Bloodthirsty - By Flynn Meaney Page 0,13

good for me. Every blonde I have ever met has dismissed me immediately. From the Playboy blondes to the hipster blondes with short hair and glasses. Blondes always think you’re trying to hit on them.

I didn’t want to hit on this blond girl. I didn’t want to look at her. I didn’t want her anywhere near me. But she came down the row, passed three different empty seats, and then chose to sit next to me. She looked me over a little, which made me feel strange. I’m not usually the type of dude that girls cruise like an overpriced shoe.

At first, the blonde didn’t say anything. As the train lurched south toward Fordham, she had her head buried in this enormous book. But she kept sneaking glances at the Ace bandages up and down my arms, the splotches of rash on the backs of my hands, the reflection of the oily ointment on my skin. The girl asked me, “What happened to your arms?”

Mind your own business.

“Too much sun,” I grunted. Wow, being pissed off really made me into a caveman.

“I see!” the girl said. This chick was downright jolly, despite my bandages and rash. Apparently she took great pleasure in the pains and misfortunes of others.

Then she asked, “Have you read this book?”

I looked at her. She tilted the cover of the book toward me. There was a creepy stone dungeon on it, as well as bats and a man in a cape with claws and fangs. It was called Nocturnal Terror.

“Nocturnal Terror?” I said out loud. “No, I haven’t read it.”

And I don’t feel like talking, I wanted to add. Even about books.

“Oh, it’s amazing!” the blond girl gushed. Then she began telling me the whole story… all three hundred pages of it. She started with the ancestors of the main characters, and everything that had happened to them all their lives, and then the second generation, and everything that had happened to those characters, and their cousins, and their hairdresser’s brother’s neighbor’s dogs… and so on, and so forth. I can tell you the background story of all these people (and pets) in six words: they all got killed by vampires.

“And so, the great-great-granddaughter thinks that she can change the vampire,” the girl continued. She used so many hand gestures when she talked that I was scared she would smack me in the face.

“So she shows up at the castle at night. And there’s this, like, attraction, there’s this chemistry between them. Like a spark, you know? So they get closer and closer, and they kiss. They’re kissing, and she thinks he has all these human emotions. But then he goes for her neck… and he BITES her! He sucks all the blood out of her body—”

“Hmmm,” I cut her off moodily. “Yeah, that’s interesting. Maybe you shouldn’t tell me any more, though. You shouldn’t spoil the ending for me.”

“Right!” Blondie said enthusiastically. “You should definitely read it. I think you’d really like it.”

I made a noncommittal noise and turned away to look out the window.

She only gave me one minute of silence. Then Blondie leaned in close to me and whispered in my ear.

She said, “I know what you are.”

I jerked my head around and almost hit her in the face.

“What?”

“I know what you are,” Blondie repeated. To make herself clear, she gestured to my arms and my bandages. What? She knew I was allergic to the sun?

Then she pointed to my face, which was not covered in a rash. And to my creepy husky eyes. She knew what I was? What was I? She knew I was the loser in a genetic lottery? A future skin cancer patient?

“A vampire,” she hissed.

Oh, Jesus. Blondes not only hate me, but they are crazy.

She pointed to the cover of her book. There was the vampire, a white old man with creepy fungus-looking fingernails and a face as wrinkled as an expired raisin. He was wearing a super-metrosexual cape. He had left the dead body of a woman in the corner of his creeptastic dungeon. He was chillin’ with some flesh-colored bats who were probably his only friends.

How dare this girl? I am not old! I am not creepy! I am not a murderer! Most importantly, I would never wear a cape. Some kids I competed against in high school quiz bowl used to wear capes instead of varsity jackets, and they were complete weirdos. Furthermore, I don’t sit around in some cold dungeon sucking blood and talking