Nightlight (14 page)

I hopped from one foot to another down the stairs, rolling when necessary as the axes suspended from seemingly out of nowhere dropped all around me. I was doing it! I was
really doing it. I swerved around a spike that shot up from the ground. It narrowly missed me, poking a hole in my costume instead. As the clock struck midnight, I could feel my cast cocoon beginning to unravel.
Soon I will turn into a pumpkin
. Or was it a helpless maid? A butterfly? In any case, some objective correlative was changing in a way that implied my character had developed. Most pertinently, in the ability to balance.

But I wasn’t done.

Okay, Pretty Face
, I said to myself, gaining encouragement from my self-established nickname,
There’s one more thing you need to fix before this night is through
.

AND THAT ONE THING WAS ADJUSTING THE ALARM SYSTEM
in our house
. Now that a vampire breaking into my house and hovering over my bed at night was no longer a deluded fantasy of mine but a frighteningly real possibility, I needed to disable the “Ring for Criminals but Ignore Any Vampires” setting.

I ran back to my house and retrieved the vampire-proof locks from our bottom kitchen drawer. Jim had been on my case about putting those on, but between the vampire fighting and my Elizabeth Bennett-esque romantic realizations, I just hadn’t found the time. Remembering that he had warned me I would be sleeping on the streets tonight if he came home and our house still wasn’t vampire-proof, I went through all the rooms, applying the safety locks that only human hands can open. This is because human hands can
squeeze and pull simultaneously, while vampires and children can only do one or the other at any given time.

I wanted to forget all about prom, so I took off my ragged cast and changed into a slim, satin evening gown. I looked in the mirror, resolved; I looked at a self-portrait I had drawn, resolved; I looked into the dirty water in the kitchen sink, which had a faint reflection, resolved. It was time to go to Edwart.

I arrived over the other side of the fence surrounding his gated neighborhood, panting, realizing I could have walked in the open entrance instead. I decided to take off my heels; they were fine to walk in, but I wanted Edwart to think that I had a hard time getting to him. I also—oops—accidentally ripped my dress climbing over a gate and—oops—accidentally messed up my hair with my hand.

I ran along the streets of Edwart’s subdivision in the dark, imagining I was a woman who balances clay pots on her head running to the watering hole, or that I was a gifted teenage girl running away from a group of vampires celebrating the greatest night of high school. A lot had happened to me in the past few days. I had dated a real boy who was a fake vampire. I had dated a real vampire with a fake accent. I had faked my death to see if I would have a big funeral, but I didn’t have any funeral at all, because my eye kind of twitched as I was lying there and it ruined everything. I had
finally
gotten through that many-book series about the girl prankster, Nancy Drew. Also there was something about werewolves, but I left that part out.

As I ran, all of these events ran through my mind in a kind of photo-video montage with cool, exhilarating rock music playing in the background. I added the image of me winning some sort of award, because I have a feeling this will happen soon.

I turned down Edwart’s street, deciding to walk the rest of the way because I didn’t want to be out of breath when I arrived. I wondered what I would say to explain the sweat stains on my dress. Would he believe me if I told him that I had peed? My pee did have a funny way of winding up by my armpits.

I was right in front of Edwart’s house when, suddenly, I heard “Decode” by Paramour. My ring tone!

I quickly opened my cell phone. “Wuddup Blood?” I said. Answering this way was a habit I had developed when I thought my boyfriend was a vampire.

“Be careful not to speak until I tell you to.”

I froze.
It was Josh!
I dropped the phone. I picked it up and then dropped it again.

I put the phone to my ear just in time to hear him say, “Good, now say ‘Switchblade’ or press one if that is your current location.”

“Switchblade,” I whispered, looking up at Edwart’s glass house in fear. There could only be one reason behind this call: kidnapping. Would I ever hear Edwart’s sweet triangle melody again?

“This is your final warning.” Josh continued.

“Stop it!” I yelled. “I’m not afraid of you!”

