Vampires Never Get Old, page 21
FIRST KILL
Victoria “V. E.” Schwab
I
[Friday]
Calliope Burns has a cloud of curls.
That’s the first thing Juliette sees.
There are so many other things, of course. There’s Calliope’s skin, which is a smooth, flawless brown, and the silver studs that trace her ears, and the mellow rumble of her laugh—a laugh that should belong to someone twice her size—and the way she rubs her left fingertip back and forth across her right forearm whenever she’s thinking.
Jules notices those, too, of course, but the first thing she sees every day in English, when she takes her seat two rows behind the other girl, are those curls. She’s spent the last month staring at them, trying to steal the occasional glimpse of the cheek, chin, smile beyond.
It started with a kind of idle curiosity.
Stewart High is a massive school, one of those places where it’s easy for change to go unnoticed. There are nearly three hundred people in their junior class, but this year, only four of them were new, introduced at the first-day assembly. Three of the transfers were boring and bland, two square-jawed jocks and a mousy boy who’s never looked up from his phone.
And then there was Calliope.
Calliope, who looked straight out at the assembled school, as if rising to some unspoken challenge. Calliope, who moves through the halls with all the steady ease of someone at home in their skin.
Juliette has never felt at home in her skin, or in any other part of herself, for that matter.
Two rows up, the dark cloud of curls shifts as the girl rolls her neck.
“Ms. Fairmont.” The teacher’s voice cuts through the room. “Eyes on your test.”
The class snickers, and Jules drops her gaze back to the paper, sluggish blood rising to her pale cheeks. But it’s hard to focus. The air in the room is stale. Her throat is dry. Someone is wearing way too much perfume, and someone else is tapping their pencil, a rhythmic metronome that grates on her nerves. Three people are chewing gum, and six are shifting in their chairs, and she can hear the shuffle of cotton against skin, the soft whoosh of breaths, the sounds of thirty students simply living.
Her stomach twists, even though she ate breakfast.
It used to be enough to get her through the day, that meal. It used to—but now her head is beginning to pound and her throat feels like it’s full of sand.
The bell finally rings, and the room plunges into a predictable chaos as everyone rushes to lunch. But Calliope takes her time. And when she gets to the door, she looks back, the gesture so casual, as if checking over her shoulder, but her gaze lands squarely on Juliette, and she feels her pulse turn over like a stubborn engine. The other girl doesn’t smile, not exactly, but the edge of her mouth almost quirks up, and Jules breaks into a full-blown grin, and then Calliope walks out and Jules wishes she could crawl under the floor and die.
She counts to ten before following her out.
The hall is a tide of bodies.
Up ahead, Calliope’s dark hair bobs away from her, and Juliette follows in her wake, swears she can smell the subtle honey of the other girl’s lotion, the vanilla of her ChapStick. Her steps are long and slow, and Juliette’s are quick, the distance between them closing a little with every stride, and Jules is trying to think of something to say, something witty or clever, something to earn one of those rare, low laughs, when her shoe scuffs something on the ground.
A bracelet, lost, abandoned. Something fancy, fragile, and Jules reaches down without thinking, fingers curling around the band. Pain, sudden and hot, slices across her skin. She stifles a gasp and drops the bracelet, a red welt already rising on her skin.
Silver.
She hisses, shaking the heat from her fingers as she cuts through the tide of traffic in the hall and ducks into the nearest bathroom. Her hand is throbbing as she shoves it under the tap.
It helps. A little.
She rifles through her bag, finds the bottle of aspirin that isn’t aspirin, and dumps two capsules out into her palm, tips them into her mouth. They break open, a moment’s warmth, an instant of relief.
It helps in the way a single breath helps a drowning man, which is to say not much.
The thirst eases a little, the pain recedes, and the welt on her skin begins to fade.
She glances up at the mirror, tucking wisps of sandy blond hair behind her ears. She is a watery version of her sister, Elinor.
Less striking. Less charming. Less beautiful.
