I can be kind and keep my boundaries.
I read them out loud while pacing, my cereal bowl cradled in one arm. “Okay, Nadia. You can do this. You can heal, set boundaries, and not spiral about undead roommates. You’re grounded. You’re powerful. You have a sticker chart for your emotions.”
I reached into my notebook, peeled off a gold star, and stuck it on my phone case.“Reward achieved for affirmations before ten a.m.”
Adulting. Nailed it.
Still, as I stuck another note on the coffeemaker, my mind drifted. I wanted to make teacher friends at my new school. I wanted to walk into the lounge and not feel like the weird new kid. I wanted to stop auditioning for cliques like I was onTeacher Idol.
And okay, maybe I also wanted a normal summer—one that didn’t include cohabiting with a four-hundred-and-something-year-old man who said words liketetherandparameters of our situation.
I shook it off.
I went back to my room and got dressed for the day. Sundress: watermelon print with a sliver of the mid-section cut out. Cardigan: pink, with an AskFor Helppin.Belt bag for sticky notes and gold stars. Combat boots, obviously. Watermelon earrings that swung when I moved. I looked like the personification of a farmers’ market, and I was fine with that.
Feeling halfway stable, I grabbed my phone and called Lena. She was always more comfortable with thiswoo-woostuff than I was.
When she picked up, I was pacing, toothbrush in one hand, my phone tucked under my ear. “Okay, so don’t freak out,” I said around a mouthful of toothpaste foam. “Actually, do freak out. I need backup freak-out energy.”
There was a pause. “Oh no,” Lena said. “What happened?”
I started talking so fast I forgot to breathe. “So, there was a fucking coffin in the floor, and I found it and I might’ve accidentally read Latin out loud and now there’s a man—naked, by the way—who says he’s from 1650 and we’re somehow bound together and he thinks Alexa is a witch?—”
“Back it up,” Lena said. “He was naked?”
I groaned. “That’s what you took from that?”
“Details, please. Is he hot?”
“Lena!” I hissed. “This is not a thirst trap. This is a crisis.”
“So… hot.”
I rubbed my temple. “He’s hot, but he’s also literally from the sixteen-hundreds. That’s like… historically hot. Which feels unethical.”
Lena laughed. “You’re looking at this all wrong. You just had a sixteenth-century hottie wake up naked in the house you’re sitting for. That’s agift.Now tell me more about his sixteenth-century dick. Is he circumcised?”
“Lena!” I pressed the phone to my chest. “You can’t saycircumcisedbefore breakfast!”
She snorted. “Maybe if you were getting some, you wouldn’t be so uptight.”
“Goodbye.”
“Send me pictures!” she called before I hung up.
I stared at the phone. “Unhelpful. Emotionally irresponsible.”
Still, my lips twitched. I placed another star sticker on the corner of my notebook. “Okay. I’m the adult here. I can manage one moody vampire.”
A soft sound came from the hallway—an ancient creak that suggested my housemate might be awake. Then I felt that stillness that washed over me again.Fuck.
I took a deep breath, squared my shoulders, and whispered to myself, “Self-regulation first. You don’t need a random vampire to ground you.”
I had a plan.
A solid, therapist-approved plan: stay positive, stick to routine, keep my anxiety low and my vampire exposure lower. I was armed with sticky notes, affirmations, and an aggressively cheerful watermelon-print outfit.
I wasfine.
