Archive of Our Own ^beta

  Star looks out at the dark horizon. A spot of light flickers from a boat, near shore but still far off. The sea laps at the edges of her skirt, rippling in the water like flower petals. No one else is on the beach tonight. Maybe it’s too late, maybe it’s too dark, or maybe this stretch of beach still reeks of missing people, metallic blood, and something sinister and primally wrong. Seriously bad mojo as Paul would’ve said.

  Nonetheless, even without the regular disappearances, Santa Carla locals know better than to stray too close to the sunken hotel. The silence here is heavy, with just the crashing waves, the whistling wind, and the thud of her own heartbeat to distract from it. Star misses tourist season.

  She hasn’t been back inside the cave yet, not since that day three months ago that Michael hauled her into the light. But she’s been around. She’s been here as many nights as she can swing it, replaying things in her head, imagining things going differently. If Edgar had only driven the stake just a little lower into Marko’s chest…if she had managed, somehow, to jump in between Nanook and Paul…if Sam’s aim was a bit less keen…if antlers didn’t count as wooden stakes.

  She thinks about that a lot.

  Old man Emerson wanted to burn their bodies. “So they’ll never come back.” Star still has to fight the urge to shudder at the thought- of David’s body, looking younger, smaller, and more boyish than she ever saw him look alive. Of the bits and pieces that remained of Dwayne. 

  Worse than that was Paul, whose blood soaked the walls and filled the pipes of the house, staining everything a sickening brown-red. Star can hardly make sense of it in her head, even though she was there watching him melt- how is it possible that the boy who laughed like a hyena, who tried to teach her bass guitar, who called her “Star-girl” and held her hand…how is it possible that all that’s left of him are the red streaks that rot the Emerson’s wallpaper?

  Paul was the only one of the boys who always felt like her real friend after she refused to kill. She couldn’t save him, and at the time, when he was snarling and spitting at her she didn’t even want to. He had to die so that she could be freed.

  Now she feels like she may as well have just killed to begin with, because her friend is dead and she helped. Either way, she feels like a killer. Only this way, her Paul is viscera in the drainage system.

  Star chews her lip so hard that it bleeds. She built this habit back when she was a half, back when she needed a little blood. Nowadays it tastes coppery and metallic. She’s lost her taste for the rich flavors and sweet subtleties- it’s all pennies to her now.

  She glances up at Hudson’s Bluff, towering over her like Dracula’s castle. (She never did read Dracula. Tried to once, back in junior high, but she couldn’t get through all the dense texts and old-fashioned language. Anyway, she liked Frankenstein better.)

  Marko’s body is still in there, in the cave, or so she assumes. She didn’t really see it happen, him dying and all. If she had known, she wants to think she wouldn’t have let it happen. But then again, at the time, she was starved half to death and could hardly make her thoughts connect. So maybe she would have just watched, watched Edgar’s stake sink into the little vampire’s chest, while his glittering blood spurted out and soaked his crop-top and stained that jacket he worked so hard on.

  She’d sensed his pain from Grandpa Emerson’s car. Pictures of it flashed in her head, mostly from Paul. She’d barely registered it at the time, being so so tired and dizzy. But she remembers bits and pieces. She remembers Marko’s scream. She’s not sure that she’d ever seen him scared before. Not like that. She’d seen him nervous, although it looked more like anger, usually, but she’d never seen him so small or so scared.

  She’s glad she didn’t have to see it in full. Selfishly, she’s glad she wasn’t there in the aftermath.

  She was there in the aftermath of everything else, though.

-

  Being back in school feels utterly, completely, impossibly wrong. 

  Star is seventeen, according to her body, her body that now ages and bleeds and hurts again. But according to the calendar, she’s twenty-five. It’s 1987. She was born in 1962. She feels seventeen still- just as moody, just as small, just as impulsive and stupid. It doesn’t make sense how she’s lived an extra eight years without gaining any wisdom or maturity.

