Chapter 7
SEVEN
December in the mountains had arrived with a thick layer of frost and a gray sky laden with snow clouds.
Sophie realized she hadn’t packed her snowboots as she trudged on foot to Ramsey Court, her sneakers wet and her fingers freezing.
In spite of the cold, her skin refused to turn rosy.
She stayed arctic white. If it wasn’t for her clothing, she wondered if she’d be invisible against the sky.
Invisible like that lady Auntie Izzy helped.
Or feeling like a ghost.
Or a monster.
She signed in at the front desk, now that an RA was there. The lobby was full of shambling figures in pajamas, skipping morning class or basking in the luxury of afternoon commitments.
Jesse would be working. Unless that was a lie, too.
Wondering if she should have texted first, she rapped on his door and stood back, heart hammering.
“Yes?” a voice called out.
Her heart instantly twisted. There was no glib mockery in his tone, no college playboy who loved scoring off the broken hearts he made. He sounded utterly bereft and crushed.
“It’s me.”
Silence.
The door remained shut for a long time, but just as she was opening her mouth to call out again, it slivered open. “Sophie?”
“Hi.”
“You... what? What are you doing here?”
“Can I come in?”
There was a second of hesitation before Jesse opened the door fully, letting her see his face.
Any thoughts of Jesse indulging in mocking laughter faded from Sophie’s mind as she took in his pouched, bloodshot eyes, the swelling around his lids, and the utter wreck of his normally sexy hair.
Wordlessly, he stepped back to allow her to enter the room, which looked like it had survived a burglary.
Books and CDs were thrown across the floor.
The chair and table lay on their sides, far from their original positions.
“Jesse. I think... maybe you need help.”
“Ha. I know. There’s just no cure for this.
You live with it until you die with it,” he rasped, voice raw.
He followed her eyes around the destruction and hastily yanked the table and chair upright.
“Sorry about the mess. I— I was upset.” As he gathered up the books, he shook his head.
“Upset is an understatement. I was devastated, whether you think I have a right to be or not. I was mad at myself on top of everything else.” Books back in place, he turned and regarded her. “What are you doing here?”
Sophie’s heart ached at the loathing in his voice, not directed at her but at himself. “If you love someone, you don’t leave them because of mental health issues. I should have listened to you. If you believe you’re a vampire—”
“Soph,” Jesse held up a hand, stopping her as the lines of regret etched deeper into his otherwise flawless face, “I’m not mentally ill. Well, not disillusioned about being some nightmare creature. I am what I am, but I’m not that scary.”
This is going to be much harder than I thought. Sophie found herself struggling to rectify what surely must be a form of madness with his calm tones and his hopeless shrug. “Okay, then. Show me. Vampires have fangs.”
“Yep. They retract.”
“And they can’t go out in the daylight.”
“They can’t go out in the sunlight. I can do a cloudy day with no problem.”
“They can’t eat garlic, and I’ve never heard you once ask them to leave it out when we’ve ordered together, and garlic is in a ton of Mexican and Chinese food.”
“Garlic is a folktale. So is a cross, unless the vampire has lost his human soul and allowed the demon to rule his body. I haven’t. I can go into any church I want.”
“Vampires don’t reflect.” Sophie tossed out another piece of knowledge from her days of reading teen fantasy books.
All the while, a prickling unease was mounting.
The days Jesse had just stopped showing up right before Halloween were abnormally bright and sunny for Antonia’s foggy mountain climate.
He worked days inside. He took afternoon and night classes.
The picture of him that was so clearly from the eighties. His dead-white skin. Like hers.
“I don’t reflect. You can see sort of a blurry outline of a body, but no ‘human’ reflection. It’s something about the demon being the shape of the man, but not the ‘man made in God’s image’. At least, that's the deal according to some friends of mine.”
“Oh, great. There are more of you?” Sophie raked her hands through her hair distractedly, while also remembering the other night when she’d thought Jesse was right behind her in town— but he wasn’t reflected in the store’s glass window.
Jesse gave her a wan smile. “A couple.”
Silence dragged. Sophie found her head shaking of its own volition as if she were willing herself to argue and protest. But you don’t need to do that.
You need to help him if that’s what you want.
Is that what you want, a psycho boyfriend?
You can't claim to care about people with mental health needs and still toss around words like “psycho”.