“Your vehicle is not insured,” he said.

“Where’s Edwart? Do not hurt him!” Slipping a little, I began to run up the glass walk.

“To insure your car, please press one or say ‘INSURE’ after the tone.” Josh’s voice said.

I stopped running, suddenly relaxed. It was a recording. So that’s how vampires make a living: using their commanding voices for pre-recorded phone calls.

At Edwart’s door, my index finger was too shaky to ring his doorbell—yes, another insecure reservation about our love for one another was preventing me from doing the inevitable.
What if his life were better without me? What if he had found someone within the last four hours who had read
more
Jane Austen novels than me? What if he had found someone who suffered from fewer delusions?
I leaned my head against the wall in self-defeat, accidentally ringing the doorbell.

Edwart opened the door. “Belle!” he cried.

“Edwart!” I cried.

“Belle!”

“Edwart!”

“Belle!”

“Edwart!”

I noticed there was garlic above the doorframe. Edwart held a stake in one hand and a “Team Jacob” shirt in the other.

“Did you get bit?” he asked nervously.

“No,” I said, coming towardss him. “I’m fine.”

“Phew!” he said. He put down the shirt and stake. “Because
that
would be a twist!”

“Don’t worry. If Josh ever tries that I will bite him first and turn him into a girl.”

We were silent a few moments. In the first moment, I noted with relief how looking at him still made my heart beat faster. In the second moment, I anxiously wondered if the beating would ever slow down or was I going into cardiac arrest after all that running. In the third moment, I took in his skinny beanpole frame and beaming, freckled face. I couldn’t help but beam back. As long as I was with Edwart, I would never lose another thumb war again.

“So what’s up?” he said.

I gave the usual answer: “Not much. Just left the vampire prom to come see you.”

“Belle, I’m really sorry I left you in the cemetery. I was going to take some karate lessons and then come back for you … but after the lesson on ethics I realized that karate begins and ends with courtesy. It is a discipline that should only be used for self-defense, and even
that
as a last resort. So I hiked up Deadman’s mountain and got the android—”

“The one that falls and gets up again?”

“Yeah—that one!” He grinned at me, wonderingly. “You remembered.”

“Of course Edwart. That was the day that I realized that I could love you even if you devoted all your time to creating a useless, unmarketable android.”

“Not exactly useless anymore.” He stepped aside, revealing the android behind him. It looked like the same
anatomically correct human body imitation as before, but something was off.

“Watch this.” Edwart turned it on. Its eyes glowed red.

“Vampire: seven miles away,” it said in the voice of Jeff Goldblum (“He was the first robot to ever win an academy award,” explained Edwart with admiration). It raised its robotic arm. Attached to it was a huge harpoon-looking weapon.

“It’s a cold-seeking missile,” said Edwart, smiling mischievously. “I call it a ‘vampire shish kabob.’”

“Awesome,” I murmured. “Why didn’t you use it?”

He looked at his feet. “I heard you were with Josh and … I didn’t want to hurt him if…”

“Why? Why wouldn’t you want to protect me from that awful, awful vampire?”

He looked at me with a sad smile and bright, weary eyes. “Would you have liked it if I blew up all the vampires while you were still dating one? Wouldn’t you have rather I waited patiently for you to return, no matter how long it took, so we could blow them up together?”

I paused, unsure where this was going.

“So I waited for you,” he continued. “I waited to see if you would come back, even though you would rather date a vampire than me.”

“Well …” I started to say, but then I decided that statement was too complicated to correct. So instead I said: “I’m sorry too, Edwart.”

He placed his hand on the android’s LAUNCH
button. “Shall we?” he said playfully, holding out his other hand for mine.

“Edwart!”

“What?”

I crossed my arms in disapproval.

“Oh—you thought … you thought I was
really
going to … you think I would
kill? Kill vampires?”
he laughed uneasily. I laughed too. I had to admit, it would make a pretty good prank some day.