  She still feels red-hot jealousy when a pretty blonde straight-haired girl talks to Michael in chemistry class. (There’s assigned seats- he’s at the front while Star finds herself in the back.) She still writes little frustrated poems in the margins of her notebook. She’s still too shy to talk to the other students, too shy to ask the girls if she can sit by them. She tries to but no sound comes out.

  At lunch, she thinks she sees David. She jolts up from her seat on the hood of Michael’s car, staring after the flash of white-blonde, but no…it’s just some punk-rock kid in black denim and leather.

  “You good, Star?” Sam says, furrowing his brows. 

  “I’m okay,” she says, trying to smile and not feel like a paranoid idiot. Lord knows Sam Emerson has enough friends who are paranoid idiots- Star doesn’t particularly feel that she needs to join those ranks.

  “Man, look at this garbage, I swear to God they’re poisoning us!” Says a loud voice, and speak of the devil- there’s Edgar Frog, leaving the school gates to join her and Sam on the hood of the car.

  Naturally Michael has first lunch period while Star gets to have second lunch period with Sam’s…eccentric friend. For the millionth time this week, she wishes lunch schedule was determined by grade level instead of fourth period teacher. Sam’s a good kid and all, but hanging around sophomores when she’s a full on senior is a bit of a drag. 

  Technically Sam and Edgar aren’t even supposed to hang out in the parking lot as underclassmen, but apparently ‘truth, justice, and the American way’ doesn’t apply to truancy. That’s fine. At least Star isn’t alone. The groups of pretty modern girls may be intimidating, but around Sam and Edgar, she can say whatever the hell she wants, which is some kind of solace. 

  “It’s pretty lackluster,” Star agrees, prodding at her shitty salad. ‘Salad’ is generous. It’s rabbit food. There isn’t any dressing or flavor, just raw spinach and vegetables. But it’s rabbit food or burgers, and Star’s a vegetarian.

  “That’s why I bring lunch from home,” Sam boasts, sticking out his tongue.

  “Hey, I’d do that too if my mom packed me food,” Star teases.

  Sam is undeterred, happily biting into his sandwich- “What can I say, ladies, it’s sure nice havin’ a mother who loves ya.”

  Star grins and flips him off, and Edgar snatches Sam’s cookie and shoves half of it into his mouth.

  “Hey, gimme!” Sam squeaks, lunging at him.

  “Hey, break it up you two or I’ll tell the hall monitor you’re out here,” Star laughs, which is an empty threat, although Sam and Edgar needn’t know that.

  “Dickweed,” Sam says, reclaiming the remaining half of his chocolate chip cookie.

  “How’s mother’s love taste, Frog?” Star jokes.

  “Pretty good,” Edgar nods. “Not vampire proof though. She oughta use holy water.”

  “Doesn’t that get baked out?” Star says.

  “Well, maybe? But I could also see it like…holy-ifying all the ingredients, y’know?” Sam considers.

  “Holy chocolate chips,” Star says, pretending to be seriously thinking about it.

  “That’s ridiculous,” Edgar says, scowling, and he proceeds to go on some rant about the mechanics of holy water vs. its effect on vampires. Star’s pretty sure he’s talking outta his ass though- after all, her pack was and still is the only pack of vampires who Edgar has encountered in his life.

  Her heart throbs when she thinks about her pack…no, her friends, so she steals a bite of Sam’s cookie in hopes that it’ll distract from talk of vampires.

  And she winds up with an oil stain on her white top because apparently Sam is just as willing to tackle her as he is willing to tackle Edgar.

-

  The video store is bustling after school, and Star’s co-worker Maria is already there and waiting behind the counter.

  “Evenin’,” she grins, smacking her gum.

  “Hey,” Star sighs, setting down her school bag.

  Lucy didn’t want to hire Star for school day shifts, but Star wanted to be able to afford her own rent, so Lucy caved. It isn’t that Star doesn’t want to stay with the Emersons, it’s just that…well, they don’t have room for her. And Lucy can rearrange the house all she wants- the fact of the matter is that for Star’s own comfort, she’d rather not have to sleep on the pullout couch in the middle of the living room.

