Immortal

The vampires invaded New York the night Jilly turned sixteen. She was pacing in front of a club called Watami, waiting for Eli to show, eager to see what he had bought her. He was late, and she knew it was Sean’s fault. Sean wouldn’t want to come, because it was Jilly’s birthday and Sean hated her. But Eli would make him do it, and they would show and she would wonder all over again why Eli couldn’t love her like that . . . and how he could love someone who didn’t like her.

Then, out of nowhere, the place was swarming with white-faced, bone-haired, blood-eyed monsters. They just started attacking, grabbing people and ripping open their throats—dancers, drinkers, bartenders, and her three best straight friends, Torrance, Miles, and Diego.

She still had no idea how she’d gotten out of there, but she called Eli first and then her parents. No service, no service, beepbeepbeep . . . no texting, no net; no one could freakin’ communicate.

She was Jilly Stepanek, lately of the Bronx, a semi-slacker who wanted to go to film school at NYU once she got her grades back up. She had been a neo-goth, into Victorian/ Edwardian clothes and pale makeup without the Marilyn Manson vibe, loved steampunk—but now all she was, was another terrified chick on the run from the monsters. Used to be the monsters were in her head; now they were breathing down her neck in real time.

No one stepped forward to represent the vampires or explain why they had taken over the five boroughs like the world’s worst gang. There were no demands, no negotiations, just lots of dying. In less than a week, drained corpses—the homeless, first—littered the streets of Manhattan, SoHo, and the Village. As far as Jilly could tell, none of them rose to become vampires themselves. Maybe all the movies weren’t true; maybe once they killed you, you were just dead.

The vampires had hunting animals like falcons that dug into their white arms. They were all head and wings, with huge white faces and bloodshot eyes and teeth that clack-clack-clacked like the windup false kind. Blood dripped and splattered onto the ground from the places the bird-suckers gouged their claws into their masters’ arms, but—she observed from as far away as possible—either the vampires couldn’t feel it or they liked it. Maybe it was their version of cutting.

The bird-suckers swooped and pirouetted across the night clouds, tearing the city pigeons to pieces. A few nights of slaughter and they owned the skies. A few nights more, and there were no wild dogs on the island of Manhattan.

Three nights after her birthday, a vampire attacked and killed her father; its vampire-bird ran her mother to the ground while they were running out of their house. Jilly screamed for her mom to run faster, run faster, oh, God, but it swooped down on the back of her mother’s head and started pecking and tearing. Her mother fell; her eyes were open but she wasn’t seeing a thing. Blood from her neck gushed onto the sidewalk beneath a lamp post, and it looked like her shadow was seeping out of her body.

Hiding in the bushes, heaving, Jilly waited it out. Then she ran the other way, in nothing but a black chemise, some petticoats, her boots, and a long black coat she had bought at a garage sale.

She tried to get to Eli’s row house but whole blocks exploded right in front of her, and others whooshed up in flames like paper lanterns. Weeping and gasping, she phoned him over and over; she texted with shaking hands. No service, no service, beepbeepbeep.

She raced in circles to get past the fires as the smoke boiled up into the dotted clouds of clack-clack-clacking birds.

By four days after her birthday, the streets were a real jungle. The survivors were as vicious as the street dogs the vampires-birds had eaten: hoarding food, and threatening to kill each other over safe places to sleep and water bottles. She had some experience with hostility, from when she had gone drug-mad. Rehab and a lot of love had redeemed her, but the old lessons were not forgotten.

Dodging fiends and madmen, she stole tons of phones—or maybe she only took them, since there was no one left alive in the stores to ring up the sales—but there was really, really, really no service. Trying to find one that worked became an addiction. At least it gave her something to do—other than hide, and run.

Her therapist, Dr. Robles, used to caution her to ease up, not use her busy brain quite so much. He said she had to let go of loving Eli because people who were gay were gay; there wasn’t going to be a change of heart no matter how much she wanted one.

