The full title of this chapter is The Washateria Blues (Vampeer Pressure for Dummies)

"Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change."

Chapter 3

MISSY

"Why am I carrying everything?" A beat. "And this still doesn't explain how you get all the blood out of your clothes. Laundromats aren't magic." Missy said, to which Paul replied: "So I can stare at your ass." and "Vampire magic." respectively. Missy definitely believed the former, though not necessarily the latter.

"Eh, you're a half-vampire what do you know?"

Missy could feel every piece of gravel and every crack in the asphalt through her tennis shoes as they walked, and the string of the heavy canvas laundry bag she was carrying was cutting into her wrist and hand —that much she knew.

It was 9 o'clock, the sun had been down for about an hour. It must have rained at some point during the day, and again recently, because there were puddles on the side of the road near the curb, and the warm asphalt still smelled like petrichor. Missy was glad it wasn't raining now —her hair was frizzy enough as it was.

She could barely hold her arm up without the bottom of the bag dragging on the ground. "You could take turns, you know." Paul was humming "California Girls" by David Lee Roth, walking on the edge of the curb like a tightrope, splashing water on her jeans every time he fell off and stomped on the puddles along the side of the road. There were grayish brown splotches all over her shins from the dirty water, but her jeans didn't feel wet.

It was still pretty hot out even with the sun down, so the water was drying almost as fast as Paul could splash her. She was too sweaty to care that much, the base of her ponytail was soaking wet, and the only reason her bangs weren't sticking to her forehead was because they were wet enough to stay that way when she slicked them back. She was already sweating through her light tee shirt, at this point they'd have to wash her shirt too when they got to the laundromat.

Paul was still wearing his jacket. It was like he didn't feel the humidity at all. "Are you sure you're not all lizards?" she asked, wiping her forehead with the back of her arm and staring at Paul's dry face enviously.

"What?" Paul stepped off the curb again, landing in a puddle that was so deep it got the ankles of her jeans wet when it hit her.

"You're not sweating." Missy pointed out bitterly. There was no part of her that wasn't sweating right now. If she looked half as bad as she felt, then it was a good thing they were the only ones out walking around right now.

"I haven't eaten yet so I'm a little cold." Paul put his hand under her drenched ponytail on the back of her sweaty nape.

Missy sighed happily. "Oh my god, it's like sticking my head in the refrigerator."

Paul grinned carefully and took his hand back. "Since we're on the subject and all,"

Missy opened her eyes and glared at Paul before he could continue. "I'm not in the mood, Paul."

Paul snorted. "Look, I know you got a hard on for doing it on your birthday but you should just rip the Band-Aid off, girl."

Missy turned away from him, tightening her ponytail viciously. "I'm not having this discussion with you again, Paul." She picked the bag up again and started walking away. She didn't get far because the bag weighed almost as much as she did, and Paul's legs were practically as long as she was.

"All I'm saying is we're out here," Paul fell into step beside her immediately. "you could do it tonight, just get it over with. I could show you—"

Missy stopped so abruptly that Paul slammed into her back, almost knocking her onto her face. "Why are you peer pressuring me all of a sudden?"

"I'm not," Paul said, too fast for Missy to really believe him.

"You are!" Missy poked him hard in the chest, for all the good it did. "You've been doing it slightly ever since Dwayne changed me but you've gotten worse the last few days. Why?"

Paul held his hands up placatingly and shrugged with his head. "I just think you're making too big a deal out of it."

"Well, it's my big deal to make," she said. "It's my life, and I've only got a month of it left," her voice cracked. It was a few seconds before she added quietly, "isn't that enough?"

"Yeah, but—"

"Maybe I don't want to be seventeen forever, did you ever think about that?" Being a teenager was hard enough, but being one forever, however long that was, was just about the worst thing she could imagine. Eighteen wasn't that far from seventeen in the grand scheme of things, but it was the last real ground she had to hold with David, and she wasn't giving it up easily. The only thing she could imagine that would be worse than being a teenager forever, was being a child forever. She didn't know how you'd even get by. "Maybe I just want to enjoy being a real person for as long as I can."

"Why?" Paul asked incredulously.

Missy sighed. "Because in twenty-seven days I'm never going to get to be human again. I want to do the things I won't be able to do later for as long as I can now."

"Like what?"

"Like breathing." She said wetly. "And not having to hurt people. Feeling the sun on my face when I want to, and getting older. Maybe I wanted to see what I looked like," she inhaled tremulously. "I don't really look like either of my parents, maybe I wanted to see which one I end up looking like when I get old. Maybe I just wanted to get old at all." She looked down at her shoes, speaking directly into her chest with her chin pressed against her collarbone. "Eighteen is the last real birthday I'm ever going to have, and I want to enjoy it as a human. I want to eat a stupid cake and sing happy birthday badly."