  Besides, Maria said that she could use a roommate. And Star likes Maria. She’s always liked Maria, ever since Maria rolled into town last year- Maria was never scared of her boys, never scared of anyone, even when she should be. She would grin at Marko and Paul, stare in appreciation at Dwayne, and she’d suggest movies to Star- good movies, like Valley Girl, The Outsiders, Labyrinth…all the stuff Star had missed in her years outside of pop culture. 

  So when David suggested she’d be easy prey for Star’s first kill, Star told him that he should go suck a lemon. Although she’s pretty sure the only reason he didn’t force her to anyway was that Marko liked Maria. The boys had more sway over each other than Star ever had over any of them. She still isn’t sure if that was because she was a girl or because she was never a full vampire like they were. Or both, she thinks bitterly, fastening her name tag on her thin top strap- it could always be both.

  Not that it matters now since they’re dead and she helped kill them.

  And shit. Now she feels awful again.

-

  “Max always liked this one,” Maria says with a half-hearted smile as she opens the VHS. Star tries not to bristle, remembering how Max threw her to the side like she was a feather. She tries hard not to flinch at the thought.

  Because Maria, apparently, genuinely liked Max.

  She said once, quietly to Lucy and Star, that Max had saved her from the streets by giving her her job. “I wouldn’t have hired me then, looking how I did,” she said, rubbing her face. “He saved my life.”

  It seems Max contained multitudes. Maria cried at his funeral. He left her his house. Star thought for a while that Maria must be a vampire too, one David didn’t know about, but…but she was always out during daytime…and she had a reflection, everywhere, not just after being invited places…and Star has been living with her for a month and is yet to wake up to any bloodshed or attempts at turning her. So maybe Max just actually cared about Maria. Or maybe he had her locked under his mind tricks. …Or maybe he just wanted a day clerk at the video store. Star doesn’t know. She tries not to think very hard about it. And judging by how quick Lucy is to change the subject when Maria brings Max up, Lucy tries not to think hard about it too.

  “Rebel Without a Cause?” Star says, reading the video cover. “No way, he hated when the boys hung around his store…and he likes their Hollywood counterparts?”

  “Aw, Max had a soft spot for delinquent kids,” Maria says, bundling herself up in a fluffy blanket next to Star on the couch. “Told me they reminded him of his sons.”

  “He had sons?” Star says, playing dumb.

  “I guess so. Never told me much ‘bout ‘em. I don’t think they got along very well, else I suppose they’d be sittin’ here in his house instead of me and you,” Maria shrugs. 

  “Yeah…” Star says, chewing her lip. “Right.” And again she thinks about her boys. Thinks about how if Paul was here, he’d toss popcorn at her and try to get her to flirt back at him. How Marko would not-so-subtly wind his arm around her shoulders, or maybe Maria’s if he’s in one of his moods where he hates her. Or how Dwayne would be trying to actually watch the movie, only to give up halfway through in favor of pouring popcorn on Paul and Laddie. Of how David would get ideas from the movie and rope some unsuspecting victim into drag racing him like James Dean just a night later…

  But they aren’t here.

  Maria’s here, and she shares the blanket with Star and gives her earl gray tea and raves about Sal Mineo’s pretty face and James Dean’s red bomber jacket and the dream land that is Los Angeles supposedly.

  And it’s not bad, actually. It’s not bad at all.

-

  Maria works her shift at the video store on Saturdays while Star wanders the boardwalk or goes to Michael’s or just hangs around Max’s house. Today she’s at Max’s house, although it isn’t really her choice- Edgar and Alan are convinced there’s some type of vampy secret hidden in the walls. Star didn’t want them to scare Maria, so she very begrudgingly agreed to let them come over today.

  Max’s house is big for two teenage girls. Big and grand and overlooking the sea, but otherwise, so bizarrely normal. There’s two floors and an attic and a basement. Three bedrooms, a bathroom and a second bathroom attached to the master bedroom. A study or library or office or whatever you call it. A kitchen and dining room. The basement’s unfinished and empty. If there is anywhere for a hidden coffin or the bones of the damned or whatever, Star sure doesn’t know it. 

