mansion and her Grandmother's grand Christmas gala.
Fourth of July was the one holiday that she got to slip away from family and join her best friend, Jill, for her family's hog roast on the lake.
She remembered feeling free at those parties. Food in colorful bursts covered the lake house kitchen, loud music played over speakers wired in and outside of the house. Country tunes drifted from the cool indoors where they packed their red, white, and blue plastic plates high with food her mother wouldn'ttouch, even to keep from offending the hostess. They would take their plates out to the sticky outdoors, down the steep wooden deck staircase to the large flat deck jutting out onto the water.
Jill's mom hung lanterns of red and blue stars, and there were floating white lanterns in the lake where at least ten boats filled with families were decked out in the holiday colors and hands held drinks in koozies.
She and Jill spent the day and evening laughing, eating, jumping from one boat to the next, shedding their jean shorts and star-spangled tank tops to hop on a tube in the water whenever someone offered.
Once the sun finally gave relief to the sky, they'd sit on blankets on her backyard hill with everyone else and watch the harbor's display of country spirit exploding in the sky while drinking Jill's mom's blueberry punch. They once slipped a ladle of the adult blueberry punch into their sparkling cups only to choke and cough at the sharp sting.
When Tilly was fifteen, this was the party where she got her first kiss.
It had been more humid than usual that year and he'd told her he liked the red and blue sparkly strands in her black hair, running unsure teenage hands over the strands making her feel pretty and like it was okay for her to be different.
Their kiss, as most first kisses are at that age, was tentative and clumsy with shaking breaths they were both far too aware of. But it had been sweet and led to a two-month relationship with awkward school hallway hand holding, and lunchtime dates where they barely talked to each other in the way that young teenagers did.
He gave her a stuffed animal stingray on their one-month anniversary, and three days after their two-month anniversary, he broke up with her by way of a note that apologized because he liked someone else.
It wouldn't be her last heartbreak, and she knew even then that it hadn't been love, but it was the first romantic crack in a tender heart.
There was something about that first one, almost like an embarrassment.
It happened to us. Could we have prevented it? What does this mean about my value?
And then the next Fourth of July party at Jill's, they swore off boys, linking their gangly arms and dancing to the country music together, their matching star tattoos and blue sparkly eyeshadow fighting against the sweat and humidity.
She kept those memories close to her because those were the times she felt like she could laugh unfettered and escape the cruelty of her sister, the stoic judgment of her mother and relatives, and the voice that told her she didn't belong.
Jill moved away their senior year of high school but still, whenever the sticky holiday came around, the nostalgia filled her with her first memories of feeling free.
Today would be Salem's festival and before she celebrated with friends and sparklers, she was celebrating a different kind of freedom from an old, dingy one-bedroom apartment.
"You didn't have much to move," Eloise pointed out as Tilly exited the bedroom at The Lost Souls House that had claimed her.
And it really had. When Ursula turned the antique brass knob and the door swung inside with a slow squeak, Tilly's mouth opened in silent awe.
The walls were a dark red with paneling and intricate crown molding, lending it an old-money look. The queen bed stood tall and sumptuous, matching the dresser in mahogany with artistic carvings of birds and stars. Above the bed was a gorgeous painting of a lake with a weeping willow draping itself into thewater and the backs of two girls sitting under its shade shoulder-to-shoulder.
A vintage area rug sat under the bed, spreading out over the warm wood flooring in woven reds and burnt oranges.
The room was warm and looked like something she would find in a castle. When she saw the fireplace, she laughed, shaking her head.
"Good?"
She turned a disbelieving look to where Ursula and Eloise stood leaning back against the hallway wall. "Good? This is like one of the castle rooms plucked out of a book I loved when I was little. It's perfect."
