Bite Me (6 page)

“Are you sure that that’s the girl you were talking about?”
“Yeah, that’s the one. The teachers didn’t believe it, but I saw it. Her
hand changed into something else! It wasn’t normal. She grew claws or
something.”
“Sorry if I don’t really buy it. That just can’t be. And she looks sad.” My head whipped around, and the two girls did their best innocent
looks. I considered telling them to get a life, but ended up sighing
instead. My current class, World Civics, was one that I had without Matt
and therefore one I spent alone. Sometimes I wondered why the teachers
didn’t seem to notice the silence, the head on the desk, the doodles in the
margins. Hello, human misery over here!
I stared at the assignment I was supposed to be filling in.
Use an
analogy to compare/contrast an oligarchy, a monarchy, and a democracy.
Let
me see. . . imagine that werewolves had all the political power. That
would be an oligarchy. If they elected a king, would that be both
democracy and monarchy? Constitutional monarchy? Might be nice if
werewolves ruled. Lycanthropy wouldn’t be so bad if it didn’t have to be
hidden, and shape-shifting would be more like being a superhero than
having a disease. Oh no, my mind was wandering. No supernatural! No
supernatural!
“AIDS,” said a voice.
The acronym made me panic for a second. Had someone figured it
out?
The teacher repeated his question, unconscious of my discomfort.
“Anyone? Anyone? Gayle? Can you explain to me why governments can
be so reluctant to admit that they have a problem with AIDS in their
nation?”
Matt’s advice to me a week ago to continue breathing proved useful,
especially I spent most of my time now jumping at small noises and
startling other people. The results of Mom’s and my blood tests hadn’t
come back yet, so every time the phone rang, my heart would stop for at
least a minute.
Gayle, an African-American girl sitting three desks to my left, was
responding. “Well, it’s sort of an embarrassing disease for a person to get
if you think about it. Most of the time, it’s spread by people doing things
that can be avoided: not using protection, letting people stick
unsterilized needles into you. . .”
A dangerous feeling constricted my throat and stung my eyes. I
raised my hand without the teacher noticing. To get his attention, I
flailed my arm around. He seemed surprised, since I hadn’t volunteered
an answer ever since the Tammy incident. “Do you have something to
add, Dianne?”
“Please,” I quavered, “please, can I go to the restroom? Now?” “Can this wait for a moment?”
“Please!”
“Quickly, then.” At least five pairs of eyes followed me while I
escaped.
Fortunately, the nearest restroom was only a few classes away. After
seeing myself in the mirror I was doubly glad that I had left—I’d been
worried that my eyes would be getting red, but instead they had turned
yellow and wild. My subconscious self must be getting pretty smart in
meeting its desires. Wolf eyes can’t cry. I bared my teeth, frustrated, and
had to take some deep breaths to keep from transforming completely.
Some tears would have been such a relief, but no, the wolf inside me
refused to show weakness outside of my own territory. It remembered
that enemies will sense fear and strike.
Yet there was the sound of sobbing from one of the stalls, a fairly
common sound in a high school girls’ room, distracting me from my own
meltdown. When the gasps and whimpers whoever in there had been
trying so hard to restrain had died away, the girl began to speak in
broken phrases. The voice sounded an awful lot like Taylor. “I know it could be worse. . . I know. . . I’m lucky. . . it’s good in the end. What? The things you’re telling me are horrible! Does it make you feel better to say them, to share? I can’t. I mean, there’s. . . no. It’s been the end of the world before.” She giggled, which was somehow more depressing than her crying. “I guess it’s true. Every time something hurts us, we pull it in; hold it inside. We’re afraid of being judged, or worse, of adding to their own burden. Yet when we bring ourselves just to admit that we’re hurting, a little of the emptiness inside fills up. And every time someone shares a little to us back again, it actually isn’t so bad, because knowing that taking some his or her pain onto us makes it
better. . . it’s better overall. Nobody can heal all by themselves.” “Um. . .”