She tried to find a cybercafé that the vampires hadn’t gutted, but there were none to be found. She broke into office buildings and tried their computers, but they were fried. She wondered how the vampires did it. She was sure it was part of their plot to take over the world.

Just like the vampires, she slept during the day, in the brightest sunlight she could find, her black coat covering her like a shroud. Even though she had never been a Catholic, she prayed to the God of the crucifix, because crucifixes could hold the vampires at bay. She wanted to pray in St. Patrick’s Cathedral but it was too dark and enclosed; she could almost hear the vampires hissing in the chapels lining the sanctuary. Her lips were cracked and chapped. She was filthy. But maybe God would help her anyway.

Please, God, please, God, please, God, please, God, please please please don’t let Eli get burned to death or sucked dry by the demons amen.

High rises burned down to ash; cars exploded, and the vampires capered on stacks of the dead. And Jilly staggered through it like the last victim of the Apocalypse. No one hooked up with her and she didn’t make any effort to take on a sidekick or become one. She had to get to Eli; at least she could die with him.

So she kept skirting the crazily burning buildings in her tattered bad-fairy gear, the indigo in her hair bleached by the sun and coated with dirt. She showed people the photograph of him she always carried in her coat pocket. No, Jilly, no, Jilly, no, Jilly, no Jilly, no Jilly, no no no sorry, loser.

She kept waiting for the fires to burn down, burn out. The smoke took a toll on her; the air smelled like someone barbecuing rotten hot dogs; she felt it congealing in her lungs and coating her skin. Five days after her birthday, she was so tired she could hardly breathe anyway, which was a sort of blessing because maybe she would die and then she could stop everything. Escaping the bad was also one of her habits. She was empty, outside and in, just a husk. If a vampire tried to suck her blood, it would probably find nothing but red powder.

She really thought that the time had come for her to die. She thought about her parents, and her friends, but mostly she thought about Eli Stein. He had been her first and only love, before he had realized he was gay. She still loved him; she would always love him, no matter what form his love for her would take. Brainbrain, go away, obsess again some other day. . . .

He was crazy-mad for Sean instead and she hoped. . . .

No, she couldn’t even think that. If she went anywhere near praying for something to happen to Sean. . . .

You are evil, Jilly, and you deserve to die.

Beneath her coat, she fell asleep and dreamed of Eli, and Sean; because in the summer after tenth grade that was who they were, Eliandsean, like one person, like the person she had hoped to become with him. Once Eli had found his other half, they had come to her house almost every day, because they could hold hands there.

They could brag about their slammin’ skillz on their skateboards and video games like any other teenage boys, and they could flirt with each other and sit on the couch with their arms around each other while Jilly’s mom brought them sodas and grilled cheese sandwiches. They were amazed and delighted by the acceptance in Jilly’s house. Tolerance, in her house, came after a hard struggle, won by determined parents who never let go of Jilly, even after she ran away with a biker, shaved her head, and told her shrink there were no bones in her hands.

It was all crazy in a new way; taggers wrote VAMPIRES SUCK over every surface there was, and people tried to share whatever information they’d learned about them: They were mindless, they were super smart; they had a leader, it was all random. They lured you in with dark sexuality. They attacked you like animals without a plan. It had something to do with global warming; they were terrorists. They were a plague created by the government.

She saw plenty of them. White-faced and leering, they darted down streets and stared out of windows, like terrible Will Smith CGI effects. She didn’t know how she hadn’t been killed yet, with all the near misses. One thing she did know, they were more like people than beasts. Just very evil people. Their birds were mindless attackers, but the vampires themselves listened to music and went joyriding on motorcycles and kept the subway people alive so they could go on rides; it’s a dead world after all.

