Chapter 1:
A New Beginning
Pop! Squilch...Pop! Squilch!
Brushing thick black strands away from her face, Vanessa Roberts hesitantly stepped out of the light and into the dark hallway searching in the darkness for the source of the noise. A melted, indistinguishable mass of puke green goo oozed itself toward her like a slinky. Every time it popped up from its suctioned hold on the stone ground below she heard a Bwalkand then a disgusting Gwalkas it landed down again. Released from her-deer-in-the-headlights trance, Vanessa screeched, "AAAHHH!" and tired to run away, but every time she turned around, the blob was no farther than before.
Squeal!The rickety metal bed beneath Vanessa protested loudly as she bent forward quickly, her back ramrod straight and neck aching with strain. She panted heavily at the memory of her nightmare and could see her breath in the cold air of her empty, musty basement. Vanessa reassuringly repeated, "Monsters don't exist, Monsters don't exist," but she did not believe herself; she was the monster she ran from. Standing up from her bed with another Squeech,she shivered in shock, not from the below freezing air. Instead, she began to smile as the cold air passed through her thin tank top and shorts and refreshed her body and purged her mind of self hatred; an instant relief, it was her form of cocaine. In Newton, Virginia (made up), even during August, snow fell and normal civilians were snuggled up in their warm furry coats, rarely daring to go outside except for work or school; but Vanessa was not normal, and she had not been since 1863. Vanessa had lost her creator and beloved, but stubbornly waited decades for him to come back. She had searched all of the known Vampyre hideouts, and even some unknown. With him gone, she saw no purpose to life and tried suicide almost daily, but she was truly immortal.
Over the years, she had acquired this house, unused except for the basement, numerous Fake IDs, since her date of birth was January 11, 1846, and loved video games, the Internet, and World of Warcraft. She was a typical human nerd-child with too much time on their hands, except she would always be a teenager. "Hmm..." she though, "I bet I could survive in space, since I do not breath air, so I really will live forever." She groaned at the horrifying thought and then trudged over to the kitten calendar on her desk, groaning again, she realized tomorrow was the day she had vowed to try to assimilate as much as possible into...gasp...human high school! Vanessa stared at the stranger on her newest ID, "Who do you think you are? A normal teenager? Ha! Go rot in your basement like you usually do, you coward." It read, Vanessa Marie Roberts, her actual name, but everything else was wrong.
Vanessa had tried to assimilate before in Richmond, Virginia, but her education was barely above a third graders and she failed all of her classes, not to mention she rarely had time to hunt and had accidentally attacked a teacher who tutored her. Not wanting to create a vampire, she had tried to suck her venom out of his veins and then brain wiped him of the experience. The memory still hurt to think about. Discouraged, she had taken a four year break, conveniently when the Xbox 360 had come out, and then took online courses. After graduating "sophomore year," by online standards, she thought she would try becoming a junior at Newton High, and so here she is, biting her nails nervously, finally going. She wanted a future, it was terrible to be stuck at an age, forever, when she was supposed to have dreams of college, jobs, drinking, and guys; but could have none.
After pacing nervously, Vanessa could stall no longer, and began to prepare like a giddy teenage girl, with no fashion sense. Overjoyed at America's transition from dresses to sweat pants, she had little "girly" clothes. Tossing articles and articles of baggy clothing onto her bed she thought morbidly, "So much for fitting in." She settled on jeans and a long sleeve turtleneck with a hooded trench coat and large sunglasses (to avoid the sun). Seeing her reflection on her rarely blank TV screen, she labeled herself as the stereotypical "emo" and shrugged, "Oh well," she thought, "at least people won't waste their time talking to me."
Testing out the sun's rays in the floor level of her house, Vanessa left the house with her keys and locked up. Glad for the immense cloud cover, she nervously whistled an old Confederate Vampyre tune that Charles had hummed as she walked down the road, feeling like a soldier walking into battle. She wish she had not looked up the way to the school a million times so she could get lost and not go, but her feet betrayed her and she soon found herself in a large cement opening with hundreds of shiny new cars, and rusty old cars. "Oh fuck," she thought seeing all of the teenagers. The variety of people astonished her, a group of stoned-looking kids sat outside of the parking lot, two girls wrestled on a square of grass nearby, grabbing hair and scraping faces, some muscle guys tossed a foot ball back and forth over the entry steps, some girls were even doing yoga, walking down the main sidewalk, various tough-looking kids nodded in her direction, probably assuming she was some gang member. "LOL," she thought and then sighed, "I better not say that out loud." She felt the joy rolling off all of them, even the depressed looking ones, and their lives, seemingly simple, confused her with their vulnerability, sensitivity, and hostile emotions. Being a vampire and all, she did not have the teenage hormones that fueled their lives, and she realized that would set her apart largely if she acted cold.