Taylor (if it was Taylor) didn’t hear me. “So maybe it would be best if
we all trusted at least one other person enough to talk to them. We could
hand our bleeding hearts over for someone else to fix. Every time we
shared it would get slightly lighter. Lighter. . . lighter. . . that’s a nice
word. I better go back to study hall now.”
In Taylor’s defence, she recovered quickly after running into me.
Telltale blotches covered her face, but her voice was steady, and her
mouth immediately stretched into a smile. “Hi! Imagine meeting you
here. I didn’t know you had a class so nearby.” She was silently pleading
me to not ask.
“Practicing lines for a play?” I suggested, giving her an excuse. I
didn’t want my friend to suffer any more embarrassment.
“Yes. . . no, I can’t. That would be a really good reason, wouldn’t it?
Better than you thinking I was schizophrenically jabbering to people
who weren’t there.”
I really did want to know but she had a right to her privacy,
especially if she noticed that my eyes had changed color. I smiled in an
effort to reassure her. “I get it. Good Mormon girls don’t lie.” She laughed self-deprecatingly and ran her fingers through her dark
brown hair. “Thanks. I will tell you sometime, Dianne. Can you wait?” “No problem. I came in here for some moping myself. But what you
said makes sense. I—I–I guess I can hold on a little longer.” I looked into
the mirror again and saw that I was back to normal.
As Taylor washed her face another girl came in, a gangly dirty blonde
with glasses, face drawn with concern. “Taylor? Are you okay?” Looking from one to the other, I decided it was best if I left them to
their hug and weep fest. “See you on the bus tomorrow,” I said, and
returned to Civics.
Every day of late crawled on as though time had decided there was
really no point in passing. I had track and field after school that day but I
didn’t have the heart. Both Taylor and Matt had something after school,
so to go early I had to go alone. I decided to go find Mom and see if I
could ride home with her.
When I tapped the door of her office there was no answer.
Frightened, I knocked harder, and even banged it loud enough to make
the janitor give me a look. When I finally burst in, my mom appeared to
have collapsed onto the desk.
“Mom? Mom!” I shook her shoulders and wondered if I should call
for help.
In what felt like hours later, she moved and sat up. Her makeup had
smeared. “I said I’m a counselor, not a psychiatrist. . . hm? Dianne? What
time is it?”
“Mom, y-you fainted. Please tell me that it was staying up too late or
giving Dad a snack. Do you need a glass of water?”
She looked confused, then sat back in her chair. “Don’t worry, Di
dear. I was just tired. Very tired. I didn’t sleep much last night. Is it
three-thirty already?”
“Yes. Are you sure you’re okay?”
The woman before my eyes didn’t seem like my mother. Her gray
eyes were large and hollow, her frame had shrunk, and her expression
was unnaturally bright. “No worries. I’ll drive you home.”
She was like that the entire journey back, chattering on about how
proud of me she was for my performance in the most recent track meet,
asking me how my day was, reminding me about Dad’s newly
completed manuscript and oh this time she thought he might have a real
success, and other small talk. “. . . So the ninth grader kept insisting that
she was a reincarnation of a laurel tree in the state park, and I said I’m a
counselor, not a psychiatrist. I recommended her to one I know;
hopefully it’ll be sorted out. I always thought high school was full of
weirdos, and I used to wonder what it would be like on the other side.”
We were in our neighborhood by the time she said this, and I was
growing agitated. She wouldn’t let me get a word in. It was as though
she was afraid I would ask something.
By the time we pulled into the front of our house, I couldn’t stand it
any more. I stood on the doorstep with my arms folded, blocking her
way. “Mom, you’re scaring me. Please tell me what’s going on.” “What are you talking about?”
“Did Nat call?”
She snapped out of it, the bubbly facade melting away. In a much
steadier tone she said, “Yes. I’ll tell you when we’re inside.” I dropped my backpack onto the floor and myself onto the sofa,
feeling as though I might throw up if I had to wait any longer. Mom took
off her high heels and then joined me, hugging one of the lumpy pillows. “There’s good news.”