“I don’t blame you for not wanting someone like me in your life. I only told you because I couldn’t keep lying if we were going to get closer. The closer you get to a vampire, the more obvious it is that they are one,” Jesse explained softly.
“Yeah, I bet. Hard to miss all that blood-drinking and murdering people or turning them into an army of the undead,” Sophie returned nastily.
Jesse bridled, blue eyes flashing. “I’ve never killed a human in my life and I don’t plan to. Just ‘cause someone did it to me doesn’t mean I’ll do it.”
Again, his voice was so sure and sane that Sophie found herself confused. She’d come to trust Jesse because he was straight with her, not mollycoddling or ignoring a problem, not pretending she was the same as everyone else. He still loved her for her differences.
Like the way she looked. “I’m not a vampire.”
“I know. But... I admit I thought you were. You’re pale like me,” his cheek hitched into a half-smile. “And you can hear like me. I think you’re a little something extra, but that doesn’t matter right now.”
“No, what matters is that I’m here, trying to help you. The first step is admitting you need help.”
“Yeah, if you’re addicted. I already know I’m a vampire.
There’s no help for that.” His fists balled tightly.
“It means you watch everyone you love age and die while you stay frozen in a weird half-life. You can never bring new people into your world for long because they’ll run from you or because you know it’s not fair to them. And it hurts.”
“Sure does,” Sophie wrapped her arms around herself, listening to him speak with such sad, bitter sincerity, disgust on his features, fingers on a perpetual flex and twist as if he could tear himself an escape route.
“You can go now. You made the token attempt to ‘give me a second chance’ or whatever this was.”
“You sound like a jerk,” Sophie blurted.
“I feel like one. I feel like I should have been smarter. I’ve been like this for almost thirty years, Soph.
I never messed up until I met you. Dammit!
” Jesse suddenly kicked the little couch in the tiny living room.
Its cheap frame splintered and sagged, worn upholstery bulging over broken wood.
“We could have just been friends. I screwed it up. You know what kills me?”
“A stake?” She was being a bitch and she knew it. Her eyes glimmered with confused, angry tears, matching his.
“That. That you are truly beautiful, not just your face, but your heart, and you could have used a friend. So could I. We could have kept being happy and I blew it, not just for me, but for you, too.”
Her eyes overflowed, a tidal wave of tears breaking the surface and flowing out as silent sobs wracked her thin shoulders.
She had wanted him as a friend. She’d believed she was happy, she’d believed she was worth loving.
He’d changed her life in a few weeks, and now she was losing him to whatever sick charade he’d invented.
Even if she could help him, did she want this to be her life, constantly hoping he’d stay on the meds or in therapy, whatever he needed?
“Please.”
Sophie looked up to see his face only a few inches from hers.
“Be angry. But not sad. You can remember me as some a-hole who had a Dracula complex if you want. But don’t cry.”
“Why shouldn’t I? I love you, too, and I can’t even help you.
I talked to my aunt, she’s a therapist, and I told her,” Sophie hiccuped suddenly, a loud gulping squeak amidst her sobs, “that I had a friend who thought he was undead and she started telling me about mental illness being a disability that needs respect and help, the same as any other physical issue. God! Why couldn’t you be blind or in a wheelchair?
I’d know how to help with that! Or maybe I wouldn’t because I don’t know how to talk to people or be with people!
Sometimes I feel like I’m not even a ‘people’! ”
Jesse watched her spiral, ranting and scrubbing at her eyes. Her eyes with the lava-red depths, her hands with their glowing fingertips. He caught her hands in his own and squeezed. “Listen to me?”
“I’m trying to!”
“No, listen to me now. About this,” he licked his lips suddenly. “I... Don’t scream.”
“Not a good line,” Sophie shoved his hands off, only to find them back on hers again, gripping with unnatural strength as he pulled her to his chest. Her adrenaline spiked and she let out a frightened gasp.
“Listen!” he hissed, shoving her ear to his chest.
Sophie struggled for a minute, but Jesse’s grip was iron. A few seconds ticked past and Sophie ceased wriggling. His hands relaxed.
What’s going on? Panic of a new kind seeped in.
She moved her head to the left. The right. Up. Down.
Jesse stepped back and looked at her, lips thin and eyes wide, the fear in them crystal clear. “What did you hear?”
“Nothing,” she mouthed.
“No heartbeat.”
The scream rose and faded, nothing left but a tiny wincing sound.