Bonnie wakes.
From dreams of nothing, nothing at all.
Sunlight welcomes her through curtain-less windows and through the dotted holes in the second floor and the farmhouse roof, warming her face.
She covers her eyes with the back of her hand.
Her tongue is sand-paper and she feels like someone has taken a hammer to the side of her temples.
First time drinking and she had drank too much.
"You will have to learn to hold your alcohol if you are to be my drinking companion."
"But you aren't normal."
"And neither are you."
Flat on her back, she rolls to her side on the sleeping bag with the Walmart price tag brushing up against her apple cheek.
She had slept in a room on the first floor that had once been a library.
Water damage marks the walls, wavy brown lines showing the depth of each flood that ruined the home year after year. The still intact red brick hearth holds memories of fires from long ago and a bayou landscape oil painting half-eaten by white mold hangs from a nail embedded in the cracked wall, and the other two walls are lined with sagging shelves filled with crumbling bloated books.
And the remnants of her makeshift bath are in the corner where the broken bust of some Greek philosopher rests in pieces. She had washed herself off with twelves bottles of water, let four drench the stink of sweat out of her hair, and the other eight to wash and rinse out her underarms and between her legs and the bottoms of her feet.
Lifting up halfway from the rayon bag, she realizes through the hungover fog that she didn't bother to put on any clothes after her hobo bath, and that despite her efforts she still smells earthy and without proper air conditioning she was going to have to get used to being perpetually sticky.
She rises, her pert brown nipples and the soft v of where her thighs meet are in full view of the window and she wonders where Klaus slept and if he slept at all.
"Did we hate each other when I was alive?"
"Hate is a strong word. I would say that we did not know each other enough to truly hate one another. We did get off on the wrong foot, and that bad impression tainted all of our interactions after that. But I'd like to think that if circumstances had been different, if we had met without the interferences then you and I would have been valuable to one another as we are now. But you ran instead, like you did tonight."
"I ran because I was scared of you."
"I agree that you were scared, it just wasn't me that scared you."
So much has transpired for her in two days, and she can't catch her footing.
The only constant in the flux is Klaus.
Last night he told her he was not her enemy and she wants him to prove it, she wants to believe him. Because if this is to be her new life, at this awkward start, smack at the precipice of adulthood, without anyone in the world to lean on as she builds and breaks down into whomever she is becoming, then who better than the hybrid, the one who has rescued her again and again, even from death.
Klaus is all she knows.
She doesn't immediately reach for the bundle of the new clothes in the blue plastic bags, instead she observes her reflection in the window pane and looks herself over. Now that she can command the wind and fire, her hair looks longer, shinier, more like a lion with a crowning mane. And her eyes, the green is deeper, darker, they are a mossy pool of confidence that was not there before. She runs her fingers over her own face, tracing the lines of her cheeks and over the curve of her lips, fingers parting to caress the side of her mouth where Klaus had kissed.
Noticing the grimoire on the floor at the foot of the sleeping bag, she flips the heavy book open to the middle and she rubs the imprint of script and whispers the name Sheila Bennett. And she realizes that Klaus must have come into the room after she passed out from whiskey and exhaustion.
A rock is thrown at the window, and she strides over to the window sill, holding the grimoire to her heart, and she peers outward to see the vampire staring up at her from the back lawn.
"Come out, love. We have a lot of work to do."
BKBKBKBKBK
Southern Louisiana only has two seasons. Summer and Almost Summer. Summer lasts nine months of the year with a reprieve from the sweltering heat lasting only three months. Almost Summer, that cool part of the year consisting of December, January and February, is when the temperature drops down dramatically to the tepid seventies and people come out their shaded rooms and from under their ceiling fans to engage with one another without fear of heatstroke to picnic and visit their neighbors and sleep on their screened-in porches.
In the middle of September all of this is a distant fantasy.
Mosquitoes bite at the back of Bonnie's legs and the fleshy part of her arms, and she listens to cicadas string a symphony, an ode to heat, and looks out over the entire back yard which is green, green, green. Technicolor green. Green everywhere. Even the pond where Klaus has begun her tutelage and is telling her to walk across is green.
"You can't be serious?" Bonnie says, turning up her lip because even though Klaus calls this grassy hole of water in the back yard a pond, she can't see the bottom.
"If you drown, I will come get you," He smirks, "Now come on with it, Bonnie. Walk across the pond and I will meet you on the other side." He states annoyed with her reluctance.
He leaves her without the encouragement he had shown her previously when it came time for her to display her magic and she feels a little slighted and insecure despite all the growth she had achieved for herself on her own last night.
Pulling at the laces of her boots, she tosses them to the side, bracing herself at the edge of the water in her acid wash shorts and thin t-shirt with the slogan, "Girls Rule, Boys Drool" in bright pink across her bra-less breast.
You set a man on fire, Bonnie, you can do this. You can do this, she repeats in a loop while chiding herself for the childish want she has for Klaus to return and hold her hand.
He yells at her not to take all day.
She closes her eyes, one foot hovering over the water when he bellows from the opposite end for her to open her damn eyes.
"You have to face what is in front of you."
She wonders how the hell he can see her eyes are closed all the way over there. And she wants to tell him to go fuck off, so what if she wants to close her eyes and pretend she is not worried about not being able to accomplish this magical feat.
She breathes in deep and exhales once her right foot touches the warm liquid and it is apparent that she is not sinking, but actually standing on one leg on top of the water.
She jerks her head up in the direction of Klaus, amazed and a little shocked, "Do you see this?"
"I do. Now walk to me."
Cautiously at first, she puts the other foot down on the surface of the water, and then proceeds to cross the pond, one foot in front of the other, small waves of green cresting over her toes and then she walks deliberately, shoulders back and head high, assured that it is her faith in herself that keeps her from drowning.
She nears the bank, and the smug hybrid extends his hand to her, an offer of help, but she pushes his hand away, scrabbling her way up to land. Dusting off the dirt and moss from her knees and elbows as she stands tall to his towering height over her.
"I don't need your help."
And he reaches for the back of her neck, blunt nails embedded in her skin for her insolence, and he pulls her to him and kisses her square on the mouth. And her head bends backward under the force of his kiss and she tries to match his vigor as she realizes it's not the water she should have been concerned about drowning in, and she pushes her small hands against his unmoving chest. Confused by the warmth in her heart and in between her legs. She parts her mouth, and he slides his tongue into her, and she takes his full lip in between her teeth and bites down, tasting metal. He breaks abruptly with a crude laugh, and beams, his white teeth shaded red from his own blood and he snaps his fingers for her to follow him, "You get an 'A' in this lesson."
Author's Note
Thank you for reading.