  The Frog brothers are unconvinced. 

  Alan, “vampire protectant” choker tied tight ‘round his neck, stands on a ladder and tosses books off of the library shelf. He opens one.  “I betcha half of these are cursed,” he says, and breaks out into a fit of coughing. A plume of dust billows out from the pages. 

  “Right,” Star says, crossing her arms. “The Modern English Thesaurus, circa 1965?” She reads the title. 

  Alan isn’t phased. “You can’t look in places that’re obvious, Star- vampires are slick, they hide things where ya least expect ‘em.”

  “...Sure,” Star grumbles. “You know vampires can’t really curse things, right?”  

  “How would you know?” He scoffs.

  “I was one for eight years,” she says.

  Alan scowls and drops the book into the growing pile on the ground. “Well, you didn’t know about Max. Maybe head vampires can do things you can’t.”

  Star raises her brows. “Oh-kay…sure. Fine. Whatever you say, so long as ya clean up before Maria’s home.”

  Michael appears in the doorway, tossing hair out of his eyes. “There you are,” he grins, shoving his hands into his back pockets like he’s in a Brat Pack photo shoot. “I was lookin’ for ya.”

  “I’ve been uh…monitoring,” Star says, waving at Alan. Alan sticks out his tongue.

  Michael shakes his head exasperatedly. “You havin’ fun there, kid?”

  “He’s solving the mysteries of the universe,” Star replies, grinning.

  “Yeah, yeah, laugh it up, you guys,” Alan grunts, “you won’t be laughin’ when we gotta save your asses from bein’ vamped twice.”

  “Thanks, but we’re good,” Michael says. “I dunno if you noticed but they’re all dead, dude.”

  “What’s that?” Star laughs, looking at Michael. He raises an eyebrow, bemused. 

  “What’s what?”

  “You like, totally said dude, dude,” Star says in her best surfer voice. 

  Michael flushes just a little. “What? Everyone says it ‘round here.”

  “Pheonix boy’s finally turnin’ California!” Star teases, bumping him with her elbow a little. Michael rolls his eyes good naturedly and  bumps her back.

  “Okay, okay, whatever you say, dude-”

  “That’s beyond the point,” says a voice behind them. Edgar has appeared in the doorway, barking in his fake Rambo voice. “The vampires might be dead, but who knows what sinister stuff they’ve left behind? And who knows how long it is till there’s more vampires movin’ in on this now-empty territory? And- here’s the big one- how do we know these were the only vampires in Santa Carla?! Max has gotta have records or something, and as hunters, it is our responsibility to make that our business! You got it?!”

  Star purses her lips. She can’t remember there being other vampires, at least none that were real competition. But she doesn’t say that- instead she says “Right on, guys, do whatever you wanna.”

  “Thank you!” Edgar exclaims. 

  Michael shakes his head, long-ish wavy hair bobbing, and nods at the hallway. Star follows after hesitating a second, briefly nervous that Edgar and Alan will destroy the place if left alone. But oh well. So it goes. 

  Out in the hall, Michael toes the beige rug. “Man, doesn’t it trip you out like…how…regular all this is? Like, who knows how long Max was alive- it’s gotta have been at least a century- but his place is straight outta Sears, 1979.”

  “It’s almost boring, isn’t it?” Star says, tracing the cream-colored wainscoting that goes halfway up the sea-green wall. “I guess he always seemed like a fairly boring man…”

  “You knew him, didn’t you?” 

  “Not really,” Star shrugs. “I mean, I saw him sometimes at the video store, and I saw him back when the video store was still a bookstore and I was real little and only came here on vacation, but I never really…noticed him, y’know?”

  “How long ago was that?”

  “Hm?”

  “When you were little and it was a bookstore?” Michael says, voice quiet.

