Fang Fiction

Prologue

After her first two weeks as a PhD student at Columbia University, Tess Rosenbloom was absolutely certain of exactly one fact:

Coming here was the best decision she’d ever made.

Everything about this place was stupidly intimidating, but she loved it anyway. The campus, with its marble rotundas and twisted iron gates, Rodin sculptures casually dotting the manicured green quads. New York City itself, a place that moved so briskly Tess could barely keep pace; no matter where she was or what she was doing, she always seemed to be in the way of someone in a terrible hurry, and she was always curious about where they were going and why it was so important to get there as quickly as possible. The professors in the Comparative Literature department moved even faster, from Whitman to Morrison to Chaucer in a single breath, expecting every student to catch the references and lob back opinions of their own.

Her fellow students, if Tess was honest, had been the least exciting part of her adventure—at least so far. They regurgitated other people’s takes on the literature at warp speed, tying everything to schools of thought, postmodernists and neo-traditionalists and fourth-wave queer feminists, every sentence so scrambled that you barely had time to notice they didn’t contain a single original idea. As if everyone were out to prove that being well-read was the same as being insightful.

It wasn’t like Tess hadn’t read all the same books they had—she’d just rarely been in classes or seminars with anyone else to discuss them. Tess’s parents were nomadic artist types, and she spent her childhood constantly on the move—a summer in a commune in Vermont, a winter staying with some friend of a friend on the Olympic Peninsula, hiking in moss forests so thick and wet they almost never saw the sun. Tess was shy, a constant reader (especially of all things spooky), dreamy and romantic and a little bit goth, attaching her literary fantasies to her latest crushes. It never mattered much when they failed to live up to them because she’d be moving soon anyway. College was much the same: Tess got her GED and bounced between community colleges, wherever she could find work, until her Shakespeare professor recognized her potential and encouraged her to consider a career in academia.

Tess had never given much thought to what she would do with her life; she was always so consumed with figuring out where she would be next week or next month that concepts like “five years from now” felt too abstract to merit consideration. But Tess’s professor helped her transfer to a four-year school to finish her BA, then apply for doctoral programs in comparative literature. Tess wrote her admissions essay about the witches from Macbeth, and the way supernatural beings are so often used in literature to externalize human fears and failings, arguing passionately for the need to study Shakespearean portrayals of the supernatural in a contemporary context.

Tess could see herself at a number of schools, but Columbia was her dream—she was so taken with the notion of a gothic campus in the middle of New York City. As Tess thumbed through a glossy brochure, a slideshow of images ran through her mind: Endless days poring over books in libraries so cavernous and reverent they felt more like cathedrals. The thrill of a new folio coming in, putting on gloves to protect the yellowed pages, the soft sounds and dusty smells as intoxicating as any cocktail. Walking across a stage in sky-blue velvet regalia, becoming a celebrated professor traveling the world to lecture eager students, working with Shakespearean theater companies and wearing glamorous gowns to their opening galas. Meeting a lover—or maybe even a great love?—who was as passionate about literature as she was, spending their days arguing about poetry and their nights in a satisfied tangle of limbs.

The day the thick white envelope arrived bearing news of her acceptance, Tess cried. She could feel the pictures in her head growing crisper, more vivid—not just fantasies, but possibilities within reach.

Tess was a little disappointed she hadn’t yet made any friends in her program (let alone found the love of her life), but she wasn’t going to let that derail her excitement. She loved being here. She loved doing this. And she’d been a loner for as long as she could remember! Maybe that was just the sort of person she was always going to be.

So she had no intention of going to the mixer the department was throwing to celebrate the end of their first full week of classes—until she heard there would be sandwiches. Most of these events had pizza, and while Tess was always thrilled to enjoy a free slice or three for dinner, there was no convenient way to snag leftovers to bring home. But wrapped sandwiches? If they were big, and Tess was lucky, she could eat for the entire weekend. She didn’t bother to change out of the jeans and black tee she’d worn to class that day, but she did bring her roomiest tote bag.

The mixer was an uninspired affair, held in the department lounge, well-attended on account of the sandwiches and cheap bottles of pinot noir and chardonnay. Tess made a half-hearted attempt to join a group chatting about Dickens, mostly because one of the guys was pretty cute—his name was Rick, and Tess often dazed off in their romantic poetry seminar imagining how it would feel to run her fingers through his soft brown hair. But after eight minutes exactly (she glanced at the clock on the wall often enough to know), she’d had her fill of ostentatious opinions and decided it was time to grab her sandwiches and get the hell out of there.

