Chapter 5
Nadia
Iwoke up determined.
Not calm—never calm—but determined. I refused to let one grumpy, naked, centuries-old vampire derail my summer of healing. This was supposed to be restful. Restorative. A mental health retreat, but with more yarn and fewer blood-drinking incidents.
Sitting up, I pushed my hair out of my face and grabbed my therapy notebook from the nightstand. It was pink, spiral-bound, and covered in doodles of stars and lemons. Inside: my handwritten pep talks, courtesy of Dr. Meadows, who had the patience of a saint.
Page one, top corner, underlined three times:
Regulate before you ruminate.
“Copy that.”
Page two:
Don’t catastrophize before coffee.
Solid advice. I flipped through more pages, reading the things I’d written in her office when I wasn’t crying into a tissue. I’d highlighted an entire section labeled
Affirmations That Don’t Make Me Cringe (Mostly).
I stood, found my stack of neon sticky notes, and started copying them down in loopy handwriting. My plan: Operation Emotional Stability.
This was essential to my survival. My therapist had been helping me train my brain to slow down—something about “externalizing reminders” and “building visual cues.” Which, in regular-person terms, meant covering every flat surface in the house with encouraging graffiti until I remembered who I was.
And now? With a vampire currently throwing a four-century-large wrench in my self-improvement era, I needed every reminder I could get.
My brain didn’t do quiet; it did sprinting thoughts and emotional fireworks.
Sticky notes were the only way I could think of at the moment to keep myself grounded long enough to breathe, focus, and not spiral into a full meltdown.
Cristian wasn’t around when I left my room, and while my brain was relieved, the rest of me seemed to be suffering from disappointment. Within minutes, I was in the kitchen with my sticky notes (definitely not looking for my—ahem—a vampire), and it looked like a motivational crime scene.
I am not too much. I am simply me.
I can take up space at work.
I do not audition for cliques.
I don’t translate myself for bullies.
My weird is welcome in my own life.
I choose rest without earning it.
I set the volume on my day.
I can be kind and keep my boundaries.
I read them out loud while pacing, my cereal bowl cradled in one arm. “Okay, Nadia. You can do this. You can heal, set boundaries, and not spiral about undead roommates. You’re grounded. You’re powerful. You have a sticker chart for your emotions.”
I reached into my notebook, peeled off a gold star, and stuck it on my phone case. “Reward achieved for affirmations before ten a.m.”
Adulting. Nailed it.
Still, as I stuck another note on the coffeemaker, my mind drifted. I wanted to make teacher friends at my new school. I wanted to walk into the lounge and not feel like the weird new kid. I wanted to stop auditioning for cliques like I was on Teacher Idol.
And okay, maybe I also wanted a normal summer—one that didn’t include cohabiting with a four-hundred-and-something-year-old man who said words like tether and parameters of our situation.
I shook it off.
I went back to my room and got dressed for the day.
Sundress: watermelon print with a sliver of the mid-section cut out.
Cardigan: pink, with an Ask For Help pin.
Belt bag for sticky notes and gold stars.
Combat boots, obviously. Watermelon earrings that swung when I moved.
I looked like the personification of a farmers’ market, and I was fine with that.
Feeling halfway stable, I grabbed my phone and called Lena. She was always more comfortable with this woo-woo stuff than I was.
When she picked up, I was pacing, toothbrush in one hand, my phone tucked under my ear. “Okay, so don’t freak out,” I said around a mouthful of toothpaste foam. “Actually, do freak out. I need backup freak-out energy.”
There was a pause. “Oh no,” Lena said. “What happened?”
I started talking so fast I forgot to breathe. “So, there was a fucking coffin in the floor, and I found it and I might’ve accidentally read Latin out loud and now there’s a man—naked, by the way—who says he’s from 1650 and we’re somehow bound together and he thinks Alexa is a witch—”
“Back it up,” Lena said. “He was naked?”
I groaned. “That’s what you took from that?”
“Details, please. Is he hot?”
“Lena!” I hissed. “This is not a thirst trap. This is a crisis.”
“So… hot.”
I rubbed my temple. “He’s hot, but he’s also literally from the sixteen-hundreds. That’s like… historically hot. Which feels unethical.”
Lena laughed. “You’re looking at this all wrong. You just had a sixteenth-century hottie wake up naked in the house you’re sitting for. That’s a gift. Now tell me more about his sixteenth-century dick. Is he circumcised?”
“Lena!” I pressed the phone to my chest. “You can’t say circumcised before breakfast!”
