Thirsty - M. T. Anderson [60]
I don’t care. I glance up at their necks, craned back to look at me, and at the wiry tendons there, and I think a passing thought about how pleasant it would be to kill them and feel their blood moving through me.
But now Rebecca is at my side, smiling uneasily.
“Come on,” I say to her hoarsely. “Come on.”
“What is it?” she demands. “What?”
“Come on!”
“No. Tell me.”
“Please,” I say.
And I think my eyes are so desperate, as are the corners of my mouth and other regions of my face, that she silently follows me.
We run through the crowds.
People are wolfing down fried dough. People are prowling in packs. A child is screaming by the moonwalk, “My arm is broke! My arm is broke!” People are shoving and grabbing.
Lights spin over us. There’s screaming all around. And above it all, voices booming out over the gruesome disco from the merry-go-round, “We damn him in his thought. We damn him in his speech. We damn him in his being. Our hate is ranged against him.”
The crowds push; people sing; someone barfs behind a tent. His back heaves again and again, as if it’s being wrung.
“A hot dog! A hot dog! I wanna hot dog!” yowls a child dragging a bear by the ear, but her parents are lost in the crowd.
And I lead Rebecca through it all to a grove of trees off to the side.
And we stand there, together, in the warm summer’s night.
The moon is pale above the whirling lights and is fringed by silver wings of cloud. The trees rustle softly above us, as if anxious with sap.
The smell of the grass is sweet, and the night feels wide and the adventure good; and I feel we can, together, do something. We will pound on desks; we will point at the map and direct the police and use words like “zone six,” “ETA,” and “triangulation.”
Finally.
“Chris,” she says, stepping toward me. “You are so strange sometimes.” She says it gently, so gently it’s like she’s stroking my face. (She isn’t.) She leans back against a tree trunk, her legs stiff. Her toe is touching mine. I don’t know if she notices. I wriggle my toe closer to her toe. Softly, she urges me, “I’m ready for your revelation. Whatever it is.”
Finally. Finally.
“Rebecca,” I say (I can’t believe I’m saying the name!), “it is very hard to talk about.”
She nods her head. “I can see. Don’t worry.”
“I have to explain something.”
She laughs lightly. “Yes, you do.”
“But I will explain myself.”
She pushes herself up with her hands outspread, so she is standing close to me. “You have to be brave,” she says.
She is standing very close to me. Her arms are at her sides, but they don’t need to be. If they moved up any, they would be around me. My arms would be around her. She is looking up into my face and searching it; her lips are parted.
Her neck is turned to look up at me, and I can almost feel its silky grass-sweet skin, follow its curve down past her collarbone and the fluting of her throat to her soft chest. My teeth are moving. They are becoming fangs. I need to talk quickly.
“Rebecca, there’s something . . . You’ll have to trust me.”
Her skin is beautifully cool and white in the moonlight, as cool and white as a tomb. And beneath it, her blood races. “Look, Chris, you’ve got to stop beating around the bush.” She puts her hand on my arm and rubs it up and down to reassure me. It does not reassure me. My teeth are swelling because of the blood. They’re enormous. They’re crowding the rest of my mouth. I can barely move my tongue.
It is now. Now or never.
I reach up and almost take her hand. Leaning toward her, I murmur urgently, “Rebecca, you have to underthtand — under —”
“What?” She leans toward me, holding my arm.
My teeth are huge. “I thaid, you — I thaid —”
“What?”
“I, uh, it’th jutht — it’th — ohhhhhhhhhh, thit!” I wail. I turn from her and smack a tree ineffectually. “Thit! Thit! Thit! Thit! Thit!” I hide my mouth with my hand.
My teeth are mammoth; tusklike; throbbing; barely crammed into my mouth.
I am filled with rage. I don’t even know at what. Rebecca looks at me, maybe even frightened. I stagger back away from her like a cowering