Teeth_ Vampire Tales - Ellen Datlow [86]
So I hid you in my backpack and we moved back to Ohio, Bay Ridge, Ohio, and I hated it, hated middle school, hated the girls who made fun of my jeans and called me a trash burger and a slut; I was like eleven years old, how much of a slut could I have been? Even in Bay Ridge? In Ohio you wrinkled up like a raisin, and you barely moved at all—I think it was too cold for you there, I don’t think you can, like, process the cold. In Pensacola you always smelled a little bit funky, like an old sneaker left in a closet, or a dog’s chew toy, but at least you could get around. Once or twice, in Bay Ridge, you were so stiff and so still in my backpack that I thought you were, you know, dead, and I cried, Baby. I really, really cried.
When we moved again, down to Clearwater, things got better; you liked it better here, too, at least at first, right? It was warm again, for one thing. And I started high school, which is a lot more fun than middle school, and our house is a lot nicer, too: There are two bathrooms, and the solarium with the hot tub, even if it leaks, and the home office where Mommy works, she’s an online “consultant” now—
What kind of a consultant?
I’m a relationship counselor.
What kind of relationships?
—but the more I asked the madder she got, all pinched up around the mouth until she looked like Grammy; and really I don’t care, right? At least we have money now, at least there are no more boyfriends wandering all over the house in their tighty whities. Not hers, anyway. . . . The first time I did it, with a boy, you knew somehow, didn’t you, Baby? When I got back from the Freshman Spring Fling, you smelled all over my hands and face, and then you went all stiff at the side of the bed, and you didn’t want to fasten on, you wouldn’t until I made you.
And when I woke up the next morning you weren’t there, even though I looked all over, and Mommy yelled at me for being late to school, I’m not going to call in for you again, Jani, I mean it! All day I thought, Oh, God, what if Mommy finds Baby? I couldn’t imagine what she would do to you, or to me. Kick me out, or—who knows what Mommy would do.
I was pretty scared, and pretty mad, when I got home. Mommy was sleeping, so I tore the house apart again, and when finally I found you, curled up behind the washer—where Mommy could have seen you in a second, if she ever bothered to look, if she ever bothered to do a load of clothes—Where were you? I said. I think I shook you a little, or a lot. Where the hell were you?
You just rolled your glass eyes at me and didn’t make a sound. All sad and cold and stiff, like—like beef jerky or something, you were nasty. So I stuffed you into the old backpack, I threw you into the back of the closet, and I almost didn’t let you out. Almost. Except I finally did, and I let you fasten on, too. And you were happy, Baby, I could tell, that night it was like both of us were flying. After that, no matter what I did or who I hooked up with, or even if I didn’t come home all night, you never ran away again. I knew you needed me, then, more than I needed you. And I realized that I didn’t really need you much at all.
But that was going to happen anyway, right? Because really, the older I get, the more I can do for myself, and the less I need the things that you can do—and the things I can’t get you can’t get either, I mean I’m not going to send you into the liquor store, right? Crawl up into the cold case, get me a six-pack of Tecate, Baby! And even the fastening on—even though we still do it, and I still like it, I can get to that place without you now. Driving really fast, smoking up and then drinking—it’s mostly the same feeling, not as pure or as . . . as good as with you, but I can be with other people when I get it. People like Bobby, or Justin, or Colin. Or Rico. Especially Rico.
I told Rico about you, Baby. I didn’t plan to beforehand, but I did. We were in the storage room—Rob said to go unpack the napkins, there must have been like fifty boxes—but instead we were joking around, and flirting, and