Min's Vampire (36 page)

First the bag of leaf lettuce. In most
McDonald’s stores even the lettuce is pre-shredded and the tomatoes
pre-sliced. All so everything about the burgers you buy are exactly
like the burgers you get in any other McDonald’s, anywhere you
go.

Gram had said it’s called
the
Socialization of
America
. That it’s a real thing, and that’s
why it’s taught in almost every college in the land. But since she
wasn’t going to college... or anywhere else... she’d decided
not
to give the lettuce
and tomatoes at McDonalds much thought.

The large plastic tubs of Special
Sauce were only around five pounds apiece, yet they were not only
physically cumbersome, but always rather slick and hard to hold
onto.

She set down the bag of lettuce,
picked up two jars of sauce—arranging them so her arms and her
chest were holding them snugly in a pincer—and then grabbed the
lettuce again. She pushed against the cooler door, yet it didn’t
give a bit.

Nothing unusual. The door was
notorious for sticking. So she put some muscle into pushing against
it, but it still wouldn’t budge.

Shit! I’m
so
not getting trapped in
the walk in cooler on my freaking birthday! I’m...
she pushed against the big metal door with all her
might...
Just
...
she pushed again, really putting her back into it...
Not!

The door swung open and she stumbled
out, her arms full and her feet suddenly slipping-sliding beneath
her. She skated and spun across the floor, amazingly missing all
the other McDonald’s workers, and crashed with a rather loud thud
into the opposite wall. Her feet slipped out from under her and she
dropped to the fetid tile floor with a sickening crunch.

~*~

“
Hey, Lucy... wake up!” The
guy’s voice was so familiar, yet it felt as if she hadn’t heard it
in years. Her eyes snapped open—Jeff Haas knelt over her. His smile
was wide and his eyes so pretty and happy to see her. Then she
realized she was laying on the ground... correction, on the tiled
floor of Mrs. Henderson’s Spanish class, and everyone from her old
school—her old life—was clustered around her. Afternoon sunlight
drizzled in sparkling rays through the large unadorned windows. The
light played against Jeff’s cheek and made his eyelashes
shine.

She felt tears well up in
her eyes. She was so glad to see them all and the looks of worry
etched on their faces.
Had that all been
just a bad dream?

“
Sorry, Lucy,” Jeff said,
running his fingers softly over her forehead. “I was just trying to
surprise you for your birthday. You kinda jumped and fell down when
you saw it.”

“
Saw what?” She was so
confused, and her head was spinning.

“
Your gift.” Jeff’s smile
was so bright and warm she couldn’t help but smile back at
him.

Mrs. Henderson prodded her way through
the assembled students and stooped down to look her hard in the
eye. “The school nurse is on her way, and she’s called your
father.”

“
Daddy?” The thought of him
coming there made her heart tap-dance in her chest. There was
nothing she wanted more than to see him. That realization, that he
was on his way, made it undeniably true. All of that—the
FBI/incarceration/moving to Gram’s/working at McDonald’s mess—had
really all only been a really horrible, really annoying dream. And
now that she thought of it, her head really did hurt. She’d
probably hit it when she fell.

“
See, Lucy. Everything’s
fine. Your dad’s on his way, and it’s still your birthday.” Jeff’s
wide smile turned shy and his brow did that sexy furrow thing it
does when he’s unsure of himself. “So, you ready for your
gift?”

“
Presents!” She chimed as
she sat up fast and felt her head throb with a burning pain. “Are
you kidding? I’m all about the presents.”

“
Okay,” Jeff said, and then
turned and grabbed up something in his arms. When he turned back to
her, Lucy cooed sweetly. In his arms was the cutest little golden
retriever puppy. It was one of the few things she’d never been
allowed to have. Her father was allergic.

But her smile hastily faded as she
really looked at the little golden bundle of boundless joyful
energy. It was dead. Not only was it dead, but it was missing an
eye and blood was dried in a thick line from its mouth all the way
across its chest.

But it was looking right at her,
panting with its little puppy tongue hanging out, and its tail
wagging.

“
How do you like your gift?”
Jeff said.

~*~

Lucy clawed and screamed her way out
of the dream, her eyes opened wide and her head scalded with pain.
She reached up to hold her head, but then her arm joined in on the
pain-a-palooza. She was pressed up against the stained stucco wall,
the greasy tiles cold and hard against her body.

At first everything else was a blur.
Odd shapes hovered around her, and she heard voices. They were all
talking about her. The only thing that was clear was a blackness
that snaked around the periphery of her blurred vision. It faded
into the din as she heard someone say, “I saw her come barreling
out of the cooler.”

“
Yeah, well, I think she was
stuck in there,” said someone else. “I’ve had that happen
before.”

“
And don’t forget Brad and
his pickle mishap. That shit was all over the floor.”

Gradually everything came into focus,
and she felt cold and sticky, on top of the pain in her head,
shoulder, and arm. There was a tangy, sweet, totally nauseating
smell. She looked down at herself and saw she was covered in
special sauce. It dripped from her hands, was splattered over the
black slacks she’d bought on sale at Wal-Mart, and had plastered
her McDonald’s polo shirt to her chest. She knew without looking
that it was dripping from her chin, and a glob ran cold and wet
down the lobe of her right ear.

“
Shit Lucy!” Greg stood over
her, eyes wide and his hands on his hips. He looked pissed. “Look
at the mess you made.”

The pain in her head turned
to a hot annoyance as she looked up slowly into Greg’s eyes.
“Mess
I
made?” Her
voice was low and strangely even sounding. “
You
sent me after too many things at
once—”

“
You should’ve made
two—”

“
I got stuck in there
because you never had the latch on the door fixed, and I slipped
because there was—” She looked over to the floor in front of the
walk-in cooler. There were even some pickle slices shining green
against the sandstone red tile. “Pickle juice on the
floor!”

