The Awesome (16 page)

There wasn’t much I could do about it outside of going back downstairs and forcing her to talk. As the prospect made me writhe, I decided I’d take another stab at sleeping. It was escapist and lame, yeah, but also convenient. The problem was I wasn’t tired despite being awake for twenty-eight hours. I slid between my sheets and turned on the radio for background noise, willing Calgon to take me away. It didn’t happen. I was way too aware. I ended up taking an hour-long bubble bath instead. From there it was a series of mindless activities to fill the hours: video games, throwing a knife at a homemade target, surfing the internet, studying for my GED. Lauren never made a peep. I checked on her a couple more times to make sure she was still there. She insisted she wanted to be alone. Who was I to argue?

The whole zombie-sitting gig was more boring than I’d feared. At least I had the date to look forward to, though the more I thought about paintballing, the less I wanted to go. The last time Ian was around his basketball buddies, he’d been as communicative as a house plant. Regression would be bad.

And really, how much fun could shooting
fake
guns at people be?

“EAT PAINT, ASS MONKEYS!”

It was a glorious moment, the crowning achievement of my seventeen years of existence. There I was, sporting no paint splatters myself, systematically sniping each of Ian’s unsuspecting teammates off of the field. I also screamed
a lot
of obscenities. Like,
all
the obscenities. I’m not sure Ian warned them that he dated a hunter, but I was pretty sure they figured it out quickly enough.

When Julie and I showed up—her in a pink sweat suit that would be decimated in no time flat, me in military-issued fatigue pants, a black sweatshirt, and my combat boots—a few of the guys ‘warned’ us that getting hit with paintballs hurt. One of them suggested that we should sit out and watch a round to be ‘sure we wanted to play.’ His name was Aaron. I didn’t like Aaron. It’s why every game, regardless of who was closest by, I hunted him down and pinged him right off the bat. The first time I got his shoulder, which was satisfying because the paint splatters got in his mouth. The second time it was his thigh, precariously close to his nuts. The third time, this game, I sniped him in the butt. He grabbed onto his bum like he’d pooped himself and shouted “Deadman!” as he slinked towards the safety cage.

Paintball was fast becoming my new favorite thing in the world. Ian was my team captain. At first he tried to give me a few hints on how to win, but after I nailed three guys from the other team right off the bat, he let me do my thing. Julie wasn’t playing anymore; she got nailed in the boob within the first fifteen minutes and got a doozy of a bruise, so she sat on the bench and watched everyone else, acting as a makeshift cheerleader. Occasionally she’d root for her boyfriend, who was on the opposite team, or give a shout out for me or Ian. Otherwise she fondled her chest and grimaced a lot. To be fair, it looked like it had hurt.

Ian didn’t do too badly for himself, though he got out early in the third round. We played thirty minute matches, and this one was last man standing. Teams no longer mattered, it was every man for himself. I’d only seen one other guy left—the captain of the basketball team who’d given Ian the shot at the party—but I could
hear
someone scuffling to my right. I counted on sound more than anything, something Mom taught me a long time ago. Some vampires could turn into mist or shadows, which meant they had no bodily form to track, so you had to hear the whisper of their movements. The guy closest to me thought he was quiet. He was as subtle as a fart in church.

I waited for my opportunity to strike, patience being a virtue and all that crap. Eventually, he got restless, and I heard him sliding over the concrete. A feral grin oozed across my mouth. He was coming, and I waited for him like a viper. It was a matter of time.

There was a thud, a soft sigh, and he emerged from behind his barricade. I lifted my gun, taking aim right as his hand came over the upper edge of the concrete.
BAM!
I nailed him, hitting him on the index and middle fingers. He yelped and twisted around in a circle, shaking the sting from his hand. I almost cackled aloud, but that would have given me away to Mark, Ian’s team captain, so I bit my lip and grinned instead.

“Deadman,” the guy I’d hit announced. “Ian, stop letting your girlfriend beat us up, dude. She’s Robocop over here.”

I could hear Ian laughing from the cage. “She’s awesome.”

The praise made me blush.

