Deadly Offer (15 page)

Her heart had enlarged. It was bursting with pain. She tried to hate the vampire. But the vampire was not half so important as she was. She hated herself.

I am loathsome. Human beings do not do to one another what I have done.

Even if I save Constance, that won’t balance it out. Because I can never save Jennie or Celeste. They’re gone. So what’s the point in ruining everything? I paid so much to purchase popularity!

You can’t un-pay, thought Althea. When you’ve done a terrible thing, it’s there, forever and ever.

Since that’s true, why shouldn’t I keep my popularity forever and ever? What difference would it make to Jennie and Celeste?

Constance began twining a lock of hair in and around her fingers, nervously looking out into the shadows.

It would make a difference to Constance, thought Althea.

Althea thought of lonely cafeterias and silent phones.

She said calmly, “Turn around, Michael.”

“Huh?” Michael kept on driving.

“I’m starving. Let’s get pizza after all,” explained Althea.

“I’ve bought you plenty of pizza,” protested Ryan. “You owe me a tower.”

“No,” said Althea. “Don’t go in my driveway, Michael.”

It was too late. Michael had already turned into the driveway.

“Back up!” screamed Althea. She leaned over the seat and took hold of Michael’s shoulders and shook him. “Get out of here!”

Michael stopped the car, rear wheels in the street, front wheels in the driveway. Hemlocks reached down all around them, trying to move them forward, coaxing them another few feet.

“Althea, you’re so sweet,” said Constance. “I’m being silly, afraid of a dumb old hedge. It’s okay, Althea. I want to go to your house. Really. Don’t pay any attention to me.” Constance tapped the steering wheel. “Drive on in, Michael.”

“No,” whispered Althea. “I’m not inviting you after all.”

Michael and Ryan stared at her, appalled. But Constance said, “Let’s hop out here. Let’s walk the rest of the way.” She put her hand on her door handle.

Althea thought of Constance drained and stupid. Of Constance dulled and trudging. She thought of Constance, ignored and unloved.

“No!” screamed Althea. “Don’t get out of this car!”

Now she was gripping Constance’s coat as well as Michael’s.

“This is a wrestling match?” said Michael politely. “Althea, what’s the matter with you?”

Ryan said tightly, “She doesn’t want me around, do you, Althea? That’s what this is about, isn’t it?” His handsome face was marred by hurt and confusion. “You just plain don’t want me at your house.”

There must be a way to have it all, thought Althea. Surely, I can have friends
and
foil the vampire. There must be a way to hang on to my friends! I’ll have thought up some excuse for this by the time we reach Pizza Hut.

“Fine,” said Ryan. “You go to your precious tower, Althea. We’ll go somewhere else.” He yanked Althea’s hands off Michael and Constance and leaned across Althea’s lap and opened her door. He pointed to the driveway.

Althea laughed hysterically and stepped out of the car. The vampire was going to take away her popularity right now. She would not even get as far as Pizza Hut.

Ryan said to Michael, “So do what the lady says. Back up and drive away.” Ryan slammed the door behind her.

Althea stood in the slush. The valley lay chilled and quiet. It was like being in a gutter, with dead leaves and torn newspaper tangling around her ankles.

Michael’s car backed up. Michael’s car drove away. Constance was safe.

Althea walked to her house without looking back.

The branches of the hemlocks leaned down to meet her, and the dark needles of the hemlocks closed behind her.

Hope was gone.

E
XHAUSTION UNLIKE ANYTHING SHE
had ever known tormented Althea. The steps up the porch were like mountains. The scale of everything had changed: She was a tiny child now, and these were the stairs of a giant.

I did the right thing! she thought, weeping. I saved Constance! Why didn’t I get to keep my friends when I was good at last?

The vampire met her on the top step.

The symmetry of his teeth was hypnotic. The points of two of them were as piercing as pencil tips, fresh from the sharpener.

“An interesting choice,” said the vampire, his voice as level as a lily pad on still waters. “Your cheerleaders will laugh at you. Your football player will forget you. You do have, you know, a forgettable face.”