When she looked back up at Greg she
saw him gulp.

She was about to point her finger at
him and tell him her father’s lawyers were going to sue the shit
out of him, and McDonald’s, and the company that designed such a
faulty latch, when the pain in her arm suddenly sparked to life
again and raged like a bonfire. It sapped her words out of her head
and replaced them with raw pain.

There was a long, cold silence, and
then Greg said, “We’ll call an ambulance to take you to County.”
His voice was thin and very polite.

A hospital! And doctors and
tests and needles and...

“
I’m fine!” she snapped, and
Greg’s head jerked back at the force of her words. Seeing the
sudden effect of her voice, she forced a fake smile on her face and
pulled herself—though cringing at the nagging pain—up off the tile
floor.

“
I’m fine,” she said again,
this time with smooth sweetness. All she wanted was to get the hell
out of there, and go home. Her birthday had already been heinous
enough; she’d rather not tempt fate anymore. And she wasn’t about
to spend the night in the emergency room.

“
I don’t know.” Greg was
returning to form. And once Greg got it into his head about
something, he always forced the issue. His beady eyes squinted down
at her. “I think you should go to the hospital and get checked
out.”

“
I... am... fine!” That
annoyed heat was back in her voice as she rounded on Greg, and
practically spit each word at him. “I didn’t black out,”—which was
a lie—“so I don’t need to go to a hospital!”

Her voice ricocheted off the walls
like a shotgun blast. Greg’s eyes bugged out and then he cleared
his throat. “You’ll have to sign a waiver,” he croaked.

“
Fine... whatever.” She
shifted her weight and almost fell back into the wall. She was
dizzy, yet still on her feet... with the help of her hand gripping
the wall. “Can you call my Gram to come drive me home?”

No way was she making it to the bus
stop, not to mention all the way home, like this.

~*~

People whirled by in blurred colors
and shapes as Lucy sat alone in the booth closest to the side
entrance. That’s where Gram would pick her up. It wasn’t the main
entrance to McDonald’s, so it was where the least amount of people
could see her.

The globs of special sauce on her chin
and ear were easy enough to remove. She’d tried unsuccessfully to
clean the special sauce from her shirt; the goop had soaked into
the fabric. She could have asked if someone had a shirt they could
loan her, but she was so tired, and her arm was throbbing
incessantly. She sat in the booth and shivered as the air
conditioning made the special sauce cold on her chest.

She was glad though. Glad that at
least that that had been the worst of it. Her birthday had
delivered pain and degradation in spades. Now all there was to do
was go home and take a long hot shower, and then crawl into
bed.

One of the blurs of movement stopped
right in front of her, and she looked up to see a beautiful couple
in a lover’s embrace, kissing like it was the end of a big budget
romantic comedy.

She closed her eyes.
At least someone’s getting it
right
. But when she opened her eyes
again
they
stared
down at her with mirrored expressions of revulsion on their
faces.

Their faces... so
familiar... oh crap!

Lucy’s ex-boyfriend, Jeff
Haas, and her ex-best friend, Tara Minger, stood clutching each
other, the looks of shock and horror clear and nightmarish on their
faces. But Tara didn’t remain shocked for long. And with a
practiced and horribly malicious smile, she held her perfectly
manicured hand to her chest—the chest that had magically grown two
cup sizes in six months, and clad in a thin silk sweater that
looked like it had been woven onto her body by the demented monks
of
Playboy
magazine.

“
Lucy Hart... is that really
you?” She turned her head and made with a faux embarrassed bat of
her eyes lashes. “Omigod! I so thought you were just some homeless
person.”

Cold tingles ran down her arms, and
her heart literally fluttered in horror. The only thing that warmed
her was the burning sensation that had bloomed across her face. She
took a breath, ready to say something, but then she got a look at
Jeff.

Jeff’s face wasn’t cruel, like Tara’s.
No, the look on Jeff’s face knocked the air out of Lucy’s lungs and
made each beat of her heart painful. It was pity she saw in her
ex-boyfriend’s eyes. And as he looked away from her and then slowly
shuffled away to the ordering counter, she could well imagine what
he was thinking.

How did she let herself get
like that?

I can’t believe I wanted to
sleep with that.

Thank god I didn’t... oh
thank god...

Tara stood there, lean and strong and
so well dressed. Her hand on her hip, her long shiny blonde hair
tossed with practiced perfection as she pursed her lips.

“
Lots has happened since you
left.” She gave a happy little laugh. “Did you really have to leave
town on a freaking bus?”

Lucy felt the weight of the
world pushing down on her, and that at any moment she would be
pulverized into the vinyl seat of the booth.
Please,
she prayed, tears welling up
in her eyes.
Pulverize me now...

“
Oh well,” Tara chirped.
“Back to the real world. I’m captain of the cheer squad now, and
we’re so ready to go to state. I mean, I’m not knocking your
leadership skills, but I know this is going to be our best year
ever!” The manic cheerleader intensity in her voice spiraled in the
air and practically dripped sparklers and confetti. But then her
voice dropped to a smooth, robust growl.

“
And if you didn’t catch the
show, Jeff’s mine now.”

Even though she hadn’t let
herself contemplate Jeff in months, she felt this horrible pang of
despair at Tara’s words, and the cruel curl of her freshly glossed
lips
.

She gritted her teeth and forced down
the sob that was trying like hell to burst free from her
lips.

We were friends... how can
you be so mean?

She learned that from the
master,
an inner voice said.
You reap what you sow.