After another near miss—a vampire turned a corner just ahead of her, and she turned on her heel and ran, hard—she broke down weeping, her thin stomach contracting; and then God must have taken the hint, or felt guilty, or whatever, but He/She/It/They did something miraculous:

It began to rain. Hard. Buckets poured down from heaven like old lady angels washing their doorstoops; gallons and rivers tumbled onto rooftops and treetops like all the tears of all the New Yorkers, like all the blood that had gushed out of the necks of the dead.

And the rain toned down the fires just enough that she soaked her coat and then raced through the fire line, arriving on the other side into some kind of hellish otherworld; everything was covered with gray and white-bone ash: trees, buildings, abandoned cars, rubble. She shuffled through layers of powdery death.

And there it was. There it was.

Eli’s row house. With the formerly turquoise paint and the American flags and some kid’s ash-colored tricycle overturned in a pile of ash like strange granular leaves. Then she thought she saw a shadow move across the window, and she stared at it for a long time, because she had actually made it, and in her heart she’d expected there to be no signs of life. There were no more shadows and she wondered if she had gone crazy or died and imagined the whole thing. By then, Jilly was certain the dead could be as crazy as the living. She staggered up the stoop stairs, kicking up layers of death that made her gag and choke.

She knocked on the door, but no one answered, and she pushed it open.

Eli and his father faced each other in the living room with the old tapestry of the Jews at Masada hanging over the upright piano. Eli looked taller and thinner, his dark hair long as ever, and he had a semi-beard. He looked like a leftist rabbi in the NYU sweatshirt she had given him. Mr. Stein was still Mr. Stein, in a navy blue sweater and dark trousers.

Mr. Stein was shouting. “You stupid faggot, you’re going to die out there.”

“Just shut up!” Eli shrieked. “Stop calling me that!”

“Eli,” she whispered from the doorway. “Eli, it’s me.”

They both turned.

“Jilly!”

Eli whooped, gathered her up, and hugged her against himself. She felt as light as a desiccated leaf, unbelievably dizzy, and reeling with happiness. Eli was alive. He was safe. And he was still here, in his old house, living indoors, with his parents.

“Oh my God, are you okay?” he asked; and then, before she could answer, he said, “Have you seen Sean?”

“No,” she said, and he deflated. She saw the misery on his face, felt it in the way he nearly crushed her.

In the kitchen, his gaunt, black-haired witchmother was cooking, as if nothing had changed. They had electricity, and gas, and as Jilly smelled the hot food—onions, meat—her mouth began to salivate. She burst into tears and he held her tightly, swaddling her in himself. He smelled so good. So clean. Almost virginal.

His father’s eyes bulged like an insect’s and he stared at Jilly, as if she were an intruder.

“I’ve been trying to get here,” she said. “Everything was on fire. And then the rain came.”

“The rain,” Mr. Stein said reverently, glancing at the tapestry.

“Now we can look for Sean,” Eli said.

“Don’t speak that name,” Mr. Stein snapped.

For God’s sake, what do you care about that now? she wanted to snap back at him. But she took Eli’s hand and folded it under her chin. She saw the layer of ash-mud on her hands and wondered what she looked like. A zombie, probably.

“I was just about to leave, to search for him,” he said, bringing her knuckles to his mouth. He kissed them, then laid her hand against his cheek. His tears dampened her skin, like more rain. “He called just before it happened, from midtown. I don’t know what he was doing there. We had a fight. I was lying down.”

Weren’t you going to meet me at the club?

Eli searched Jilly’s face with his fingers and she felt each brush of his fingertips close a wound the long days and nights had cut into her soul. There was no one she loved more. She would go to her grave loving Eli Stein.

“Of course you’re not leaving now. Look at her. She looks like she’s dead.” Mr. Stein had never liked her. Not only was she formerly a mad slut, she wasn’t Jewish, and her family had given Eli and Sean safe harbor to commit their carnal atrocities.

“You need to fix the door,” Jilly said. “Or at least to lock it.”

“I thought it was locked,” Mr. Stein said. He looked at Eli. “Did you unlock it?” He walked to the door to check it, passing close by Jilly so that she had to take a step out of his way. He grabbed the door; she heard a click, and then he turned the knob.