"You can still do that as a vampire." Paul said.

"But it won't be real." This was her last real birthday, every one after this one wouldn't count because she wouldn't really be getting any older. She didn't know how long Paul had been a vampire, or how many birthdays he'd celebrated as one, but she could see why he didn't understand how important this was to her. She wasn't ready to be a vampire yet. She knew that a month wouldn't make a difference either, she was never going to be on board with killing people, but like it or not, she made a deal with David, one she couldn't renege on even if she wanted to, and believe me she wanted to. "I don't want to be a vampire, Paul, but I don't have a choice anymore, and I've accepted that, otherwise I'm just going to be miserable forever, so I just want to enjoy being human for twenty-seven more days, okay?"

"I just don't want you to change your mind, that's all." Paul dragged the sole of his boot back and forth on the asphalt.

Missy scoffed sadly. "If I honestly thought David would let me get away with it, I could see why you'd be worried, but you know David better than I do, you know he's expecting me to go through with it. Even if he says he won't force me, you know that won't last forever." It was very like Paul to be so concerned about her changing her mind, it was no secret how he felt about her and about her joining the family. It was sweet, kind of. If she wasn't so scared she could throw up about becoming a full vampire she might think it was endearing.

She couldn't say that Paul's concerns were entirely unfounded either. She hadn't exactly been chomping at the bit to be a full vampire, she could see where he was coming from. She'd given him every reason to think she was going to back out of her deal with David when the day finally came, despite the fact that both of them knew David would never let her, and if not David, then certainly Max.

She was still frankly terrified of the head vampire, no matter how harmless he seemed —especially how harmless he seemed.

Keeping Max's existence a secret was harder than it sounded when the people from whom she was supposed to be keeping him a secret were mind readers, but to their credit, Star and Laddie had been giving her, in addition to a wide berth, her privacy, as much as they could anyway. She had no way of knowing if they were telling the truth about not dipping in her thoughts, but she chose to believe them anyway for her own peace of mind.

"My arm is killing me, here." She swung the bag at Paul, but it was so heavy she couldn't really get any momentum behind it and it hit him halfheartedly in the knees. Paul looked like he wanted to keep arguing —that or he was breathing through his mouth, and considering Missy knew for a fact that full vampires like Paul didn't actually breathe, she was inclined to believe it was the former rather than the latter. "I don't want to keep fighting about this, Paul, it's between David and me, and really it should just be between me and me because it's my decision, not yours, and certainly not David's." She added in sotto voce, which was as pointless as Paul breathing through his mouth. He could hear her regardless.

She didn't even have the privacy of her own thoughts. That was the only thing that hadn't completely changed since she became a half-vampire. Most notably was her relationship, or lack thereof anymore, with the brothers Frog.

She missed Edgar and Alan so much she could barely breathe sometimes. It was like a hole in her chest that opened up again every time she thought about them, ripping the scab off again before it could even remotely begin to heal.

Her falling out with the Frog brothers wasn't directly Dwayne's fault —indirectly it was absolutely Dwayne's fault, but really it was her own fault for not putting some distance between them before Edgar and Alan got hurt because of her and not after. Really it was down to bad luck and Edgar's suspicious nature, which she didn't account for when she went to say goodbye.

At least David had more or less agreed to leave them be despite the fact that they knew their secret. She checked on them every night anyway to make sure that David wasn't going back on his word, and to remind herself that all this suffering wasn't for nothing. She may be a monster-in-training, but Edgar and Alan were safe in spite of her, and that was all that mattered to her anymore.

That didn't make it hurt less, and she was just torturing herself, something which Marko pointed out every time she went to see them (making sure they didn't see her too). It was everything she could do not to try to talk to them, to apologize and try to explain her side of things, but she knew even if they would humor her long enough for her to try —which they wouldn't, Edgar said they'd kill her if they ever saw her again, that even in the parallel universe where they actually forgave her, she knew they were safer off without her.

Paul mercifully took the bag from her and swung it over his left shoulder like it weighed nothing at all. Missy heard him take a quiet unnecessary breath and cautiously braced herself. "You really want a cake for your birthday?"

Missy laughed. Paul started to sing the chorus of "California Girls" at the top of his lungs as they walked, and for the next couple of minutes, the hole in her chest didn't bother her as much.

