Chapter 48. Lorena
lorena
This is the worst moment of my life.
I sold out my classmates to the vampires. I’m the real monster. And most monstrous of all is that beyond my guilt, I’m more heartbroken over losing William.
He and Fabiana left to patrol, but I can’t move. My pulse seems to be ricocheting through the chambers of my heart like it’s a pinball machine, unable to settle down. The first-period bell rings, and I suck in a deep breath, trying to swallow my emotions.
“Where’d he go?”
I look up at the sound of Salma’s voice. Blinking away the blurriness of my vision, I see she’s not alone; Tiffany, Zach, and Trevor are with her.
“Um, his aunt came to—”
“Cut the crap, Navarro.” Tiffany crosses her arms. “Tell the truth.”
My gut tightens in alarm. “What are you talking about?”
“Zach already knows,” she says. “I told him.”
“What’s wrong with you?” I snap, and I feel like an idiot for having ever defended her to William. I should’ve known she couldn’t keep a secret. “What if he’d heard you—?”
“I wrote it down and saved it to a drive that Salma delivered to Zach for me.”
Salma’s eyes widen with surprise. “The fuck?”
Tiffany played us both. Zach stays uncharacteristically stone-faced, and I can’t tell if he’s actually angry or compensating for something he doesn’t feel. After all, it would be hard to believe Tiffany without proof.
“Is someone going to tell me what the fuck’s going on?” asks Trevor.
“Lorena will,” says Tiffany.
“I can’t,” I say, giving him a pleading look. I’m not going to endanger his life or betray William. “Trust me, you don’t want to know.”
“Does this have to do with what happened to the LUB?” asks Trevor. “Is this why none of you were surprised? You’re all keeping a secret from me?” He turns to Zach. “Seriously, man?”
But Zach says nothing.
“Fine, I’ll tell him,” says Tiffany.
“DON’T—!”
“William is a vampire,” she cuts across me.
I don’t even breathe as I stare at Trevor, awaiting his reaction.
He stares back at Tiffany blankly, then he looks to me and Salma, like he’s waiting for someone to make it make sense. Maybe he’s not as informed about what the Legion does as I feared.
“Tell him,” Tiffany says to me.
“Okay,” I say with a sigh. “I’ll tell you. The truth is, Tiffany hasn’t been making a lot of sense lately, and Salma and I think she should see the nurse.”
Tiffany looks at me like she’s never seen anything so abhorrent in her life. Neither have I, and I hate myself for what I’m doing, but it’s for everyone’s protection.
“Salma,” says Tiffany, the fury in her voice barely restrained. “Tell them she’s lying.”
I look at my best friend, and for the first time, I’m not sure if she’ll have my back.
We used to like telling people that if one of us killed a man, the other one would bury the body.
We said it often mostly because Ma hated it, and Pa would offer to be our lawyer.
But I never thought we’d have to actually put those words to the test.
“Tiff, you need to drop your anger at Lore,” says Salma in a placating tone.
Tiffany looks at her with the revulsion she usually reserves for me, then she turns to Zach. “You believe me, right?” she asks, looking at him imploringly.
“You already know I’m on your side.”
Even though it’s not technically an answer, there’s an implication in his statement that’s even more concerning. It sounds like he’s already done something to prove his trust.
“But you believe what I told you, right?” she presses.
He looks like he wants to agree, but the yes never comes.
Tiffany’s dark eyes flicker like embers, and she looks from me to Salma. “Fuck you both. You’re the biggest liars I’ve ever met in my life—you deserve each other.”
Then she storms off, and Zach runs after her.
“Why didn’t anyone tell me about Tiffany?” asks Trevor when it’s just the three of us.
“We were trying to protect her,” I say, looking at Salma and wishing she would jump in and help me out. But she’s staring at the floor, and she looks dangerously close to crying.
“So what do we do?” asks Trevor.
“We only have a couple of days of school left,” I say. “We’re going to call her parents and give them a heads-up.” I tug on Salma’s arm to shake her out of it.
