Contrary to my assumptions, my parents hadn’t realized how much they had been restricting me until I told them directly. After some discussion, we came to an agreement on what my rights and responsibilities were, and they promised they would try not to lecture so much anymore. Before I go to bed, my mom approaches me and says she’s glad I opened up to them. I realize then how little I ever speak about what I want from other people. Maybe it isn’t the world that’s closed off to me, after all.
School is the same the next day, but somehow different. I’m different. I laugh a little more and speak my mind a bit more freely. It’s funny how the more I talk, the more people listen to me. They say I seem to be in a really good mood, and I smile. “Just a little,” I tell them.
I miss the bus on purpose today, instead making my way to the park and settling against the usual tree. The leaves left clinging to the branches are sparse and trembling in the open air, staring down at their fellows blanketing the ground as I unzip my backpack and pull out Cyclamen. Opening to a random page, I’m about to start reading but am interrupted by the sound of my name. Kat is jogging my way, her jangling chains and ripped jeans attracting varying looks from children and parents alike. I stand up to greet her with a smile.
“Hey.” She stops in front of me, adjusting the hem of her v-neck. “I don’t usually see you here this early.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever met you here before five or six,” I agree.
“Yeah, normally I’m at home doing homework, but I thought I’d take some time off today. I’ve got a lot on my mind.”
“Like what?” I prompt, but Kat diverts the question with a shrug, plopping down in the grass cross-legged.
“Just stuff. Hey, what book is that?”
I glance at Cyclamen, seating myself in front of her, and hold it up for her to see. “It’s Trystain’s. I keep forgetting to take it out of my backpack.”
Taking the book from me, Kat flips through a few pages and raises a brow. “Trystain lent this to you? I thought he hated romance novels.”
“It’s not exactly romance,” I amend. “He wrote it. It’s his life as a human.”
An expression I can’t identify flickers across Kat’s face and then melts into a soft smile. “He must really trust you,” she says. I shrug uncertainly and fiddle with my fingers. After flipping through the pages one more time, she hands the book back to me and leans against the tree.
“You guys are really a like, you know,” she informs me. “You really are fond of each other, aren’t you?”
I’m about to deny the second part, but after thinking about it for a moment, I have to concede, “I guess so. I think…I think I trust him more than anyone else. It’s like I can tell him anything.”
A little chuckle bubbles out of Kat’s throat, followed by a low, breezy sigh, and she rests her head against the tree, staring up through its naked branches.
“I guess,” she murmurs, still wearing the faintest of smiles, “I never had a chance, huh?”
A long second passes as I start to comprehend the meaning behind her words, and her protective nature suddenly makes sense.
“I’m so sorry,” I blurt, but she waves it off cheerfully.
“It’s okay. I guess I got a little too attached to you. I’m sorry.”
“You shouldn’t apologize,” I insist. “It’s not your fault. And even if I don’t feel that way about you, I still like you a lot. I—”
I stop abruptly as I realize what I’m about to say. I love you. It’s hypocritical. I can’t love like other people. Pushing that twisted kind of attachment onto her with those three sacred words wouldn’t be right, wouldn’t be fair. Not when she’s offered me the same sacred words—even if she never actually said them—with the love I’ve always needed; naïve, earnest, and pure. But… Maybe this is what I’ve always needed. “Real” love, instead of the searing, shattering substitute that I share with Trystain. Maybe I could become pure again. Maybe I could learn to love like everyone else. Maybe I could be normal.
Kat muses over my hesitation and then smiles wistfully and pulls me into a hug. “I love you too,” she says, and it’s the saddest confession I’ve ever heard. She’s warm and soft to the touch, and her hair smells faintly of apple-scented shampoo. She feels like love. Folded in her arms, I know that I love her naively, earnestly, purely, and that she loves me the same way. But I also know that I’m not at all naïve, I am rarely earnest, and I can never again consider myself pure. The only untarnished piece of me left is entrusted to Kat. I’m comfortable with that. It’s enough.
Shifting, I reciprocate her embrace.
“Thank you,” I whisper. I feel her squeeze me just a little tighter, and something wet drips onto my shoulder. She only ever sheds the one tear.
It isn’t until the next day that I really start to think about the three of us—Kat, Trystain, and I—as one unit instead of three combinations of two. We are an entity separate from the ignorant world. We know pain. We know about vampires. We are a leech and two donors, and two of the damned and one rejectee, and two who bicker and one who is just happy to have them both dragging her out of her downward spiral.
“Hey, are you listening?” Kayla waves a hand in front of my face, bringing me back to the current state of affairs—that is, walking home from school because we “accidentally” missed the bus again. I blink always my daydreams.
“Yeah, I hear you,” I lie. Kayla doesn’t seem quite convinced. I brace myself for complaint, but the first thing that she says is, “Are you okay?”
My brow crinkles. “What do you mean?”
“You seemed like you were really depressed for a while, but then you got really happy recently. Did something happen?”
I don’t know how to respond. I had no idea that anybody had noticed I’d been down. I thought I was just suffering alone, unobserved, ignored. Maybe I’d wanted it that way because I wasn’t ready for anyone to know about my “dirty” side, the side that would take a razor and use it. Am I even ready now? It’s been a secret for so long, I’m not even sure what to tell and what not to.
I don’t want to start crying again. So I smile, an honest, multifaceted smile that doesn’t hide but doesn’t reveal either, and I say, “I’ll tell you some other time.”
Kayla regards my face for a moment and then hugs me, and I wrap an arm around her too as we start across an intersection, only to shove her away as a BMW roars our way, tires squealing against the brakes, and the license plate is white and the car is gunmetal gray and the sound of the impact is black, and then sky, and then air, and then pavement.
The traffic signal flicks from yellow to red. I can’t breathe, but I see the red.
It’s almost black against the asphalt.
