Vampire Kisses

  “Black.”

  I remembered Mrs. Peevish. I paused and asked, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

  “You mean I’m not grown up?”

  “That’s a question, not an answer,” I said coyly.

  “What do you want to be?” he asked.

  I stared into his deep, dark mysterious eyes and whispered, “A vampire.”

  He stared at me curiously and seemed disturbed. And then he laughed. “You are a riot!” Then he looked at me sharply. “Raven, why did you sneak into the house?”

  I looked away, embarrassed.

  Jameson wheeled over some pastry on a cart. He lit a match and flames rose around the dessert. “Flambé!” he announced. And just in time.

  Alexander extinguished our desserts and told Jameson we would finish our dinner outside. “I hope you aren’t afraid of the dark,” he said, leading me into the dilapidated gazebo.

  “Afraid? I live for it!”

  “Me, too,” he said, smiling. “It’s really the only way to see the stars properly.” He lit a half-melted candle on the ledge.

  “Do you bring all your girlfriends here?” I asked, fingering the used candle.

  “Yes.” He laughed. “And I read to them by candlelight. What would you like?” he asked, pointing to a stack of textbooks on the floor. “Functions and Logarithms or Minority Group Cultures?”

  I laughed.

  “The moon is so beautiful tonight,” he said, staring out the gazebo.

  “Makes me think of werewolves. Do you think a man can change into an animal?”

  “If he’s with the right girl,” he said with a laugh.

  I moved closer to him. The moonlight softly lit his face. He was beautiful. Kiss me, Alexander. Kiss me now! I thought, closing my eyes.

  “But we have all of eternity,” he suddenly said. “For now let’s enjoy the stars.”

  He placed his dessert bowl on the ledge and blew out the candle, and I quickly grabbed his hand. It wasn’t a Trevor hand or a skinny Billy Boy hand. He had the best hand in the whole world!

  We lay down on the cold grass and gazed up at the stars, holding hands.

  We relaxed in silence, our hands warming together. I could feel the prickly legs of the spider ring.

  I wanted to kiss. But he just stared up at the stars.

  “Who are your friends?” I asked, turning to him.

  “I keep to myself.”

  “I bet you met tons of cool girls before you moved here.”

  “Cool is one thing. The kind of girls who accept you for who you really are is another. I’d like something…lasting.”

  Lasting? For eternity? But I couldn’t ask that.

  “I want a relationship I can finally sink my teeth into.”

  Really? Well, I’m your girl! I thought. But he didn’t turn toward me; instead, Alexander gazed at the sky.

  “So you don’t have any friends here?” I asked, trying to pump him for more info.

  “Just one.”

  “Jameson?”

  “Someone who wears black lipstick.”

  We both stared up at the moon in silence. I beamed from his compliment.

  “Who do you hang out with?” he finally asked.

  “Becky is the only one who accepts me, and it’s because I’m the only one who doesn’t beat her up.” We both laughed. “Everyone else thinks I’m weird.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Really?” No one had ever said that to me in my whole life. No one.

  “You seem a lot like me,” he said. “You don’t gawk at me like I’m a freak.”

  “I’ll kick anyone who does.”

  “I think you already did. Or at least smacked him with a racket.”

  We laughed in the moonlight, and I placed my free arm on his chest and hugged him, as my Gothic Mate softly stroked my arm.

  “Could those be ravens?” I asked, pointing to a flurry of dark wings circling high above the Mansion.

  “Those aren’t birds—they’re bats.”

  “Bats! I’ve never seen bats around here, until you moved in.”

  “Yeah, we found some hanging in the attic. Jameson set them free. I hope they don’t frighten you. They’re wonderful creatures.”

  “It takes one to know one, right?” I hinted.

  “But don’t worry. They never swoop down and get tangled in jet-black hair like yours. Only in mall hair.”

  “They like hairspray?”

  “They hate it. They know mall hair looks terrible!”

  I laughed, and he began softly stroking my hair. His touch calmed me. I thought I was going to melt into the earth.

  He was certainly taking much more time than Trevor had. I began stroking his hair, which was silky from his gel.

