Vampires Never Get Old - Zoraida Cordova Page 0,10

my mouth, I regret them. But I don’t know what her kind of sympathetic means. It smells like white girl pity to me, and I don’t want Neveah’s pity. I throw a meaningful glance at her trailer, the beaters in her driveway. You’re not better than me, I say, without saying a thing. Just look around.

Her faces twists up, and my stomach slips to my feet like a deadweight. I’m being a jerk and I know it, but I won’t take it back.

She nods once and slides out of the car. Closes the door, and the overhead light goes off, casting me into the darkness.

Shame blankets me and I groan, rubbing a hand over my face. Why did I do that? No wonder I don’t have any friends. No wonder Jason Winters likes to kick in my face. I’m kind of an asshole.

I wait for her to walk to her door, and once she’s inside, I pull out, gravel rolling under my wheels. I’m halfway down the road, trying desperately to not think about what Neveah said, when I realize I’m humming that song again. The Blood River Boys ballad.

Later, after it is all over, I’ll wonder if things would have turned out different if I’d said something. Apologized for being a dick, admitted what I wanted and why the Boys fascinated me, how I felt about my mom and everything. Maybe Neveah could have said something, conjured some words or a warm touch that would have changed things. But I didn’t, and she didn’t, and things went the way they did in our dying town named after a massacre.

* * *

The next morning I catch myself singing the Blood River Boys song in the shower. And later as I’m boiling eggs for breakfast. And again when I’m prepping Mom’s medications for the day, laying them out in their little individual bowls so she doesn’t have to guess the dosage.

And I know I’ve got to face a hard fact. Neveah may not believe in the Blood River Boys, but I do. I believe in them with my whole heart. A heart that feels like it’s slowly crumbling to dust in my chest, a heart so damaged that I sometimes feel like it’s a wonder it pumps at all.

Back last year I figure my heart was normal enough for someone my age. But then my cousin Wallace died of a drug overdose, and my friend Rocky moved away, back to his dad’s place in the city, and then, just as the school year started, Mom got sick. At first no one believed Mom’s illness was serious, least of all me, but by October she was in and out of the hospital and the doctors were giving her less and less time and then Mom sat me down one night after she had been especially bad, wheezing and coughing through dinner, and told me the truth. She wasn’t getting better. In fact, she was getting worse. “This will be our last Christmas together,” she said, point-blank, just like that. “You’ll be eighteen soon enough. Better get used to being on your own.”

But the thing is, I don’t want to be on my own. Some kids would, I know. They’d see it as independence. Freedom. And it’s not like I don’t want that one day, maybe? Just not this year. I mean, I already lost Wallace and Rocky and now it’s going to be Mom. And I think that if I’m not careful, I’m going to lose myself next.

* * *

“Hey, Landry,” I ask, as I lay bacon on the flat grill. “When’d you put that Blood River Boys song on the juke?”

Landry’s doing the books in her office, but she’s got the door open so she can keep an eye on things, namely me. The cook called in sick, so I’m stuck covering the dinner shift in the kitchen. The diner is so small that I do a bit of everything. Janitor, cook, server. I don’t mind. It means more money in my pocket come payday and more meds for my mom, and most people’s tastes are simple around here. As long as I can break eggs and dress a burger, I’m good.

“What song?” Landry says, decades of cigarette smoke turning her voice to a grumble. “I ain’t changed a song on that box since before Ronald Reagan was president.”

“No?” I shrug and grab the next waiting ticket. “Maybe I just never saw it. So that means something’s wrong with the juke.