Althea opened her purse and took out her mirror. In its little square she studied this forgettable part of her body. Although the vampire stood directly behind her, when she tilted the mirror, he did not show in the glass. He has no reflection, she thought. And I, in the morning, will have no reflection, either. Nobody will know my name or face.

“As for me,” said the vampire, “I, too, have made a choice.”

She closed the plastic cover on the little purse mirror and put it away. There would be no need to use it again; it would never again matter how she looked.

His voice was sticky, like spiderwebs. “You are no longer a match for me, my dear.”

I’m his dear, she thought. I catered to him and pandered to him. You know how low you’ve fallen when you are dear to a vampire.

The vampire touched her chin and lifted her face to look at him. He had never touched her before. It was as spongy as she had expected, as if he were swollen with rot beneath his skin.

“It is time, my dear,” said the vampire.

“Time for what?” said Althea dully. She had no time that mattered anymore. Nobody was waiting for her or interested in her.

“For us,” said the vampire. He swept his cape around her shoulders, and they walked together in its black velvet. The foul smell of him was intoxicating. She gagged, but she wanted more of it, and she breathed deeply.

He said, “Just a few steps to negotiate, my dear.”

She took his hand. His fingernails, wrinkled and tarnished like old foil, glittered against her fair skin.

He said, “I do so love the view from the tower, don’t you, my dear?”

She said, “Are you migrating? Is that what is happening?”

“Of course, my dear. You’re just going to feel a little tired afterward.”

Althea nodded. She said, “I’m not arguing with you. I thought I would argue with you. There was that time I threw chairs at you.”

“You welcome my presence. You are eager. You thought you were saving Constance, but that’s not really the case. You wanted to be here yourself, Althea. You wanted to be part of the migration.”

Althea’s mind drifted. “Like robins?” she asked. “Like swallows?”

The vampire smiled. His curly pink tongue ran wetly around his thin lips and stroked his teeth. “Not quite. There, Althea. We’ve reached the landing. Another few steps and we’ll be at the tower door.”

The vampire’s face was all teeth. Sharpened at the ends like pencils.

“You said you would make me popular,” Althea said.

“And you had a good time, didn’t you, my dear? Being popular was quite wonderful, wasn’t it?”

Althea stumbled.

The vampire said, “This is the last step, Althea.” He drooled over the words. “The very last step you ever have to take,” he whispered.

The very last step, thought Althea.

But it’s not the last step that eves

ters. It’s the first step.

If I had not taken the first step, I would, not be here now. I brought him Celeste. It is fitting that I should surrender to him now and become like Celeste and Jennie. I deserve it. “Does our original agreement stand?” asked Althea.

“I suppose it does,” said the vampire, “although that hardly matters now. Come, my dear, let’s open the tower door together.”

“What happens,” said Althea, trying to lift her foot up that last step, trying to go with him, “after me?”

“There are others,” said the vampire: “Girls who don’t matter. Girls without friends. Girls who will do whatever I ask.” He smiled hugely. “Girls like you, my dear.”

“Who want to be popular?” said Althea.

The vampire nodded and bent over to help lift her foot over the final barrier.

Althea’s voice became a whimper. She said, “I want to be popular one more time. Please? Please, please, please?”

The evil crescent of the vampire’s smile covered his face.

“Because if I could be popular just one more time … ” She begged, she groveled, she whined. “I would remember it,” she sobbed. “I would frame it in my mind and keep it. I would make it last. Like an ice-cream cone. I would have it slowly. I would know how wonderful it is.”

“Like an ice-cream cone,” repeated the vampire, laughing. “Licking the edges, trying not to let it drip away from you.” He licked his lips in a circular motion.

“Please?” she sobbed. “Please let me be popular one more time.”

The vampire paused. He looked around the house, the house from which neither she nor he could ever escape. He opened the tower door. It creaked when it swung. The tower room was frigid. The window she had left open when Ryan parked in the driveway had a rim of ice on it. He looked at Althea, clinging to his hand, begging, begging, begging, for one more gift.

“Well … ” said the vampire.

“I’ll do anything,” she said fervently. “I’ll do anything.”