  “Do bats like gel?” I asked.

  “They love the way it looks with a silk Armani,” he teased back.

  I wriggled over him and pinned his arms down. He looked up at me with surprise and smiled. I waited for him to kiss me. But he didn’t move. Of course, he didn’t move—I was pinning him down! What was I thinking?

  “Tell me your favorite thing about bats, Bat Girl,” he asked, as I anxiously stared down at him.

  “They can fly.”

  “You want to fly?”

  I nodded.

  He wrestled me over and pinned my arms down. Again I waited for him to kiss me, but he didn’t. He just stared into my eyes.

  “So what’s your favorite thing about bats, Bat Boy?” I asked.

  “I’d have to say,” he began, thinking, “their vampire teeth.”

  I gasped, but it wasn’t because of Alexander’s comment. A mosquito had bitten my neck.

  “Don’t be afraid,” he said, squeezing my hand. “I won’t bite…yet.” He laughed at his joke.

  “I’m not afraid. A mosquito bit me!” I explained, scratching like mad.

  He examined the mark like a doctor. “It’s starting to swell. We’d better get you ice.”

  “It’ll be okay. I get these all the time.”

  “I don’t want you to tell your parents you came over to my house and got bitten!”

  I wanted to tell the whole world I was bitten, but that mosquito had ruined everything.

  He took me into the kitchen and put ice on my tiny wound. I listened to the grandfather clock chime away. Nine…Chime…Ten…Chime. No! Eleven…Chime. Frig! Twelve. It couldn’t be!

  “I’ve got to go!” I exclaimed.

  “So soon?” he asked, disappointed.

  “Any second my dad will be calling from Vegas, and if I’m not there to answer, I’ll be grounded for eternity!”

  If only I could stay and live with Alexander in his attic room and have Creepy Man serve me Count Chocula cereal every morning…

  “Thanks for the flowers and the dinner and the stars,” I said hurriedly by Becky’s truck, scrambling in my purse for the keys.

  “Thank you for coming.”

  He looked dreamy and gorgeous, and somehow lonely. I wanted my Gothic Vampire Mate to kiss me now. I wanted his mouth on my neck and his soul within mine.

  “Raven?” he said cautiously.

  “Yes?”

  “Would you like me to…”

  “Yes? Yes?”

  “Would you like me to…invite you again, or would you rather sneak back in?”

  “I’d love to be invited,” I answered, waiting. If he kissed me now, we’d be bonded for all eternity.

  “Wonderful then. I’ll call you.” He kissed me softly on the cheek. The cheek? Still, it was softer and more romantic than the time Jack Patterson had kissed me outside the Mansion, and much more romantic than Trevor pushing me against a tree. And as much as I wanted a real kiss—a vampire kiss—he was changing me. I was transforming into a swooning noodle-legged, goopy, googly-eyed, drippy marshmallow girl.

  I could still feel his lovely, full lips against my face as I drove home. My body tingled all over with excitement, longing, passion—feelings I had never felt ab
out a guy before. And as I scratched the bite that wasn’t his, I could only hope I wouldn’t turn into a blood-sucking mosquito.

  “Dad’s explaining to Becky the rules of blackjack,” Billy whispered anxiously, as I ran through the door. “He’s already told her about every casino and the history of Siegfried and Roy. He’s running out of hotels on the strip!”

  I whispered, “Thanks,” to Becky and quickly grabbed the phone.

  “Becky loves to talk,” my dad began. “I had no idea she was so fascinated with Las Vegas. Next time I’ll bring her. She tells me you guys have been watching vampire movies all evening.”

  “Yeah…”

  “Revenge of Dracula for the fiftieth time?”

  “No. It’s a new one. It’s called Vampire Kisses.”

  “Is it good?”

  “I give it two thumbs up!”

  16

  Chocolate-and-Vanilla Swirl

  Becky and I were eating ice-cream cones—Vanilla Royale and Chocolate Attack—outside Shirley’s Bakery the next day.

