Drink, Slay, Love

Chapter Twenty One

At first Pearl was oddly happy to be in school. Everything about this place was so distant from her problems that she might as well have travelled to another planet. But then she heard the whispers in the hall, everyone talking about the Dairy Hut and the horrible fire. It had been contained, thanks to the speed of the fire department, but there had been one casualty.

One casualty.

No one seemed to know his name. Ted. Or Todd. Or Ben. Or Brett. "Brad," Pearl wanted to say. He'd been an idiot who couldn't stammer out a complete sentence. He'd been a boy who was easily distracted by cleavage. He'd been a skinny kid in an ice-cream store, a dropout whom no one really knew and no one really remembered and no one really cared about, until he became fodder for conversation up and down the halls of Greenbridge High.

Every time she overheard another student whispering about him, she wanted to rip the lockers off the walls and kick the concrete until it cracked. And then she wanted to rip and kick herself for feeling like this. She'd never felt this way about a victim before. Maybe it was because he'd been her victim alone, not shared with the Family. Maybe it was because she hadn't meant to kill him. Or maybe it was simply the corrosive influence of all these humans.

She had to stop this feeling. But every time she tried to shut it off, her brain replayed the bite-suck-die cycle from last night. She felt as if she were suffocating on the memory, and she stumbled through the morning with little awareness of her surroundings.

At the end of third period Pearl shuffled back to her locker with so little enthusiasm that she might as well have crawled. She shoved her books inside and then leaned her forehead against the cool metal. She wished she could run fast and far away from her memory, her Family, and all the voices around her. But where could she flee that they wouldn't find her? Vampires were immortal and very, very stubborn. Someday they'd catch her. One night she'd be late returning to shelter. Dusk would come early, or dawn would come late. Or they'd find a way to trap her. No, she had to find a way to fix this mess, reclaim her place in the Family, leave this daylight world, and forget about Brad.

Behind her, she heard two voices.

"Dude, you ask her."

"Nuh-uh, you ask."

"Rock paper scissors?"

"You cheat, man," Matt said.

"How is it possible to cheat at rock paper scissors?" Zeke asked.

"You game the system," Matt said.

"It's not my fault you always choose rock."

"My manly strength will not allow me to choose a less unyielding material," Matt said. "I have rocks for muscles. You fear my strength."

"Whatever," Zeke said. "You never choose scissors."

"Sometimes I choose paper," Matt said. "You can't predict me. I'm cagey."

"You always choose rock or paper," Zeke said. "So long as I always choose paper, I can't lose."

"See, I knew you gamed the system."

Pearl did not turn around.

"On the count of three?" Zeke asked. Together, they said, "One. Two. Three." There was a brief pause. "You should have chosen scissors."

"That would have been too obvious," Matt said. "You just said I never choose scissors so you had to know I would choose scissors so I couldn't choose scissors because you'd know it. Hence, the rock."

"Hence the paper, covering your rock. You ask her."

"Well played, my friend," Matt said. "Well played."