Only one other girl was by the sandwich table; most everyone had already gotten their firsts, and it was too soon to politely go for seconds. She looked around twenty-four, same as Tess. She was tall and gawky, Indian American, with deep brown skin and long black hair, wearing cutoffs and a faded green tee. Her body was all angles, sharp elbows and hips and knees, but her face was full of curves—big lips, a prominent nose, and wide eyes. Tess had seen her at orientation, but they didn’t have any classes together, so they didn’t know each other at all.

“Turkey or ham?” she asked Tess.

“For now or for tomorrow?” Tess replied. This girl had brought a tote bag too.

“Oh, great point,” she enthused. “I feel like ham won’t keep—it gets that sheen to it, and no one wants to eat a shiny ham sandwich.”

“But if you want tuna, it’s now or never,” Tess countered. “Definitely not taking chances on anything mayo-based in this heat.”

“Okay, okay.” The girl nodded, formulating a plan. “So we do tuna right now—and I’m gonna say that pairs with white wine, right? Fish and white? That’s a thing?”

“I’m not sure either this fish or that wine is good enough to worry about pairing, but I’m always down for a bottle of white.” Tess laughed.

“Excellent. Then we take take turkey for tomorrow…”

“And the BLT for Sunday,” Tess finished.

“Oh my god, yes. ” The girl grinned. “It’s gonna be so cold and salty, we won’t care at all that it’s two days old. You’re so fucking smart. I’m Joni, by the way.”

She was already shoveling sandwiches into her bag, not bothering to be stealth about it—Tess absolutely loved her style.

“I’m Tess.” Tess grabbed some sandwiches of her own, plus a couple little bags of chips, two apples, and some chocolate chip cookies in Saran Wrap.

Joni glanced at the wine and furrowed her brow.

“I don’t think I have a corkscrew, do you? Should we steal one of those too?”

“I have one,” Tess said and laughed.

“Great! We’ll eat at your place. Oh my god, is that Blood Feud ?!?!” Joni pointed at the worn paperback in Tess’s overstuffed tote. “I’m obsessed with those books!”

“Seriously??” Tess had felt certain that not one of the snobs in their program would be into her favorite vampire novels.

“ Yes! Omg, how hot was it when Callum and Isobel have sex in the middle of the moonflower meadow?”

“Not as hot as when she and Felix have sex in the milky jade pools after their battle with Tristan!”

“Do not even tell me you’re a Felix girl, he’s so boring!” Joni protested, but she was grinning.

“Who’s your favorite then?” Tess goaded her. “Callum? The bad boy? Ooooh, how original.”

“Puh-lease, it is so obviously Octavia!” Joni shrieked. “By the way, did I not mention I’m a big giant lesbian? Anyway, Octavia rules, everyone else drools, when I turn twenty-nine I’m throwing a Blood Feud– themed party just like the ball Octavia had for her twenty-ninth birthday.”

“That’s genius, ” Tess gushed. “You could do Victorian decorations, make your place into Konstantin’s townhouse with the blood punch and everything.”

“The blood punch, oh my god, yes! With cranberry juice! Or actual blood!”

“Or both!”

By this time, they were both doubled over laughing, and the rest of the mixer had gone more or less silent as everyone turned to gawk at them. But Tess found that as long as she was standing with Joni, she absolutely did not care.

“You ready to go?” Tess asked.

“Boy, am I!” Joni grabbed an unopened bottle of chardonnay, and they both waved jovially to the group as they strode out of the room.

Within two weeks Joni and Tess were best friends, and by spring semester they were living together in a grimy basement apartment a few blocks from campus, a place filled with cheap furniture scrounged from Housing Works, daring experiments in homemade frosé, Harry Styles dance parties, and online quizzes about which vampire from the Blood Feud books you should marry. The year Tess spent living with Joni was the best year of her life.

Until Rick’s Valentine’s Day party.

And the panic attacks. The nightmares. The insomnia.

And then Tess moved out while Joni was away on spring break without ever telling her why.

Back at that first mixer, Tess never could have guessed that she’d be dropping out of Columbia in just eighteen months, leaving behind her best friend, her career, and all her dreams.

It wasn’t personal. It was just what she had to do to survive.