  “Alexander’s the dreamiest! I can still feel his lips tingling against my cheek,” I said. “Becky, for the first time I don’t want to run away from this town, ’cause at the top of Benson Hill lives my Gothic dream guy. I can’t stop thinking about him. I only wish you’d met him, too, then you’d know how spectacular he is!”

  Suddenly a red Camaro pulled up.

  “Matt saw Becky’s truck parked outside Freaky Mansion last night,” Trevor proclaimed in his ornery way as he sauntered over. He stared into Becky’s face and asked, “Trying to spray paint the Mansion, Igor?”

  “No,” I defended, smiling, still thinking about last night. I wasn’t going to let Trevor spoil my wonderful mood.

  “So you weren’t up to trouble, Werewolf Girl?” Trevor asked, continuing to stare at Becky.

  Becky looked scared.

  “Let’s go, Trev,” Matt said.

  “We’d love to chat with you lovely gentlemen, but we’re in the middle of a corporate meeting,” I told him. “So you’ll have to leave a message with my secretary.”

  “Is Shirley putting Prozac in her ice cream now?” Trevor said, laughing. “I don’t think you’d know what a gentleman was if he bit you on the neck!”

  I continued to lick the edge of my cone.

  “Or was it you up there?” Trevor guessed. “You’re always up to trouble.”

  “Maybe it was Becky’s parents; it’s their truck. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that one out.”

  “I just thought that maybe you and Becky were dating the Osbournes! Oh, I forgot, he just bites the heads off bats—he doesn’t turn into them.”

  “I think I hear your mother calling,” I said.

  “They’re just like you, you know, miserably pale, and social outcasts. They haven’t even tried to join the country club yet. But then again we don’t accept vampires.”

  “Vampires?” I laughed uneasily. “Who says that?”

  “Everyone, pinhead! The Sterling vampires. The dude hangs out in the cemetery. But I think they’re just escaped lunatics like you. They’re total freaks.”

  “C’mon, Trev, let’s get out of here already. We’ve got practice,” Matt said.

  “Now I see who wears the pants in your relationship,” I said. “But I forgot, your pants wound up on my locker.”

  Trevor grabbed the cone from my hand.

  “Hey, give it back!” I shouted. Trevor had managed to spoil my blissful mood after all.

  He took a huge lick.

  “Great, now it has disgusting snob germs. You can keep it,” I said.

  “Baby, it had germs the moment you looked at it.”

  “Let’s go, Becky,” I said, tugging her arm.

  “Leaving so soon?”

  “I thought I was done with you!” I shouted.

  “Done? You’re always trying to break my heart, aren’t you? Does this mean our engagement is off?”

  “Let’s go, Trev,” Matt said. “We’ve got things to do.”

  “You know you love this, Monster Girl. If it wasn’t for me, no one would pay attention to you.”

  “And I’d be the luckiest girl in the world.”

  “I’ll see you in the car,” Matt impatiently told Trevor.

  “I’ll be right there,” Trevor replied, then leaned into me. “If you want to be the luckiest girl in the world, you’ll go with me to the Snow Ball.”

  Trevor was asking me to a dance? And of all dances, the Snow Ball? The big school dance where plastic icicles and snowflakes hung from the gym rafters, and fake snow covered the gym floor? He’d show up with me on his arm in front of all his friends? The soccer snobs and the hundred-dollar-haircut girls? It had to be a big joke. I’d be gussied up, waiting at my house, and he’d stand me up, or he’d dump a bucket of red goo on me like in Carrie. But even if he was serious, even if by some miracle Trevor really did like me, I couldn’t go to the ball with him. Not now that I had met Alexander Sterling.

  “It’ll be a night you’ll never forget,” he said seductively.

  “I’m sure it will, but I don’t want to have nightmares for the rest of my life.”

  “Just can’t tear yourself away from Nick at Nite.”

  “No. I’m already going.”

  Trevor sneered. “Stag? Or with an inflatable doll?”

  “I have a date.”

  Becky gasped, but she and Trevor weren’t the only ones surprised by my rash words.

  “In your dreams! I was only asking you out of pity. No one else would show up with you, unless he was dead.”

  “Well, we’ll just see about that, won’t we?”

