dance of how I was feeling right now. He stumbled down the steps, fell down, and puked all over himself.

“You lied to me,” I said to Kate, planting my feet in the gravel between the paved driveway and the street.

She looked at me desperately, hands at her sides, unable to speak.

“You said you came to our school to take AP classes,” I continued, louder. “You said you didn’t drink.”

“Finn…”

“I thought you didn’t care about parties and beer and all that b.s. high school stuff,” I said.

“I’m sorry, Finbar,” Kate said. “But, I mean, to be fair, you kind of lied to me, too.”

“What?” I went from disbelieving to angry very quickly.

Kate crossed her arms over her chest, and I couldn’t tell if it was a defensive move or from the cold.

“Well, you’re not a vampire,” she told me.

“Jesus, Kate.” I rolled my eyes and stomped at the curb. “That is so ridiculous. That is so completely different.”

“Why?” Kate challenged me, stepping closer.

“I never told anyone I was a vampire,” I said, looking down at her. My position on the curve of the pavement gave me extra height above her as she stood in the street.

“But people believed you were.”

“And I believed you!” I yelled back, so suddenly and forcefully that Kate rocked back on her heels.

That was exactly the point. I’d believed Kate. Of course, on the outside, she was beautiful and confident, which I saw at first glance. But then we got to know each other. And she told me that she loved math. That she didn’t know that many people at school. That she liked to read. That she stayed home on Friday nights to watch movies. And I thought, as beautiful as she was on the outside, on the inside she was kind of sensitive. Maybe a loner. Maybe like…

“I believed you were like me,” I spit out. “You made me believe that.”

I don’t know how she reacted. I looked down at my sneakers instead, and I couldn’t look back up. I was pissed off and I pushed gravel from the ground into the toe of my shoe, tearing the rubber.

Still, in a final, painful, lame nice-guy gesture, I asked Kate, “Do you need me to walk you to the train?”

I asked it detachedly, my arms crossed. Dumb move. I smeared extra blood all over myself.

Kate shook her head. “My sister’s coming. She’s going to pick me up.”

I trudged back to the house. Still wet with blood, I looked as if she’d really ripped my heart out of my chest—and then thrown it back at me and stained my shirt. The worst part was that this was how it was supposed to be. I mean, Kate belonged out on Friday nights, at parties, doing pickle flips and kegstands. She belonged with other guys. I, meanwhile, belonged on the couch next to my mom, waiting for the Bennet sisters to get married off. Parties, beer, rule-breaking, romance—these weren’t things for me. The worst part was knowing the whole thing had been a joke.

Actually, the worst part was that I stepped in that kid’s vomit on the way back inside.

Back inside to say good-bye to my brother, to leave forever his world, to return home to the safe boundaries of my mom-sanitized walls, my whiny amateur poems, my fantasies.

“Hey, Finbar!” Luke’s shadow on the front steps was holding a beer. “Time for our game!”

Okay, I guess my sailor bedsheets and the Bennet sisters could wait. I had to wait for Luke’s bloodless shirt anyway. And so I played beer pong. And drank real beer. And, actually, I did well. Beginner’s luck, I guess. I sank quite a few cups, and we beat two different teams.

I guess a guy with vomit on his feet, blood on his shirt, and tears in his eyes is pretty intimidating to an opponent.

chapter 16

I thought the world would end when Kate and I broke up. But I’d also thought the world would end when Kate told me she knew I wasn’t a vampire, or when I passed out in physics class, and it hadn’t. You may not have noticed this, but I can be a pessimist sometimes. But I shouldn’t be. I mean, I’ve had the name Finbar for sixteen years, and I’ve only been punched in the face once.

After my surprisingly kick-ass game of beer pong that night (Luke and I killed. We should have been playing for money!), I steeled myself to return home and break the news to my mother that