3. Three
Three
Presley
Aaron was a bad driver, and there was no one to tell him except me. Kim’s sweet tendencies meant Aaron’s annoying behavior—probably mine too—would go unchecked because Luke and Zach were . . . on vacation somewhere else. Probably doing great and not sad at all.
Aaron liked to do this thing where instead of easing off the gas into a stop, he’d slam on the brakes. It was like I was on an amusement park ride, and not the fun kind. It would have made me want to barf if I still could.
Kimberly took the change like a champ. I’d decided to be helpful by not yelling at Aaron for his poor driving skills, because it was a little too much on her senses at the moment. She couldn’t even handle the radio for very long.
I’d decided to be a good boy for her, but the torture of sitting in the car for hours in silence had me drawing a frowny face into foggy windows of the car.
I could have told Aaron all of that. Not like we were playing the quiet game or anything, but for the first time in my life, I didn’t feel like talking. No, that was sort of a lie.
I fiddled with the peeling lettering on my pullover. Kimberly thought of everything. She’d made us stop at a thrift store and bought us all new clothes with the money we’d saved from the car wash. I was being forced into blah-gray clothes, but I got the meaning behind it. We needed to not look like ourselves. But clothing was personal and fun, and I looked forward to choosing every day. This had been chosen for me. Though it was probably for the best, I didn’t want to make mundane decisions.
“Are we there yet?”
Aaron glared at me through the rearview mirror. I was on my third warning, but Aaron wouldn’t do anything. Unlike Zach . . .
I sighed. “I want to stop and get an MP3 or something. I’m tired of sitting in the silence.”
I didn’t even know if they made such an ancient device anymore.
“We’re not spending money on that,” Aaron said.
“Oh, so you’re the finance man too, huh? You believe that, Kim? He’s such a dictator.”
She rubbed her forehead. “We need to stop soon anyway. We can check by the hotel.”
We’d been driving for miles on a singular road in Alaska. It wasn’t exactly high on my list of places I’d wanted to visit. I don’t think Alaska was happy to see us. It hadn’t stopped snowing since we’d arrived.
The whole car jolted as we ran over something. A puppy—maybe a child.
“Smooth driving there, Tex.”
“I’m trying. It’s the blizzard. There’s debris all over the road.” Aaron sighed.
Kimberly rubbed his shoulder—she coddled him too much. “It’s okay. Five more minutes.”
“I can drive us,” I said.
“No. You’ll drive us into the ditch.”
“I’m a better driver than you!”
“Guys,” Kimberly said.
“Look, you’re upsetting Kim,” I said.
“You’re the one who’s yelling.”
“I’m only yelling because you never listen to me.” I grabbed his headrest and shook it.
“Stop touching my headrest,” Aaron snapped.
“What are you going to do about it?”
Aaron tried to slap my hand off. The car swerved into a tailspin, and all three of us screamed as we crashed into a ditch.
“Shit!” Aaron slammed his hands on the steering wheel. Sitting in the ditch, I remembered my previous resolve not to piss my brother off because he’d been acting a little unhinged. Eh, I’d try harder once I wasn’t stuck in a car for hours upon hours with the worst heater known to man.
Kimberly rubbed her forehead again.
“Sorry, Kim,” I said.
“It’s okay.” She turned to me with a soft smile, then back to Aaron. “Why don’t we stop at the convenience store here on the corner, then our hotel is only a street over.”
“What about the car?” Aaron said.
“Let’s ditch this one and get another tomorrow,” I said.
“We just got this one.”
“Yeah, and it sucks.”
“Sorry, I couldn’t steal you a better car, Pres,” Aaron spat.
“Me too.”
“Boys.” Kimberly stopped us both.
“Sorry,” we said.
“I’m going to the store. I have some stuff to get. I’ll look for your MP3.”
“I wanna come.” I pat Aaron’s shoulder on my way to follow Kim. “Make sure to wipe down the car real good, buddy.”
We’d tried to scrub our stolen cars of prints and things before we left them. Just generally to make it harder for someone to track us. Cops, The Family, Legion. The list was long.
Kimberly rubbed his shoulder again. “Do you want anything?”