“I’m going to class,” says Trevor, and I get the impression he’s eager to get away from us. As if we’ve let him down.
After he’s gone, Salma and I don’t move. It feels like we have unfinished business. “Where’s William?” she asks. “And who was that woman?”
I don’t answer her because something else is bothering me. “Why did Tiffany call you a liar?”
“Because I backed up your lie.”
“You didn’t lie. You chose your words carefully.”
“Are you not going to answer me?” asks Salma, rolling back the sleeves of her blazer like she’s getting frustrated, and I glimpse an ugly bruise on her non-cast arm.
“What is that?” I ask, reaching for her hand to take a closer look—
“I’m serious!” She crosses her arms. “Tell me what happened!”
“Only if you tell me what the fuck is going on with you.”
“You first.”
I roll my eyes. “That woman is another vampire, and she came to inform William that the vampires know where he is, and they’re coming for him in two days.” With every word, my best friend’s face grows more horrified.
“To the school?” she asks, breathless.
“They won’t make it here,” I assure her. “William and Fabiana have a plan to intercept them. He’s going to do whatever they want in exchange for our protection, which means that he’s leaving soon. It’s done. Your turn.”
My eyes burn, but I don’t have the luxury of crying. We still have a whole day of classes.
Salma’s shoulders sag like she’s overcome with exhaustion, and she leans against the wall as she slides down to the cold floor. I join her there, folding my knees into my chest while I wait for her to explain what’s going on.
“You remember that time when we were nine, and our families went on that ski trip to Boulder?” she asks after a long while, and there’s a raw quality to her voice that makes her sound younger.
It fucking terrifies me.
“I remember you convincing me to sneak up to the hotel rooftop in the middle of the night to see if we could see stars,” I say. I can still picture the twinkling lights poking through velvety black space, like tiny glittering eyes watching us from across the solar system.
“You remember how I got so sick after that trip that I missed the rest of third grade? That’s when you became friends with Aurora.”
I nod and glance again at the purplish bruises on her skin, afraid of where she’s going with this.
“I’m not coming back to school after winter vacation,” she says.
“Because of the vampires—?”
“The doctors ran some tests over break.”
Seven words. And they’re worse than anything Fabiana said.
“I have it,” she says, tears welling in her eyes. “What Mom had. And it’s very advanced.”
No no no no no.
I can accept that vampires are real and that William has to live among them. But losing Salma? This can’t be real life.
“My doctor didn’t want me coming back to school at all. He wanted me to start on a treatment plan, but you saw what that did to Ma. It crushed her faster than the disease. I won’t spend my last months with machines and needles and tubes and all that shit.”
It feels like it consumes all my energy just to summon my voice.
“Then … what?”
She looks at me as if she would rather I fill in the blank for myself.
“I told Tiffany I was sick over break, but she has no idea how bad it is. I said that I would tell you in my own time because I knew this would be hardest on you.”
“We’ll find better doctors,” I say, starting a to-do list in my head. “My parents will help. We’ll search for drug trials. We’ll travel anywhere to meet with specialists, and we won’t stop until we get the answer we want. What does your dad say?”
“I don’t have a dad,” she says, and I know better than to press that button.
“Look, let’s go home early. We’ll talk to my parents and figure this out.”
“And abandon our classmates to be picked off by vampires? We can’t go!”
When she says vampires, I flash to when I walked in on her with William in his room, and something else clicks into place. Something I don’t want to see.
“Sal … why did you want William to bite you?”
She doesn’t answer.
“What did you really ask him to do?”
She swallows. “I asked him to turn me.”
Something twists inside me, and I snap, “That’s not a solution! It’s a last resort—!”
“There you go again, deciding what’s best for everybody according to you.” Salma tries springing to her feet, but she has to pull herself up using the wall for support.
I stand up, too. “You realize you’d have to pretend to be dead and go into hiding forever?”
“I’m dying!”
The sentence screeches out of her, and I’m robbed of breath.
“And you’re fucking letting it happen.”