"What made you want to be a vampire?" Missy halfheartedly kicked her legs so that her ankles swung back and hit the washer she was sitting on, making a hollow metallic cacophony that accompanied Billy Ocean's "When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Get Going" that was playing overhead. That was irony for you, even the radio was mocking her now.

Paul popped the stale bubblegum he found in the pocket of the jeans that had been sitting on top of the washer when they came in with his teeth and shrugged, which was about as deep of an answer as she was expecting from someone like Paul. "I don't know." Paul shrugged again. "I mean, why wouldn't you wanna be a vampire?"

This line of conversation felt dangerously repetitive. "I can think of a few reasons." Missy said petulantly, which Paul mostly ignored, except for the quiet "ha" he made in response. "Do you ever wish you'd changed your mind?" She knew the answer before she even asked. She very much doubted that Paul had ever regretted anything in his whole life. The much louder "ha!" from Paul confirmed this.

She tapped the backs of her heels against the washer solemnly, blowing her now dry but still incredibly gross feeling bangs off her forehead.

Paul pushed a small pile of dirty clothes across the floor with his foot and slapped her on the knee with his icy hand. "Lift your legs," he said.

Missy pulled her legs up onto the washer with her, perching her heels on the edge of the machine and wrapping her arms around her knees. She could feel how cold Paul was even in that brief second. He must have been really hungry.

Paul neither confirmed nor denied whether or not he was, but Missy could hear him snapping the stranger's gum as he loaded the washer under her, so maybe that was why he was chewing it in the first place, to fight his hunger pangs.

Paul kicked the washer shut so loudly that the woman folding her clean clothes next to them gave them a dirty look. "Quarter," he held his hand out and Missy lowered her legs so she could put her hand in her pocket. She carefully tugged a Ziploc bag full of quarters out of her jeans and unrolled it. She unzipped the bag and fished out a single quarter that was painfully warm from being pressed up against her thigh compared to Paul's fingers when she handed it to him.

"Was it hard?" She asked suddenly.

"Was what hard?" Paul asked, leaning against the row of washers across from her.

"Your first time." Missy realized too late how bad that sounded. "You know what I mean!" She said before the feverishly excited look on Paul's face could lead to him making a joke about erections.

"Okay, Little David." Paul said playfully.

Missy glared at him. "Just answer the question."

"What was the question?" Missy knew that Paul knew damn well what the question was, but she also knew she wasn't getting anything out of Paul until she humored him and asked him again if it was hard.

"That's what she said."

"Paul!"

He chewed on his cuticle and laughed so hard that his weight against the washer made it rock slightly. "Sorry." Paul cleared his throat. "Ask me again."

"No." Missy said petulantly. "You're not going to take it seriously, I'm not going to try to talk to you."

"God, you're a buzz-kill sometimes." Paul sighed, though it wasn't as venomous as it sounded.

Missy didn't point out that Paul was supposed to be her friend and she was going through a really rough time, something he'd already been through, mind, so excuse her for trying to get a little comfort and perspective from him.

"Buzz-kill." Paul said again, this time noticeably more affectionately.

"Was it though?" Missy chewed on her lip. "Difficult," she said pointedly. "I mean."

Paul pursed his lips in thought, giving Missy the brief hope that he would actually answer her, hope which was immediately shattered when he dramatically said "Nah," followed by: "our teeth are really sharp."

"I'm aware," Missy snapped. "but you know that's not what I meant."

The woman's voice humming what felt like a lullaby to Missy that was playing now through the speaker mounted on the corner of the wall near them made Missy's ears perk up, the way certain smells reminded you of the past. It was so familiar to her, but she didn't know why. It was like trying to remember a dream after waking up. "Who sings this?" She asked out loud, more for her own benefit than Paul's, but he heard her anyway.

"Barbra Streisand." Paul said absently. "The Way We Were."

Missy stared at him. "Why do you know that?"

Paul shrugged. "Used to play on the radio all the time."

Yeah, but how long ago? Because this song reminded her of being a little kid, of her mother humming it while she gave her a bath.

Speaking of her dearly departed mother, it had been weeks since she heard from her —if she had ever really heard from her in the first place, but she had seen neither hide nor hallucination of her mother since the night Patrick and Eden died. She wished she could say the same for Patrick.

She still didn't know if that was her mother's ghost or a product of her overactive and sadistic imagination, but regardless of whether they were real or not, she missed them. It was the first time in seven years, longer if you took into account just how long her mother had been out of her mind, that her mom had really talked to her. Even if it wasn't real, it had been nice, and it was now more than ever that she really needed an Obi Wan. With everything that was going on with David and Max, and especially with the Frog brothers' abrupt exodus from her life, she could really use someone to talk to.

