Sweetblood (9781439108741) (14 page)

I take a deep breath and shout, “WHAT?”

“Someone is here to see you,” she shouts back.

“WHO?”

She doesn't answer. This can't be good. I untangle myself from the sheets and pull on my boots. One should never greet a mystery guest bootlessly. I hear voices from the kitchen. I head in that direction and find my mother pouring a glass of orange juice for Mark Murphy.

“Hey, Lucy,” Mark says.

“Hey.”

“Mark stopped by to see how you're feeling,” my mother says. She likes Mark, a major strike against him.

“I'm feeling fine.”

“Well then…” My mother is all twitchy. “I'll just… ah… I'll be downstairs. Folding laundry.” She heads down the stairs.

Mark says, “I haven't seen you at school lately. You okay?”

My god, he actually
cares
. “Yeah, I'm okay. I mean, I'm not great, but I'm not sick or anything. I just needed to take some time off after… you know.”

“After Gruber tackled you?” He's holding in a smile.

“Yeah.”

“I thought you might take him. He's got a black eye.”

“Really?”

“You nailed him.” Mark is grinning now.

I grin right back at him. It feels weird the way it stretches my face. When was the last time I laughed? “I might come back to school just to see that.”

Mark gets his serious look, the one that makes him
older and more handsome. “So… you aren't officially suspended or anything?”

“No. They think I was having an insulin reaction. Temporary insanity.”

“You weren't?”

“I had the insulin reaction earlier, in chemistry, by the time I ran into Gruber I was okay. I just wanted to get out of there. Don't ask me why.”

“Why?”

“Well, it was kind of embarrassing, passing out in class. I don't know what I said. I might have said anything. I don't remember.”

“I heard you just stood up and fell down.”

“That's not so bad, then. Also, they wanted to send me to the hospital and I didn't want to go. I wasn't sick.”

“Remember last time you were hospitalized?”

I think back. “That was a long time ago. I had a really bad insulin reaction.”

“We were eight.”

“We were playing some kind of game.”

“Sleeping Beauty.”

“I was in my princess phase.”

“Yeah. We were in Little's Woods looking for dwarves or something, and all of a sudden you just curled up on the leaves and went to sleep. I couldn't wake you up.” He is looking away, seeing into the past.

“So you went and got help.”

Mark's face is flushed. I can't tell if he is embarrassed or angry or about to cry, and I can't understand why he would be any of those things.

“Not—I never told you this. I didn't go for help right away. I just watched you sleep. You were Sleeping Beauty.”

“Really?” I remember Little's Woods, a two-acre patch
of trees between the creek and the railroad tracks. A few years ago it was cut down to make room for another housing development, but when we were kids, Mark and I used it as our own private wilderness area. I imagine him watching me as I lay unconscious on the forest floor.

“Then I went home.” He is really red now.

“To tell your mom?”

“I went home for lunch.”

“You…” My mouth is hanging open. “You
left
me there in the woods?”

“I was just a little kid. I didn't
know
.”

“I was in the hospital for
days
! Why are you
telling
me this?”

“I just had to. Look, I was thinking you were, you know, Sleeping Beauty. You could sleep for years. And I was
hungry
.”

He looks so uncomfortable I feel a laugh spilling from my mouth. “Hungry? You're
always
hungry.”

“I know,” he says as if confessing to a terrible sin.

“How long did you wait before you told somebody where I was?”

“A couple of hours. Your mom came looking for you.”

“So you told her where to find me.”

“Not exactly. I knew everybody would get mad at me for just leaving you there, so I went back to the woods by myself. You were still asleep….”

“More like in a coma.”

“So I tried to wake you up, but you kept on sleeping. Then I remembered that there was only one way to wake up Sleeping Beauty. I kissed you.”

“You did?”

“I… I'm sorry.”

“For kissing me?”

“For being so stupid. For leaving you like that.”

“Did it work?”

“What?”

“The kiss.”

He shakes his head. I can almost feel the heat from his cheeks. “I had to run and get my mom. I never told anybody how long I'd left you there. Till now.”

“That was a long time ago,” I say.

“I still feel bad about it.”

“We were just kids. Forget about it.”

I see the muscles in his face relax. He says, “You know what I think about sometimes? I imagine that I'm walking through the woods and I find you lying there, and I take you to the hospital.”

“Why?”

“I guess to make up for before. I know it's really stupid, but I wish I could save your life sometime.”

