Deadly Offer (10 page)

She could almost see Becky smile: that wide, delighted, pixieish smile that made her such a great cheerleader. That uptilted head, that crowing laugh, that low-volume hair, and twitching pony tail!

Althea giggled into the phone. Becky’s giggle matched, and they agreed to meet before school in the morning, to talk about essential things before class began.

Althea hung up. She smiled, thinking of friendship. What a beautiful thing it was. She looked down regretfully at her next quadratic equation and lifted her pencil to finish off the homework.

An oddly clear shadow crossed page 78.

A shadow like glass or mirrors.

The vampire said, “I have decided. I want Becky next.”

B
ECKY’S RANCH HOUSE WAS
on a hillier and rockier lot than Ryan’s. The driveway was cut deeply into the earth, with high stone sides that dripped with dank climbing ivy. Hemlocks planted many years ago had grown into monsters, shouldering their way toward the windows.

Becky went in through the garage, which was dark and tumbling with boxes and shadows, leading Althea into a lower-level rec room.

Dark brown carpet and dark-paneled walls made a mockery out of the word
recreation.
Althea could not imagine bouncing, cheerful Becky inhabiting such a grim cellar of a room. She could well imagine the vampire inhabiting it, however.

Becky bounded up another set of stairs to the kitchen/living room level.

Althea frowned. On the third step she turned and looked back. A shadow clear as glass drifted behind her.

Althea shut the rec room door firmly behind her. It was a thin door, a weak and shallow door. A door that would stop nothing.

Upstairs, mercifully, was bright and light.

The kitchen was packed with broccoli-green cabinets. The living room had been decorated to look like a garden, with white wicker furniture, and fanciful flowers danced on the drapes and cushions.

Perhaps the dark and brown things of the world would stay downstairs, and the light and bright would control the upper level.

Becky flung open the door to her own bedroom. Althea had never seen so much purple, so many hues and shades of lavender, violet, amethyst, and mauve. “I love your room,” she whispered. She soaked up the joy of the room, the sheer exuberance in life that Becky’s room was.

“Me, too,” said Becky contentedly. “It’s perfect.”

Becky picked up her telephone, which was also purple, and phoned Ryan. “Come on over,” she said to him. “She’s here.” Becky winked at Althea. “He’s having supper with us,” she whispered, hand covering the receiver. “He adores you.”

Althea lost her breath. It was such an odd feeling, suddenly to have empty lungs and a pounding heart.
Ryan adores me.

Becky said, “Ryan’s going to tell us star stories in the backyard and teach you how to look through a telescope.” Becky, laughing wickedly, said, “This whole overnight is a setup, you know.”

She opened the kitchen door. A cold wind filtered into the safe warm kitchen. The yard was completely black. Althea grew cold from her feet to her eyes: a deep chill, like an early death.

Becky ran out onto the grass as if entering another, lower world.

Althea cried out. Her breath was gone again, but not from love. Fear yanked it out of her chest. “We—we can’t go out there!” she said.

“You afraid of the dark?” teased Ryan, stepping from his yard into Becky’s.

Althea hung on to the kitchen counter. “Come back in, Becky!” cried Althea. She smelled the foul eagerness of the vampire.

“Scaredy-cat,” Becky teased.

“Make her come back in, Ryan,” said Althea desperately. She had to get Becky back inside, in the bright purple bedroom, the safe green kitchen, the many-flowered living room.

Ryan wrapped his arm around Althea. It was an embrace of comfort, not desire. “I don’t believe I’ve ever met anybody who’s really and truly afraid of the dark. I’ll stay with you. It’ll be all right. Think of the dark as a warm and gentle friend.”

Althea’s laugh rasped like a chain saw.

“I heard something in the bushes,” said Becky. “I’ll join you two in a minute. I just have to see what it is.”

“No!” screamed Althea. “No, you don’t! It doesn’t matter what it is! Come back in.”

“Now, now,” said Ryan, holding her, preventing her from saving Becky. I’m in a zoo, thought Althea. Ryan is my keeper.

She felt primitive and savage, felt as if she, like some jungle tiger, had fangs.

Or were her fangs those of a vampire?

