Page 77 of Blood Lovers

But his eyes don’t open. In fact, after that one act of reaching, he seems spent. And then he turns his face to the side and just… drifts off.

I sit there on his bed watching the color return, little by little, to his pallid skin. The sweat dries and no new beads of sickness appear on his brow. And when I place the back of my hand against his cheek, he’s cooler. Not normal, like a human, but much cooler than he was.

It’s helping. My blood was his cure.

I blink, noticing the lavender haze around the corners of the room, and for a moment I think—I hope—that maybe this whole thing is a dream.

Maybe I’m still in the library back at the Guild.

Maybe Grandma didn’t die.

Maybe everything is the same and I’m going to wake up and know for sure that this was nothing but a dreamwalk.

But then there he is. Paul. Sitting in the chair where I was earlier. Me on the bed, next to Ryet.

We have switched places.

He smiles as he begins to clap. A slow, mocking, deliberate clap.

Then he is gone and the lavender haze recedes, and I’m too spent and tired to care what happens next.

I just lie down and within moments, I’m asleep too.

Zusi haunts my dreams, but in her typical, fun, Zusi way and not some purple-haze stalking way.

It’s not a walking dream. Just random memories, I think. Our formative years play in my head as I sleep, vaguely still aware that I’m in bed with a vampire.

“He’s cute,” Zusi is saying. We’re in our dorm, which is in the top-floor attic of the Merchant Building on the west side of campus. This is where they put me once I was old enough to leave the Community Building with the other kids our age. Zusi is my only roommate. And I love her for this. Because she should be down on the seventh floor with the rest of her class, and she isn’t. She’s up here, with me.

She’s got her phone out and she’s pointing to someone on the screen with a perfectly manicured and polished fingernail. “Are you going to kiss him?” Her tone is teasing and fun.

This is when I realize I’m not the one she’s talking to. Not grownup me, anyway. I am Syrsee, age… I dunno. Fourteen, I guess. Other me is sprawled out across my bed looking up at the ceiling with a stupid smile on my face. We’re still wearing our uniforms, so it’s probably break time.

Zusi is sitting in one of the desk chairs, legs crossed primly, her uniform perfect and crisp. My own pleated maroon skirt is flared around my bare thighs and my white blouse is untucked and wrinkled. I don’t have my scuffed Mary Jane shoes on, but I am wearing the maroon cable-knit knee socks with gold tassels. My left big toe is sticking out of a hole that has been darned several times already.

“I don’t know.” I sigh these words out. Then I turn over, still smiling stupidly, and look at her. “He’s two years older than us.”

“Yeah… but…” She sucks in air as her eyes travel up and down the length of my lean, long body. “He’d definitely go for you.”

“Because I have tits.”

Zusi giggles. She does not have tits. I was the first to fill out, so to speak. And it happened early. I was wearing a C-cup by the time I hit sixth year.

Younger me giggles too, then hides her face with her hands. “No. I’m not even going to talk to him.”

“Why not? I heard he likes you.”

Younger me’s hands come off my face instantly. “You did not.”

“I swear.”

Other me is still wearing a dubious look. And this is when real me remembers this day and I get sad all of a sudden. I was so in love with a boy called Myer. He was, like, the boy in the upper class every girl wanted to date.

He smiled at me that day. I was just walking through the library for my free period, minding my own business. He and his group of friends were at a table near the back. This was their usual place. They had free period the same time as me.

I didn’t usually spend time in the back. The officer in charge of me that year had assigned me a private space for free period so I spent my time on a little second-floor balcony overlooking the main desk in the lobby.

It was a nice space. Really nice space, actually. But it was set apart from everyone.