Bloodthirsty - By Flynn Meaney Page 0,57
because it’s rated, like, triple X and they’re not allowed to see it.” Kate rolled her eyes. “It’s forbidden.”
I tried to look dark and dangerous. “Do you like forbidden things?” I asked.
“No,” Kate said flatly.
“Well, what about Bloodthirsty the book?” I asked. “Girls definitely love the book.”
“The girls in your class love it,” Kate told me. “People didn’t even know Ashley Milano could read until Bloodthirsty came out. And Kayla Bateman fell off the elliptical machine because she was reading the handcuff scene.”
“Maybe she was just top-heavy,” I suggested.
“Oh my God, that reminds me!” Kate said, sitting up cross-legged on the leather. “I wanted to tell you something hysterical that I heard Jenny Beckman saying.”
Oh, God, what was it? Jenny was around me way too much. She could have said anything about me. No, calm down. Maybe it wasn’t about me. Where was this unnatural belief that I was the center of the universe coming from?
“She and Kayla Bateman were talking about you, and…”
Uh-oh. Uh-oh. It was about me. Had I been caught in a Nate Kirkland moment? But I only ever scratched my nose in public! Never picked! It had been a scratch, I swear!
“They, like, think you’re a vampire,” Kate said. She waited, smiling, expectant, as if she’d just finished the punch line of a joke.
My first thought was, Duh, of course I’m a vampire. The knowledge was pretty widespread now. Ashley Milano had even lent me the sun shield from her Oldsmobile to protect my skin when I walked to the parking lot. And the girls who had started with garlic bread had since approached me with a silver crucifix and a stick that vaguely resembled a wooden stake. While I was glad these girls believed I was a vampire, I was also kinda bummed out they were trying to kill me.
“Oh.” I pushed a pathetic laugh up from my stomach.
Kate, expecting me to give a full-belly laugh of the type perfected by Santa Claus, recognized the lameness of my reaction. Damn my weakness for smart girls.
“You knew they thought that?” she asked.
“I don’t know, I mean, I heard something,” I said. “But uh, obviously, I thought it was a joke.”
“Didn’t you think it was completely ridiculous?” Kate said, opening her eyes wide at me.
“Yeah, I guess….” I shrugged and looked back toward the screen.
Chauncey Castle was drizzling blood down Virginia’s chest and then licking it off. In between moans, Virginia told him: I know that you are dangerous. But my passion for you is dangerous, too.
“So why didn’t you tell them you’re… a human?” Kate asked. She was grinning broadly and, as she thought of me as a vampire, she burst out laughing. She even threw her head back.
“Oh.” I shrugged again. My shoulders were getting sore from all this shrugging. “I mean, there were a lot of people who thought… or assumed… like…”
“Really?” Kate said. “I thought maybe Jenny just told Kayla, because Jenny’s a little, ya know…”
“So,” I ventured weakly to Kate. “You didn’t think I was… a vampire?”
Kate laughed louder than an entire audience at The Colbert Report. Her laughter was enormous, taking up all the space in the room, and I was suddenly very, very small.
“Are you kidding?” she asked. “Did you want me to—”
“But,” I ventured, “what about my sun thing?”
“What?”
“You didn’t think it was weird that I can’t go out in the sun?” I nudged.
“Aren’t you Irish?”
“But you didn’t think I was… dark and mysterious?”
“You drive a Volvo.”
“Edward Cullen drives a Volvo!” I jumped up in my own defense.
“Did you buy that car to be like Edward Cullen?” Kate asked.
“No!” I said. “My dad liked the gas mileage… but, wait. You didn’t think I was a vampire? Or that I was, like, scary? Or that I beat people up all the time?”
Kate shook her head. “Not even close,” she told me with a certainty that made me depressed.
“So… but…”
I tried to think for a minute, but on the screen Virginia White’s blood was being sucked out. Her semi-horrified, semi-orgasmic moans distracted me.
“But what?” Kate prompted.
“So why did you, like, you know… in the hallway…?”
“What?”
“Why did you kiss me?” I asked. “Why do you… did you… whatever… like me, if you don’t think I’m scary or a vampire or beat people up all the time?”
“I like you because you’re not scary,” she said, still smiling. Kate raised the remote to switch off the TV, then turned to face me. “Or a vampire. And because you don’t beat people up all the