Just … less.
She leans closer, studying the flecks of green and brown in her blue eyes, the scattered dots across her cheeks.
What kind of vampire has freckles?
But there they are, flecked like paint against pale skin, even though she’s careful to avoid the sun. When she was young, she could spend a good hour outside, playing soccer or just reading in the dappled shade of their family’s oak. Now, her skin starts to prickle in minutes.
Add it to the growing list of things that suck (ha ha).
Her eyes drop to her mouth. Not to her teeth, polished as they are, fangs tucked up behind her canines, but to her lips. The boldest thing about her. The only bold thing, really.
Her sister told her that good lipstick is like armor. A shield against the world.
She digs through her bag, draws out a blackberry shade called Dusk.
Jules leans into the mirror, pretending she is Elinor as she reapplies the lipstick, carefully tracing the shade along the lines of her mouth. When she’s done, she feels a little bolder, a little brighter, a little more.
And soon, she will be more.
Soon—
The bathroom door crashes open, the room filling with raucous laughter as a handful of seniors barge in.
One of them glances her way.
“Nice color,” she says, a note of genuine appreciation in her voice. Jules smiles, showing the barest hint of teeth.
Outside, the hall is empty, the bracelet gone, rescued by someone else. The tide of students has thinned to a stream, the current heading one direction—the cafeteria—and Jules is thinking of skipping lunch, or rather the performance of it, and curling up in a corner of the library with a good book, when Ben Wheeler comes crashing into her.
Ben, fair skin tan from a summer of running in the park, brown hair sun-bleached a tawny gold.
She hears him coming. Or maybe she feels him coming. Senses him the second before he knocks his shoulder into hers.
“I’m wasting away!” he moans. “How is a growing body supposed to make it between breakfast and lunch? The hobbits had the right idea.”
She doesn’t point out that she saw him scarfing down a bag of animal crackers between first and second period, a granola bar between second and third. Doesn’t point out that he’s clutching a half-eaten candy bar in one hand even as they make their way to lunch. He’s a distance runner, all sinew and bone and wolfish hunger.
She leans against Ben as they walk.
He smells good. Not bitable but likable, pleasant, homey.
They’ve been friends for ages.
In seventh grade, they even tried being more, but that was right around the time Ben figured out he preferred guys and she realized she preferred girls, and now they joke about which one turned the other.
Gay, that is. Not vampiric. Obviously.
Nobody turned her, either way. She was born like this, the latest in the honorable line of Fairmonts. And as for the whole blood gift, or curse, Ben doesn’t know. She hates that he doesn’t know. Has thought a hundred thousand times about telling him. But the what-ifs are too big, too scary, the risks too great.
They reach the cafeteria, all scraping chairs and shouting voices and the nauseating scent of stale and overheated food. Jules takes a deep breath, as if diving underwater, and follows him in.
“Cal!” calls a girl, waving to Calliope across the room.
Cal. That’s what Calliope’s friends call her. But Cal is a rough word, a heavy hand on your shoulder, a gruff sound in your throat. Juliette prefers Calliope. Four syllables. A string of music.
“Here’s a wild thought,” says Ben. “Instead of silently pining, what if you just admit you have a crush on her?”
“It’s not a crush,” she murmurs.
Ben rolls his eyes. “What would you call it, then?”
“It’s…” Juliette looks at the other girl, and she is back in the kitchen that morning, trapped between her parents, wishing she could crawl out of her skin.
“We’re not trying to pressure you,” said her dad, one hand sliding through his hair.
“It’s just, one day you’re going to find someone,” added her mom. “And when you do—”
“You’re making it sound so important,” he cut in. “It doesn’t have to be.”
“But it should be,” Mom said, shooting him a warning look. “I mean, it’s better if it is…”
“Oh no, not the talk,” said Elinor.