Suddenly, something banged Vanessa hard in the head and she winced, turning around angrily, she saw an adorable little blond rushing over to her. Bending over to pick up a white, plastic disk, she grabbed my hand, shrinking back at the coldness, and said,
"Oh my gosh! Are you okay? I didn't mean to, I j-just tried to throw it and th-then..."
Vanessa stopped her mid-sentence and said, making sure to not show her fangs, "I-it's okay! Don't worry."
"Oh, you must be the new junior girl, I'm Naomi Walters!" Seeing the confusion on Vanessa's face she added, "at a small school like ours, you're the only new girl this year, so we all noticed! Welcome!"
Her words echoed in Vanessa's head, "only new girl...only new girl." "Oh gosh," she thought. "Umm...Hi Naomi. I'm Vanessa. Vanessa Roberts."
"Ooh, what a pretty name. Oh! This is my brother Phil, 'Phil!' she shouted.
Vanessa turned around to see another blond kid rushing over.
"Sorry about the Frisbee!"
Vanessa realized that must be what they were calling the disk that hit her, what a strange name. "Ah...It's ok."
"Just wanted to make sure you hadn't been hit too hard, considering your actually talking to my little sister." He playfully ruffled her hair and said, "but she's only a year younger than I am, I'm a senior." He said it like it was the coolest thing in the world and Vanessa had to fake cough to cover up her laugh.
Just as she felt some small pang of belonging, a loud ding! ding!rang throughout the school yard and Vanessa couldn't help yelping in surprise.
Laughing at the noise, Phil said, "Well, see you girls later, gotta get to class. Oh, and welcome Vanessa."
Vanessa showed Naomi her schedule and asked, "Do you know where this is?"
It turned out they had three classes together, Biology being first, so they headed over together. When they walked in, a stern looking woman said, "Oh so you're the new student! Take off those sunglasses immediately, it's highly disrespectful!"
Not bothering to argue back, Vanessa took them off slowly and the class could not hold back a loud gasp, her eyes were blood red from her recent hunt, there was complete silence as their instincts made them fear her. After a few moments, they each mumbled a "hey" or "hi" or just gossiped to their neighbor about how scary she looked. Vanessa sighed, they had no idea she could hear every word they said.
A random guy asked her as she followed Naomi to a table in the back of the room, "Do you wear color contacts? Those are totally awesome, dude! Uhh... I mean Vanessa."
"Uhh..yeah, thanks." Vanessa replied lamely.
Naomi was extra nice and Vanessa could not help but to assume she had no friends in the class. She leaned over often to mumble some explanation on inside jokes she had missed out on and actually filled Vanessa in on a lot of names and rumors of the others. The class turned out to be behind what she had learned online and she took notes diligently, even daring to smile once or twice. As soon as she exited the classroom, she put on her sunglasses and looked at the ground, blinking rapidly. She lasted the next two classes without her and wanted to refresh a little before lunch where the number of windows were quadrupled and to not reveal she did not eat, yet at least, the nerd in her had calculated it earlier. She looked around the hallways, empty except for a few senior looking guys, and snuck out the front doors. She walked around the building until she found a nice shady spot. Closing her eyes as she leaned against the cold bricks, she took a fresh breath of unessential air and searched in her deep pockets for a cigarette. "Huh?" she thought, "Oh fu-!" she swore aloud, but stopped when she realized someone else had stolen her spot and yelped in surprise.
"Sorry, didn't mean to scare you." the stranger mumbled in a low, gravelly voice. He held a cigarette and exhaled a long column of smoke inches from her face.
"It's ok, didn't mean to take your...uh.. spot." she said quietly, avoiding his deep, brown eyes, barely visible below a sweep of disheveled, black hair, like him...
"No! Don't think of the past!" she told herself silently.
She heard a low, throaty laugh...also quite familiar..."It's OK. You seemed to have forgotten something." He handed her a cigarette identical to his own.
Unable to hold herself back, she gripped his jaw as gently she could and said, "Open your mouth." with a little Vampyre Influence laced in between each word.
Wide eyed, he grabbed his cigarette and opened his jaw as far as it would go. Vanessa inspected his canines, finding nothing unusual and sighed sadly. "S-sorry I thought you were some...someone else." she said pitifully.
Instead of exploding at her, he just laughed his tantalizingly beautiful laugh again and said, "So you looked in my mouth?"
She tried to sound unaffected by it and said, "Ummm...He-They! had a uh...gold tooth, so I was just checking to see if you were them, they had disappeared and all."
He did not press her anymore and said, "Okay? Well, sorry to disappoint you." Actually sounding sorry.
For the next ten minutes, neither talked, not out of awkwardness but a silent peace agreement, forcing Vanessa to think. "Ahhhh," she thought, the cold air and smoking eased her body and mind of pain and she even slid her jacked away from her shoulders and rolled up her sleeves. "Why does he look, and act, so much like him? It feels like torture!" she thought angrily. She was snapped from her inner turmoil as she realized he was staring at her. "Why am I so unobservant around you?" she thought as she stared back in his eyes.
