Secret Vampire (6 page)

But this time it didn't work. The phone rang and rang. When the answering machine came on, Poppy
said, "Call me at the hospital." Then she hung up
and stared at the plastic pitcher of ice water by her
bedside.

He'll get in later, she thought. And then he'll call
me. I just have to hang on until then.

Poppy wasn't sure why she thought this, but sud
denly it was her goal. To hang on until she could talk to James. She didn't need to think about anything until then; she just had to survive. Once she
talked to James, she could figure out what she was
supposed to be feeling, what she was supposed to
do
now.

There was a light knock at the door. Startled,
Poppy looked up to see her mother and Cliff. For a
moment all she could focus on was their faces, which
gave her the strange illusion that the faces were
floating in midair.

Her mother had red and swollen eyes. Cliff was pale, like a piece of crumpled white paper, and his
jaw looked stubbly and dark in contrast.

Oh, my God, are they going to
tell
me? They
can't;
they can't make me listen to it.

Poppy had the wild impulse to run. She was on
the verge of panic.

But her mother said, "Sweetie, some of your
friends are here to see you. Phil called them this af
ternoon to let them know you were in the hospital, and they just arrived."

James,
Poppy thought, something springing free in her chest. But James wasn't part of the group that
came crowding through the doorway. It was mostly girls from school.

It doesn't matter. He'll call later. I don't have to think now.

As a matter of fact, it was impossible to think with
so many visitors in the room. And that was good. It
was incredible that Poppy could sit there and talk to
them when part of her was farther away than Nep
tune, but she
did
talk and that kept her brain
turned off.

None of them had any idea that something serious
was wrong with her. Not even Phil, who was at his
brotherly best, very kind and considerate.
They
talked about ordinary things, about parties and Roll
erblading and music and books. Things from Poppy's
old life, which suddenly seemed to have been a hundred years ago.

Cliff talked, too, nicer than he had been since the
days when he was courting Poppy's mother.

But finally the visitors left, and Poppy's mother
stayed. She touched Poppy every so often with hands
that shook slightly. If I didn't know, I'd know, Poppy
thought. She isn't acting like Mom at all.

"I think I'll stay here tonight," her mother said.
Not quite managing to sound offhand. "The nurse said I can sleep on the window seat; it's really a couch for parents. I'm just trying to decide whether
I should run back to the house and get some things."

"Yes, go," Poppy said. There was nothing else she
could say and still pretend that she didn't know. Be
sides, her mom undoubtedly needed some time by
herself, away from this.

Just as her mother left, a nurse in a flowered
blouse and green scrub pants came in to take Poppy's
temperature and blood pressure. And then Poppy
was alone.

It was late. She could still hear a TV, but it was far
away. The door was ajar, but the hallway outside was
dim. A hush seemed to have fallen over the ward.

She felt
very
alone, and the pain was gnawing deep inside her. Beneath the smooth skin of her abdomen,
the tumor was making itself known.

Worst of all, James hadn't called. How could he
not call? Didn't he know she needed him?

She wasn't sure how long she could go on not thinking about It.

Maybe the best thing would be to try to sleep. Get unconscious. Then she
couldn't
think.

But as soon as she turned out the light and closed
her eyes, phantoms swirled around her. Not images
of pretty bald girls; skeletons. Coffins. And worst of
all, an endless darkness.

If I die, I won't
be
here. Will I be anywhere? Or
will I just Not Be at all?

It was the scariest thing she'd ever imagined, Not
Being. And she was definitely thinking now,
she
couldn't help it. She'd lost control. A galloping fear
consumed her, made her shiver under the rough
sheet and thin blankets.
I'm going to die, I'm going to

die, I'm going to

"Poppy"

Her eyes flew open. For a second she couldn't
identify the black silhouette in the darkened room.
She had a wild idea that it was Death itself coming
to get her.

Then she said,
"James?"

"I wasn't sure if you were asleep."

Poppy reached for the bedside button that turned
on the light, but James said, "No, leave it off. I had
to sneak past the nurses, and I don't want them to
throw me out."

Poppy swallowed, her hands clenched on a fold of
blanket. "I'm glad you came," she said. "I thought
you weren't going to come." What she really wanted
was to throw herself into his arms and sob and
scream.

But she didn't. It wasn't just that she'd never done
anything like that with him before; it was something
about
him
that stopped her. Something she couldn't
put her finger on, but that made her feel almost ... frightened.

The way he was standing? The fact that she couldn't see his face? All she knew was that James
suddenly seemed like a stranger.

He turned around and very slowly closed the heavy door.

