"Mom? When are we going to be there?"
Cade (Cadelynn) Borcher's tone from the back of their gray Honda station wagon sounded restless and annoyed as she pried off her headphones that no longer, thanks to dead batteries, murmured it's usual mix of The Barenaked Ladies and Matchbox 20. They had been traveling from their small "village" of yellow springs in Ohio to the small Canadian town of Pleasantville for at least the last 5 hours, stopping only for food and once for a reststop in Indiana, and frankly, she was getting tired of the endless trek down the highway. And if the long drive itself didn't tick her off enough, There was the fact that, along with all the other little annoyances she could NOT stand, Her CD Player dying, her dad singing along to the radio, her mom's constant reading, Cade's head hurt from staring at the yellow line snaking itself along the side of the road too long. She supposed this was partly her fault. It wasn't as if someone MADE- her stare at it.
Her mom looked over her shoulder to her 17 yr. old brown haired daughter after a minute of silence following the question. "Soon enough hon. Just relax." Cade watched as she shifted in her seat and back to her book with barely a word to her father, who hummed along to the radio.
Cade looked to her own book, a Musty and yellowed copy of The Two Towers she had finished during the long stretch between Chicago and Indiana and snorted. Yeah. Her mom could say soon enough because she actually had something to read. She always did, and it was ALWAYS a damned mystery. She, on the other hand, had nothing. In the packing, she had stupidly NOT saved any books to put in her backpack for the long trek to their new house. Unless you counted an old copy of Punk magazine, but that you usually didn't. This whole lot of having nothing to do turned into a whole lot of thinking. This usually happened to her, because when she had nothing to do, She had time to think, and when she thought, it was usually about every bad thing that might or had happen to her, and she thought of all the evil "what If's" that could pop out of the closet at any time, like some monster from a 4 yr old's nightmare.
What would her school be like?
She had learned about the school she was going to early on but, even though Pleasantville wasn't TOO big, it would be a big leap from Yellow springs High School, with it's graduating class of 35. She supposed she wouldn't fit in, and that she'd be shoved into lockers, or pushed into drinking fountains. This had never REALLY happened to her before, but she supposed this school was big enough to hold one shithead who thought they'd give it a try. |Great| Cade thought bitterly. |With my luck, I'll get permanently stuck, and the first day of school they'll have to call the Pleasantville fire brigade to get me loose. | She had an uncanny power to get herself suck in the strangest situation possible, and the even more uncanny power of having everyone show up at the right moment to laugh at her.
Soaking this thought in like a sponge on a counter after it's been washed, Her Eyes gazed out the winding scenery before them, a blinding flash of trees then dirt, than passing cars and the occasional truck, then to the road going by under the car. No matter how hard she tried, her eyes went right back to the damn little yellow line that she silently thought would haunt her until the day she died. Cade heard her mom's sigh as she shifted in her seat, turning a page. Apparently the trip was finally getting to her. As the rhythmic hum of the engine revving soothed her into mild sedation, she began thinking once more.
What iftheir neighbors turned out to be creepy people?
This thought stemmed from cade's remembrance of their very last neighbor in yellow springs, the one in the icky tin roof house next door, which was separated by thorn bushes, the house which kept a dozen or so stray cats, and whenever the old woman who owned the said house went off somewhere, she was always the one who had to feed the damn scrawny things. She HAD felt sorry for them, as they huddled around the milk saucer yowling hungrily, but as one scratched her for getting to close to it, she had not resisted all urges to kick it across the room, which the old lady found out, and of course had banned Cade from ever taking care of her "precious pussies" again. She had said this as if it was a PRILVAGE to take care of the furballs. It all had worked out in the end, because a week before they left, the health inspectors kicked her, and her 13 cats out of the tin house, leaving it empty once more.
Like the first time, Cade paused in her thoughts once more, her Pale gray green eyes peering out her window to see if their journey had progressed any. Looking to her Count Chocula wristwatch, she saw, 2 hours had come and gone without her knowledge. This further proved her belief that "spacing out" made long trips, not to mention anything boring go faster than she thought it would. The road before them had changed to a traffic of cars, coming in all cavalcade of colors and makes. She listened to her mother and fathers discuss the toll for the tollbooth, and after that bridge was crossed, what highway or exit they needed to take. As her parent's voices turned to a drone, the seemingly final thought, although it had unconsciously crossed her mind sense they pulled out the driveway of their empty house.
What if they found out she was a vampire?
Okay, so this was her family's one BIG Secret, one of the reasons she thought she was "pretty cool". It was a secret, which she had managed to keep pretty much safe sense the day she had grown her tiny fangs. Looking at this now, cade supposed this was the one would thing that would be enough to give them away. They weren't always there, (although cade could ALWAYS feel them.). She had normal teeth, after having braces for a year. They came out only on two occasions A) If she was "Excited" in some way (she found this unlikely, because she doubted any guy would for her) and, B) She was so hungry the thought of human blood was a good one.
Other than her fangs, and her slightly pale skin, and the way she sometimes dressed, (green Baggy pants, a black shirt that said In crude white lettering "If I Throw a stick, will you go away?") she looked quite normal, like the average teenager. This was because she had not been bit to become this way. She had been born quite naturally a vampire because her mother, an aspiring newswoman and father, an aspiring writer, quite normal looking, also were vampires, and when she had a child, she also would be a vampire and so and so on down the line as long as she could go. But cade's mother and father hadn't dwindled much in the thought of that they were what they were. There had been no "Family reunions" in Transylvania. (This had been cade's favorite joke sense she could understand it) Infact, if she brought up the subject (which was very rate), her mother, or father (it didn't matter who you asked, both would give you the same reply) would stiffly look at her then give cade a look as if she had grown another head on her slender shoulders. Looking at this now, she had to laugh, because, if cade didn't have the constant her reminder of her fangs, she herself (and others) would've thought she was just a girl who particularly didn't like the sun.
Infact, until the day cade actually BIT someone, nobody yellow springs had known the Borcher family were vampires.
Okay. This was the thing. She hadn't really MEANT to bite the guy, who had been her former boyfriend (So she had been with one or two guysthey always dumped her). He had been, more than frisky and as his hands wondered where they should've, He soon found, to his surprise (and cades) Her fangs in his neck. It had happened as quickly as a shot, but looking back, cade thought the whole ideal seemed to take hours, the event moving in slow mo. Of course her parents had found out (to their horror) and had called 911, even though they knew he was dead as soon as the blood hit the ground (or, seeing the marks, the EMT's made sure he wouldn't, in their words "spring back to life"). The town's local newspaper, a day later, boasted a headline reading VAMPIRE GIRL IN Y.S.! That was when cade's mother figured it was time to move. They moved so much, that cade got used to having their house in shambles, Boxes on the floor.
As this thought, like all the others, although this one with more painful memories, soaked through, Cade looked up. She hadn't noticed, In her almost state of half sleep, that the car had stopped, and was in the driveway of a nice looking suburb house. Her father's hand was soon on her slender shoulder, waking his daughter awake.
"Hey cade!" he said. "We're home!"