Vanity Teens

Chapter Six

A.N. I forgot to cast Ari's lovely mother, Viktoria, who will be played by Kate Beckinsale. Do you like Viktoria so far? I feel like I don't hate her yet, but she's interesting. What do you guys think?

Chapter Six:

The sky was darkening in London by the time we were readying to leave the city. It was a crescent moon tonight, an ominous moon, and I was surprised that I could actually see the stars.

The taxi we took was speeding through the streets of London like a roller-coaster, fast and blurry. The lights all around were just bright orange, yellow, red, and green blurs that flittered and fluttered on by.

Benny and I began a counting game: I had to count all the red double-decker buses I saw, and she had to count all of the red telephone boxes she could. Whoever counted a hundred first, won, and I obviously won.

"What's your costume, then, Sam?" Benny asked him, as he sat beside her silently. He was a quiet kid, and I knew it must have something to do with secrets. I hadn't figured out his tell yet, to see when he was lying, but I would. His face always seemed so blank of expression or deep in depression, he was a brood. But everyone has a tell. Biting their nails, fidgeting with their fingers or hair, blinking, or just raising an eyebrow. I would find his, yes I would.

"Werewolf." Figures, since I was a vampire. Oh, the cliche of life was too overwhelming. "What are you going as?"

"A vampire."

"Well, I'm a Queen Bee," she said, whipping out the costume from her carrier bag.

When we arrived at Vienna's, we saw one of the biggest houses on Gleurmere Grove: Plumb Estate. It was a fancy house, to say the least, and it was by far bigger than my own. It was at least two hundred years old, but it had been built over and refurbished hundreds of times since then.

Yet apparently, Vienna's family hadn't tended to the garden as well as they did to the house, or maybe such a wild garden looked nice. It did, surprisingly. I liked how the twisty vines wrapped around the house and over the great glass windows, reaching to the eighth floor. It was definitely a Georgian house, like the amazing ones I'd once seen in Bath or Westminster.

"This is her house?" Sam asked, completely struck dumb. He was stunned.

"Yeah," Benny said, nodding. We'd seen better.

"And you're sure it isn't the Queen's?"

"No," I told him, trying not to show any arrogance in my voice. It was terribly hard. I was trying to be less cruel to him, I'd decided to get over it. He was so nice that I was starting to feel shitty about myself whenever I teased him, and self-hatred wasn't me at all. "The Queen's aren't as good as this!"

"Are you sure?"

"Positive."

The taxi driver informed us of our arrival, so we began changing into our costumes there and then, in the back of a cab. Classy, aren't we? Thankfully, I didn't have one of those plastic vampire teeth that weird out the mouth, I had two separate sets of singular teeth that clasped onto my cuspids to give me fangs. I rocked them, obviously. My costume was relatively easy to put on, but Benny's was trouble.

"Will you strap up my bee-rump?" she had asked me.

"I'd be honoured to," I said, as I attached the straps around her waist. I couldn't stop laughing at how she looked. She had a massive ass because of that bee-rump, and it was just hilarious. Sam's costume was a furry monster that zipped up along the back, with a mask that he kept down like a hood.

Thank fuck he didn't ask me to strap him up, too. That'd be weird.

In a good way.

We paid the taxi driver and entered Plumb Estate, with Vienna Plumb waiting for us at the door.