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CHAPTER ONE PREACHER'S KID
Maureen Morrisonmight have been the preacher's kid. PK. Peekay. Whatever. She might have been the preacher's kid, but she knew how to lie, to deceive people with just a few words; she uttered words that she shouldn't know, let alone speak aloud; she knew how it felt to kiss another girl; and arguably worst of all she had never truly believed in an omniscient being, who had created what humans called the universe; who saw all and knew all. What I mean to say is, the thing about Peekay Morrison is if you looked past the just barely above average grades, the piano she played to accompany the church choir (that was, before the accident that had rendered her left hand with three fingers instead of five), past the kind smiles, and instinctive offers to commit random acts of kindness, Peekay Morrison sinned without remorse.
Despite all of Peekay's faults, Alaric and Morgan Morrison have always made it abundantly clear that all three of their daughters are their pride and joy, even if Athena and Minerva — fraternal twins and three years Peekay's senior — who can do no wrong in the eyes of the small town of Hawkins were often shoved into the limelight. Peekay, on the other hand, has always been shunted off into the wings of their life; she was aware that she has many flaws, and compared to her goddesses of older sisters, she was merely a commoner, worshipping their every decision. She had accepted that she's some sort of screw-up some time ago, but she didn't care anymore, not when the prospect of becoming a vampire — forever young and beautiful, so perfect that she was almost imperfect — was dangling right in front of her, just barely out of reach.
Ever since she had chosen to do a report on vampires in sixth grade, she had been captivated by the mysterious creatures. No longer did the word mythological mean anything to her, after all, there was no proof that vampires don't exist. The thought occupied her mind almost every hour; the thought that occupied every vacant area of her bedroom walls. It was tantalizing, the thought of finally becoming a vampire, it fills a hole in Peekay that she never realized that she had in the first place. When there was nobody to spend their afternoons with her, she would turn to the diagrams of bats and the passages of her worn copy of Bram Stoker's Dracula. The cover had begun to fall off, the pages were worn and creased where she had dog-eared the corners, penciled-in annotations litter the margins, smudged across the pages.
Wind buffeted the girl and tugged at the edges of her blue cloak as she biked purposefully in the direction of the shelter. She takes a pause on the side of the road to readjust the scarf around her neck which blows into her face every few moments as the wind picks up and dies down. Fall had come to Hawkins in a strong gust of wind; the trees, which just the month before were bright green and flourishing gloriously were now filled with slowly dying leaves, the green draining out and replaced with a sea of reds, oranges, and browns.
