"Okay," James cuts me off. "This isn't easy, you know? What you're going to hear isn't one of my best moments. After my parents died, it was . . . hard."
"Was it really a fire?" I ask, bracing myself for a story of how the fire was a cover-up, of midnight vampire attacks and bloody handprints smeared across white sheets. Instead he surprises me with a short laugh.
"Yep. Just one of those random tragedies everyone reads about in the newspaper and everyone forgets three days later. Except for the people it happens to."
It's hard to imagine that when I was cursing the day-to-day indignities of being a high school freshman, he was dealing with having his life suddenly ripped out from under him. Imagining James as a sudden orphan causes me to pull the afghan back up and wrap it, mummylike, around my shoulders. He's stopped talking again, but for once I don't poke or prod.
"Anyway," he continues so suddenly that I jump, "after my parents died, they had to figure out what to do with me. My grandparents had died long before I was born, and my parents didn't have any siblings. If they had left it up to me, I would have taken my chances on my own, but I was sixteen, and legally that meant I had to be placed in a foster home."
A foster home seems so . . . clinical. "Were the people nice?"
James shrugs. "I guess. They lived in an old renovated farmhouse with acres of fields around it. Susanna bred some form of German shepherd, and Ian spent most of his time with old tractor parts. An old country bus picked me up for school. When I went."
"When you went?"
"Yeah. I probably skipped half the time, but I passed. Barely," he snorts and then opens his eyes. "You know, when you're happy it's hard to imagine not caring about anything. But I didn't. Not myself, not my future, not anyone. Sometimes I imagined what it would have been like if we'd never moved, if we still lived next to you and your family, and if you and I still spent most of our days coming up with the perfect insults for each other. I'd stay up late at night, imagining conversations that could have happened on the way to school, in our backyards, over the phone . . . ," he says and then shoots me an embarrassed glance. "It was stupid-I had other friends, and you and I didn't even talk that much after sixth grade."
I don't know what to say. I feel like I should admit something personal as well-that when he kissed my cheek on the hammock I was just pretending to be asleep. That the day his family moved away I cried. Or, a little voice inside whispers, you could sit closer. That's a sure sign of emotional solidarity. That little voice is right, and from the way James is still looking at me, I'm going to have to come up with something a little more supportive than a few jokes. Trailing a clump of covers, I scoot to the edge of the bed and then slide to the floor. Now there's not as much space separating us, but even that measly six feet has taken on the proportions of a football field. Do I scoot over and loop my arm around his shoulders, or is leaning forward with a concerned expression, Oprah-like, okay?
I'm still wrestling with myself, eyeing the floor like it's Mount Everest and wondering how the whole vampire thing fits into the equation, when James's voice pipes up. "Comfortable now?" he asks with an off-kilter smile that says he knows exactly what stupidity I've been debating.
"The bed was too soft," I say in a rush, which makes him grin even more. The good news is that he's smiling again; apparently all I need to do to make him feel better is tap into my inner social moron. "I'm so sorry, James."
He shrugs again. "Not your fault."
"But that still doesn't explain where the fangs come in. My money's on a certain girlfriend from the wrong side of the afterlife."
His expression turns cagey. "Possibly."
"You mean there are several choices?" I ask, and then resist the urge to bang on my chest. Where did that shrillness come from? Clearing my throat to evict whatever jealous-girlfriend type has come in and changed the wallpaper, I strive for something calmer. "I mean, the only logical choice is Violet."
"I had other girlfriends, you know."
"I'm not saying that the only girl who would find you attractive is one with serious codependency issues. I'm saying that I've been English buddies with Violet this past week, and she's said a few things that are finally starting to make sense. And then there's the fact that she flipped in the lunchroom when she saw us talking."
"Okay, it was Violet."
"Did you lose a bet? Check the wrong box on a survey? Because she's kind of weird."