“Really?” I didn’t dare believe it.
“Yes. You’re completely clean.”
My eyes widened. “Really?” I said again, incoherent with relief. But
then—”What about you?”
Mom pursed her lips and looked at the carpet, rubbing her hands like
she was cold in our heated living room. “I’m not going to get any
worse…”
“Oh! That’s the best! I was so incredibly worried for days and days
and I couldn’t sleep but now it’s worth it because it’s all going to be
okay—”
“I—I’m not finished. For at least four or five months.”
My joy, my mind, and my world came to a screeching halt. “What?” “It’s still just coming out of the incubation period. If we’re lucky, it
might be almost a year before the effects of. . . I mean before I start to
really deteriorate. Our insurance will cover the drugs, but my
lycanthropy means staying at a hospital is pretty much out—Nat
admitted I’m not going to do as well as a normal patient if I’m restricted
to home care.” Her optimism broke down, and her voice began to
quaver. “I am so sorry.”
“No! It’s not true! NO!” I couldn’t see or think. “We need a second
opinion. How do we know Dr. Silver’s that qualified?”
“He sent the sample to the general hospital for double checking.” She
hugged me tightly. “Don’t you
dare
change again.”
I didn’t change this time, since the thing I wanted least was to worry
my parents further. But I did cry. Most people have cried or have seen
someone crying like that at least once. It’s the terrible gulping, shrieking,
uncontrollable wail that feels like it will never end. It’s the grief that
makes all but the most empathetic people back away. It’s the pain that
makes the throat hoarse and the eyes burn. It also happens to be the only
sound I’ve ever come across that can wake a tired vampire sleeping
upstairs.
My father ran down to the living room, assuming the worst, and took in the scene. Mom had loosened her hair, which is the same color and texture as mine but much longer, and wrapped it around my shoulders like a security blanket the way she used to when I was small. She was crying too, but less vocally. Wisely she said nothing trite or moral, she just held me until I stopped screaming. It wasn’t hard for Dad to figure it out. Through the curtain of tears I glimpsed him sitting on the stairs, his
face buried in his hands.
Presently I calmed down enough to push Mom gently away and grab
a box of tissues so that I could breathe. Mom took one, blew her nose,
and went over to Dad.
“It’s not as bad as it looks,” she said to him, clasping his hand.
“Dianne will be okay.”
Dad whispered something to her, got up, and got one of the logs we
had stacked by the fireplace to light for Thanksgiving. He wordlessly
picked it up—it was the thickest one in the pile—and snapped it in half.
A shower of splinters fell onto the carpet. He snapped it again and again.
When it was nothing but a pile of matchsticks he shoved the pieces into
the fireplace, then began with another log. I watched him demolish the
woodpile with the distant sense that I should be amazed, too busy
feeling angry and sad and tired of it all for it to impress me any more
than that.
Strangely, Mom, usually the most easily upset one in the family, was
the calmest right now. Her words were even and reasonable. “Be careful,
Andy, don’t stake yourself with one of those shards by accident.” “Why? Why, Mom? It isn’t fair.” I thought about all the
Thanksgivings my mother would miss from now on; then started a fresh
bout of sobbing.
Unlike the other moments of fear or sadness we had experienced,
there was no transforming. We were not a vampire, a werewolf, and a
shape-shifter. This was human sorrow, and we were grieving as humans.
Forget monsters. Life is what really bites.

The shadows crossing the walls were gingerly touching the Olympic posters and the photographs of novas and nebulas taken by the Hubble satellite. The shelf filled to overflowing with science fiction and fantasy books loomed over me. My small hoard of track and field trophies on the windowsill gleamed with borrowed, false glory. Dad sometimes affectionately claimed that the reflected light blinded him when he walked by. Dad. . .