“It’s broken.” He glared at Eli. “Did you break it?”

“Dad, why would I do that?” Eli asked.

“Maybe vampires tried to get in last night,” Jilly ventured. “You need to put up some crucifixes. They really do work.”

Mr. Stein crossed his arms over his chest. “Not normal,” he muttered.

“Dinner is almost ready,” Mrs. Stein announced from the kitchen, smiling weakly. Jilly wondered where on Earth she had found a brisket. In the still-working refrigerator of their house, she supposed.

Eli gave her a look that said, My parents have lost their minds, obviously. He had some experience with mental illness, since he was her best friend.

She didn’t smile, even though, as usual, they were thinking the same thing. It wasn’t funny. She didn’t know who was crazy and who wasn’t.

“You could take a shower, Jilly,” Mrs. Stein continued.

Jilly was too weak and exhausted to take a shower. But Mrs. Stein gave her some mashed potatoes and a piece of cheese and they energized her enough to stagger into the bathroom. For the first time in weeks, she was a few degrees less afraid to be enclosed in a small room; to take off her clothes; to stand vulnerable underneath water . . .

. . . and then Eli was in the bathroom, taking off his clothes too. He climbed into the shower and wrapped his arms around her, sobbing. She started to cry, too, naked with her best friend who did not want her the way she wanted him; they clung to each other and mourned.

“He’s out there,” he said. “I know he is.”

She turned around and leaned her back against his chest. It was so unreal that she was here. To just walk through their door. . . .

“Your parents are probably out there having a fit,” she said, her eyes closed as she savored the pleasure of mist, and warmth, and Eli.

“Are you crazy? They’re probably dancing in circles. ‘He’s in there with a girl! He’s not gay! He’s not a faggot!’” He mimicked his father’s voice perfectly. Then he added softly, “What about your parents?”

She raised her chin so the water would sluice over her face. Her silence was all he needed.

“Oh, Jilly. Jilly, God, what happened?”

“I can’t talk about it. Don’t say anything. I’ll never stop crying.”

He laid his hand over her forehead. “I’ll only say that they were so good to me. And in Judaism, goodness is a living thing,” he whispered.

“Thanks.” She licked her stinging lips again.

Head dipped, he turned off the water. Then he toweled her off and retrieved some neatly folded clothes set out by his mother in the hall. A pair of sweat pants swam on her and belled around her ankles. There was a black sweater, no bra. Not that it mattered.

He put back on his clothes, laced his fingers with hers, and took her into his room. There were pictures of her everywhere—at school, at their first Broadway play, holding hands in Central Park. The ones of Sean outnumbered them, though. First there were a lot of pictures of just the two of them, Eli and Sean, the brand-new boyfriends; and then, of Eli, Sean, and Jilly, as Eli brought the two “together”—mugging for the camera, practicing for a drama skit, their very silly trip to a book signing at Forbidden Planet. Sean looked pissed off in any picture she was in. Didn’t Eli notice?

She stretched out on the blue velour bedspread, feeling as if she had just set down a heavy load of books. It was incredible to her that he had been sleeping on this wonderful bed, in his own room. She didn’t even know if her building was still standing. She could go back, get more clothes, get her valuables and money.

Eli would go with her. They could look for Sean on the way.

She dozed. Eli spooned her, holding her; each time she inhaled, he exhaled. It had been that way in the early days, for them. When Sean came along, he added something new; he was a literal breath of fresh air. Even Jilly had been charmed by the surfer dude who had lived in L.A. and knew movie people who might be able to help her. He talked about working as a stand-in. He hung around stunt men. His uncle had rented out his surf shop as a movie set.

But once he was sure of Eli’s love, he changed. She saw it happen. Eli didn’t. Maybe changed was the wrong word; around her, he became chilly and disinterested, and she knew he was never going to introduce her to anyone in the industry. But Eli didn’t see it.