"You could talk to us."

Missy sighed. "It's not the same and you know it." Although all of them had been through what she was going through before, none of them really sympathized with her. They couldn't. It had been so long since any of them had been in her shoes, they just genuinely couldn't understand, even Paul, who hadn't been a vampire for as long as the rest of them had, had still been one for too long to really know how she felt.

They might, she thought, if she even tried to talk to any of them, but she didn't. Maybe if she was being honest with herself, she still hadn't forgiven any of them for what happened with Patrick. Having Patrick hanging around to torture her didn't help. It was a constant reminder of that night, and the longer it went on that she didn't tell them about her hallucinations, the worse and more isolated she felt. She convinced herself that they either wouldn't or couldn't understand what she was going through, so there was no point in trying to make them. Even with Patrick haunting her, she felt incredibly alone.

She was incredibly alone.

"And I've asked you not to read my mind, Paul." She knew he largely couldn't help it, but it was the cherry on top of the cake that was all of her other problems, and honestly it was just the easiest one to deal with right now. "If I thought any of you actually cared, I might," at Paul's unhappy expression. "maybe cared isn't the right word, but if I thought any of you might understand, or if there was something to be done about it, I might tell you. But it's done with." Talking about it now would be like closing the barn door after the horses already ran away. It might make her feel better in the short term, but at the end of the day, she would still be a half-vampire, and talking about it wouldn't make her feel better about that.

Paul shifted his weight from one foot to the other and clucked his tongue, inhaling dramatically like there was something else he wanted to say, but didn't.

Missy was glad he didn't. She stuck her hands in her pants pockets, which did little to make either of them feel less awkward.

Of all the things she'd lost or had been irrevocably changed by her being a half-vampire, the worst one had to be how all of her relationships had been affected. None of them had gone unscathed, sure, some of them had gotten off light by comparison, but none of them had been left intact. Not all of them were as worse off as her relationship with Edgar and Alan (or Eden, for that matter, if they were talking who'd faired worst for being friends with her, it was definitely Eden), but despite Dwayne's...noblest of intentions, she still resented them all for it, even Paul and Marko. The only person she could say for certain whose relationship with her hadn't been fundamentally changed by her being turned into a vampire was David. They still more or less hated each other, and she could still barely stand to be in the same room as him, but if the fact that he was no longer trying to actively kill her was an improvement, it was the only one so far since she became a half-vampire.

Maybe Paul was right and everything would get better when she made her first kill. Maybe everything just sucked right now because she was in purgatory, caught between her human life and her life as a vampire, but not quite either. Maybe so, but she'd take a half life as a half-vampire versus no life at all.

"How much longer?" She sighed.

"Forty-five minutes," Paul replied without looking behind her at the washing machine. "Wanna play twenty questions?"

Missy huffed through her nose. "What I want is not to stand here for forty-five more minutes. Can't I just meet you at the boardwalk?" She knew the answer already without asking.

"David wants—"

"Wants us to stick together, I know." Missy sighed again. "You're my babysitter. Was it like this when you and Marko and Dwayne were half-vampires? Or does David just not trust me because I'm me?"

"It's only been a couple weeks, Miss." Paul said.

"Don't remind me."

"David just doesn't want you to kill someone before, you know."

Missy raised her eyebrows sarcastically. "Before I'm actually supposed to kill someone, you mean?" She asked dryly.

"Yeah." Paul pushed off the washing machine and came over and stood next to her, bumping her shoulder with his. "He'll lighten up on the leash eventually. He's just careful, you know?"

Missy leaned back on Paul automatically. "I know." She kept hearing how it was going to get better, but she had yet to see any evidence of that. Missy caught the corner of her bottom lip with her teeth and bit it. "We don't have to tell him," she said casually, as casually as she could when her heart was already racing at the thought of trying to keep anything from David. "What's forty-five minutes? Even I can manage for that long."

"No way."

"I'll stay out of trouble —I won't talk to Edgar or Alan, I promise." The latter was an easy compromise, she didn't really want to talk to either of them after the way they left things.

"This is your only free pass." Edgar said. "Next time we see each other, it's gonna be at opposite ends of a stake."

The worst part about such an indictment was she knew Edgar actually meant it. He might get him and his brother both killed trying, but he would kill her if he got the chance.

"David'll find out." Paul said, exhaling hard like he was smoking even though he wasn't. "He always does."

