What Kills Me
Authors: Wynne Channing
What Kills Me
By Wynne Channing
Copyright © 2012 by Melissa
Leong
All rights reserved. No part of this
book may be reproduced in any form, except for the inclusion of
quotations in review, without permission in writing from the
author/publisher.
Smashwords Edition
Published in the United States of
America by Jet & Jack Press
ISBN-978-0-9881054-0-9
Cover design by Liliana Sanches
Davis
Table of Contents
For my parents who let me
watch scary movies then comforted me when I had
nightmares.
1
A human girl will be
re-born a vampire. She will shed the blood of all who walk in
darkness and bring about the death of the entire vampire
race.
—Ancient vampire prophecy
The sun’s down. I am so
dead.
I walked out of the bakery with a box
of cannoli balanced in my hands and when I saw the dark sky, my
smile faded. I shouldered my way through the crowds and rushed into
a piazza. The clock on the church tower read 9:25 p.m. I rounded
the fountain in the center of the square, my flip flops slapping at
my heels. I shifted my box of pastries so that it was under my arm
like a football and quickened my pace.
Sofia is going to kill me. When I left
the house at 7:30 p.m., I had told her that I’d be only twenty
minutes. But I’d lost track of time wandering the narrow
cobblestone streets, snapping pictures. So far, I wasn’t being a
good guest in her home. Two days ago, I had accidentally used
dishwasher soap in her laundry machine, producing a titanic bubble
bath. This was not the way to redeem myself.
A few people sat on the stone stairs
around the fountain. A bearded man plucked at a guitar and nodded
his head. A woman reclined against her boyfriend, her hands on his
knees as if they were the arms of a chair.
One young man stood alone on the top
of the stairs. His hands were in the pockets of a charcoal coat
with an asymmetrical zipper that cut across his chest. His face was
backlit against the street lamps, but I knew that he was staring at
me. He had such rigid posture that nothing but his head moved as he
watched me cross the square.
I dropped my gaze. The
straps of my backpack dug into my shoulders and shifted my T-shirt.
I tugged at the hem so that the Canadian flag was centered in the
middle of my chest.
He probably wants to
rob me.
My father had warned me about
pickpockets in Rome. A few days before my trip, he had come into my
room with a bulgy blue fanny pack: “To keep your valuables
safe.”
From the corner of my eye I
could still see the man’s face pointed in my direction, and I heard
my best friend’s voice in my head.
Zee,
he’s checking you out. See if he’s hot.
Ryka had encouraged me to have a summer fling. The only fling
I’d ever had with a guy was when Felix Lewis flung me in the air
during cheerleading tryouts. “Find someone and have fun,” but avoid
the bad guys, she had said. She wanted me to keep my
other
valuables
safe.
Pretending to look back at
the clock, I glanced at the fountain. The guy was gone. I searched
the piazza but didn’t see him.
Too bad. He
might have been cute. Would his trying to pick my back pocket count
as second base?
I turned down a lane sandwiched
between two square buildings and wove through a group of men in
soccer jerseys. An old man in an undershirt and house slippers
stood in the street with a dusty poodle, and I returned his sullen
glare with a smile and a nod.
After walking several
minutes, something seemed wrong.
Okay, I
remember passing this restaurant with the row of people eating on
white linen tablecloths under white umbrellas. I remember this
tight street with the parked cars on my left. But I don’t remember
the street opening into a parking lot and this giant purple
bush.
A mass of fuchsia flowers
cascaded down the side of a building, like a purple monster arm,
reaching for the ground with its branchy fingers.
I would have remembered this.
I doubled back through the dim streets but then couldn’t find
my way to the piazza.
Don’t
panic.
I took a mental inventory
of the contents of my bag: a journal, my wallet, my passport, my
digital camera, a bottle of water.
Of
course, I didn’t take the note card with Sofia’s address and phone
number on it. It’s on my dresser. Of course, I didn’t take a
map.
I could see Sofia’s round face,
scrunched with disapproval, the creases on her frowning forehead. I
performed a frustrated pirouette.
“Come on,” I said, exasperated with
myself.
“Excuse me?” A voice said behind
me.
I spun around, and there he was in the
middle of the road. The guy from the fountain. I recognized his
jacket and his tall, stiff stance.
