Too late.
It was night two of my Tiffany Amanda Blair research project. Tonight’s mission: Ransack her bedroom.
Tiffany’s room was for people who liked hiking, all the way at the tippy-top of the house. I walked up the grand staircase to the second floor, where a loft overlooked the main entrance, one of those spots where you’re eye level with the huge fancy chandelier in the entryway—or at least, you would be if it was strung up correctly. The chandelier was old and dusty, only partially lit, missing quite a few of its crystals, and dangling several feet too low from exposed electrical wires, the old man’s balls of crystal chandeliers.
At the doorway to Tiffany’s room, I flipped on the lights, startling a few bats.
“Shit!” I leapt back as the bats flapped about the room in a brief and aimless panic before settling back into a dark corner. I made a mental note to figure out how to rehome bats later.
Movie posters, vintage snapshots, and certificates of achievement awarded to teenage Tiffany were layered over faded wallpaper, which was peeling at the seams from water damage. It was a normal, wholesome room, forgotten by time and taken over by bats. Honestly, a relatable aesthetic.
The few pictures tacked to the wall featured a pale, even-featured girlwith a perky blond ponytail. In one photo, she was sporting a cheerleading outfit. Beside it was a newspaper clipping featuring Tiffany holding pom-poms at the edge of a football field. It was captionedValentine high cheer squad. check out those smiles!
I let out a groan, a noise of despair from deep within my soul, and flopped back onto Tiffany’s comforter. Cat model-walked into the room and beached herself on the bed next to me.
“Oh, Cat,” I lamented. “What have we gotten ourselves into?” I stroked her fur to comfort myself. She responded with force, biting and viciously attacking with her hind legs. Same, Cat. Same.
How was I supposed to pull off a former cheerleader? She had won Best Smile. I had fangs. People remembered popular girls.
There was one thing I could check off pretty easily. Judging from her photos, Tiffany hadn’t been a natural blond either. She was one of those women who was blond as a child and refused to let that go. There were a couple of boxes of Clairol Nice ’n Easy Ultra Light Cool Summer Blonde in her bedroom closet.
“Apply all over and work through hair. Leave color mixture on hair for twenty-five minutes,” I read aloud. Simple enough. I headed to the bathroom for the first step in my transformation into Tiffany Amanda Blair.
With the hair dye applied, I had some time to kill. Downstairs, I found Heaven doing yoga by candlelight near the second-floor bedrooms. A too-sweet knockoff Yankee Candle was hitting all the wrong notes, the Axe Body Spray of vanilla candles.
“You don’t need to do yoga.” Finally, I had some good news to break. Vampire strength was real. “Yoga won’t do anything for you anymore.”
“Mind-body connection?” Heaven moved into downward dog, and one braid escaped her giant bun and swept the floor as she pedaled her feet.
“Eh.”
Heaven plopped back on her haunches. “It’s not working for me today, either.” Her eyes were too wide and she looked too alert.
“Have some more coconut water,” I said. “It’s probably the bloodlust.”
She chugged a box that she’d set by her yoga mat and seemed to settle down. But Heaven’s mind-body connection was broken. She wrinkled her nose. “What stinks?”
My hair was covered with blond hair jizz and wrapped in plastic, giving the overall impression of a used condom. “Ammonium thioglycolate,” I answered, channeling Elle Woods. “Or no, that’s for perms. It’s just blond hair dye.”
I couldn’t shake the sense of unease that I might not be able to pass as Tiffany. Sure, a few pounds and changing trends in eyebrows could distort anyone’s appearance, but Tiffany had been slight compared to my agrarian silhouette. I was busty with hips that looked better in a bar wench outfit than in a cheerleading skirt. Ten years could turn anyone into a bar wench, though. I’d seen it happen time and again.
“Can you help me pick out an outfit?” I said, wandering over to the adjacent bedroom and scanning a pile of clothes with my phone flashlight. I wasn’t a clothes horse, but if you’re alive long enough, things accrue.
“What’s this?” Heaven followed me to the bedroom and pulled out a long purple dress with a boat neckline. Her headlamp was starting to fade.
“All of the ones in that pile are bridesmaid dresses.” There was one from the ’70s that looked like bad wallpaper, a flapper-style one from the ’20s, a ren faire number from thatLord of the Ringswedding I’d been in. “Always a bridesmaid,” I said wistfully.
“I can’t believe you had this many friends,” she said, sounding genuinely confused. “I thought you didn’t do friends.”
“Then what are we?” I waved at the space between us.
“You’re my anemic-looking neighbor who I befriended because I make it a point to know my neighbors.”
That stung, so I quipped, “And you wanted my parking space.”
“That too.”
I’d had friends, once upon a time.
