"Nessie, could you watch her for a little bit while we go out?" Mom asked my cousin. It had been about a month since my first day at school, and Mom started going back into her old routines now that she was sure I was fine with my new one. Her old routine included biweekly "hunting trips" or sometimes just "outings." I knew these must have been when she and everyone else went to kill some people for their blood. What else could it be?

"Sure, do you know when you'll be back?" Nessie asked.

"Probably sometime early tonight, before Sybil goes to bed."

"Alright, sounds good, see you later."

I sat playing with my blocks like I normally did, not expecting the day to go any different than normal, just with fewer people and less danger around. I realized this assumption was wrong, though, when after maybe ten minutes, Nessie spoke up.

"I'm not sitting here in this room all evening again, so how about we go do something?"

I stared in her direction, bewildered. No one ever tried to do anything spontaneous with me like that. What did she have in mind?

"You've never climbed a tree before, have you? Why don't we try that?"

Well, this wasn't going to go well. Hopefully it wasn't too high up, because if I fell, which was definitely a high possibility, I didn't want to get too hurt.

"Come on, let's go!" She grabbed my hand and led me downstairs, helped me get my shoes on, and brought me outside. "Don't worry, we'll start with a small tree, so you can learn."

I looked around as if I would be able to locate a good starting tree, but of course, I couldn't do that.

"Ah, here's a good one! I'll help you," she exclaimed, half-dragging me over to the tree she was determined to climb together.

"There's a low branch right here for you to climb on, but you'll have to pull yourself up a little bit."

I reached for where I thought I saw her hand gesturing towards and found the branch she was likely talking about. I pulled myself up onto it with a little help from Nessie and then continued to follow her directions as we climbed higher and higher up. It felt odd following directions when I normally didn't, but I wasn't as strict with my self-made rules with her compared to the rest of my family. She wasn't a vampire, I had no reason to fear her.

Every single time I thought she would say "Here we are! This is the top!," she never did. We just kept going higher and higher, and I was worried I wouldn't be able to get back down. But, still, it was fun. It was different from the blocks I always played with. Mom was always too nervous to do much of anything with me, afraid of hurting or overwhelming me. Nessie usually treated me like a normal kid, which was refreshing. She thought I could do more than my parents let me, and she was right. Of course, I never did anything to prove her right in front of my parents, so it was my own fault they acted like that.

Way past what I would have considered too high for a beginner to climb, she finally told me we were at the top.

"Look out at the view! It's sunset now, so the sky's all kinds of pretty colors," she said.

I sat down on the branch I was standing on and looked toward where all the sunset-y colors were. I could see blurs and blobs of dark oranges and pale pinks, so I could tell it was gorgeous, but seeing the detail would make it a lot more pretty. For now, the colors were enough. It was beautiful, though I missed seeing the full sunset.

I could hear all kinds of sounds that I rarely took the time to listen to in this life. I liked nature, but it was hard to spend much time in it. Here, in this tree, I could hear so much. So many birds throughout the woods, and so many animals along the ground. It was amazing, perfect.

We sat there for a long time, mostly in silence, but Nessie would say a thing or two now and then. It was nice, it was peaceful. I liked it, and would definitely try to do it again sometime if my family would let me. What would they do if I just randomly tried climbing a tree? If mom was there, I'd likely be stopped, but anyone else might be happy and encourage it.

Before I knew it, the sky's amazing colors faded into darkness, and Nessie stood up onto her branch.

"Time to go get dinner now," Nessie sighed as if that was the last thing she wanted to do. "It's gonna take a while to get down normally…" she paused as she thought something over. "Sybil, we're going to try something, but don't tell Aunt Rose we did this, okay?"

If I were going to tell Mom about anything, it probably wasn't going to be about whatever Nessie had in mind to do, so she was all clear to do whatever she was thinking.

"I'm going to give you a piggyback ride, so you just need to hold onto my shoulders and wrap your legs around my waist to hold on."

I followed her directions as best as I could, with her help to get me off the branch and onto her back, and soon I was secured.

"Okay, good. Now, close your eyes and don't open them until I tell you."

What? Wasn't she just going to climb down with me on her back? Why would I need to close my eyes?

"Come on, just listen, or this is gonna take a lot longer."

I closed my eyes, hoping this wasn't going to end too badly.

I didn't know what I expected to happen, but I for sure didn't expect to feel myself and Nessie flying through the air, my hair whipping back behind my head, and then feeling the impact of hitting the ground. Except…I was fine. I was still holding on to Nessie's back—albeit tighter than I was before—and Nessie seemed fine, too. But surely we had just fallen from the tree, right? What else could that feeling have been? How were we okay? Why weren't we splayed out on the ground, with various broken bones? This didn't make any sense. Nothing in this family ever made any sense.

"All done now, Sybil, you can open your eyes."

I opened my eyes, which were closed tighter than I intended them to be. Nessie shifted me so she was carrying me on her hip instead of on her back.

"Are you okay?" she asked, smoothing down my hair which was probably tangled from the flight down.

I almost caught myself nodding, but I stopped myself before I could. Nessie wasn't a vampire, but I still had to keep up my ruse of not communicating with anyone. That was a rule I couldn't break.

"Alright, time for dinner. Everyone's probably gonna be back soon, in an hour or two," she said. "We're a bit behind schedule."

She set me down so I could walk inside myself, and I went into the dining room while she went into the kitchen to prepare whatever we were having for dinner.

I wasn't sitting for too long when she brought out the food. She didn't hand me a fork or anything, so I assumed it was something I could eat with my hands. It was a sandwich—peanut butter and jelly—so I was safe from getting accidentally messy.

I was getting really tired near the end of my sandwich. Combination of a long day and a food coma; my body was exhausted.

It wasn't that late, though, so I wouldn't be going to bed anytime soon. Well, maybe since this was a late dinner, my bedtime was soon. Or if I just fell asleep on the couch or something, I wouldn't get woken up? I just wanted to go to sleep now, and not wait.

Nessie came up to me and grabbed my plate, before taking it into the kitchen to presumably clean it or just put it in the sink for someone else to clean.

"Now it's time for us to go in your room and read some books or something," she said, and I was glad for that. If she read a book, I'd have the perfect opportunity to fall asleep while my parents and the rest of the vampires weren't here. That would leave room for more peaceful dreams.

Upstairs, she picked out a book and began reading after we got settled. By the time she got to the end of this story, I was fast asleep, feeling the comforting warmth of her skin as opposed to the usual coldness of mom or dad's skin. It was nice. It was what I would feel every night if my family weren't vampires. If my life were how it was supposed to be. But for now, if this was all I could get, it was enough.