"Funny," he says. "So I told you how Susanna and Ian's farm was in the boonies, right? There were maybe three houses within a five-mile radius. Two of those were owned by old retired couples. The other one, the closest one, was deserted. Or so everyone thought."
"Dum dum dum."
"Yes, dum dum dum. Thank you."
"No prob."
"A few weeks after I moved in, I started taking walks. Sometimes I'd even go in the middle of the night, climbing out my window and down a tree like in the movies. One night I walked farther than I ever had before-anything to keep my mind off of reality-and I came across one of those rambling old country houses, complete with a wraparound front porch. For a second, just a second, I thought it was our old house. Or this house," he says, squinting up at the ceiling. "Honestly, other than its size, it was completely different. But it was enough to make me try the front door."
"Breaking and entering. Awesome," I say, happy when it makes him smile. I prefer it to the sadness, times infinity.
"The inside wasn't nearly as rundown as I expected," he continues, "and there was an old couch against the wall. Newspapers were everywhere. Old, yellow ones. And stacked up in the far corner was what I thought was a pile of sticks," he says.
The emphasis on "I thought" makes me a little queasy. I almost don't want to ask. Almost. "Let me guess. Not sticks?"
"No," he says flatly. "Not sticks. Animal bones and fur, from a lot of animals. More than could crawl inside for warmth and then die in the exact same place. I turned and ran for the door, but then there was Violet, standing with her arms twined around the pole of the porch and smiling. You know, I think I actually said hello. She looked like a doll, especially in one of those dresses."
"Anyone can look like a doll when their waist has been cinched to the size of a milk ring," I say peevishly and then feel foolish when James gives me a confused look.
"Anyway," he says, "Violet grabbed my arm and said that she was glad to meet me."
"And then she dragged you to the shed and bit you, right?" I ask, thinking that I'm being helpful by filling in the blanks. A+++ for me. I wait for a sign of affirmation, a mouth twitch, a blink, a head wiggle, anything, but nothing comes. "Right?" I repeat.
James suddenly finds his shoelaces fascinating.
"Are you kidding me? You mean it didn't happen that night? You mean you went back?"
"After my parents died I couldn't believe how normal everything was," he says before I can ask him how he could have been so stupid. "Even though I was in a different place with different people, it still felt the same. Susanna made dinner every night at the same time my mom did. She even used some of the same magazine recipes. Every morning I would wake up to the same dumb bird chirping, and every day I would put on the same clothes. And yet all it did was remind me how different everything was, how horrible. Nothing at Violet's was the same. Not her, not the life, and not the rest of them. It felt like getting lost in a movie or book. It was an escape."
"But didn't their extreme strangeness set off any warning bells?"
He gives me a withering stare. "Give me some credit. But vampires are supposed to be outside the realm of possibility, right? And besides, I didn't see you jumping up and down in the cafeteria crying monster."
"True. But I didn't see their animal-bone collection, either."
"Fair enough," he says. "The truth is I didn't care. It felt like a dream, and I acted like it was a dream. One night Violet asked me if I wanted it all to last forever. I said yes. She bit me, she told me to bite her, and by that time I was so out of it that I did. When I woke up I thought, hey, at least nothing will ever be the same." His head thunks against the desk. "It was the stupidest thing I've ever done. You can't kick me more than I've kicked myself."
"Couldn't you have just dyed your hair purple and called it a day?" I ask weakly. When I think about the loneliness and grief that drove him to do this, I am suddenly choked up. I slide halfway across the floor to be closer, to let him know that I appreciate his honesty. When I stop, he lifts an eyebrow.
"Really? That's the best sob story I've got. What does a guy have to say to make you move all the way?"
When I don't answer, he scoots forward, closing the distance himself and leaving me to stare dry-mouthed at the inch between our knees.
"Do you know that all the blood in your body just rushed to your cheeks?" he asks. "They're glowing."
My head jerks up. Without thinking, I clap my hands to the runaway body parts, which do feel a little bit warm.
"Whatever. It's too dark to tell that," I say with false bravado.