  “I’m leaving,” Matt shouted from the car. “Are you coming?”

  “Thanks for the ice cream, psycho,” Trevor said, getting into the Camaro. “But next time remember, I prefer Rocky Road.”

  I watched my double-dip Chocolate Attack screech away.

  “I’d offer you mine, but I know you don’t like pure vanilla,” Becky said consolingly.

  “Thanks, but I have bigger things than ice cream to worry about. Like getting a date!”

  Every time the phone rang, my heart jumped. Was it Alexander? And when it wasn’t him my heart would break into a million pieces. It had been two long days since I had seen my Gothic mate. I was so preoccupied with Alexander, dreaming of the next time we’d be together, nothing else mattered. I didn’t wash the spot where his tender love lips had pressed against my flesh. I was acting like I was straight out of a Gidget movie! What had happened to me? I was losing my edge! For the first time in my life I was really afraid. Afraid of never seeing him again and afraid of being rejected.

  If I asked Alexander to the dance, he might freak out. He might say, “With you?” or “No way, not a lame, school dance. I’m so beyond that! And I thought you were, too.”

  I was beyond that, even though I’d never gone to any dances to actually get beyond them. I wouldn’t be going to homecoming or the prom or any of the other dances scheduled throughout the school year. I would stay home with Becky and watch the Munsters on TV. But Trevor’s challenge had forced me to fight back, with a weapon that I didn’t even have: Alexander.

  This feeling of not being able to eat or sleep was new to me. To hang my heart on every ring of the phone, to scream at the top of my lungs for Billy Boy not to tie up the line with his addictive web surfing, not to be able to watch Nosferatu without crying, or to listen to a silly, sappy, drippy, lovesick Celine Dion song without thinking she had written it just for me—I wanted it all to go away.

  I think some people call this love. I called it hell.

  And then it happened. After two long, torture-filled days. When the phone rang, I thought it was for Billy Boy, and when Billy Boy called my name, I thought it was Becky. I was ready to pour my heart out to her. But before I could speak, I heard his dreamy voice.

  “I couldn’t wait any longer,” he said.

  “Excuse me?” I asked, surprise
d.

  “It’s Alexander. I know guys aren’t supposed to call right away. But I couldn’t wait any longer.”

  “That’s a stupid rule. I could have moved.”

  “In two days?”

  “It was only two days?”

  He laughed. “It seemed a year for me.”

  His comment was like a love letter sent straight to my heart.

  I waited for him to go on, but there was silence. He said nothing more. This was the perfect chance to invite him to the Snow Ball. The worst he could do was hang up. My hands were shaking and my confidence was oozing out with my perspiration. “Alexander…um…I have something to ask you.”

  “I do, too.”

  “Well, you first.”

  “No, ladies first.”

  “No, guys are supposed to do the asking.”

  “You’re right.” There was silence. “Well…would you like to go out? Tomorrow night?”

  I smiled with delight! “Go out? Yeah, that would be great!”

  “So what were you going to ask me?”

  I paused. I can do this! I took a deep breath. “Would you…”

  “Yes?”

  “Do you…”

  “Do I what?”

  “Like to dance?”

  “Yeah, but I didn’t think this town had any hip clubs. You know of one?”

  “No…but when I find one, I’ll let you know.” I was such a wimpola!

  “Great! Then I’ll see you tomorrow at my house, after sundown.”

  “After sundown?”

  “You said you lived for the darkness. So do I.”

  “You remembered.”

  “I remember everything,” he said, and hung up the phone.

  17

  Dream Date

  My first date! Becky said my first date was dinner at the Mansion, but I didn’t agree. Tonight we would be going out: to watch a movie, to play miniature golf, to share a soda at Shirley’s. I spent all afternoon talking with Becky, speculating about where he’d take me, what he’d be wearing, and when he would kiss me.

  I was so excited, I ran the whole way there. I had to meet Alexander at his iron gate. My mom would have freaked if she had known I had a date with the guy who lived in a haunted house. I couldn’t bear the thought of his showing up at my door and my dad’s asking him questions about tennis players and his plans for college. So I had to meet my Romeo on his balcony.