Her sister drifted through the kitchen like a warm breeze, on her way in instead of out. Her porcelain cheeks were flushed, a sleepy glow on her skin that always seemed to follow her home. “Firsts are just firsts,” she said, reaching for the coffeepot. She poured herself a cup, the contents dark and thick. Juliette watched as she added a shot of espresso. A “corpse reviver,” she called it.
Juliette crinkled her nose. “How can you drink that?”
Elinor smiled, soft and silver as moonlight. “Says the girl living on capsules and cats.”
“I don’t drink cats!” she snapped, appalled. It was an old joke, gone sour with age.
Her sister reached out and ran a perfect nail along her cheek. “You’ll know when you find the right one.” Her hand dropped to the space over her heart. “You’ll know.”
“Hurry up and bite someone.”
Juliette blinks. “What?”
Ben nods at the lunch buffet. “I said, hurry up and buy something.” The line is getting restless behind them. She scans the selection of sandwiches, pizza, fries, doesn’t know why she bothers. But that’s not true. She bothers because it’s what a human girl would do.
She grabs a bag of chips and an apple and follows Ben to the end of an empty table at the edge of the room.
Ben eyes the mountain of food on his lunch tray like he can’t decide where to start.
Jules tears open the bag of chips and offers him one before dropping it on the table between them.
Her mouth hurts. The pain is a low ache running through her gums. Her throat is already dry again, and she is suddenly, desperately thirsty in a way no water fountain is going to fix. She tries to swallow, can’t, dumps two more capsules into her palm and tosses them back dry.
“You’re going to give yourself an ulcer,” says Ben as the capsules burst in her mouth, blossoming on her tongue. A moment of copper warmth, there and then gone.
The thirst eases, just enough for her to swallow, to think.
The pills used to really work, to buy her hours instead of minutes. But the last few months, it’s gotten worse, and she knows that soon the pills won’t be enough to quench the thirst.
Jules presses her palms against her eyes. Keeps them there until the spots come and then go, leaving only black. A merciful, obliterating dark.
“You okay?”
“Migraine,” she mumbles, dragging up her head. She lets her gaze drift two tables over and one down, is surprised to find Calliope looking straight back. Her pulse gives a little jerk.
“You could talk to her,” says Ben.
“I have,” she says, and it isn’t a lie.
There was a moment in English last week, when she told Calliope she’d dropped her pen. And that time in the hall when Calliope made a joke and Juliette laughed even though she wasn’t talking to her. And once, in the second week of school, when it was pouring outside and Jules offered her a ride home and she was just about to take it when her brothers pulled up in their truck and she said thanks anyway.
“Well, you’ll have your chance.”
Juliette’s attention snaps back. “What?”
“Alex’s party. Tomorrow night. Everyone’s going.”
Alex is a varsity football player, a “steel-jawed fox,” and Ben’s current crush, which is unfortunate, since by all accounts Alex is straight.
Ben waves his hand whenever she mentions that.
“People aren’t straight,” he says. “They just don’t know better. So, party?”
Jules is about to say she doesn’t do parties when she catches a warped reflection in Ben’s soda can, a blank canvas, a pair of blackberry-colored lips.
“What time?”
“Pick you up at nine,” says Ben. “And you better make your move. Calliope Burns won’t wait forever.”
II
[Saturday]
Juliette hovers outside her sister’s room.
She’s about to knock when the door swings open under her hand and Elinor appears, obviously on her way out. She looks Jules up and down, taking in the starry tights, the short black dress, the polish on her nails already smudged because she can never seem to wait for it to dry. “Going somewhere?”
“Party,” says Juliette. “Could you, I don’t know…” She gestures down at herself as if Elinor has some transformative magic instead of just good taste. “Help me?”
Elinor laughs, a soft, breathy sound, doesn’t check her watch. Reggie will wait. She motions toward her vanity. “Sit down.”
Jules lowers herself onto the cushioned stool in front of the well-lit mirror, examining the line of lipsticks balanced along the back edge as Elinor hovers behind her. They both show up, of course; she’s never understood the logic behind that myth. Juliette studies her sister in the reflection—they’re three years apart, and, side by side, the differences are glaring.
