Original Stories Fan Fiction ❯ Crystal ❯ Chapter 8

Crystal, Chapter 8:

 

 

Rumors of my wild kiss with Scott made their way around the school by the time I got back for the concert that night. Classmates looked at me with new eyes, the boys appreciatively, the girls a little less so. Did they believe the rumors so easily? I thought at least some of them were my friends.

 

“Hi, Crystal.” Scott slipped his arm around my waist, and I immediately twisted out of his embrace, putting a little distance between us.

 

“Hi, Scott,” I said, lowering my eyes like a good girl. The mark of my feeding still showed red on his lip. I went and took my place in the lineup. We had a show to do. Scott stood by my side, a little closer than strictly necessary. In a way, I missed the old Scott, the one who used to make jokes. At least that Scott respected my space. It was my own fault that he now thought I liked him like a boyfriend. You didn't go around kissing your good friends so hard that their lips bled. I noticed he had on a high collar dress shirt. I must have left a mark on his neck, too.

 

The lights dimmed, and we went into our first song. I forgot about Scott and concentrated on the music. Somewhere in the audience sat my parents, and Paul. Somewhere else, I was sure, Johnny was watching, too. Let me make it through this night, I prayed.

 

Thankfully, the hunger had abated. I made it through the finale this time, to thunderous applause. We could have been awful, and still we would have gotten the same enthusiastic applause. That's how it is when the audience is composed of friends and relatives. I was just glad it was over. It was the last concert of the year. Now, we just had to get through exams and then it would be summer vacation.

 

I met my parents and Paul in the hallway after the show. “Mom, a bunch of us are going out to celebrate. Can I go? I'll get a ride home from one of the other kids.”

 

It was tradition. Paul, I could tell, wasn't very happy about it, but my parents took him under their wing and explained that's how we did it in American schools. He went with them, leaving me with my fellow choir members, and Scott. Johnny was nowhere to be seen.

 

I should have known he wasn't far away. He never was. We went to the pizza place in the next town. They had a back room with pool tables which we had reserved for our after-party. There was no booze, but then again, we didn't really need it. We were still high from our performance, nerdy as that sounds.

 

After a while, the girls warmed up to me again, seemingly impressed that I had left my mark on Scott. Scott stuck like glue to my side, flaunting his fat lip and stealing kisses from me whenever he thought he could get away with it. I was almost tempted to bite him again, right then and there. He wouldn't have minded, and it would have served him right. But I refrained.

 

Somewhere along the line I spotted the quiet boy leaning against the far wall. He had his hands in his pockets, and he watched me constantly. When my eyes met his, he slowly straightened, and I noticed his eyes were flat black. Never a good sign.

 

Scott was loudly telling his story of our passionate kiss to a group of his friends, grabbing my arm and pulling me over to demonstrate. I stiffened, but before I had time to react, Johnny was there, between us, staring at Scott's bottom lip.

 

“She did that?” he asked, sounding impressed.

 

“Yeah, and this, too,” Scott said, pulling aside his collar while at the same time trying to pull me around the other boy so I could bear witness to his battle scars. “Wild thing,” he said fondly.

 

Johnny didn't move. His eyes narrowed as he spotted the red mark on Scott's throat. “Crystal, let's go.” He spun around and walked towards the exit, not even looking to see if I was following.

 

I extricated myself from Scott's grip. “He's my—cousin,” I explained sheepishly. “I've got to go.” I hurried after Johnny, with the girls nodding in sympathy as I walked by. The boys hooted, at me or at Scott, I couldn't tell. The door slammed shut behind me.

 

“You're lucky I didn't kill him,” Johnny commented quietly from the side of the building. He hadn't brought a car, so I wasn't sure how we were going to go home, but Johnny had no intention of bringing me home just yet. His eyes, when he took my elbow and stared into mine, were still black and angry. I'd been making Johnny angry a lot lately.

 

We started walking. It was a long walk from this town to Lockwood. I had no idea where we were going. For a long time, we walked in silence. “I'm sorry,” I said contritely at last. “I didn't mean for any of that to happen.”

 

“Why did it happen?” Johnny wheeled me around to face him on the deserted street.

 

“I couldn't help it!” I said. “I was so hungry! You weren't around. You're never around anymore, and I just—I just needed blood!”

 

Johnny stilled so completely that I had to blink to make sure he was still there in front of me. “You don't need blood,” he said. “You don't need blood.”

 

“I do too!” I protested. “You may not want to believe it, but I crave blood, Johnny!”

 

He took my hand and led me off the road into the woods. A light shone in the distance. A house. He had me wait outside while he went in alone. After a while, the front door opened and he beckoned me inside. Two people lay sprawled on the living room couch, both of them dead for all I knew. Their throats were torn and bloody. If Johnny meant to shock me, he miscalculated. I went up to the woman and touched my fingers to her throat. My stomach knotted. I wanted this. I wanted it so badly.