  Star runs her tongue over her teeth, feeling the tiny human points of her canines. “A while ago,” she acknowledges. She feels at her incisors, the ones that would elongate and grow sharp when she was hungry, year in and year out since she was first seventeen. They’re flat. 

  She thinks. “Eighteen years ago. I was…maybe seven when it became a video store.”

  Michael nods, not saying what they’re both thinking- eighteen years ago he wasn’t around yet. He’ll be eighteen in January.

  Star isn’t sure if she’s a cradle robber or not, and Michael doesn’t like to talk about it. He says she isn’t, because she’s got the brain and body of a seventeen year old, and he likes to leave it at that- he isn’t fond of thinking hard about it. Star isn’t so convinced. Sure she’s got the dumb teen impulses and acne and comprehension skills of a seventeen year old, but she’s got the lived experience of a twenty-five year old, doesn’t she?

  She just isn’t sure where she fits, or who she fits with. She didn’t think about this kind of thing so hard when she was a vampire. Human things like time and gender and sex had less reverence then, because the ins and outs and technicalities just didn’t matter much in the face of eternity. 

  But Star is mortal again, and they matter. 

  “So you used to come here growin’ up?” Michael says, nudging the subject back to the realm of comfortable conversation.

  “Yeah,” Star says, thinking about it. “I mean, it wasn’t much back then, hadn’t become what it is now. It picked up more in the later ‘60s. But Max’s bookstore was there, at least till…’69 I think? I dunno. I’d come for a week at a time every summer.”

  “So that’s why you came here when you ran away,” Michael murmured. “Musta been real scary bein’ in this town alone.”

  “Well, yeah, I mean…yeah. So when the boys found me…I guess it was just nice not bein’ alone. They made me feel…safter. Which is ironic…obviously.”

  Michael chuckles. “No, it makes sense- bein’ around the most dangerous folks in Santa Carla would be kinda safe- like, if you’ve tamed the monsters in the shadows, nothing else can get ya.”

  “Is that what you were doin’ when you joined up?” Star teases. “Feelin’ scared? Tamin’ monsters?”

  Michael wrinkles his nose. “Nah, I was lettin’ ‘em tame me,” he jokes. “‘Cos otherwise I’d just be too dangerous, baby,” he says, with a goofy grin. Star can’t help but grin back. Michael swings broody and dark and has a resting scowl, but his smile is like a friendly dog’s. He sometimes reminds her just a little bit of Paul- well, Paul if he had the ability to think before he spoke.

  “Very tough,” Star says, shaking her head. 

-

 “Here,” Sam says, balancing Laddie on the handlebars of his bicycle. “Hold here, yeah? You got it? Good.”

  “Sam, you’d better be careful,” Star warns.

  “You let him ride around on the back of a motorcycle without a helmet, don’t you tell me to be careful,” Sam grins.

  Touché. 

  “Yeah, well, I was invincible back then,” Laddie says mildly, in the same tone that another kid would say “I had a cold last week.”

  “See? He was invincible back then,” Star echoes.

  “Not to stakes,” Edgar says darkly. Alan elbows him.

  “Shut up, dude, the kid,” he murmurs, and Star gives Alan a grateful smile.

  Laddie doesn’t like talking about the night it all went down very much, and Star doesn’t blame him. He was just a kid. And sure, he might’ve been disturbed by all the blood and guts, but the boys were good to him. Dwayne in particular had a soft spot for him, always stealing books for him, reading him stories, teaching him games, letting him play with his skateboard…

  Star didn’t always get along with Dwayne- he was bloodthirsty, brutal, and cold when he got hungry. But he was awkward and almost shy when he wasn’t, although before Star spent the better part of a decade with him, that shyness came off more like he was stuck up.

  Weirdly, Star got to know Dwayne better in the past year than she had in all the seven years before. She credits that to Laddie.

  “Where are you going?” Dwayne had asked her one night, as she led Laddie up the stairs.

  “Out,” she said, jutting out her chin.

  Dwayne had glanced between her and Laddie for a moment, before he said “Mind if I join you?”