Darkness. Now the only light came in through the
window. Poppy felt curiously isolated from the rest
of the hospital, from the rest of the world.

And that should have been good, to be alone with
James, protected from everything else. If only she
weren't having this weird feeling of not recognizing
him.

"You know the test results," he said quietly. It
wasn't a question.

"My mom doesn't know I 'know," Poppy said. How
could she be talking coherently when all she wanted to do was scream? "I overheard the doctors telling her....
James, I've got it. And
... it's bad; it's a
bad kind of cancer. They said it's already spread. They said I'm going to
. . ." She couldn't get the last word out, even though it was shrieking through her mind.

"You're going to die," James said. He still seemed quiet and centered. Detached.

"I read up on it," James went on, walking over to
the window and looking out. "I know how bad it is.
The articles said there was a lot of pain. Serious
pain
„

"James," Poppy gasped.

"Sometimes they have to do surgery just to try to
stop the pain. But whatever they do, it won't save
you. They can fill you full of chemicals and irradiate
you, and you'll still. die. Probably before the end of
summer."

"James-"

"It will be your last summer-"

"James, for God's
sake!"
It was almost a scream.

Poppy was breathing in great shaking gulps, clinging
to the blankets. "Why are you doing this to me?"

He turned and in one movement seized her wrist,
his fingers closing over the plastic hospital bracelet.
"I want you to understand that they can't help you,"
he said, ragged and intense. "Do you understand
that?"

"Yes,
I understand," Poppy said. She could hear
the mounting hysteria in her own voice. "But is that
what you came here to say? Do you want to
kill
me?"

His fingers tightened painfully. "No! I want to save
you." Then he let out a breath and repeated it more
quietly, but with no less intensity. "I want to save you, Poppy."

Poppy spent a few moments just getting air in and
out of her lungs. It was hard to do it without dissolv
ing into sobs. "Well, you can't," she said at last. "No
body can."

"That's where you're wrong." Slowly he released
her wrist and gripped the bed rail instead. "Poppy,
there's something I've got to tell you. Something
about me."

"James
. . ." Poppy could breathe now, but she didn't know what to say. As far as she could tell,
James had gone crazy. In a way, if everything else
hadn't been so awful, she might have been flattered.
James had lost his consummate cool-over her. He was upset enough about her situation to go com
pletely nonlinear.

"You really do care," she said softly, with a laugh
that was half a sob. She put a hand on his where it
rested on the bed rail.

He laughed shortly in turn. His hand flipped over to grasp hers roughly; then he pulled away. "You
have no idea," he said in a terse, strained voice.

Looking out the window, he added, "You think
you know everything about me, but you don't. There's something
very
important that you don't
know."

By now Poppy just felt numb. She couldn't under
stand why James kept harping on himself, when
she
was the one about to die. But she tried to conjure up some sort of gentleness for him as she said, "You
can tell me anything. You know that."

"But this is something you won't believe. Not to
mention that it's breaking the laws."

"The law?"

"The laws. I go by different laws than you. Human
laws don't mean much to us, but our own are sup
posed to be unbreakable."

"James," Poppy said, with blank terror. He really
was
losing his mind.

"I don't know the right way to say it. I feel like somebody in a bad horror movie." He shrugged, and
said without turning, "I know how this sounds,
but
... Poppy, I'm a vampire."

Poppy sat still on the bed for a moment. Then she
groped out wildly toward the bedside table. Her fin
gers closed on a stack of little crescent-shaped plastic
basins and she threw the whole stack at him.

"You
bastard!"
she screamed, and reached for
something else to throw.

CHAPTER 5

J
ames dodged as Poppy lobbed a paperback book at
him. "Poppy”

"You jerk! You snake! How can you
do
this to me? You spoiled, selfish, immature-"

"Shhh! They're going to hear you-

"Let them! Here I am, and I've just found out that I'm
going to
die,
and all you can think of is playing a joke on me. A stupid, sick
joke. I can't
believe
this. Do you
think that's
funny?"
She ran out of breath to rave with.
^,
James, who had been making quieting motions with
his hands, now gave up and looked toward the door.

"Here comes the nurse," he said.

"Good, and I'm going to ask her to throw you
out, "
Poppy said. Her anger had collapsed, leaving her near
tears. She had never felt so utterly betrayed and
abandoned. "I hate you, you know," she said.

The door opened. It was the nurse with the flowered blouse and green scrub pants. "Is anything the
matter here?" she said, turning on the light. Then
she saw James. "Now, let's
see;
you don't look like
family," she said. She was smiling, but her voice had
the ring of authority about to be enforced.