Elinor’s hair is silver-blond, her eyes the deep blue of summer nights, while Juliette’s hair is a dingier shade, more straw than moonlight, her eyes a muddy blue. But it’s more than that. Elinor has the kind of smile that makes you want to smile back and the kind of voice that makes you lean in to listen. She is everything Jules wants to be, everything she hopes to become. After.
She remembers Elinor before, of course; it’s only been a few years, and the truth is, she’s always been delicate; beautiful. But there’s no question that now she’s more. As if that first kill took who she was and turned up the volume, made everything sharper, stronger, more vibrant.
Juliette wonders what she’ll be like with the volume turned up, which parts of her will get loud. Hopefully not the voice in her head, doubting everything, or the nervous energy that seems to steal across her limbs. That would be her luck.
Elinor’s fingers slide through her hair, and she feels her shoulders loosen, her tension melt. She doesn’t know if this is a vampire power or just a sister one.
“El,” she says, chewing the inside of her cheek. “What was it like?”
“Hm?” her sister says in that soft, cooing way as she touches a curling iron, testing its heat.
“Your first kill.”
The moment doesn’t slam to a halt. The world doesn’t stiffen or still. Elinor doesn’t stop what she’s doing. She simply says, “Ah,” as if everything about Jules is suddenly clear.
“Is it really so important?”
Elinor considers, a slow shrug rippling through her. “It’s as important as you make it.” She twists Jules’s hair, pins a piece of it out of the way. “Some believe it’s just the doorway, that it doesn’t matter which one you pick, as long as you go through.” She works her magic, taming Jules’s hair into ribboning curls.
“Others think the door determines the place beyond. That it shapes you.”
“What do you think?”
Elinor sets the curling iron aside, turns Jules toward her, one finger lifting her chin.
“I think it’s better if it means something.”
A soft brush slides along her cheekbone.
“It didn’t mean anything to Dad,” says Jules, but Elinor clicks her tongue.
“Of course it did. He took his best friend.”
Her stomach turns. She didn’t know that. “But he said—”
“People say all kinds of things. Doesn’t make them true.” Elinor dips a small brush into a pot of liquid liner. “Close your eyes.” Jules does, feels the tickle of the line along her eyelid. “Mom went a different route,” continues Elinor. “She took a guy who wouldn’t take no for an answer. It was the last word on his lips as he died.” She laughs a small, soft sound, as if telling a joke.
Juliette opens her eyes. “What about you?”
Elinor smiles, her perfect red lips parting a little. “Malcolm,” she says in a dreamy way. “He was beautiful, and sad.” She looks past Jules in the mirror. “He didn’t struggle, even toward the end, and he looked so peaceful when it was over. Like a sleeping prince. Some people want to die young.” She blinks, returning to herself. “Others put up a fight. The most important thing is never to let them get away.”
Jules looks down at the array of lipsticks on the vanity, starts to reach for a coral, but Elinor shifts her fingers two tubes right, to a deep shade, neither red nor blue nor purple. She turns over the tube, reads the label on the bottom.
HEART-STOPPER.
Elinor takes the lipstick and applies with it an expert hand. When she’s done, she pulls back, head tilted like a marble sculpture. “There.”
Juliette studies her reflection.
The girl in the mirror is striking.
Hair falling in pale waves. Blue eyes ringed black, the sharp cut of the outer edge making her look feline. The dark lip, something more feral.
“How do I look?” she asks.
Her sister’s smile is all teeth.
“Ready.”
* * *
There’s a sign on the door that says COME ON IN, but Ben still has to pull her over the threshold.
Parties are everything Juliette hates.
They are loud music and crowded rooms, food she can’t eat and booze she can’t drink, and all the trappings of the normal life she’ll never have. But she drank a full cup from the coffeepot before leaving, and at least the sun’s gone down and taken the worst of her headache with it. The world is softer in the dark, easier to move through.
