Sweetblood (9781439108741) by Pete Hautman Page A

with him?”
    â€œHe likes privacy when he does a tarot reading. That’s his thing, the tarot cards. Pretty weird, huh?”
    â€œHe gave me a glass of wine.”
    â€œHe must really like you.”
    Dylan’s voice sounds far away. We are driving down a tunnel of streetlamps. When I blink, the lights move. Am I having an insulin reaction? Sometimes the symptoms are pretty peculiar. To be on the safe side, I dig into my purse for some candy. All I have is a bag of Gummi Bears. I shove a few in my mouth and force myself to chew and swallow.
    â€œGummi Bears?” Dylan asks.
    â€œI’m hungry,” I say.
    â€œOh.”
    For a moment I regret not telling him about my diabetes. But it’s really none of his business. I get so bored with being Diabetes Girl, it’s nice to have friends who don’t think of me as a diseased cripple.
    â€œI thought you were going to introduce me to a vampire,” I say. It sounds like I’m talking from the bottom of a well.
    Dylan looks over at me and says, “I did.”
    I slip in through the back door in my stockings, pad through the dark kitchen and up the stairs, feet whispering on the carpet. I can hear my father’s snores and the sound of air passing in and out of my own lungs. I take a deep breath and open the door to my room, half expecting to find my mother sitting on my bed, waiting—but all is as before. No computer, clothes on the floor, rumpled bed waiting. I fall onto it. I should test my blood sugar. In just a few more seconds, I’ll get up and prick my finger and squeeze out a drop of blood and make it be a number: 106, 34, 348. No number will surprise me. I feel the Gummi Bears swimming in wine soup, dissolving, sending glucose molecules through the walls of my small intestine. I see monarch wings crumbling.
    Do I believe that Wayne Smith is really a butterfly-raising vampire? Not for a moment. Why would Dylan tell me such a thing? To impress me? He is such a child.
    I close my eyes and see myself standing beside a river drinking nectar from a tall, golden cup. I see myself falling from a tower of stone.
Chaos, upheaval, revelation.
Wayne’s words sounded familiar. Where have I heard them before?
    â€œChaos, upheaval, revelation,” I say out loud. Who doesit sound like? I try faces: My father, Mark Murphy, Dylan, Fish…. No one I know talks like that. I send my thoughts to books and movies, imagining the words in the mouths of actors and characters, but nothing rings true. I turn my thoughts to cyberspace and it hits me.
    Draco. Draco used those words. Is it possible? Could tarot-card-reading Wayne actually be Draco the cybervamp? Did Dylan actually introduce me to a real vampire?
    I roll myself up in my comforter enchilada style and tell myself that I am safe.
    There are no vampires. Not anymore.

17

    Fuzz
    I rise as from death, my head thick with dream-goo, my body stiff with rigor mortis. What? What is it?
    Knock knock knock.
    I know the sound of my mother’s knuckles.
    Knock knock knock
.
    â€œOkay! Okay! Okay!” I shout. Or rather, I try to shout. It comes out as a pathetic gurgle.
    â€œIt’s seven o’clock, Sweetie!” she says.
    Seven o’clock. I have to be at school in forty-five minutes. I sit up. I don’t feel so good. I still have my clothes on. My guts hurt. I imagine things growing inside me: Tumors, parasites, aliens.
    â€œSweetie?”
    â€œOkay, I’m up!”
    Footsteps recede; I flop back onto my pillow. I couldskip school. Lie in bed all day and read. The thought of staying in bed gives me a warm moment, but I know it’s not so easy. My mother would be in and out all day, fretting.
Honey/Sweetie/Sugar? Are you sure you don’t want to see Dr. Fisher, Lucy Honey/Sweetie/Sugar?
    Better to head for school and sleep through classes, I think.
    But I really don’t feel so good. My head hurts and my face feels fat and my mouth tastes horrible,