She snorted. “Maybe if you were getting some, you wouldn’t be so uptight.”
“Goodbye.”
“Send me pictures!” she called before I hung up.
I stared at the phone. “Unhelpful. Emotionally irresponsible.”
Still, my lips twitched. I placed another star sticker on the corner of my notebook. “Okay. I’m the adult here. I can manage one moody vampire.”
A soft sound came from the hallway—an ancient creak that suggested my housemate might be awake. Then I felt that stillness that washed over me again. Fuck.
I took a deep breath, squared my shoulders, and whispered to myself, “Self-regulation first. You don’t need a random vampire to ground you.”
I had a plan.
A solid, therapist-approved plan: stay positive, stick to routine, keep my anxiety low and my vampire exposure lower. I was armed with sticky notes, affirmations, and an aggressively cheerful watermelon-print outfit.
I was fine.
Until I walked to the kitchen and found Cristian perched on the counter, poking Alexa with a fork.
“What the hell are you doing?” I demanded, clutching my stack of neon sticky notes.
He didn’t flinch. “You must truly love fruits,” he said, studying me. “You seem to frequently wear their image upon your person.”
I glanced down. Watermelons today, lemons yesterday. Right. “Focus, Dracula. Why are you stabbing my smart speaker?”
He tilted his head. “I am attempting to release the witch trapped inside this black cylinder.”
“You’re what?”
He gestured calmly to Alexa. “You should not leave a trapped witch unsupervised.”
He said it so seriously I almost admired the commitment. Almost.
Then Alexa’s blue ring light pulsed.
Cristian tensed, eyes sharpening. “It speaks again.”
“Oh my god.” I rubbed my temple and grabbed the fork out of his hand.
His gaze flicked from Alexa to me—and stopped. His brow furrowed. “Your midsection is uncovered. Were you attacked?”
I froze. “What?”
He gestured vaguely toward the cut-out in my dress. “Your garment is incomplete.”
“It’s fashion.”
He muttered, perfectly deadpan, “Then fashion has lost its shame.”
I pointed the fork at him. “Get off the counter before I lose mine.”
He did not move. So, I ignored him, slapping another sticky note onto the cabinet door.
He watched. “What are you doing?”
“Placing quotes from my therapist around the house.”
“For what purpose?”
“For my inner healing. And anxiety management.”
He blinked, as if I’d spoken in Latin again, though he would probably understand that better than modern English.
“And a therapist is—?”
“Someone trained in the art and science of inner healing.”
“Ah… right.”
I peeled another sticky note, smoothed it onto the fridge, and said quietly, “When you feel the urge to shrink, that’s a cue, not a command.”
He frowned. “The witch in the cylinder tries to shrink you?”
I rolled my eyes. “No. Life does. People suck sometimes.”
It was strange how fast it came back. The tension. The pressure to perform. The fear of being too much or taking up the wrong amount of space.
I could feel the start of a spiral. My mind reached for the memory that explained it, one of the many I never liked to think about.
I took a deep breath and let myself go there because I needed to understand why my chest felt tight again. I needed to remember where this started.
And just like that, I was back in the staff lounge.
The veteran teachers were gathered at their usual table. They fell quiet the second I walked in. It wasn’t a natural pause. It was pointed, and it settled on my skin before I even reached the counter.
Mrs. Rourke glanced at my dress and gave me a tight smile. “Cute polka dots,” she said. Her eyes dropped to the hem, then flicked to the others. A quiet cue for them to enjoy the moment with her.
Mrs. Lin let out a short snort. She tried to hide it behind her coffee mug. She nudged the teacher beside her with a quick elbow, and they shared a look that said everything they thought about me. I had seen that look from the first week.
I set my papers down and told myself not to grip them. “You all set for the faculty meeting on Thursday?” I asked. My voice stayed even. That was the one thing I could control.
They answered with clipped patience.
“It’s on the calendar,” one of them said without looking up.
“It has been on the calendar,” another added.
A heavy silence followed.
I tried one more time. I opened the top folder to check my lesson plan for the theme challenge project, the one that had finally gotten my students excited. They asked about it every morning. They chose prompts on their own; some had taken journals home to continue writing.
“I’m finishing the theme challenges for next week,” I said. “The kids have been really engaged with it.”
Mrs. Lin tapped her phone. “That kind of thing is fine for warmups,” she said. Her tone was flat. Not interested. “It’s not essential instruction.”
Another teacher nodded. “You should talk to us before changing routines. Parents get confused.”
My fingers curled around the folder.
“It works for them,” I said. “They look forward to it.”