The Traveling Vampire Show (22 page)

“Why County General?” I asked.

“Well, he feels it’s better equipped, and he was almost as close to it as ...”

“Where was he?”

“Out on Route 3.”

On Route 3 and a dog ran out in front of his car?

A chill scurried up my back and the skin on the nape of my neck stiffened with goosebumps.

“Anyway,” Mom said, “he’s fine, but they’re going to keep him overnight.”

“What for?”

“Just as a precaution. Because of the head injury, mostly. They want to keep an eye on him till morning.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“Anywhoooo, I thought I’d like to stay here at the hospital with him.”

“All night?” I asked.

“I don’t have to stay....”

“No, it’s fine.”

“If you’d rather not stay by yourself, I could come home.”

“No, you don’t have to do that.”

“Or I’m sure you could spend the night with Rusty or one of your brothers.”

“Danny’s out of town.”

“Well, Lee’s home. Or go over to Stu’s.”

“I’ll be okay here,” I said.

“That’s fine. You’re certainly old enough to stay by yourself. There’s ground beef in the fridge. You can make yourself a hamburger if you want. We were going to grill them on the barbecue tonight....” Her voice trembled and stopped and I knew she was weeping. After a while, she sniffed and said, “If you’d rather get take-out, there’s money in the drawer....”

“I’ll be fine,” I said. “Don’t worry about me. Tell Dad hi for me, okay?”

“I will, darling. Oh, he said I should let you know that he missed the dog.”

“He should’ve hit the dog and missed the tree,” I said.

I heard Mom laugh softly. “I’ll tell him that. And I’ll give him your love.”

“Thanks.”

“Anything else before we hang up?”

“Not that I can think of.”

“Okay then, honey. You can call us here if anything comes up.” She gave me the hospital’s phone number and Dad’s room number. Then she said, “I guess that’s about it for now.”

“Guess so.”

“Okay, we’ll see you in the morning.”

“See you then,” I said.

“Be good.”’

“I will.”

“Bye.”

“Bye,” I said, and hang up.

So he’s pretty much all right?” Slim asked when I turned around. Nodding, I realized she’d heard only my side of the conversation. I wasn’t sure what she knew and what she didn’t. So I explained, ”They’re keeping him overnight because he hit his head, but ... other than that, he broke his arm and cracked some ribs.”

“But his head’ll be all right?”

“They think so.”

“He missed a dog and hit a tree?”

I smiled. It must’ve looked strange, because it brought a frown to Slim’s face. “He was out on Route 3,” I explained, “and a dog ran out in front of his car.”

Slim made a face as if she were smelling something horrible but amusing. “A one-eyed dog?” she asked.

“I didn’t ask.”

“Woo.”

“Yeah.”

“When did this happen?”

“I don’t think it was that long ago.”

“Our dog’s been dead since about noon.”

“Yeah.” I shook my head. “Had to be a different dog.”

“Maybe the one that chewed up my Dracula.”

“The very same,” I said.

She grimaced.

I grimaced.

“Maybe we’ve got ghost dogs,” she said.

“Or someone wants us to think so,” I said, which got her laughing. “Anyway,” I continued, “it wasn’t a ghost or a dog that chewed up your Dracula.”

“Are you sure?”

“Pretty sure. For one thing, there’s no such thing as ghosts.”

“Are you sure?”

She was seeming very playful.

“Pretty sure.”

“Don’t be.”

“Anyway, if there are ghosts, they can’t bite stuff. They don’t have any ...”

“Teeth?” she asked.

Grinning, I shook my head. “That’s not what ... I mean, they’re just ... like spirits. They don’t have substance.”

“A matter of opinion.”

“Anyway, ghost or not, a dog would’ve had to paw the Dracula off your bookshelf. Or bite it out. Either way, it would’ve messed up your other books. But they were all in a neat row. That could only be done by a human.”

“Or a vampire,” she added, “speaking on behalf of our absent Russell.”

I laughed. “Daylight,” I reminded her.

Her smile evaporated. “Which leaves us with humans. I’m glad we’re out of my house.”

“My mom isn’t coming home till tomorrow morning, so I guess there’s no reason you can’t stay here.”

