42: Washington

Jay kicks the back of your chair again. “Dyke,” he whispers, just loud enough for you to hear.

You keep doodling without looking up. It’s hard being a vampire, you think, for like the zillionth time this year.

A spitball flies by and lands on the floor. Monique giggles and you hiss at her.

The problem isn’t that no one understands you, it’s that they think they do. You’ve known you were destined for immortality since you read Anne Rice when you were 10, but since then your subculture has been totally co-opted, your own identity subsumed under a trend that you’re outside of.

It started with those stupid movies, the ones where the vampires all have dramatic hairdos and preppy clothes, and their pale skin sparkles like they shower in that stupid glitter from Claire’s. Since then instead of being a freak, you’ve become a vampire fashion victim.

The wall clock ticks one minute closer to 7:30. You tap your pointed pewter rings on your desk, rolling them – clickclickclick – like claws on linoleum. In the corner of your eye, Craig is wadding up another spitball. You sneer and put your pen to paper.


The bell dies away. “We have a new member of our class today,” Mrs. Schreiber says, after everyone has more or less settled down. “I’d like you all to say hello to your new teaching assistant, Mr., um …” She glances at a piece of paper. “Collins.”

“Cullen,” a man’s voice says, softly, but in a way that cuts through the classroom chatter. You look toward the door. An impossibly handsome man is standing there, auburn-haired and dressed like a cloudy sky, with pale white skin and piercing blue eyes. He looks at you and smiles. “Call me Edward,” he says. Your blood runs hot in your veins.

He takes a seat by Mrs. Schreiber’s desk, and class continues more or less like normal, except every time you look, he’s watching.

Or, rather, every time he looks up, you’re the one watching him.


The bell rings, followed by the shuffling cacophony of a classfull of students fleeing their desks as quickly as possible. By the time you’ve finished the last sentence and closed your notebook, even Mrs. Schreiber has vanished.

You reach down for your backpack, and when you look up Edward is watching you again. He meets your gaze for a moment, before dropping his eyes to the leather-bound book in his hands. You stand and walk toward him. “What are you reading?” you ask.

“The Götzen-Dämmerung.” he says. “It’s about hammering,” he adds, smirking.

“Thus Spoke Zarathustra,” you say, rolling your eyes.

He laughs and you sit on the corner of his desk. “So what’s an interesting girl like you doing in BHS?” he asks.

“Wishing I could get the hell out of here.”

“Everything ends eventually.”

“Does it?” You glare at him pointedly.

He coughs and looks down at his book again. “Anyway,” he says, “aren’t you a little young to be reading Nietzsche?”

“Aren’t you a little old to be a TA?”

He looks up just like you wanted. You lean in and kiss him, biting down on his lip, letting the littlest trickle of his blood flow into your mouth. You can see the cracks in his ice blue eyes. You see yourself reflected in them.

After what seems like an eternity, he breaks away. “I should go,” he says, standing hurriedly. “I’ve got to call Bel… um, my friend.”

You follow him to the classroom door and watch him walk down the hall. “This isn’t over,” you say.