“No.” He gave her the googly eyes, then glared at me. “Don’t spend all our money.”
“Sir, yes sir.” I gave him a salute with my middle finger.
“Come on.” Kimberly wrapped her arm around me and handed me a bigger coat. It was more for the disguise than it was the cold. I fished my sunglasses out of my pocket and put them on. It was pitch dark outside, with barely any moonlight peeking through the clouds, so naturally, I couldn’t see shit, but I looked cool, and that’s all that really mattered. Kimberly had some too, but she needed them for the fluorescent lighting.
The snow was falling in thick puffs that soaked into the fabric of my coat and wet my hair.
“How are you holding up?” Kimberly asked. She always asked me that. She asked Aaron that too. Kimberly was working hard as our glue. I guess someone had to be, but I felt bad because it wasn’t how it was supposed to be. It should have been us taking care of her. That was the original plan.
“So peachy, Kim. Happier than I’ve ever been.”
She gave me her serious brow.
“I’d be a lot better if Aaron wasn’t so annoying.”
“He’s trying his best. We’re all a little stressed. And he’s—”
“I know. I’m sorry you’re in the middle of all this.”
“Nowhere else I’d rather be.”
“Seriously, you’re telling me your fluffy strawberry bedspread back at BFU wouldn’t beat walking in a blizzard in the dark in the middle of nowhere?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying.”
Aaron and I would have killed each other already if it wasn’t for her. She’d seen adversity and had a level head. Aaron did too when his veins weren’t full of the queen’s blood like mine.
It wasn’t fair. All of us were going to go somewhere safe. We were going to help her through the change. We were all supposed to be—
She squeezed my arm as we entered the brightest building ever. The convenience store had buzzing fluorescent bulbs and was blaring Christmas music. I rubbed my chest where it suddenly felt hollow. Kind of like when I used to get heartburn from eating way too many hot chips and drinking energy drinks.
A man dressed in a green elf costume looking for donations rang a bell just inside the entrance of the store. Kimberly gripped my arm. She must be hurting. The sensory overload hadn’t been that hard for me to manage when I changed. It was different for everyone, but for her, the sound was killer. “ Too much noise in my head ,” she’d say.
“I’ll take care of him,” I whispered to her.
She mouthed, Thank you as she pulled her hood over her head to shield her ears.
“Hey, dude. Can I see that bell?”
A large man with salt-and-pepper hair looked down at me and raised a bushy brow.
“No.”
“Come on, I want to show you a magic trick. It’s worth it. I promise.”
I grabbed the bell and covered it with my hands. I’d practiced sleight of hand a lot as a kid who liked to cheat, and it was about a thousand times easier as a vampire. It was criminal that my brothers didn’t let me get on social media, because I would’ve made us so much money as a social media magician. Luke never thought the idea was stupid.
I did the ole behind the ear trick which he wasn’t too enthused with. Tough crowd.
“Oh my god, what is that?” I pointed at nothing across the store, and as he turned, I chucked the bell outside in the snow as far as it would go.
I was gone by the time he turned around. Sucker.
“Hey!” His voice echoed in the store, but I’d already found Kim. She’d protect me. Any man would shiver and quake in the face of an angry Kimberly Burns. Human or vampire.
“Here.” She shoved the smallest MP3 player in my face.
“Oh god, it’s ancient . . . and gray. No pink? Green?”
She scoffed with a smile. “It’s all they had.”
“How do I put music on it?”
“There are instructions on the back. Maybe you can use a computer at the hotel.”
“It comes with a manual!? We’re really in trouble, aren’t we?”
We were in a lot of trouble. And the MP3 was a bad omen.
I kind of zoned out after that, watching the door and waiting. The feeling was still there in my chest, like I had slammed three burgers and washed it down with a liter of soda. I expected them to walk through the door like they always did.
The twins were just those guys. They always showed up. Even if they told me they might not make it to a game—I was the best mascot to ever mascot the halls of my high school—my brothers always made it. Christmas, New Years . . .
