Musings of a High School Vampire: September 4

When I arrived this morning, Jenna was hanging around the high school steps.

 

“You’d better get moving, kid.   You’re gonna be late.”

 

She rubbed the toe of one sneaker awkwardly on the back of the other.

“You know it’s, like, not far at all.   I just, like, had to talk to you…”

 She then smeared her hair out of her eyes momentarily, and took a breath.

“Like – all that stuff I said the other day?   I have, like, no idea what I was thinking.   It was the, like, dumbest thing ever.   I, like, reckon I’d been reading too much of that Twilight and Vampire Diaries stuff – ’cause, like, it’s all so clearly totally, like, fiction.   As if there would actually be, like, vampires, in the real world and I’d happen to, like, know one.   That’s – like – so dumb.   So – yeah.”

She stole a quick look at me.

 

“Jenna.   You don’t read Twilight.”

She was careful answering.

“No.   But I, like, could have…”

I nod slowly.

“Yeah.   You know – you’re right, kid.   Going around saying shit like that is dumbest thing ever.   But it doesn’t matter now anyway, okay?   Forget about it.”

“It – like – doesn’t?”

“Nah.   See ya.   Oh – hey – but don’t leave your fucking windows open at night.   You never know what might get in…”

The bell rang and gave her a fright, and she tumbled off to her own school with her awkward pre-teen run, and without looking back.

 

Caught up with Kane in a couple of classes – he talked of Carly and we joked a bit about that ‘date‘ we didn’t get around to this week.   After school, the princess herself was leaning on the front fence, waiting for him.   Kane followed her to her car, but paused and looked over his shoulder.   I did that universal ‘getouttahere,youfuckwit’ movement with my head, and then he grinned and raised a ‘seeya’ hand as he turned away.

 

And then I went to the school office, shook hands with the principal, collected my transcripts, and went home.   After some final directions from me, the hired dumpster outside the house was mostly full, the charity organisation were loading up the last of the worthwhile furniture to take away, and the Cat was spitting and complaining through the bars of the pet carrier.

 

When the cab pulled up, I locked the door and left the key under the mat for the agent, grabbed my backpack in one hand and the cranky Cat-in-a-box in the other, loaded them in the taxi with me, pulled the cab door closed with a click…

…and left.

 

NEXT ENTRY…

Musings of a High School Vampire: A Week Ago Today

A week ago today, I was given an ultimatum.   Uh oh.   I’m never very good with authority figures, I have to say. Or with taking orders.

 

Or (while we’re on the subject) with morals to stories, you know?   I was going on about fairytales and all that shit the other day, but the bit I never ever get is the pseudo-morality that’s dropped in at the end like some stupid afterthought – only you’re meant to take it as ‘the whole meaning to the story all along’?   What the fuck?   Now, you know how I feel about ethical conduct as the best of times (it graduates from relative indifference to total fucking contempt) – but even you know story morals are all bullshit, yeah?   Come on.   Nothing in real life has a ‘moral’.   No nice cliched closure, no neat end to the story, no simple but profound lesson to be learnt and taken away for use next time.   No – such – thing.   Fairytales might have started out by being based on real stuff, but the moral is some poncy didactic wanker’s attempt to contain scary shit with the trappings of a ‘life lesson’.   Bah.   That’s a flimsy way to cage a beast if ever I read one.

Tonight Kane is coming over for pizza and beer (awkward, but I cope) and 80s action flicks.   Nice.   Mitch, ever the fish boy, got hit in the head with a basketball today, went to the hospital for two hours over lunch, but came back to school to tell tall tales about having seen actual stars at the moment of impact.   Fuck, he’s a sad case.   After school I checked the mail and found Py had sent me a semi-pornographic postcard with “Amelia is looking for fun” written on the back.   Yeah – thanks for the warning, buddy.   Punctual as ever.   Sheesh.

Pam is vacuuming in the next room and singing Pink songs loudly and out-of-tune because she thinks Eddie (the imaginary guardian I invented to placate her) is ‘at work’ being a security guard.   She loves ironing his uniform – I prepare it extra smelly and dirty for her sometimes so she can feel self-righteous and maternal at the same time.   Jenna her daughter has exhausted her entire vocabulary in five minutes of clumsy attempts at conversation with me (where, like, as usual, like, every second word was – ‘like’), and is now playing a dangerous game over there with the Cat and a roll of newspaper.   The Cat is swinging its tail and glaring and raking claws through the end of the paper maliciously (it wishes Jenna’s bare arm would come a little closer…)

And I’m sitting here, snapping rubber bands between the fingers of one hand, watching Twitter crash, deleting old phone texts, and refusing to have morals to stories.

 

Oh.   And I killed Amelia a week ago today.  

Did I not mention that?

 

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