 

I glanced at Johnny, but he just watched me with his dark eyes. So be it. I lowered my mouth to her throat and drank. She wasn't dead. I could feel the faint pulse of her blood as the warmth spread through my veins to settle in my stomach. I hadn't even felt hungry before Johnny brought me here, but I was glad he had done it. “Thank you,” I said, sitting back. He hadn't touched the other person.

 

“You don't need it,” he said again stubbornly.

 

Tell that to my burning throat. “Johnny, maybe it's time. If this keeps happening to me, maybe it's a sign that I'm ready to change for real.”

 

“No,” he murmured. He opened the front door. Already, I could see that the throats of our two donors looked better, the skin merely red and not broken. “No.”

 

“Why not?” I pushed past him into the darkness beyond, but I wasn't done arguing. “Why won't you change me? I want to be with you all the time, Johnny! I'm tired all day and hungry all night. I'm sick of regular food. I want blood! I want to be like you, Johnny!”

 

He staggered as if I'd struck him. “Like me?” he asked. “You are like me.”

 

He took my hand again and ran with me through the woods, back the way we came. I couldn't keep up, and he swung me around so that he carried me, and we ran back to the little town where my friends were still celebrating with pizza, through the dark country roads towards Lockwood. He did have his car. It was still parked at my school.

 

We drove to my house. I was glad to see Paul had already left. I wasn't sure I wanted to deal with him tonight, too. Mom and Kenny were in the living room, waiting for me to get home from my party, I guess. They were surprised to see Johnny.

 

Mom followed us into the kitchen, where Johnny rummaged around in the cabinets and took down two bowls. “Go to bed, Lisa,” Johnny said in a tired voice. “I'm not staying long. I want to talk to Crystal—alone.”

 

He waited until he heard both my parents go upstairs before he got out the ice cream. “You like ice cream, right?” he asked me. He dished out two big scoops, one in each bowl. He put one in front of me and kept the other. “You don't need blood, Crystal. Neither do I. We want it.”

 

He took a big mouthful of ice cream and ate it. My eyes widened. I had seen him drink, occasionally, with Kenny or Uncle Robert. I had never seen Johnny eat food.

 

“The lake sustains me,” Johnny said, continuing to eat his ice cream. “Blood sustains me. If I stopped, the way I am now, I don't know how much in control of myself I would remain. I don't remember all of how it works. But I was born human, and I ate food and slept like a human, until I chose not to. I could learn to eat food again, and grow old again, but I choose not to.” He pushed away his half-eaten bowl of ice cream. “My point is, you and I are not so different. You are stronger than your cravings, Crystal.”

 

“But what if I choose it?” I asked. “I want to choose it like you did.”

 

Johnny smiled. “I know, and I am so very glad. But maybe I'm not ready yet, Crystal. Give me some more time, let's find out what the Scottish cousins are after, and then we can take that final step. Will you wait a little longer?”

 

My heart clenched. What if the cousins were after my brothers and Johnny was killed in the attempt to stop them? What if a little longer was too long? “You can do it, Johnny,” I said. I knew he was afraid I would die in the attempt to change me. “But I'll wait—a little longer.”

 

I pushed my ice cream away too. “Don't go, Johnny,” I said. The blood was only half the problem. I hated it that Johnny stayed away because of the Scottish cousins. “I'm glad you came to my show tonight.”

 

“About that.” Johnny came around the table and carried both our bowls to the sink, where he rinsed them out and put them in the dish drainer. I wondered what my mother would think in the morning, seeing two bowls in the drainer. “Did you have to kiss that boy to take his blood?”

 

My face reddened. “I couldn't break the skin on his neck,” I admitted. “The lip was easier.”

 

Johnny laughed, easily and with real enjoyment. “Your kisses belong to me,” he said, and then to prove his point he kissed me. “Don't forget again.”

 

“Johnny,” I said, when I could breathe, “will I be able to break the skin after you change me? Otherwise, we have to figure out some way to do this. I can't have you feeding me forever.”

 

Johnny laughed again. “You think of the silliest things,” he told me, ruffling my hair. “That will be the least of our worries.”

 

Not the least of mine. It seemed like a pretty big problem to my eyes.

 

Johnny tucked me into bed and sat with me until I fell asleep. He hadn't told the whole truth when he said he chose to become a vampire. He hadn't had much of a choice when he was a child. He was born and groomed for this life. That was why I think he wanted to give me a true choice, as much as he wanted me to be with him. If I chose Paul, he probably would let me go. The idiot.