I was getting really tired of looking at the stuff in my room. In genetic and upbringing terms it was interesting that two very liberal-artsy individuals could produce a daughter who could sing “The Elements”, which lists the entire periodic table to the tune of “A Modern Major General” by Gilbert and Sullivan, ever since she was ten. I’d decided one day that there are five main types of interests that define personalities, at least when it comes to school. There are the academics, the artists, the athletes, the accessorizers, and the (forgive me) assholes. Most people I knew were two of these, with one dominating. I was an athletic academic, my parents were artistic academics, while Matt seemed to be an athletic artist. Matt. . .
I felt the need to hug something, and reached out from under the blankets to grab Ozzie, a worn black toy dog with floppy limbs. It was my favorite stuffed animal. Mom gave it to me when I was five, after I lost my first tooth. Mom. . .
No matter how I tried, the same thoughts always returned. Whether I began with life, science, philosophy, counting sheep, or deciding what to wear tomorrow, it always ended with DadMattMom. Round and round in circles. DadMattMom. DadMattMom. My mind kept ducking something it couldn’t bear to contemplate, but landed straight in another painful subject.
DadMattMom. DadMattMom.
MomMomMomMomMomMomMOMMOMOMOM.
After the three of us had stopped going into hysterics, Dad had asked Mom if she wanted to let her family and the school staff know. Her reply whispered and sighed in my ears.
“I think. . . not yet. I can’t. I need to get used to it first and not have a dozen people watching my every move. I don’t want sympathetic unhelpfuls being the theme of every conversation. Worse, people will realize that you must have it too. And they will talk. Who had it first? What did they do to bring it upon themselves? . . . Not now. It will have to come, but I want it to be as far away as it can be.”
I once again experienced the sense of being full of liquid sloshing around inside. When this happened I was sure that in a moment I would dissolve completely and flow in all different directions. But my eyes were made of bone, too worn to let out the water that threatened to drown me.
I finally pushed off the covers and left.
The closest thing I had to a plan was the vague idea that I might like some hot chocolate, already-brushed teeth be damned. I tiptoed downstairs, hoping not to disturb my mother, who needed all the rest she could get. Our house has three ‘real’ floors and the loft, which is kind of half a floor within my parents’ room that we use as a library and as Dad’s office. The basement has two rooms; one with our television and DVDs, the other with all the machines, pipes, and things that run a slightly-lower-end-middle-class life of a suburban family. Though the last time I checked, the neighbors didn’t have any large steel cages in their basements.
It was dark except for a dull red glow coming from the living room. When I unthinkingly flicked on the lights there was a surprised squeak. The source of the noise was almost buried in the easy chair–the springs are bad and it tends to engulf anyone of moderate size–with a folded laptop on his lap, and currently shielding his face with his arms. After a few seconds he realized who it was and lowered the arms. Slowly, he said, “Have I embarrassed myself again?”
“Don’t worry, Dad, your ‘eek!’”—I did an exaggerated high-pitched imitation—”is very manly.”
He did a sort of half-smile with the barest glimpse of pointy teeth. Sometimes I mulled over how by the time I was in college we would look like we were the same age, and that I had better start concocting cover stories. Maybe, I thought grimly, I could say that both my parents died of disease and this was my older brother Andy. Nat said he’d start aging eventually, but how many decades would it take before Dad looked like he could be my father? I shivered.
“To ask the extremely obvious, you can’t sleep, Dianne?”
“To state the extremely obvious, especially as this is 1:20 a.m., yes. Are you working?”
Dad stared at the Apple as though willing it to open itself. “In theory.” He was wearing different clothes than from when he had just woken up; I wondered if the black color scheme reflected his mood.
I turned to go into the kitchen, but a question occurred to me. “Um, are you going to tell me to go back to bed?”
“Hm?” He had been staring blankly—and squinting—into space. “Oh. I doubt that doing so would be of any benefit to either of us. How about we make a deal: I switch on the table lamp over there, you turn off the main light, and I let you stay here with an added discretionary clause.”
“Huh?”
“I mean we don’t have to tell your mother.”