“No reason you can’t go to the vampire show tonight, either.”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t want to miss that.”

“I might.”

“Oh? You’d rather stay home and watch television?”

“Maybe. If you’ll be here.”

“I’ll be here unless you throw me out, I guess.”

“I wouldn’t throw you out.”

“What about Rusty?” she asked.

“What about him?”

“He really wants to see that show.”

“He’s probably grounded.”

“He’ll find a way to get out.”

“Maybe.”

“He will. And then he’ll show up here, all rarin’ to go.”

“I almost hope he doesn’t,” I said.

We suddenly ran out of words, so we stared at each other. Again, we both seemed awfully aware of being together in an empty house. Nobody to see us. Nobody to tell on us. Nobody to stop us.

We were only a few feet apart. A couple of steps forward and I’d be close enough to put my arms around her, pull her up against me, kiss her ...

I couldn’t move.

She wasn’t moving either, just gazing into my eyes. She looked solemn and hopeful.

I ached to take those steps and hug her, feel her body against mine, feel her lips....

A smile broke across her face and she said, “Maybe we’d better eat.”

Saved! But disappointed.

“Good idea,” I said. “Cheeseburgers sound okay?”

“Cheeseburgers sound great.”

“We can do ’em outside on the grill.”

“Why don’t you get the fire started and I’ll make the patties?”

“Great.”

I hurried to the refrigerator, found the package of ground chuck, and gave it to Slim.

“How many you want?” she asked.

“I don’t know, how many do you want?”

“I haven’t thought about it.”

“Do you make ’em thick or thin?” I asked.

“Thin’s better. I don’t like them raw in the middle.”

“Me either. So if you’re making them thin, I’ll have two.”

“Okie-doke. Maybe I’ll have two, too.”

We both smiled like idiots.

Slim set the package of meat down on the counter, then stepped over to the sink and started to wash her hands. I watched her standing there, bent over slightly, the bottom of her T-shirt hanging crooked across the rear of her cut-off jeans. Her rump filled the seat of her jeans. A fringe of threads brushed against the backs of her thighs. Her legs were smooth and tanned all the way down to her ankles.

She looked over her shoulder. “What?” she asked.

“Nothing.”

She smiled. “Nothing, huh?”

“Just looking,” I said, and blushed.

We had another of those staring contests where I wanted to go to Slim, but was afraid to, and she looked as if maybe she hoped I would come over and kiss her.

This time, it didn’t go on very long before she said, “Maybe you’d better go out and start the fire.”

“Yeah, guess so. Back in a while.” I hurried outside. Nowadays, most people have grills that run on propane. It’s easy to use and doesn’t pollute the environment (God perserve us from the fumes of backyward barbecues!) When I was growing up, however, we never had a propane grill. We never had charcoal lighting fluid, either. Dad claimed the fuel odor gave food a bad taste, but I’m pretty sure he was just trying to protect my brothers and I from the scourge of doing something “the easy way.” So while every other family in Grandville started their barbecue fires by squirting fuel on the briquettes, we had to build ours the “natural way,” like Boy Scouts on a campout, by crumpling paper, piling on the kindling, then adding the briquettes on top.

At least he allowed us to use matches. Could’ve been worse.

Usually, I resented that we weren’t allowed to use fuel. Tonight, though, I welcomed the distraction of building a fire the hard way.

For one thing, it kept my mind occupied so it wouldn’t dwell too much on Dad’s accident ... or on the murdered dog ... or on the chewed book or the missing yellow roses ... or on my betrayal of Bitsy ... or on the Traveling Vampire Show....

Also, it kept me out of the kitchen.

I was glad to be outside in the murky afternoon, watching flames lick at my sticks and briquettes, with Slim safely out of sight.

Alone with my fire, I missed her and longed to be with her—but! I felt a wonderful sense of relief. At least for a while, there was no need to worry about how to act with Slim in a house without adults.

It remained in my mind, along with all my other concerns, but didn’t overwhelm me because my main thoughts were focused on adding sticks and briquettes to the fire.

I jumped a little when the screen door banged shut.

Slim came trotting down the back steps with a bottle in each hand.

They weren’t bottles of soda pop.

“You think your parents’ll mind if we drink up some of their beer?”

