Affinity

Chapter 4: The Senior Year List

Seven years later

Thursday, August 2, 2012

About three weeks prior to Prologue

The pewter grey Toyota Highlander screeched to a stop, unexpectedly flinging the teens in the backseat forward. The seatbelt bit into Nastia's lower stomach as her forehead collided with the back of the leather headrest of the front passenger seat, where Pam's stepdad Bob sat. Pam had grabbed onto what she calls the "oh shit" handle and Nathaniel, her thirteen-year-old brother in the very backseat, groaned in immense displeasure when his Sprite spilled all over his lap. Her other younger brother, nine-year-old Sam, paid no mind to anything outside of his Nintendo DS.

"Mom!" Nathaniel yelled.

Tammy Barnes honked her horn at the devil red Ford Fusion who just swung into their parking spot in the busy lot outside the local superstore. "You have got to be kidding me!" she exclaimed.

Pam joined her mom in her astonishment. "Wow, what an a-hole! We were waiting for the spot for like ten minutes!"

"Let's move the car along. Find another spot," Bob urged his wife and like the true sea-loving "Mainah" he was, Bob had no love for the r sound so 'car' sounded like 'cah'. When he wasn't in front of a TV screen watching one of his New England teams play, Bob was a calm soul. His wife and stepdaughter, however, were a different story.

"No, I want to give this little floozy a piece of my mind!" Tammy rolled down her window. A couple of cars were already lining up behind their car waiting.

"Mom!" Nathaniel complained again. "I spilled my drink on me!"

"Is it on the seats?"

"No."

"Oh, good. You'll live."

"What?! Mom!"

"Stop whining, you big baby," Pam snapped at her brother while Nastia giggled.

"Shut up! I'm not whining!"

"Yes, you are!"

Nastia spoke up over the sibling's bickering, "She seems to be taking her time getting out, Tammy. And there is a line behind us."

"Little flatfoot is right. You're making it a big deal, hun," Bob added.

Bob always called Nastia this. She now knew there was a fatherly endearment to the nickname, but she never quite understood why he called her that. He said it is because she is not a "mainah", but she is also not a "dirty Yankee". That didn't explain it but seemed to be enough of an explanation to him.

Just then, the red door of the offending car flew open.

"Oh! She is getting out!" Pam squealed in Nastia's ear.

Tammy practically leaned out her window to yell. Nastia slouched down in her seat and face palmed. It felt like no matter which family she was with, her biological vampire one or the one she now viewed as 'her human family', they always had a flair for dramatics.

"Hey! Who the hell do you think you are? Are you blind? We were going to park there!"

A frail old woman hunkered out of the car. With a little purse looped over her shoulder, she gripped her "oh shit" handle to pull herself upright. Holding a wrinkled hand to her ear, she squinted her eyes towards Tammy, whose head was still out of the window. "What was that, dear?"

Tammy faltered.

"'Aye. Real floozy, that one," Bob chuckled.

"Well, she--I---," Pam's mom yelled back out, "Nothing!"