It seemed to Althea that it took hours for Becky to return, and that when she came, she moved more slowly. Was paler.

The evening seemed to last for hundreds of years, in which they all grew old and exhausted. She could hardly wrap her mouth around the syllables required for speech. She could hardly see Ryan, could hardly remember Becky.

At last Ryan left.

She adored him, but she could not bear the length of the evening. Every quip, every move, every story consumed her, until all energy was completely sapped. She could hardly unbutton the front of her shirt. She could hardly lift her pajamas. Scarcely brush her teeth. She was actually glad that Becky had turned down the covers of the bed, because she did not know if she could summon the strength to move a blanket.

The mattress was wonderful, so soft, so welcoming, so necessary. The pillow onto which her head sank was a shelter in which she could rest forever. I’ll never get up, thought Althea. I’ll have to move in with Becky and take a week off from school.

A cold, cruel wind seemed to blow through her mind, filtering through her brain, blinding her eyes.

She’ll just be a little … tired,
the vampire had said.

She was too tired even to shudder.

It can’t be, she told herself. I would have felt something. He can’t—I mean—those teeth—it wouldn’t work unless—

And yet … he calls it migration. A word for swallows in the sky. There’s nothing in that word about feeling fangs in your flesh.

Be rational, Althea said to herself. Football games, cheering practice. Cheering, studying for exams. Of course I’m tired. I’ve had a very demanding week.

“Althea, hop up and change the TV channel, will you?” said Becky. “I can’t seem to find my remote control.”

Althea dragged herself into a sitting position and crawled to the end of the mattress. She could not quite reach the buttons on the TV. Like an ancient crone with arthritis, she tottered two steps, changed the channel till Becky was satisfied, leaned briefly on the shelves, and pushed herself off like a swimmer pushing off the pool wall for another lap. At last she was back in the bed, back down on the lovely good pillow. Nothing was demanded of her body. Only rest.

Rest.

It was all she wanted.

All she would ever want.

If it’s him, she thought, if he was here, with me, I won’t have enough energy to have friends. I won’t have enough energy to be in the squad or date Ryan or sing in the chorus. Or do anything at all. I’m finished. She said, “Becky?”

“Mmm?”

“When you heard a noise in the bushes, what was the noise?”

“I was just teasing. I didn’t really hear anything. I’m sorry if you took me seriously. Ryan was dying to be alone with you outdoors. He had some fantasy that you and he would stare at the stars together, and you would be overcome with uncontrollable emotion, and I would go back in while you two danced in the dark.”

In the dark.

Among the hemlocks.

No, she said to herself. It can’t be me. He said we were a match for each other. I’m just exhausted, that’s all. I’ve had a hard day. In the morning, I’ll be energetic and enthusiastic again.

When Becky found the remote control under a pile of fashion magazines and shouted with delight, Althea slept on, as if in something deeper than sleep.

B
UT WHEN SHE AWOKE
on Sunday morning, sun streamed in the bedroom window. It lay golden and warm upon the dark violet of the bedspread and tickled the sweet lavender of the wallpaper.

Althea bubbled with joy.

Nothing had happened. It was cheerleading, and homework, and the pressure of being interesting in front of a new boyfriend that had worn her out. Althea hopped out of bed and went into Becky’s darling little bathroom, in which everything was white: white as snow. Shower, tiles, walls, everything gleamed porcelain and pure. Two tiny violet guest towels with lacy fringe hung from a white rod. Violet bath towels were stacked on a white wicker shelf. Embroidered violets peeked delicately from the folds of the shower curtain.

Althea stepped in the shower and sang under pulsing hot water.

She wrapped herself in one of the purple towels to dry, and the towel was soft and wonderfully thick.

Life is good, thought Althea. I am in control.

She danced into the kitchen to see if she could help with or start breakfast. Becky’s parents had apparently come in late, for their bedroom door was shut and the house lay quiet, as houses do on Sunday mornings while people sleep in.

Althea found cereal and milk and crunched happily. Out the kitchen window she could see the backyard, and in the sun it was such a pretty yard. The leaves were gone from the trees, but they were such graceful trees: a willow and two clumps of white birches with papery, peeling bark. The thick shrubs were covered with frost, and they glittered, half snow, half sun, utterly beautiful.