Sean had actually been a kind of vampire. He sucked up anything he wanted; he drained Eli’s friends and class-mates by using them to advance up the social ladder, then blindsided them with his snotty I-am-mean-and-because-I-deserve-to-be-you-must-permit-it attitude. She could almost predict when he’d show his other face. Jilly’s mom used to say they should give Sean the benefit of the doubt because he had been through a lot. Any guy who was gay had suffered. So they had to be nice to him, even though he was a jerk. She knew what her mom was not saying: We put up with your bad behavior. Welcome to the real world—the one that does not revolve around you.

Her mom would never say anything like that, of course.

Because she was dead.

But she had never talked like that, not even when Jilly was the most drug-crazy; she had said Jilly was hurting.

But even when Jilly was at her worst, she still would have done anything to help Eli become more, and more, and more of all the wonderful things Eli was.

“God, I’m glad you’re here,” he whispered, nuzzling the back of her head. She cried some more, and he held her.

There was a soft knock on the door. Mrs. Stein whispered, “It’s dinner time.”

Jilly was very hungry, and the smell of food was making her clench and unclench her hands. But Eli had fallen asleep with his arm over her. She tried to figure out a way to slide out from underneath him without waking him up. She couldn’t manage it, so she stayed beside him. Her arm began to ache. Her stomach growled.

As she contracted and released her muscles, trying to keep the blood circulating, she heard Mrs. Stein crying. It was a high-pitched, irritating kind of weeping, and it set Jilly on edge.

“No one is helping us!” Mrs. Stein cried. “No one.”

Jilly, hungry and despairing and exhausted, listened to the rain, and imagined New York City going up in steam. Then she let herself go fully to sleep for the first time since she had turned sixteen.

The yelling jerked Jilly awake.

“You will die!” Mr. Stein shouted downstairs.

“Stop yelling!” Mrs. Stein was crying again. “You’ll drive him away, the way you always have.”

“What, drive away? Didn’t you hear what he just said? He’s leaving anyway!”

Jilly groaned, feeling in the bed for Eli, realizing he’d gotten up. His parents were trying, in their way, to tell him that they loved him and didn’t want him to risk his life by leaving their home. She felt the same way. She didn’t want to get out of bed. She knew Eli so well, knew they were going to leave as soon as she emerged from the bedroom—maybe we can eat first—and it wasn’t going to be a graceful exit.

“It’s because they blame you for not fixing me,” Eli told her as they left his parents’ house. It was still raining; Mrs. Stein had given them parkas with hoods and umbrellas. The rain seemed to have cleared the sky of the vampire birds of prey. Another miracle.

At least they had gotten to have some breakfast first—last night’s brisket, and pancakes. And blessed coffee. While she’d been on the street, she’d heard a story that one man had knifed another over the last cup of coffee in a pot in a diner.

She didn’t say anything. She couldn’t forgive Eli’s parents for being so narrow-minded as to pick a fight with their son and his best friend, when they might never see either of them alive again.

She adjusted the heavy backpack, filled with extra clothes, shampoo, toothbrushes, and toothpaste. Eli was carrying the heavier one, packed with food. He had a small satchel over his shoulder too, packed with photographs of Sean, seven of them, as if someone might not recognize him in the first six. Sean was weird-looking, with almond-shaped eyes and a long, hooked nose in a long, narrow face. So he wasn’t handsome, he wasn’t nice, and there were other gay guys in their school if Eli wanted a boyfriend. Gay guys who liked Jilly a lot. Unfortunately, Sean was the guy for him.

Eli groaned when they reached the pocket park, site of their first make-out session, after her birthday party in the eighth grade. She’d been so excited and happy she hadn’t slept all night.

“Even the trees got burned up,” he said. They walked close together, holding hands. She had a strange floating sensation; if he hadn’t held on to her, she thought she might have floated away from sheer fear.