  Now, Star had assumed at the time that Dwayne was just trying to monitor her the way David would want him to, but as the night went on, she started to think he might have just…genuinely wanted to tag along.

  “Yay!” Laddie had said, grabbing Dwayne’s hand in his free hand. 

  Dwayne had smiled and ruffled the kid’s long hair. 

  “Where to?” Star asked, still a little irked at getting a babysitter.

  “Hm? Oh, no, you lead the way,” Dwayne said. Fine. He’d wait and see how she’d fuck up, and report back to David. Swell. 

  So Star held her tongue, and walked towards the bikes. Marko was closest to her height, so she grabbed his- he was off flying who knows where, and she’d been stealing his bike on nights like these for years. What Marko didn’t know wouldn’t kill him.

  If Dwayne was shocked by this, he didn’t say so, just raised his eyebrows a little, and mounted his own. “Who d’you wanna ride with?” He said gently to Laddie. Begrudgingly, Star had to admit she liked how gentle he was with Laddie. 

  Still, she was secretly a little satisfied when Laddie picked her. 

  “Bad choice, little buddy, ‘cos I’m totally gonna beat ya there,” Dwayne teased.

  “You don’t even know where we’re going,” Star pointed out, smiling despite herself.

  “Where are we going, then?” Dwayne asked.

  “Bookstore!” Laddie grinned. “Gettin’ some new things to read.”

  “Tuff,” Dwayne nodded. “Got any ideas?”

  “Henry Huggins,” said Laddie, “that or the book that comes after Mouse and the Motorcycle.”

  “Runaway Ralph,” Star put in. It came out when she was Laddie’s age, and she figured he’d like a book about motorcycles considering how often he was on one.

  “Sounds up my alley,” Dwayne said politely, starting his bike. “Count off the race, kid?”

  Laddie did, and Star started Marko’s bike fast as she could, and they were off.

  She and Laddie wound up winning, although she got the funny feeling Dwayne had let that happen, because every time he started to win, he’d slow down a little, or drive himself over a road block, or make some other obvious mistake that he could barely plausibly deny. And he smiled just a bit too hard when Laddie mocked him for losing.

  In the bookstore, Dwayne wound up getting Laddie a copy of Tuck Everlasting. “It’s about uh…the shittier parts of immortality. We can read it to him. Together,” Dwayne had said, a bit stilted, when Star raised an eyebrow at the book.

  “Okay, sounds nice,” she said, and was surprised to find that she meant it.

  Now, Star wonders how the book ends. They never did finish it. She doesn’t think she ever will, even though she is madly curious.

  She puts the thought out of her head and watches Sam mount his bicycle, starting to pedal unevenly. 

  “Faster…” Laddie urges, voice as wobbly as the bicycle.

  “I’m tryin’!” Sam grunts.

  “C’mon, I’m slipping, I think!” Laddie warns. Sam grits his teeth and pedals faster, getting more stable as he builds a rhythm.

  Laddie whoops with excitement as Sam finally reaches a steady pace, cheering the same way he did when he’d beat Dwayne at things.

  Star smiles weakly.

  She misses Dwayne. But she’s real glad Laddie still has kids who treat him like a little brother.

-

  “What was it like?” Sam asks quietly. He’s sitting against Michael on the Emerson’s couch, and Star is eavesdropping from the kitchen.

  “What was what like?” Michael’s voice says, subdued and a little unsure. 

  “Y’know. It. The uh…the vampire thing,” Sam murmurs. 

  There’s a silence, and Star imagines Michael adjusting his position, chewing his lip, maybe, rubbing the back of his neck. 

  “I know it’s a loaded question and all,” Sam adds hastily. “I’m just- I was just wondering.” Another beat of silence. “I mean- what was it like wantin’ to eat me, Mike, y’know? Did I smell really good? Like a burger or somethin’?”

  “Like cherry pie,” Michael says finally, but he’s teasing. 

  “No, c’mon, for real,” Sam murmurs.