Okay, I think, this is a little too weird. My best friend, rock-solid Mark Murphy, is going off the deep end. Now I am embarrassed too. I wish I could give him something, a way for him to feel better about himself. Maybe I could ask him to do me a favor. Then I think of something.

“How late do you go to bed?” I ask.

“Pretty late.”

“What are you doing tonight, say, around eleven?”

“Uh… I don't know.”

“'Cause I was wondering if I could come over.”

He stares back at me with such an utterly bewildered expression that I have to laugh.

Studying

“I don't think they're gonna tell you,” says Mark in a low voice. We are being mouse-quiet. His parents are asleep upstairs. We are in his room, way down in the basement, but his mom can hear hair growing, he says.

“I'm not surprised. Last thing most of them want is to meet a web friend face-to-face. Everybody knows we're all fat and ugly with questionable personal hygiene.”

“I've been meaning to talk to you about that.”

I swat his shoulder with the back of my hand. It's like hitting a stone wall. “Ouch,” I say. “When did you get so Schwarzeneggery?”

Mark grins and rubs his shoulder. “I've been working out.”

Mark says, “Why
do
you want to know?”

“I'm trying to figure out if this guy I met at a party is from our chat room.”

“What guy?”

“An older guy.”

Mark doesn't say anything for a few seconds. When I look at him he has this funny expression on his face. “You going out with him or something?” he asks.

“Me?” I have to laugh. “No!”

He looks relieved. For a second I don't get it, then I realize that Mark is jealous. Over
me
! And that makes me feel like I've got a lot of air in my chest. I breathe out.

“He's just this… kind of weird guy.”

“Why didn't you ask him?”

“I don't know. Maybe I will if I ever see him again.”

“But the people in the chat room could be anywhere, right? I mean, what are the chances they live here instead of a thousand miles away?”

“Pretty good, actually. Transylvania started off as an offshoot of a local goth Web site.”

“I'm not following this,” says Mark. We are sitting next to each other in front of his computer. Our shoulders are touching.

“Draco is this so-called vampire that drops in on the chat room.”

“I thought you were
all
vampires.”

“Draco's more serious. All these guys
talk
about drinking blood, but I think Draco might actually
do
it.”

“That's pretty creepy.”

“Not to a vampire.”

Mark is looking at me. “This is a guy you think you met?”

“Maybe.”

“Isn't that kind of scary?”

“A little,” I admit. “But it's also kinda cool.”

“What was he like? Did he look like Bela Lugosi?”

“Actually, he looked more like Elton John.”

“Wow. That is scary.”

I laugh out loud at the comical expression on Mark's face. He shushes me, pointing upstairs. That really sets me off; I clap my hands over my mouth and laugh through my nose, making a truly gross snorting sound, which gets Mark going too. A few seconds later we calm down just in time to hear footsteps from upstairs, followed by his mother's voice.

“Mark? Is that you down there?”

“Yeah.”

“What on earth are you doing up at this hour?”

“Studying?”

There are three long silent seconds when I imagine her standing at the top of the stairs trying to figure out if the snorting laughter she thought she heard was really the sound of her son studying. Just when I am sure she is about to march down the stairs she says, “Well, it's after midnight. Go to bed.”

“Okay, Mom.”

We listen to her shuffle back to her room.

“She's got ears like a bat,” Mark whispers. His face is only about nine inches away from mine. He has little lines at the corners of his lips, and his eyes are the soft brown of chocolate pudding. His head is a planet, pulling at me. What would happen if I let go? If I let myself fall toward him and our lips smashed together? He kissed me once before, but I was in a coma. Not a very good kiss, at least from my point of view. I wonder if he is about to try again.

The thought sends a panicky jolt through my body. I stand up.

“I better go,” I say.

I am standing on the street in front of Mark's house and my heart is going about a hundred beats a minute. Am I having another insulin reaction? I don't think so. I cut back on my long-acting insulin after the incident at school. If anything my sugar is a little high. I don't want to risk another bout of hypoglycemia, not after the last one. But why is my heart pounding?

I think about Mark's face, and our shoulders touching, and his chocolate-pudding eyes. I'm not breathing. I suck in a lungful of cool night air and tell my heart to slow down. It doesn't work. Going home and climbing into bed and sleeping seems impossible. I'm so awake right now my eyes feel like they're about to pop right out of my head. I should go back and make Mark talk to me. But I can't. Why not? I don't know. I start walking. Walking and thinking, thinking and walking, listening to the tock tock tock of boot heels on concrete.