Suddenly, I was reminded of the Christmas music playing in the store. The hollow feeling grew, and I rubbed my chest. I hated the bells. The nostalgia. The stupid sparkly Santa decorations mocking me with their smiles.
“I’m going to check on Aaron, okay?”
She narrowed her eyes. “Will you be good?”
Luke’s words danced in the foothills of my mind.
“Yes, ma’am. I earnestly swear to only piss Aaron off a little bit.”
I bolted for the door, taking extra care to wave at the doorman before darting out into the night. The parking lot was sparse, with larger trucks and four-wheel drive vehicles. A fresh blanket of snow covered everything, and the swift wind swirled around me. With nothing but darkness overhead, I wanted the snow to lift me into the sky so I could dance there and escape for a minute.
Aaron found me. He had a wool sweater on and a huge jacket that made him look ridiculous, and I had to fight the urge to make fun of him for it. Aaron and I were really bad fugitives. This whole ordeal was making me realize we were bad at literally everything.
“What are you doing out here?” Aaron asked.
“Do you care?”
“Of course I care.”
“Coulda fooled me.”
“Well, you could have fooled me too. You’re being difficult.”
“Well, maybe if you’d stop trying to be Luke. We could just continue like we always did before.”
“I’m not trying to be Luke. I’m trying to make sure we get where we’re going in one piece.”
“We’d probably be there by now if we didn’t have to stop every other day for you to feed and almost kill everyone who looks at Kimberly the wrong way.”
Aaron opened his mouth to speak, then buried his face in his hands and groaned. “I hate this . . .”
“Shit. Sorry. I didn’t mean that.”
“It’s okay.”
“No, I was being a dick. You can’t help it.”
As much as he was annoying, he was trying. We never had that dynamic before. Maybe a little once Zach and Luke graduated and it was just us and Mom most nights, but we didn’t have to depend on each other. We’d always had someone to tell us what the hell we were supposed to do.
Aaron nodded and patted me on the back. “I’m trying. I just don’t . . . feel like myself right now.”
I hadn’t given Her much thought before we left Blackheart. For one, why doesn’t Ms. Hell Bitch have a name? Who decided referring to Her as a pronoun was appropriate? It made any conversation about Her extremely confusing. I once asked Kilian Her story, and I couldn’t get past the first two minutes before deciding not to care. He talked too slow, and it all got jumbled up. I wasn’t interested in Hell Bitch’s story anyway. She hurt my brothers. Which meant She was dead to me.
Also, why is She a “queen?” What exactly does She rule over? A bunch of mind-numbed zombies? I guess my brothers fell into that category, but in my mind, they didn’t count.
This whole treating Her as something otherworldly was so weird. I stopped asking Luke about Her. Aside from his pulse shooting through the roof, he’d get this strange look in his eye that made me sick to my stomach. When his eyes glazed over like that, he didn’t look like my brother. He didn’t sound like him either. His voice would change and get all serious. Luke wasn’t like that. All mysterious and broody. He was fun and loud.
Her blood changed everything, and now it was swimming in my veins too. I still didn’t get the hype.
“What does it feel like for you?” he asked.
“Like I have the worst heartburn ever. Kinda hollow deep in my chest like I’m a chocolate bunny.”
It made me sad, but I didn’t say that. I wasn’t ready to hash out my feelings just yet. I wanted to save them up and spew them on Luke when I saw him next. I would see him again, and it would be soon. This was just some temporary madness.
“That’s a good way to put it.” He did that weird half-smile thing. Normally, it didn’t work on me, but he looked wiped. I needed to be nicer to him.
“Do you . . . feel it too?” I asked.
“Yeah, I feel this dull ache. Sadness but mostly thirst. It’s stronger than any of that. That’s all I can think about. Like it knows that’s my weakness or something.”
Hell Bitch caused that too.
“Give it to me straight. Are we fucked?” I asked.
“No, Pres. We’re going to get through this.”
“We’re going to find them, right?”
“Yeah, when we get to where Luke wanted us to go, I’m sure he left us some kind of instruction.”
I nodded.
He did. I know he did. He always had a plan. This would be no different. We would be together soon. I hoped. In time for Christmas even; it wasn’t that far away.