The Lost Girls || Bbangsaz

XX

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     The sun had just begun to set as l made my way over to the apartment above the meat marker. I wasn't exactly eager to get back to Hyein's and sit around that moldy tomb until it was time to go to the bank, so I stopped to grab a bite to eat. The guy who told me I'd be pretty if I smiled tasted like a mix of tomato paste, noodles, and metal. He reminded me of SpaghettiOs.

     Dani had given me instructions on how to unlatch her hidden drawer, and I was eager to look over her notes myself before bringing them back. Maybe there was a loophole to the memories. Something she had overlooked.

     Elton and Gwen had torn the place apart. A top-to-bottom violation of the place we all considered home. I didn't believe for a second they expected to find the heirlooms. The destruction had been a careful shredding of everything we held dear, a reminder that he still knew our hearts and where to hit hardest. He wanted us to run. He wanted our fear, because he no longer had our love. One way or the other, it all came down to control. I closed my fist around the locket I hadn't taken off since the night Hyein gave it back to me. Soon.

     The stairs to the second floor creaked as I approached the apartment with caution. The door was wide open, revealing the mess to the street below. Elton had broken the lock the night he ransacked the place, but I could've sworn we shut it when we left. My senses went on high alert as I stepped over the threshold, and I froze as Hanni swung around with a yearbook in her hands. Glen River West's 1987 yearbook.

     She held it up. "Explain yourself."

     A spread of black-and-white photos had "In Loving Memory" scrawled across the top. Dozens of pictures of Hyein and me filled the two pages.

     The yearbook committee cropped all the photos where we'd accidently appeared in the background to make us look like a couple of Suzy High Schools. There were even a few pictures of a girl who most definitely wasn't me, but an effort had been made. I had no idea anyone had cared.

     "That was nice of them," I said.

     "That was nice of them?" Hanni slammed the yearbook to the ground. "That's all you have to say? You died over thirty years ago." She hadn't asked, but I felt compelled to answer, anyway.

     "Technically, yes?" The rage and confusion in her eyes had me taking a step back.

     Deep down, she'd known. But deep down wasn't the same as upfront confirmation. The night Elton had told me the truth, I pushed him off the bleachers-even though I'd been having suspicions for weeks that there was something otherworldly about him. Then I spent the next two days denying it and shutting down any conversation related to vampires. Hanni was handling it a lot better than I ever did.

     "How?" Tears gathered at the corners of her eyes. "Tell me the truth."

     "For the record, I never lied. I just omitted a few facts." When she shot me a glare, I held my hands out. "Okay. Not what you want to hear right now. The truth is.." I'd only ever shared the truth with people I intended to kill, and I couldn't afford to think about what that meant in regards to my feelings for Hanni. "I'm a vampire." She sucked in a sharp breath. "I know."

     I rolled my eyes. "If you know, then why are you acting like it's some dark secret I was keeping from you? Which I only did out of self-preservation, by the way."