Edwart turned away from me a little but moved his eyes so they were looking at me peripherally.

“Can I … show you a video game I made?” he asked quietly.

“Yeah, sure. That’s so cool that you make videogames! Is it about me?”

“Well,” he said as he turned on his Wii. I realized that my clever deduction was very clever, indeed. Of course it was about me!

“Okay, so this is you,” he said pointing to an unflatteringly computer-animated girl.

“But she has brown hair,” I said.

“You have brown hair. Don’t you?”

“Brown with red highlights,”
I corrected. Jeez!

He pointed to a muscular warrior character. “This is obviously me,” he said, “and this is Josh!” He pointed to a mushroom near the bottom of the screen. “Let’s fight him, Belle!”

I was getting a little impatient. Were we going to have
to wait four books and thousands of pages for anything to happen?

“So what do you want to do now?” I asked.

“Play videogames.”

“How long do you want to play videogames for?”

“A really long time. I want to play every videogame with you.”

“And then after that?”

“Well if there’s time we should really work on our club website, but I understand if you get tired after all these videogames. I have two closets full.”

I lay back on the couch, exhausted. The problem with smart boys is that they never initiate.

Then, quick as a flash, it happened. In one squeaky scoot across the plastic couch, Edwart was by my side. He swiftly wrapped his arm around me, pulling me towards his bony chest.

His hands grabbed my hands like they were video game controllers. He pushed down on my left index finger. I low-kicked. He pushed down on my left pinkie. I jumped. He pushed down on my right thumb. I paused in mid-air. He kind of rotated my wrist while pushing down on my right middle finger. I crouched down and shot a fireball from my hands. This was getting fun!

Suddenly I blurted out. “I love you more than everything in the entire galaxy combined into one potent, delicious piece of gum!”

“That definitely seems like enough,” Edwart said. He
gazed at me in silence for a moment. “This game shows how I feel.”

We looked at the Belle and Edwart figures on the TV screen. They were next to each other and bobbing up and down lightly, every so often saying “Hiyah!”
Just like us
, I thought.

Slowly, Edwart began to trace my spine with his fingers, drawing invisible shapes on my back. I turned towards him and traced his hand with my fingers, making an invisible turkey.

After a few minutes, Edwart asked: “What am I drawing?”

“A computer.”

He sighed and gently pressed his lips to my hair. “You know me too well,” he murmured.

I imagined what the kids at my old school in Phoenix would think if they saw me now. They’d probably think, “Belle left Phoenix? I thought there was someone missing from my history project group!”

We began to butterfly kiss, which is when you touch your eyelashes to the other person’s skin. I was going to respect Edwart’s desire to wait, and he was going to respect my desire for winged creatures.

“AHHH LEG CRAMP LEG CRAMP!” Edwart suddenly shouted.

“Oh my God, I’m so sorry, did I do something?” I asked, worried that this was getting too intense for him.

“No, I just need to stretch it—okay, that’s better.”

I lifted up my face towards Edwart’s to butterfly kiss him again. He bowed his face towards mine, fluttering his eyelashes softly against my eyelashes, and then against my cheek and lips. Edwart had terrible eyelash-eye coordination, so I held very still to help him out. He firmly cupped my face in his hands for better aim. Then, very slowly, he tilted my face to his. I stopped fluttering my eyelashes. We stared at each other for a very long time. My eyes started going a little cross-eyed and I saw three noses at once. He swept away the hair that was stuck to my ChapStick, weaving his fingers deep into my brownish-red tresses like a finger headband. Tenderly, he drew my lips towards his, and I could feel his breath tickling the tiny hair follicles that every normal woman has above her mouth.

“AHHH FOOT CRAMP FOOT CRAMP!” he yelled.

“How is this happening?”

“It’s fine—ow!—it’s fine now.”

We looked at each other and laughed a little because, hey, relationships take work, and communication.

And with that Edwart put his cold lips to my neck, for the first time.