While doing the required light maneuvers, I replied, “Right. Sorry, late night equals slowness. Though technically it’s early morning. I was going to get myself a drink. Would you like anything?” I knew what he wanted, but sometimes I prefer to pretend that he has more than one thing in his diet.
“The usual. . . if it’s not too much trouble.”
“No problemo. Hot or cold?”
He looked wistful. “Somewhere in the neighborhood of 98. 6 Fahrenheit and 36. 8 Celsius?”
“Poor Daddy. I don’t have a thermometer, but I’ll try.”
Mom’s voice trailed down after me. “Herbal tea would be really nice.” I craned my neck over, and sure enough, she was standing at the foot of the stairs, almost as pale as her husband. She had wrapped herself in a purple and blue flowered blanket. “Better than the two of you hiding from me.”
“We’re not. . .”
“Relax, I’m kidding. This isn’t exactly land of the well-rested, is it?” She came down and kissed me on the top of the head. I felt a mixture of teen desire to protest, ‘Mo-om!’, and little girl pleasure.
The process was simple enough. I pulled out one of the bottles of blood, poured it into a mug, and put it in the microwave. After nearly sixteen years the setting was automatic; I didn’t even need to think about how long it would take to heat it to vampire-preference. While that was revolving, I filled two other mugs with hot water from the faucet, dropping the bag of herb and flower tea into the first and mixing cocoa into the second. I knew we had a tray somewhere–
“Are you okay, Di?” chorused my parents.
“Yeah, fine. I just knocked over most of the pots and pans.”
When I’d put everything back I carefully carried the hot drinks on the tray, hoping not to spill any on my ‘The First 1,000 Digits of Pi’ t-shirt. The big comfy chair now had two occupants—my dad took up so little sideways room that my mom barely had to squish at all. When Mom is sick she tends to want companionship more than usual. Dad had put the computer back in the loft while I was messing around in the kitchen; he now had an arm around Mom’s shoulders.
“Thank you,” Mom said, taking her flowery tea. She generally preferred coffee, but caffeine would have defeated the purpose of joining us. I put down the tray, pulled a cushion over to a spot near the chair, and sat cross-legged on top of it. Dad and I each took a mug.
Being down here, in the soft yellow lamplight, felt much better than alone in my room. I asked Mom, “So, have you come for the beverage or for the company?”
She wrapped her hands around the tea, warming her hands. “Company. Would using the phrase
‘Sleepless in Seattle’
have copyright issues?”
“Might I suggest lucid in Laconia?” Dad said.
She smiled. “I have an idea. Can we pretend that we have known about me being HIV positive for a long time and have gotten used to the idea and don’t have to make that our main topic and don’t have to avoid it in a very obvious way as if we had an elephant in the room?”
I was hesitant. “I don’t know. Do we have that much imagination?”
“We could try.”
“I drink to that,” Mom replied. We all took a sip.
I nearly choked. “Oops.”
Dad grimaced. “Switch.”
We switched mugs while Mom tried not to giggle. “Bloody gross,” I muttered.
“I faintly remember liking chocolate once. . . Selene, please. It was a simple mistake.” He took a long, deep drink to wash away the taste.
When the trauma of the moment had faded away and I was comfortably slurping cocoa and doing my best to think about nothing, a new problem arose. “What are we going to do now?”
“In relation to me,” asked Mom, “or just until the sun comes up?”
“The sun comes up. Tell stories of your childhoods? Toilet-paper all the trees in the neighborhood? Play Chinese Checkers?”
“Chinese Checkers seems safest,” Dad put in.
So I got out the wooden board with the six-pointed star and all the little colored pieces. As always, Dad was red, Mom was blue, and I was green. We played for about twenty minutes; moves interrupted with drinks and repetitions of, “Dear, why did you do that? Your pieces are blocking mine! It’s so annoying. . .” from my parents. Meanwhile, my inner monologue managed to split into an inner dialogue.
