Vampires Never Get Old - Zoraida Cordova Page 0,84

follows him in.

“Cal!” calls a girl, waving to Calliope across the room.

Cal. That’s what Calliope’s friends call her. But Cal is a rough word, a heavy hand on your shoulder, a gruff sound in your throat. Juliette prefers Calliope. Four syllables. A string of music.

“Here’s a wild thought,” says Ben. “Instead of silently pining, what if you just admit you have a crush on her?”

“It’s not a crush,” she murmurs.

Ben rolls his eyes. “What would you call it, then?”

“It’s…” Juliette looks at the other girl, and she is back in the kitchen that morning, trapped between her parents, wishing she could crawl out of her skin.

“We’re not trying to pressure you,” said her dad, one hand sliding through his hair.

“It’s just, one day you’re going to find someone,” added her mom. “And when you do—”

“You’re making it sound so important,” he cut in. “It doesn’t have to be.”

“But it should be,” Mom said, shooting him a warning look. “I mean, it’s better if it is…”

“Oh no, not the talk,” said Elinor.

Her sister drifted through the kitchen like a warm breeze, on her way in instead of out. Her porcelain cheeks were flushed, a sleepy glow on her skin that always seemed to follow her home. “Firsts are just firsts,” she said, reaching for the coffeepot. She poured herself a cup, the contents dark and thick. Juliette watched as she added a shot of espresso. A “corpse reviver,” she called it.

Juliette crinkled her nose. “How can you drink that?”

Elinor smiled, soft and silver as moonlight. “Says the girl living on capsules and cats.”

“I don’t drink cats!” she snapped, appalled. It was an old joke, gone sour with age.

Her sister reached out and ran a perfect nail along her cheek. “You’ll know when you find the right one.” Her hand dropped to the space over her heart. “You’ll know.”

“Hurry up and bite someone.”

Juliette blinks. “What?”

Ben nods at the lunch buffet. “I said, hurry up and buy something.” The line is getting restless behind them. She scans the selection of sandwiches, pizza, fries, doesn’t know why she bothers. But that’s not true. She bothers because it’s what a human girl would do.

She grabs a bag of chips and an apple and follows Ben to the end of an empty table at the edge of the room.

Ben eyes the mountain of food on his lunch tray like he can’t decide where to start.

Jules tears open the bag of chips and offers him one before dropping it on the table between them.

Her mouth hurts. The pain is a low ache running through her gums. Her throat is already dry again, and she is suddenly, desperately thirsty in a way no water fountain is going to fix. She tries to swallow, can’t, dumps two more capsules into her palm and tosses them back dry.

“You’re going to give yourself an ulcer,” says Ben as the capsules burst in her mouth, blossoming on her tongue. A moment of copper warmth, there and then gone.

The thirst eases, just enough for her to swallow, to think.

The pills used to really work, to buy her hours instead of minutes. But the last few months, it’s gotten worse, and she knows that soon the pills won’t be enough to quench the thirst.

Jules presses her palms against her eyes. Keeps them there until the spots come and then go, leaving only black. A merciful, obliterating dark.

“You okay?”

“Migraine,” she mumbles, dragging up her head. She lets her gaze drift two tables over and one down, is surprised to find Calliope looking straight back. Her pulse gives a little jerk.

“You could talk to her,” says Ben.

“I have,” she says, and it isn’t a lie.

There was a moment in English last week, when she told Calliope she’d dropped her pen. And that time in the hall when Calliope made a joke and Juliette laughed even though she wasn’t talking to her. And once, in the second week of school, when it was pouring outside and Jules offered her a ride home and she was just about to take it when her brothers pulled up in their truck and she said thanks anyway.

“Well, you’ll have your chance.”

Juliette’s attention snaps back. “What?”

“Alex’s party. Tomorrow night. Everyone’s going.”

Alex is a varsity football player, a “steel-jawed fox,” and Ben’s current crush, which is unfortunate, since by all accounts Alex is straight.

Ben waves his hand whenever she mentions that.

“People aren’t straight,” he says. “They just don’t know better. So, party?”

Jules is about to say she doesn’t do parties when she catches