CHAPTER

THIRTY-EIGHT

FROM THE PRIVATE BLOG OF WILL MASON

The G-Spot

February 27

The most incredible thing. Hard to even think about, much less write down. This won’t go on the website. This is something else, something for me.

Not to get too doleful, but the Freak might have found someone. Or would Marc be something? I don’t know. He’s not human; he can’t be. But he’s real.

He’s wonderful.

Okay. The beginning: heading over to Summit, checking out the vampire thing. That gorgeous girl in all the YouTube videos from the last couple of weeks. She’s on camera naming names, giving out addresses, saying the craziest shit while sounding sane and looking earnest as hell, and backed up by people who don’t seem crazy, either.

I mean—these guys are getting affidavits. They’re basically swearing on a Bible that what they saw was real, that vampires are real . . . it was worth checking out. Unlike most of the media, I knew there were plenty of things out in the world we didn’t understand. Unlike most of the media, I wasn’t at the supposed Vampire HQ because the YouTube girl was slim and blond and had wonderful boobs. I actually listened to what she had to say. And it was fascinating . . . if she was telling the truth.

I kind of forgot about her when I saw him. This was the next day, after the so-called vampire queen shooed us away like we were a flock of unruly chickens. Which wasn’t far off, come to think of it. She hadn’t seemed like the terrifying soulless dark queen of the undead described on YouTube. For one thing, she had highlights. For another, she seemed genuinely exasperated to find a bunch of reporters camped in her yard. And finally, she seemed as interested in her shoes as she was in getting rid of us.

Anyway, next time he came out.

God, how to describe? Taller than me by a couple of inches. Super-short black hair and the most wonderful green eyes, bright and piercing. He was probably wearing clothing; I couldn’t get past his face. And he was super nice, politely but firmly telling us to fuck off. I was alternately embarrassed to be there and thrilled I’d come.

Then, the best thing, the most perfect thing, he makes a Better Off Dead reference. A couple of the guys there were from the Strib and the Press, so he mutters, “Four weeks, twenty papers, that’s two dollars. Plus tip!”

When opportunity isn’t just knocking but kicking my door in, I go with it. I walked right up to him and introduced myself with, “I want my two dollars!”

He grinned—God! What a smile! I said my name, first and last, and he gave me his, just the first. Then we traded lines from the movie back and forth, and then he did a sublime impersonation of Bobcat Goldthwait, and that led us to Say Anything (we both agreed Cusack must have had some wondrous upper-body strength to hold up a boom box so long; impressive for a skinny guy), and before I knew it we were talking. Just talking.

He’s so beautiful.

But then it was like he remembered this was business and not pleasure and sort of walked me off the lawn. I didn’t care, I couldn’t look away from those green eyes. I was babbling something—I don’t remember what—and walking backward, and then those eyes got big and startled and he lurched forward and shoved and I went flying. And I just lay there looking up at the sky and thinking, I knew it was too good to be true. My own fault. My own fault; how often have my sources told me I’m alone?

And then I sat up. And I saw what Marc had done. He’d shoved me out of the way of one of the news vans. The driver, in the deepening gloom, hadn’t seen me walking. (I’d been walking backward, so I couldn’t really call the guy on his carelessness.)

He didn’t just save me from a nasty accident. He had the nasty accident instead. I could actually see the bulge in his jeans (not like that, unfortunately) from the broken bone, halfway between his knee and his ankle. In the winter gloom the blood trickling through the denim looked black.

I babbled something (“Oh my God I’m so sorry are you okay I’ll call an ambulance no wait I’ll drive you to the ER I’m so sorry thank you thank you for saving me please let me help you oh your leg your poor leg”), and he was all “No big, I’ll be fine,” stands up on his broken leg and starts limping back to the house. Just a sprain, he says. (Gorgeous, but thinks I’m an idiot.)

“I’m coming back!” I said, grabbing at his arm. I’d been frozen, staring at him as he limped out of my life, and finally woke up enough to run after him. I caught his arm and helped him up the steps. “I’m coming back,” I said again, quieter.

He was all stiff, not friendly anymore, no trace of that smile. “Don’t. It’s fine. Don’t.”

“Not about that,” I said, waving at the mansion to indicate my sudden lack of interest in Vampiregate. Who gave a shit about vampires when this enticing mystery was in the same house? “I want to see you. Check on you, I mean.” That sounded casual, right? “You saved me. Of course I’ll come back.”

“Don’t,” he said again, but he gave me a long look before he got the seriously heavy door open and limped inside, out of my life.

“I’ll come back,” I said, and it’s true. It’s the truest thing I’ve ever said in twenty-seven years.