"Damn! You're skin!" he said, astonished.
Thinking her skin had begun to bubble from the exposure, she looked down and said, "What?" in her confusion, and relief.
"It's just really pale, I didn't mean to offend you! It's beautiful really, so smooth like...like snow."
"Oh, thank you." she said awkwardly, and then the end of lunch bell rang, saving her from his attention. "Bi!" she said quickly, stomping her cigarette in the cement and running off pulling her sunglasses, hood, and sleeves back on.
All she could think of for the rest of her day, as Naomi whispered questions about where she had gone, was him. It was only before slamming her locker door shut to head for PE with Naomi and Phil that she realized she did not know his name. "Maybe I can ask him tomorrow, if he is there again." she thought, "Probably not, he would not want his girlfriend or whoever to get suspicious." She tried to distract herself with aimless conversation about sports with Phil, but she could not stop wondering, "Maybe he does not have a girlfriend...No! Him? Impossible..." but she wanted it to be true. "What's so great about him?" she thought, "He's just an exceedingly handsome, human guy who happens to look a lot like your ex-boyfriend/soul mate. Uggh! This is NOT making me feel better."
When Naomi showed her to the locker room and helped her find her combination and number, she hastily apologized for leaving her and told her where the gym for basketball was.
"Sorry!" she said, "I have to go to soccer practice on the other side of the building, gotta go! Bi! Have fun!"
Vanessa watched her go, her high ponytail swinging over hear thin, graceful shoulders. Naomi had nice, tan legs that always made Vanessa jealous, and a cute, curvy figure. She had never complained about her figure until now, she had no visible muscles, but superhuman strength, smooth, pale legs, and a tall, gangly body, but unnatural grace, "Oh well." she thought, for the millionth time that day.
The basketball coach started off with simple passing drills with a partner. Looking around the room for a vaguely familiar face, she found someone staring at her, "Oh no!" she thought, it was him. Their gazes locked on to each other's for several long moments, and turning around she realized they were both alone. Groaning with giddy apprehension, she walked over to him and said,
"Partners?"
"Sure." he replied, with no trace of emotion.
They did not talk, mostly because Vanessa was determined to play basketball, at least a bit, well; Vanessa assumed he thought she was a freak and was mad at being stuck with such a terrible partner. She tried hard, but failed miserably although Vanessa had a lot of hand-eye coordination from video games. She could never control power while dribbling and it often sprang high up, allowing the defense to take it away, or she would throw too light to a teammate and cause them to have to dive for it. Even if she could control her strength, she lacked the coordination necessary. "I can kill a full grown mountain lion, but I cannot throw a rubber ball in a hole?" she thought morbidly, "I guess my Vampyre abilities do not include human sports, or socialization without Influence, or school."
After Vanessa's partner realized her silence and grim facial expressions were actually from her incompetence at basketball, he smiled frequently and offered her tips while laughing at her failed attempts. Vanessa felt at ease with him, laughing and smiling together, oblivious to the other students' glares; she felt like she had known him forever, not just that day.
Walking back from the gym in pleasant silence, Vanessa wanted to call his name, but she still had not asked what it was, and he had not asked for hers. "Why did I feel so normal with somebody I knew little enough about to not know their name?" she thought, and asked,
"Sorry, I forgot to ask you, but what is your name?"
"Oh, I go by Charlie, you?"
"Vanessa!"
"Ok then, Vanessa, it was nice meeting you." he said in a mock formal tone.
"And you as well." she said, mimicking him with a curtsy.
He laughed again.
He turned around as Vanessa gulped in awareness of the sound, and headed for the boys' locker room, and then Vanessa headed to the girls'.
She walked home, taking a long route to enjoy the cold weather and emptiness of the streets. She felt a slight purpose in her life, a nice change to the emptiness of two hundred years of just following technology. She returned to her dilapidated home with a smile. As she put her coat on her old-fashioned rack, slipped off her heavy boots, and put her backpack down, her cat, Cornelius, padded over loudly to do figure-eights between her legs. "Alright, alright" she said down at him.
"Guess you aren't used to me being gone all day."
Vanessa poured Cornelius' food and sat down with a Creak onto the old, white chairs in the kitchen. She turned on her IPod and speaker. Her favorite song, "Get Over It" by Ok Go blared out and she could not help but dance around in her socks on the slippery tiles. She felt light and giddy and danced to at least three more songs without rhythm. Flushed and excited, she hurried over to her backpack to get started on all the homework she had accumulated. Woah,she thought, now I understand why those internet bloggers complain about high school so much! She had a lot, but actually HAVING to do something felt nice for a change.