Missy huffed. "I don't really care about David." That was both true and untrue. Mostly she just didn't care about David's arbitrary and unfairly stringent rules that only seemed to apply to her. Even if that wasn't true, she thought, preempting the argument she could see between Paul's ears, that was how it felt. Star and Laddie were half-vampires too, and Laddie was just a little boy, yet David gave them way more free reign than he did her. "And don't say it's because they've been half-vampires longer than me." If anything, that should make them less trustworthy than her. Star had to be practically feral her hunger pangs were probably so bad, and she gave no indication that she was ever planning to be a full vampire, something which Missy, albeit reluctantly, had already set a date for.

And oh yeah, she wasn't going around behind David's back wishing he was dead, so there was that.

It was little consolation that David trusted her enough to protect Max's secret, she'd rather not know about him, but despite the fact that David refused to let her go out on her own, that he introduced her to Max said a lot about what David thought about her longevity as a vampire. Terrifying as meeting Max was, it was as close to a compliment as David was capable of giving.

Missy sighed heavily through her nose. "Twenty questions, you said?"

"Why do you look nervous?" Missy struggled to keep pace with Paul, who was walking away from her like he just got done robbing a bank. The bag was slowing her down, so Paul took it from her without stopping when she got close enough to him for him to take it. She was already out of breath, and sweating again. "Paul!"

"I don't look nervous," Paul said, but the way his feet beat the pavement like it owed him money spoke volumes.

"You can't even see the way you look right now." Missy panted. "You're whiter than a sheet which for a guy who can't get a tan is really saying someTHING!" Paul grabbed her by the elbow without looking and yanked her up next to him. Even with him holding onto her arm, it was tough to keep up with him. "Are we late for something I don't know about?" She huffed, hooking her elbow through Paul's to give her any hope at all of not falling behind. Even so, it felt like Paul was two seconds away from tearing her arm out of the socket anyway.

"Yeah."

Okay.

Missy pulled her arm back and looked both ways before she let Paul drag her across the street. Just because getting creamed by a car wouldn't kill him didn't mean she would be so lucky. But who knows, for all she knew it wouldn't kill her either. Half-vampires could clearly die, just look at Eden, though maybe it was easier for a full vampire to kill a half-vampire, or maybe she was right, and being half human meant she was still 100% vulnerable. "What are we late for?" She asked, knowing full well that Paul was too distracted to answer her.

"What time is it?" Paul asked, trying to grab her left arm with the hand that used to be holding her elbow to look at her watch.

"Easy!" Missy yanked her arm out of his reach, which was harder than it sounded even though she was actually taller than Paul, he had reach on her easily. She spun her watch around to look at it. "It's ten twenty-two, why?"

"Fuck." Paul said, but that was all he said before breaking into what felt like a sprint to Missy, but was really a light jog.

"Is David going to kill you?" Missy asked, trying to lighten the mood.

Paul huffed tensely, but he was smiling under his breath. "Probably, yeah."

The neon lights of the boardwalk hit their faces like the sun in the afternoon, and Missy looped her arm through Paul's again, patting his chest absently. "Just tell him it was my fault. I'm sure he'll blame it on me anyway," she added quietly.

David, Dwayne and Marko were standing by Paul's bike, theirs were nowhere to be seen. A graveyard of cigarettes of varying degrees of smoked surrounded David's feet.

"You're late," he said right away.

"It was my fault," Missy said, though the look David gave her said he didn't believe her. "I was being slow." Now that David looked like he believed. "But if I had known we had plans," she said tartly. "I would have taken longer."

"Missy, enough." Marko said. "Not the time."

"Why?" Missy asked, reaching out to take her jacket off the back of Paul's bike. "What's happening tonight?" She could hear her heart beating faster already.

"I don't have time to explain to you. Anymore." David said pointedly. He threw his cigarette on the ground and stepped on it. "Just keep your mouth shut and your thoughts to yourself," good luck there. "and don't talk to them, even if they talk to you directly, unless I tell you to. Let's go."

Missy put her jacket on and untucked her hair from the collar absently. "They?"

Thank you for reading.

Attention Breaking Pointers, Missy stans, and Mavid shippers, I have a question for YOU! Two questions, to be exact: what's the biggest unanswered question from The Breaking Point you're most looking forward to having answered in The Ticking Crocodile, and which new character are you most excited about? Returning characters don't count, looking at you Mavid shippers. I'd love to hear from you guys, in the meantime, I'll be over here. The next chapter will be out in—

Get it? It's a Soprano ending. Next chapter will be out when it's out. See you soon!