Teeth_ Vampire Tales - Ellen Datlow [64]
This kindness that she offered made her feel better about having to kill. It made her able to look Gina and the other girls they hung out with at night school in the eyes with no guilt.
It was Gina’s birthday. Gina knew that her time was coming to an end. And one thing that she had always wanted to do was go to the beach. But of course she never would be able to, because of the sun.
“Why don’t you go to Abe’s Tropical Paradise Tanning Spa?” one of the girls said during one of their five-minute breaks.
“You’ll come, too, Amy,” Gina said. “We’re both so pale, we could probably use two treatments of spray-on tan.”
Everyone laughed. Including Amy. But it made her miss the sun.
Abe’s promised a total paradise experience in the very comfort of your own hometown. No travel needed! Bring a beach towel! Swim in our marine-animal-free lagoon! Real imported Jamaican sand! Hawaiian-style tiki bar! Private parties available! Spray tan included!
“It might be a fun idea,” Gina said.
Everyone promised they would come. Especially Amy. She wouldn’t miss it for the world.
Gina’s parents knew that there wasn’t likely to be much longer, so when Gina asked for such an extravagant sixteenth birthday party, they gladly paid the $1,500 for Gina and her friends to have a private tropical experience.
All the girls packed beach bags and flip-flops and went downtown at night.
The lagoon area with tiki bar that served virgin margaritas had sand everywhere and a soundtrack of water lapping and bird calls. There were heat lamps that had no harmful UV lights in them. They just flooded the room with warmth. The only way you could tan up at Abe’s was to get spray-on tan. He still had some tanning beds, but they were in a storage room and he didn’t have a license for that anymore. People didn’t want the skin cancer. They just wanted the tropical experience.
Amy was the first to arrive. Abe let her wander around by herself, and she opened up doors and closets as she explored.
In one room, she found the old tanning beds. They looked like futuristic coffins.
Amy could not resist. She had never slept in a coffin. She had vampire friends who swore that it was the best sleep you could ever get. You were so sealed in, with such darkness, that they were sad that it wasn’t in fashion, or that having a coffin delivered to your home would call too much attention. It wasn’t like the old days, when death was a part of day-to-day life and coffins were common.
Amy wanted to try it out. She opened one of the beds. Lay down. And pulled the cover over herself. It was dark. She’d checked that the machine was unplugged, to make sure that it wouldn’t be accidentally turned on. Deprived of her sight, she found her hearing heightened. She could hear the heartbeat of everyone as they entered the spa. Two people. Now five. Now eleven. She could smell their sweat. She could pinpoint the person with the sweetest blood. She drooled for a second at the thought of the taste of the girl. But she would have to feed later, on a stranger. Rules were rules.
She relaxed. She breathed easy for the first time in years.
She drifted off, content.
She woke when she could hear the girls moving into the room. She didn’t want them to think she was weird, so she lay there, waiting for them to leave the room so that she could arrive like a normal girl, from the front door, and not emerge from the tanning bed.
“We can put all the bags and stuff in here, so they’re out of the way. We don’t want to see winter coats and boots in our tropical paradise,” Gina said.
And that was when it happened.
The tightness in her chest. The unbearable feeling of being strapped down.
“Oh, Mom! You bought me roses!” Gina said.
“Yes, but they won’t go with the tropics. Just leave them in the bag and we’ll put them in a vase at home.”
The bouquet of red roses with thorns that her mother had picked up on impulse just to give to her girl on her birthday lay inside the bag. Gina innocently put the shopping bag on top of the tanning bed, trapping Amy inside.
Amy had never believed