“Sorry. I was talking to myself,” I
said.
He took a step toward me and his face
shocked me. He had high cheek bones and clean-shaven, pale skin.
His deep-set blue eyes were in shadow under thick, dark eyebrows,
but they were luminous.
I realized then that I was staring
with my mouth ajar.
“You’re American?” he asked in his
Italian accent.
“No, I’m from Winnipeg. It’s in
Canada,” I said, pointing to my T-shirt. I glanced away, feeling
weird that I had just directed his attention to my
chest.
He nodded. “You are on
vacation?”
“I’m living here for two months
studying Italian.”
“Well then, welcome
to
Italia
,” he
said, and his pale pink lips smiled. “Do you like it
here?”
“I’ve only been here for about a week
and I love it.”
“What do you love most?” The word,
“lah-ve,” filled his mouth thickly.
“I love the architecture, the food,” I
said. “If I could eat gelato every day for the rest of my life, I
would.”
“Then you must be sweet.”
His smile widened and I felt
embarrassed. To quash my anxiety, I thrust my hand at him. “I’m
Zee,” I said.
He seemed startled, tucking in his
dimpled chin to gaze at my hand. “Zee?”
“My name is Axelia but everybody calls
me Zee.”
“Paolo,” he said.
He slipped his smooth, cool hand into
mine. I gripped his palm and shook it vigorously.
“Eggs-ee-lee-ah?” he said, pronouncing
every syllable of my name. “I like it.”
“Thanks. I like it too.
It’s spelled
A-X-E-L-I-A
; but the
X
is soft. Though I
hated it when I was young. In kindergarten, someone spread a
totally untrue rumor that ‘Zee likes pee,’ and then, you know, at
recess, it was always ‘Zee likes pee, Zee likes pee.’”
I laughed and when he didn’t join me,
I cleared my throat to silence myself. “And I have no clue why I
told you that story, since we just met.”
Oh, Zee. Always babbling
when you’re nervous.
He cocked his head and studied my
face. “Zee, would you like to go with me for a gelato?” he
asked.
Whoa. Is this beautiful
man asking me out? Ryka would be celebrating with corniness: “He
doesn’t want to steal your wallet. He wants to steal your
heart.”
“Uh, thank you, Paolo,” I said,
relishing the opportunity to use his name. “But I actually need to
get home.”
“Where do you live?”
“Good question. I mean, I’m not sure.
I’m a bit lost,” I said with a shrug and something in between a
grin and a grimace. “It’s on a narrow street around here. There’s a
café on the street. There’s a pizzeria. I know—every narrow street
has a café and a pizzeria. And I don’t have a map or an address. I
might just have to live on the streets, survive on cannoli, and
sing for coins.”
“You sing?”
“Yes but I’m sure people will pay me
to stop.”
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I will help
you.”
“Oh, I remember!” I exclaimed.
“There’s a white church on my street.”
“Via della Scala has a white church,”
he said. “And a café and a pizzeria.”
“Via della Scala, that’s it!” I
said.
He put his hand over his heart and
bowed slightly. “May I have the honor of walking you there,
Zee?”
“That would be lovely.”
As we walked back to Sofia’s
apartment, I chattered to fill the silence. I told him about the
laundry fiasco and about my Japanese housemate, Miyuki. At one
point, I realized that I was nervously swinging the box of cannoli
while I walked. Paolo kept his eyes on me while I looked everywhere
else. His suede coat sleeve would brush my bare arm, giving me
goose bumps.
“How old are you?” I said.
“How old are
you
?”
“Seventeen.”
“Me too,” he replied.
“I start university in the fall. I’m
going to take general arts courses for now because I’m not sure
what field I’d like to get into. My father’s an aerospace engineer
and my big sister is studying mechanical engineering. But I almost
failed physics and math in high school. So for the safety of
mankind, I don’t think I should get a job building anything. I love
taking pictures so maybe I could be a photographer. What do you
do?”
“I’m a student.”
“What are you studying?”
“I’m a student of life,” he said. He
pursed his lips when he smiled.
Was that code for
unemployed?
“I see,” I said, instead. “And what
have you learned so far?”
“I’ve learned that treasures present
themselves when you least expect them,” he said. “And you? What has
your life taught you?”