I rolled onto my stomach, crawling across the dirty ground to get to the back corner. Mark would have to move sooner or later, otherwise the match would be a draw, and I’m pretty sure he took my flawless victories as an affront to men everywhere. His expression after I nailed him in the hip with a paintball during the second match suggested as much, anyway.

Unlike the other guy, he stayed quiet. So quiet, I couldn’t figure out exactly where he hid, which meant I’d have to lure him out. I looked around for something to throw: a rock, a piece of concrete block, the body of a hapless paintball victim. I came up short, though, and so I did what any good hunter would do. I played dirty. I took off my boot and tossed it at a threesome of construction barrels twenty feet to my right. I wanted him to think I was over there, and the only way to do that was to make a ruckus. In the meanwhile, I kept my head low and edged around the corner, my gun drawn and ready.

It was too easy. Mark slid out from behind some pallets to run at the barrels, his gun drawn and ready. He wasn’t close enough yet, so I cocked my rifle and breathed slow, waiting for him to come into perfect snipe position. He mad-dashed, spraying everything around him in bright orange paint. It was so willy-nilly I almost laughed, but I managed to hold back. Especially when I pulled the trigger and nailed him in the shoulder with a splash of blue paint.

“Shit! Shit! Deadman. Shit!”

I surfaced from my hidey-hole to grin, trying to look normal despite my lack of boot making me totter like Quasimodo.

“Good game,” I said, leaning over the barrel to retrieve my shoe.

“Yeah, GG. You’re a beast with a gun. For serious.”

“Thanks.”

He shook his head and made for the bench. Julie hooted and hollered at me, shaking a section of chain fence while she jumped up and down with excitement. I waved at her as I wedged my foot back into my boot. Ian jogged out to join me in the arena, a huge grin splitting his face. I played it cool, like I wasn’t bursting at the seams with my awesomeness. But let’s be honest—I was spectacularly awesome and both of us knew it.

“Nice,” he said, holding my gun so I could lace my boot.

“Thanks.” As soon as I stood again, he leaned in for a celebratory kiss. It wasn’t a quick brush of lips either. It was a ‘cling to his shirt and close my eyes’ type of kiss. My arms wrapped around the back of his neck, sliding through a slippery patch of paint. He squatted, grabbing me underneath my thighs and foisting me. The next thing I knew I was suspended off the ground. My eyes flew open, and I laughed against his mouth. This was one of the last things I expected from a guy so shy in public he could only manage one word answers. He laughed back and gave me another kiss, which promptly stifled any of my smart-ass commentary.

Not that I had much to say because it was pretty much the best thing ever.

W
E PARTED WAYS
with his crew at nine. Julie and John went back to John’s house, and Ian agreed to come back to mine after I promised Janice would be wearing pants.

“Rotter boyfriend is probably there. You’ve been forewarned,” I said as we headed to his car. We’d changed into normal people clothes before leaving the building so we wouldn’t get paint on his dad’s leather upholstery. I wanted to gloat and point out that
I
wouldn’t have made a mess anyway, because
I
was splen-fucking-diferous and clean as a whistle, but I bit it back and smiled a lot instead. I didn’t want to make Ian think I was an egotistical hag who hated his friends, even if the egotistical hag part was true.

“It’s cool. I’ve never met a real vampire before, and uhh—the other night wasn’t a ‘meeting’.” A crooked smile played around his mouth. “More like ‘show and tell’.”

I smirked. “Hardy harr. I’d never met one either, so it was a first for me, too. Oh, right. Our pet zombie is there now, too. I should mention that so you don’t freak out when you see her.”

Apparently, that one wasn’t as cool, because he stopped pulling out of the parking lot to give me a look that suggested I’d lost my mind. My statement probably painted a picture of a slathering shambler tied up to a chain and living in a doghouse in my backyard, so I made the necessary corrections, relaying Lauren’s sad story and how Mom waited on the DoPR’s verdict before doing anything. It must have been adequate clarification, because he eased the car onto the road, shaking his head the whole time.