The vampire laughed, again. “I know, my dear. You always have.”

She clasped her hands. “Then I can have my popularity one more time? I can sit with Ryan? And Becky? And Kimmie-Jo? And Michael? I can cheer in one more game?” A desperate tremor of a smile, a hideous facsimile of a smile, spurted across her face like a wound.

“Hold out your arms, Althea,” said the vampire.

She held them straight out, like tree branches.

He gave her an invisible burden, spread on her extended arms and palms as if she were carrying a freshly ironed gown. “Your popularity,” he breathed. “As invisible as you will be in the morning.”

The popularity was invisible, but it warmed her, the suntan of friendship. She could hear the voices of friendship: distant laughter and remote chatter. It caught her up, like traffic, rushing her down the halls, tossing her among the best crowd.

I did anything to get you, she thought. I destroyed myself to have you. I’m going to do it again, too.

A cold draft from the tower passed through the popularity, turning it as autumn winds turn leaves.

It awakened her slightly, as chilly winds do, and she looked up and into the tower.

The shutters will stay open, she thought. Long after I have sunk like Jennie and Celeste. The vampire’s dark path will cross the hemlocks, and slip through the trees, and find others. Other girls who want to be popular. Who are weak.

I am going down, thought Althea. But I will
not
take another girl with me. I will take
him.
There will be nothing left of me. But instead of the popularity one last time, I will have the vampire. It will be his last time.

Resolve—warmer, hotter, sterner than popularity—filled her heart, and mind, and soul. “I reject your gift,” said Althea softly. “I’m getting rid of it.”

“You can’t do that,” said the vampire.

Althea smiled. The smile inched down her body, giving her strength, first to her face, then to her shoulders, her heart, her arms.

The vampire’s teeth went back into his mouth. He looked alarmed.

“That’s your source of power, isn’t it?” she cried. “When weak people take what you offer, you become strong. You would have had no power if I had had the courage to ignore you.” Strength from understanding crept down into her legs. Althea kicked his black cape away and stomped on it. She began laughing.

The vampire took a step backward into the tower room.

“I won’t let you do it to others,” said Althea. “I won’t let you lay out any more dark paths.”

The vampire held up his hands to stop her. She smacked them out of her way.

“No!” said the vampire. “You can’t do this!”

Rhythm unbroken, feet unstoppable, Althea stomped toward the vampire. As she advanced, he backed up.

“You are nothing! And I am a match for you!” Althea cried.

The vampire kept moving back.

She leaped forward. The vampire hunched over into a ball, like a porcupine hiding its soft underbelly. Althea grabbed him. She took her popularity and pushed it against him, shoved it on him, wiped it on his face and his clothes. She mopped him with it.

“There,” she said. “It’s yours again.”

His speech changed. He no longer sounded human. He no longer spoke English. A whimpering babble spurted from his mouth. His sharp teeth hung over the edges of his thin lips like foam.

“I’m free,” Althea said.

She smiled. Not at the vampire, nor the world, nor a handsome boy, but at herself. She was free. That deserved a smile.

Efficiently she snapped the shutters together. The shutters that had rebelled when she was weak surrendered now that she was strong.

The vampire was trapped by the shutters that bound him, like lids on coffins.

She left the tower. The door locked by itself.

For a while, the vampire beat on the floor and on the door, but he had no power without a victim. Eventually the noise stopped.

I have stopped him, thought Althea. But what matters more, I stopped
myself.

She walked down the stairs. Walked out of the house. Walked into the yard, in the sleet and the ugly dark. There were no threats. There was only weather and winter.

I have no friends. I will have to make friends the way other people do, one at a time, by being nice. I am not a cheerleader. I will have to get on the squad the way other girls do, by practicing hard.

Someday I will have it back.

But I will have earned it.

It will be mine, and I will
never
have to give it away.

I will deserve it.

The house is still there, although Althea moved away. The hemlocks are taller, thicker, and darker. When night falls, cars do not drive by and strangers keep their distance.

Two winters have damaged the tower. One of the shutters has come loose. It’s banging against the tower, as if something inside hopes to get out.