Normal Me:
Skip, skip. Mom’s nightgown is pretty. Dad’s going to win, isn’t he? He’s got a nice little trail going. I think I’ll move my next piece five spots up.
Crying Me:
Oh crap, how can you be playing checkers when Mom’s going to DIE?
Wolf Me:
Embrace the pain, human. Change. It’ll be so much simpler then. Kill. Eat. Sleep.
Normal Me:
Whoa, it’s getting pretty crowded in here. Is it my turn?
This game distracted us for a while (Dad was the winner) but once it ended, we sank straight back into the sleepless exhaustion again, staring into our empty cups. It was 2:00. I was getting a headache, but anything was better than being in the dark with nothing but my unstoppable silent voices for company. Mom leaned her head on Dad’s shoulder and looked steadily drowsier, until I was pretty sure she had nodded off. I pointed and Dad put his finger to his lips.
“It hurts,” I whispered.
He whispered back, keeping perfectly still. “Laugh and the world laughs with you, weep and you weep alone.”
“I’ve heard that before. Doesn’t help much.” I leaned against the wall, hugging the pillow I had been sitting on earlier.
“It’s from a 19th century poem called ‘Solitude’, by Ella Wheeler Wilcox—”
“Ew,” I murmured.
“What?”
“E-W-W. Her initials. Ew.” Feeble joke, I knew, but he smiled a tiny bit.
Dad’s voice, always pleasantly smooth, moved into a soothing, soft singsong tone. This was the first time he had recited any poetry for weeks. Usually he’d quote or sing something every few days. “‘Laugh and the world laughs with you. Weep and you weep alone–for a sad old Earth must borrow its mirth but has trouble enough on its own. Sing, and the hills will answer, sigh and it is lost in the air.’’
Mom sighed and moved a little closer to him. He stroked her hair.
“‘. . . The echoes bound with a joyful sound, but shrink from voicing care. Rejoice, and men will seek you, grieve and they turn and go. . . ‘ “
“I’ll say,” I interrupted, thinking about my friends.
“‘They want full measure of all your pleasure, but they do not need your woe.’”
Without opening her eyes, Mom dreamily added, “‘Succeed and give, and it helps you live, but no man can help you die.’”
“That comes later, darling. You can sleep, it’s all right.” At this point, he sounded like he had a lump in his throat, even though he had been very calm ever since destroying our firewood. “‘Be glad and your friends are many, be sad and you lose them all. There are none to decline. . . there are. . . ‘ sorry, just a minute, it’s, ‘There are none to decline life’s nectared wine, but alone you must drink life’s gall.’”
I looked at the three mugs, then at my parents. “We all drank this time.”
He followed my gaze thoughtfully. “Hm. We’ve disproved the ageold wisdom.”
A huge yawn nearly dislocated my jaw. “Thanks, Dad. I guess I’ll have to go back to bed if I’m going to resemble sentient life at school tomorrow.”
“I’d sit by you if you wanted, if it wasn’t for. . .” He indicated Mom.
“It’s okay.” I headed towards the stairs, and then turned. I had to say it. “Dad…”
“Yes?”
“This means Mom’s probably going to die before you and I look like we’re the same age, right?”
“Yes.” He didn’t meet my eyes.
“Promise me we won’t drink alone?”
There was a silence. I wondered if he was thinking about how I would grow old and die before him, and any of my children do the same, along with grandchildren, unknown generations to come. He wasn’t the sort of person to follow Mom when she went if I still needed him, but after I was gone. . . I suddenly decided that Dad needed more pity than I did. If my existence weren’t at stake, pardon the pun, I would say that vampires shouldn’t marry.
Finally, he whispered, “I can’t. I can’t promise that, I mean.”
“Okay. Just wanted to know.”
Didn’t bother with brushing teeth again, I only used mouthwash before returning to my room. Then shut my eyes. When I opened them again the sun had come up. I tiptoed down to check on my parents, then sighed: Mom was still asleep there, and Dad hadn’t moved the entire night.