“Man, that’s so crazy,” he said. “It’s cool, but I can’t imagine living that way. Like, my parents do some whacked out crap. My mom’s in a Wiccan coven, and my dad’s into purification fasting and eating grass, but you got me beat. Seriously.”

I rolled the window down, turning my face into the warm breeze. The air smelled like fresh cut grass which, for reasons I never understood, made me happier than a pig in shit. I wanted to bottle up the smell and carry it with me all the time. It made me think of summer and ice cream and barbecued chicken—all things I was a fan of, the last two likely responsible for my wobbling arm flab. “It’s not bad. Well, it’s never boring anyway.”

“Yeah. I guess that’s true.”

We drove in quiet for a while, pulling into my driveway twenty minutes later. I grabbed my bag of paintball clothes and walked around the front of the car to take Ian’s offered hand. It was the first night the peepers wailed from behind my house, and I smiled at the thought that soon, Ian would be out of school and we might get to hang more. I hoped he wouldn’t get his head on straight and realize he dated a girl with a screwed up life. I was pretty sure I’d miss him when he took off screaming.

“Did you want to head inside to see if she’s naked?” Ian asked beneath his breath. I elbowed him and made for the porch, creating as much noise as possible as I stomped into the house. On the off chance Janice was doing something bizarre, like hanging from the ceiling or wearing a Hazmat suit, I’d at least telegraphed my arrival so she could, you know, stop and not embarrass me to death again.

The good news was she sat at the kitchen table waiting for us, looking for all intents and purposes like a mom ought to look. There was even a Betty Crocker thing going on thanks to a plate of homemade cookies. The vampire sitting to her left kind of killed the illusion, but this was a huge improvement over the other night. At least no one could see any flopping jangs.

“Hey, you two. How are you?” Mom asked.

“Pretty good.”

“Good. I sent Lauren downstairs. She wasn’t comfortable seeing people yet, but she sends her best. And Ian, I’m sorry about the other night. It was...” Mom’s face turned pink, and Jeff squeezed her shoulder. My fingers tingled with the desire to brush him away from her, but I shoved my hands into my pockets. I hadn’t made nice-nice about vampire boyfriend only to ruin it by being over-protective now.

Mom sighed. “It wasn’t good. I’m sorry. It’s a bad first impression.”

Ian shrugged and tried to play it cool, though I noticed the tops of his ears turning red. “It’s okay.”

“Good.”

She smiled, he smiled, I smiled, we all smiled, and I made the mistake of assuming that meant everything was copacetic. I thought that Mom and Ian had made peace, that I was improving by not wanting to stake Jeff. I told myself that for once, tonight would go perfectly, that the paintball was the beginning, and that I could go upstairs and hang with Ian and it’d be awesome. Even if The Sex wasn’t on the docket, I was happy to have him around. He was nice to me and made me think that my quirks were interesting instead of freakish.

Yeah, I thought it’d be a fantastic date night with a fantastic ending. I got so far as to take Ian’s arm and to pull him towards the stairs.

And then my mom ruined everything by throwing acid in my face.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

M
Y FACE BURNED
, my eyes burned; it was like she’d dunked my head in a vat of fryer grease. I wheezed and backed away, hitting the wall hard, a picture behind me rattling and threatening to topple. That didn’t stop me from thrashing like I was on fire. I tripped and stumbled around like I could outrun the pain. Strong arms wrapped around my upper body, hefting me off of the floor. I didn’t know who it was, I didn’t care who it was. I thrashed, keening all the while. I was in so much agony that it didn’t immediately occur to me that another date night had essentially gone to Hell and back again.

“Maggie. Margaret. Listen to me.”

Mom’s voice penetrated, but only because the pain downgraded from ‘red hot lava in eyes’ to ‘boiling hot water in eyes.’ My nerve endings pulsed like they wanted to burst through my skin. I tried talking through it, to ask what happened, but I wasn’t coherent. I did manage to lump a bunch of swears together to form one long, never-ending obscenity, though. If the
Guinness Book of World Records
caught wind of it, they’d clock me in for ‘Longest, Rudest Rant in the History of Man.’ In my defense, I felt like I was being eaten alive at the time, so it was justified.