Vampires Never Get Old - Zoraida Cordova Page 0,68
any harm to come to you.”
“I know,” I said. Wanted to say something more. I let the words perish. There was no need to justify this to them. They wouldn’t get it. “I just need some time to myself every day. Not long. Is that okay?”
“Te amamos, Cisco,” Papi said.
That’s the worst part. I’m sure they probably do. But how do you tell someone that their love suffocates you?
NoOneKissesLikeGaston: Whew, my face is burning.
MiseryBusiness: Welcome back!
BrujaBorn: This has to be real. It just has to be.
298 Notes
invisibleb0y
July 18, 2018
Just after midnight, I made for the lake again. I knew I had a couple of minutes before my parents returned. They had left me alone to go hunt, and so I broke their rule without hesitation. They had hunted without me, so technically … they broke their own rule?
I made for that shimmering water.
Called his name.
It rang out over the water and he came to me, a burst of wind, and then he froze at my side. I stared into those eyes again.
“You’re real, aren’t you?”
He nodded.
“How are there others?”
“We don’t know.” He ran a hand down the full length of my left arm. I shivered, not from any chill.
“My parents…” I paused, let my eyes wash over his body, over the way his T-shirt fit across his chest, his round stomach. “They said I was the only one.”
He smiled. “Definitely not true.”
“But why?” My voice was not a whisper anymore. “Why would they lie to me?”
A frown twisted his face. “That’s a question for them, not us.”
“What else is true?”
Kwan tilted his head to the side. “About us? About what we are?”
I nodded.
“I don’t know what else they told you,” he said. “What I should say about what we are.”
“I want to know it all,” I said.
About me. About us. About him.
“I know you do, but…” He turned his face away, scrunched it up. “I don’t know if I should be the one to tell you.”
I put my hand on his chest. Didn’t even think about it. I just wanted to feel that surge again, and his power—if that was what you could call it—rushed forward, spread into me.
But it wasn’t enough. It seemed so unfair to experience this only once in a while, always unplanned, never sure when the next jolt would be. I needed more.
“I don’t know if I can come back,” I said. “If I can keep this up. My parents are going to catch me.”
He turned to leave but paused. “You could come with us.”
“I can’t,” I said, more of an instinct than an objection. “How could I do something like that?”
“We all did it,” he said, and there was no hesitation there. In that, he revealed so much.
There were others.
Their parents had most likely lied to them, too.
And they had left.
“You just … went out on your own? But how?”
“Just … think about it.”
Then Kwan disappeared as quick as he arrived.
And his words were all I thought about as I stretched out on the roof ten minutes later, staring into the night sky. Papi joined me, asked me what I was doing.
“Dreaming,” I said.
He stood there for a few moments, and he couldn’t have known that my body was humming with energy, the residual effect of being near Kwan.
“Am I really the only one?” I asked. Aloud. To him. To the sky.
He used the tip of his boot to scratch at the roof. It was an unconscious reaction to being nervous, and I sat up, holding myself with my elbows.
“The only one,” he said, smiling at me. “Eres especial.”
He walked back into the house without another word.
Did they know? Was Papi certain in that claim, or was it just another lie they told me to keep me safe?
I began to consider what Kwan had said, and the act twisted up my stomach, set my heart afire in panic.
He told me to think about it.
So I did.
NoOneKissesLikeGaston: Is it weird that I want you to go? Because I want you to.
NoOneKissesLikeGaston: (Wow, I’m talking to you like you’re real. Are you real?)
924 Notes
invisibleb0y
July 19, 2018
The sun had just set when Mami came up from the cellar, her face fixed with a scowl. “Cisco, have you been reading those conspiracy blogs again?”
I had a book in my lap, my back pressed against the wall. My stomach lurched as I looked up at her. She was serious. “What are you talking about?”
“Your Papi said you asked him something strange yesterday,” she continued, using a towel to wipe blood