The Single Undead Moms(17)

Considering that this was my first crowd situation since I’d been turned, I thought I was doing pretty well. While the combination of sights, smells, and sounds was overwhelming, I distracted myself by cataloguing all of the odors in my head. Paste and new crayons and floor wax and kid sweat. I’d glutted myself on bottled blood as soon as I rose for the night. I even swigged a sample of HemoBoost on the drive over. (Definitely not a repeat purchase. It tasted like a combination of old dirty pennies and that stuff you find dried on the corners of your mouth in the morning.) Thanks to that vurpy experience, I was more nauseated than hungry. My fellow parents were safe.

Jane was trailing behind me at a casual pace. And when people questioned the presence of a childless vampire at a school event, she simply responded that the Council was looking into opportunities to partner with the county’s schools and provide support. It seemed plausible enough, and Jane was generally known as a reasonable, non-murdery citizen, so they accepted the explanation.

Miss Steele hadn’t put a lot of effort into decorating like the other teachers had, but the room was clean and organized and chock-full of informational posters about addition, subtraction, nouns, and verbs. Miss Steele herself was nowhere to be found, but that wasn’t unusual. There were so many different parents with so many different needs, and teachers spent a good deal of registration night running around the building, chasing down paperwork.

Dorothy Steele had been a first-grade teacher when I attended Half-Moon Hollow Elementary School. Approaching ancient even then, she hadn’t been a cuddly nap-time and handprint-turkey sort of teacher. She’d been stern, no-nonsense. But I left her class with impeccable penmanship and a thorough knowledge of my times tables, material far above my grade level. Without her, I might never have achieved the math proficiency I needed for accounting. But telling her so probably would have irritated her. Miss Steele had never been one for emotional displays.

I settled into the tiny child-sized chair in front of the desk marked “Danny” on a cheerful fire-engine-shaped name tag and marveled at the sheer number of labeled folders waiting for me. Basic information forms asking for address, phone number, e-mail, Social Security number, Twitter handle, and shampoo preference. Forms to authorize Danny’s lunchtime food choices and put money in his account. Forms to approve his use of the school’s Internet. Forms to enroll him on the bus route. Forms that promised that I would not hold the school responsible if one of his classmates pushed him off the top of the monkey bars and broke his collarbone. (It was a pretty specific form, in terms of liability.)

I spent thirty minutes filling out the papers, signing my name over and over again as Danny’s sole legal guardian. Instead of putting Marge’s and Les’s names down as Danny’s emergency contacts, I wrote down the name of the local Council office daytime liaison. It felt wrong, but considering my uncertainty about my in-laws, I couldn’t risk them being able to come retrieve Danny from school while I was out for the day.

This had been so much easier last year, when all I had to worry about was keeping Danny occupied while I tried to fill out his mountain of kindergarten paperwork. I still hadn’t explained to Danny that I’d been turned. I just couldn’t seem to gather my nerve. There was no good time to work that into a conversation. Hey, sweetie, could you turn off Ninja Turtles long enough for Mommy to tell you that she’s one of the undead and your life has changed forever?

For right now, I was in a holding pattern, adjusting to my new life, and it was working for me. I felt like I was balancing a house of cards on my palm and any movement would bring it down.

“Mom, look what we got!”

I turned to find a blue-frosted “HMHES” cupcake being shoved into my face. Now, under normal preturning circumstances, my main concern would be getting blue frosting out of my sweater. But since human food smells absolutely repellent to vampires, I was far more focused on the fact that Danny was waving what smelled like a freshly deposited cow pie directly in front of my face. I gasped, whipping my head back away from the treat. The overreaction merited a few curious looks from other parents, so I worked to maintain control over my gag reflex.

“Mom, what’s wrong?” Danny asked. “Don’t you want a bite?”

I would rather watch one of those “eyebrow waxing gone wrong” videos on YouTube than take a bite of that thing. I wheezed, “It’s all yours, sweetie.”

“You’re not on a diet, are you?” Danny said, shaking his head. “Katie Hannan’s mom is always on a diet, and Katie says she never smiles anymore.”