Becky walked slowly into the kitchen. Her eyes seemed to lack focus. Her body lurched slightly, and she sank into a kitchen chair as if unsure where she might be. Althea poured her a glass of orange juice that she had whipped in the blender; it was frothy and light.

Becky looked at the glass. She frowned. She said, “This is so weird, Althea. I just didn’t seem to get any rest last night. I don’t think I can even pick up that juice glass.”

Althea became very still.

Becky said, “I think I’m coming down with something. I don’t want you to catch it, Althea. Or Ryan, either. We have such important games next week. He can’t get sick; the football team needs him. You can’t get sick. The squad needs you.”

Through uncooperative, frightened lips, Althea said, “The cheerleading squad needs you, too, Becky. Getting sick is out of the question.”

Becky put her arms on the kitchen table and then rested her head on her arms. “I think it’s in the question,” she said, trying to laugh. “I think—I really think you’d better go on home, Althea. I think I need to go back to bed.”

“NO!”

Becky focused one eye on Althea and then closed it, exhausted by the effort. “I feel as if I could sleep for a month,” she said.

Althea grabbed Becky’s shoulders and shook her. “Get up!” she cried. “You have to get up! You have to try. You have to stay on your feet!”

“Huh?” said Becky, falling asleep.

Becky’s mother came into the kitchen. “What’s the matter?” she said.

“I think Becky—um—has the flu,” said Althea. “She—um—”

Becky’s mother went right into action. Thermometer, aspirin, chicken soup, the works. “My poor baby,” crooned Becky’s mother. “You haven’t been sick in years! This is not like you! I think cheerleading is responsible. It takes such time and energy and it is simply draining. I just don’t think it’s healthy to work so hard day after day, week after week. I’ve said that all season, haven’t I, darling?”

“Mmmm,” said Becky, leaning on her mother.

With Althea on one side and Becky’s mother on the other, they walked Becky back down the hall to her bed, tucked her in, and wrapped her warmly.

“What a sweet girl you are,” said Becky’s mother to Althea. “So helpful and understanding. I want you to do one little thing for me.”

“Anything,” said Althea, who felt dead, like something evil and sick, who infected her friends, and ended their happiness. Somebody who could turn a lovely purple and white room of irises and violets into a purgatory of exhaustion.

“At practice on Monday, tell Mrs. Roundman that I am taking my daughter off the squad. There is simply too much being demanded of her.”

“No!” whispered Althea. “I’m sure Becky will be fine by Monday. She’ll be in school Monday. Send a note with Becky to say you want Becky to sit out the practice! Mrs. Roundman will agree to that. Please! Please don’t take her off the squad.”

Becky had fallen back asleep.

Her long, dark hair swirled on the pillow, like a winter storm cloud around the paleness of her tired face.

My friend, thought Althea. My third betrayal. I have given away Celeste, given away Jennie, and now Becky. Becky!

Her friendship with Becky played in her heart like slides in a darkened classroom: the first welcome, the encouragement at tryouts, the little speech of friendship when she made the squad. The phone calls, the laughter, the hair volume jokes.

I gave her to the vampire.

How many more will I give? When will it be over? Will it ever be over?

Becky’s mother kissed her daughter’s cheek. “Well,” she said, adjusting the blanket hem, “I’ll wait till Monday and see. But cheerleading is not worth your health.”

Althea no longer knew what cheerleading was worth. She knew only one thing. She was going home. She was closing those shutters, closing them forever, and if it was the end of cheerleading, the end of friends like Becky and boys like Ryan, well, she did not deserve them, anyway.

She felt tight and strong with resolve.

Nothing the vampire could say or offer would make Althea change her mind this time.

She drove over the hills and down to the bottom of the valley.

She parked sternly, with a solid pull on the brake, as if making very, very sure that she was going to stay and see this through. She shut the door of her car not with a slam but with certainty. She strode across her yard, marched up her stairs, and climbed upward.

T
HE TOWER ROOM WAS
quiet and dusty in the sun. It felt of nothing.

There was neither power nor evil here. It was merely an empty room.

She ran her fingers through her hair, as if strengthening herself from the top of her head to the tips of her toes.