If she’d been Rusty, I would’ve blown my stack.

But she was Slim, and she looked so good, and she had that smile.

“They’ll just kill us is all,” I said, smiling.

“Never fear. My mom drinks the same brand. We can replace these with some of hers.”

“Then she’ll have missing bottles.”

“She’s keeps a zillion of them around. She’ll never know the difference.”

“We will,” I said. I must’ve said it funny.

Slim laughed and said, “Gad-zooks, I hope so.”

We sat on the stairs outside the back door and sipped our beers. We were side by side, so we didn’t have to worry about staring at each other. We could look straight forward at the lawn or grill, or down at the beer bottles we were holding, or somewhere else.

When we first sat down, there were a couple of inches between us. As we talked and sipped, they disappeared somehow, through no fault of mine. I didn’t move, so Slim must’ve. Before you know it, her upper right arm was touching my upper left arm.

I tried not to think too much about it, but I couldn’t quit thinking about it.

Even though Slim and I had been best friends for all those years and done so much together, it was almost as if we were on a first date. Everything about her seemed new and wonderful and scary.

When our bottles were about half-empty, Slim said, “Think the charcoal’s ready?”

I considered jumping up to check, but that would’ve broken the contact between our arms. We might not be able to get our positions just the same when I came back.

“I’d give it another ten minutes or so,” I said.

She nodded, sighed, took another sip of beer, then said, “I’m not in any hurry.”

“Me neither.”

“It’s kind of nice, just sitting here.”

“Yeah.”

“Just the two of us,” she added.

My heart started pounding like mad. Afraid to look at her, I stared toward the barbecue grill and nodded.

“Not that I’ve got anything against Rusty,” she said.

I managed to laugh. “You don’t?”

“He’s okay.”

“For a pain in the butt.”

This time, she laughed. Then she said, “What really bugs me is that he’s always around. I know he’s your best friend and all, but...”

I was tempted to turn my head toward her, but I stopped myself. “But what?” I asked.

“Sometimes I just wish he’d take a long walk off a short pier, that’s all.”

“Same here.”

In a low voice, she said, “Thing is, it’d be nice if just the two of us could do stuff sometimes.”

Now I had to turn my head. Looking her in the eyes, I asked, “Really?”

“Yeah. Not that I want to hurt his feelings or anything.”

Our faces were so close together that her eyes made tiny jerking movements from left to right as if she couldn’t make up her mind about which of my eyes to look at. I could smell a sweet warm scent of beer on her breath.

“Just that I sort of like being alone with you,” she said. “Like now.”

“Same here,” I whispered.

Then Slim reached down between her legs and set the beer bottle on the next lower step. Turning herself sideways, she put her arm around my back. I set down my bottle. When I turned, my knee pushed against her knee. We both leaned toward each other and put our arms around each other and kissed.

Her lips were cool from the beer, and soft, and hers. I’d kissed girls before. A few times, anyway. In fact, I’d kissed Slim before, at least on the cheek a couple of times when she was going away on trips with her mom. But there’d never been another kiss like this one.

The way Slim kissed me, I figured she must be in love with me just the same as I was in love with her. She hugged me so hard it hurt. I took it easy on her, though, because I could feel the bandages under her shirt.

The kiss went on and on. I felt as if I were sinking into Slim. I was in her and she was in me. I had her breath in my mouth and in my throat and in my lungs. I had the tips of her breasts touching me softly through our clothes. I wanted it to go on forever.

Way too soon, she loosened her hold on me. Her lips moved away from mine. Her breasts stopped touching me. But she remained so close that our noses almost touched, and she stared into my eyes.

I stared back into hers.

This time, the staring didn’t make me nervous. This time, it just felt good.

After a while, she tilted her head sideways and kissed me again. This time, her lips barely touched mine before she took them away. “You’re all spitty,” she whispered. She eased away from me, but not very far. She was wet around the mouth herself, and a little bit red. Smiling softly, she leaned toward me again. She stretched out the neck of her T-shirt and rubbed it across my mouth. Then she moved back and wiped her own mouth in the same place. “Kissing can be messy, huh?” she asked.

I opened my mouth. For a moment, I thought I might’ve forgotten how to talk. But I managed to say, “Guess so.”