  Michael doesn’t answer for a moment. “I…hm…God, Sam, I dunno. I wasn’t…I wasn’t me, y’know? I mean, I was, but I…wasn’t, somehow.” He hesitates. “Everything just felt…bigger, somehow. Hunger. My uh- senses, whatever. Anger, kind of.” He pauses, and adds “I mean. Things felt smaller too, though. Like…they didn’t matter so much…” 

  Michael lets that hang in the air, not saying what Star knows Sam hears- like Sam didn’t matter so much anymore.

  Star’s stomach twists. Michael isn’t wrong. He isn’t wrong at all. She thought Sam was little more than a nuisance all those months ago. Hell, she woulda drained him herself if that didn’t mean losing her humanity. Now, though, she can’t imagine thinking so callously. And he isn’t even her kid brother. For Michael, it must be even more of a mind twister.

  Star thinks that being a vampire didn’t exactly dial up emotions- it was more that it muted her conscience. The boys weren’t always monsters. They were more like…people with no sense of right and wrong. And Star has to admit that sometimes it really did kill her back then, not partaking in their bloodbaths. Not even for her hunger, not fully. 

  No, it sucked because for a while, the only reason why she wasn’t killing was simply because that would mean David had won. That her stubbornness had been for naught. That would mean breaking her pride, and letting the boys turn her into something she didn’t say they could turn her into. Worst of all, that would mean liking it.

  David’s big mistake was bringing Laddie in. Honestly, if he hadn’t done that, if he hadn’t put the life of that little kid on the line, Star would have probably killed someone within the week. She was so close to cracking.

  But then it became about not allowing them to keep Laddie eight years old for all of eternity. Apparently, that was enough to renew the dying fight within her for one final year. And then when even that got hard, Michael was there, and she had even more to fight for…

  Still, she wonders what would have happened if Paul hadn’t accidentally bit Laddie, if Michael had made eye contact with a different girl…would she be staked through like Marko and David? Melted like Paul? Exploded like Dwayne?

  If she was still a vampire now, would it even bother her that they were dead?

  …But of course it would. Having no conscience didn’t mean having no feelings. She loved the boys, once. Even David. The fact that she wasn’t a vampire anymore, well, all that meant was that she wasn’t interested in killing a bunch of people because of her sadness.

  But whatever. She is a human again, and she’s glad she is. She’s glad Michael is, too, and that Sam didn’t get eaten up- he’s a good kid. Sometimes she wishes the Frogs were eaten, but then she thinks past her annoyance and circles back around to feeling both sorry for them and awfully endeared.

  “Popcorn’s ready,” Star says, emerging from the kitchen and pretending that she wasn’t just thinking hard about the effects of vampirism on morality.

  Sam glances up. “Oh. I’ll pass.”

  Michael gives him a funny look. “Oh-kay, weirdo,” he shrugs, grabbing a handful of popcorn. “Thanks Star,” he smiles.

  Star makes eye contact with Sam across Michael, and he gives her a bit of a look before his eyes return to the radio that plays in lieu of a television. And she thinks she gets it… After all, she’s lost her appetite too.

-

  Star looks out at the dark horizon, out where the Pacific meets the starry night sky. Hudson’s Bluff looms above her, there to darken the skyline, and it always will be, in more ways than one.

  Someday she’ll return to the depths of the cavern. She knows it. She feels it calling in the core of her bones. 

  Tonight, she just starts Marko’s- well, hers, now- dirtbike, and heads home. Maria is waiting, probably with another new release to pop into the VCR, and Chinese takeout that isn’t worms or maggots.

  If she was still a vampire, she might have heard the rustling in the caves. She might have heard the sound of claws scratching at the dirt walls, stirring, pacing angrily. She might have heard the silent cursing of a little vampire whose heart didn’t get staked properly, leaving him alive, lonely, and to add insult to injury, without his bike.

  But Star isn’t a vampire, so she remains comfortably unaware, happy-ish in her mistaken belief that she no longer lives in the murder capital of the world.