They passed dozens of burning buildings, sizzling and steaming in the rain. The subway station split the sidewalk; by mutual unspoken consent, they gave it a wide berth. Darkness and seclusion—perfect vampire territory.

Shadows and shapes moved in the alleyways; they walked down the center of the street, gripping each other’s hand. It was strange, but Jilly was more afraid with Eli there than she had been by herself. She didn’t think she could stand it if something happened to him. He was so nervous; he was broadcasting “come and get me” to anyone interested in easy pickings.

He pulled a cell phone out of his parka and dialed numbers, listening each time. Finally he grunted and put it back in his pocket, and moved his bangs out of his eyes. Her heart stirred, and she touched his cheek. He smiled distractedly; she knew he was glad she was there, but it was Sean he most wanted to see.

She used to have these long conversations with her girl friends about if Eli would ever come back to her. Eli had been her actual boyfriend for two years. They had made out all the time, but never gone any farther than that. They’d been too young. Then he and Sean had found each other . . . or rather, Sean had found him. Sean had moved to New York and zeroed in on Eli, even before Sean was sure Eli was gay. So Eli had given Jilly the “we can still be friends” speech.

Only in their case, it was true. They were excellent friends. They thought alike, read alike. He thought NYU was a great goal. He talked about going there too. They both hated sports. And Sean, who was a jock, hated that.

He never said a word about it to Eli. As far as Eli was concerned, Sean loved Jilly like a sister. Had used those exact words, in fact, the one time Jilly tried to discuss it with him. But when Eli wasn’t paying attention, Sean zinged her out with vast amounts of passive-aggressive BS—veiled threats and lots of snark. He picked fights just before they were supposed to meet her somewhere—like Watami. Being somewhere in midtown when he was supposed to celebrate with her was classic Sean, King of Bitter Homosexuality.

Eli brushed it off, refused to agree to her reality. So she didn’t bring it up again, ever. She didn’t want to give Sean the ammunition for an “It’s either her or me” speech.

As they walked out of the burn zone, the sky began to darken, and a rush of resentment roared through Jilly. Her tired body was aching for Eli’s soft, clean bed. She wanted to take another shower, and brush her teeth for a year. She didn’t want to be risking her life, or Eli’s, for someone who hated her.

Her mind was trying to figure out what life would be like if they found Sean. And then, before she knew what she was doing, she said, “Watami. The club. Maybe he went there.”

He looked at her. “He wasn’t going to go. And he’d come to my house first, or try to get to me through our friends.” And they did have other friends, gay friends, who envied them for having Jilly’s family to hang with.

“Okay, never mind. Maybe he went to school.”

Eli raised his brows. “Maybe.” He smiled. “It’s big. Maybe they’re doing like a Red Cross shelter there.” He hugged her. “You’re a genius, Jilly.”

Too smart for my own good, she thought. The old Jilly, pre-rehab—the one without the boundaries—might not have suggested places to look for Sean. But Jilly was a good, nice person now. Maybe that was why he didn’t love her. She wasn’t edgy enough. She could change. . . .

But he can’t. He is gay, she reminded herself.

It was nearly dark. It was so dangerous to be out like this; she’d seen vampires leap from the shadows and drag people away. Sometimes they growled; sometimes they were silent. Jilly had been sleeping next to an old lady in a store one night. In the morning, all that was left of the lady were her shoes. Jilly had no idea why she herself had been left alive. Maybe the old lady had been enough.

They met a man on the street a few blocks from the school named Bo. He staggered when he walked and he talked very slowly. There was a scar across his face from the slice of vampire fangs.

“They have to feed as soon as they change,” he told them. “The vampire who tried to kill me was brand new. There was another one with him, the one who made him into a vampire. He was laughing. My friends staked him. They don’t change to dust.”

Then he staggered on.

“Wait!” Jilly cried. “Tell us everything you know.”

“The new ones are the worst,” he said. “They’re the most lethal. Just like baby snakes.”

Now, as the gloom gathered around them in the rain, they hurried to their old high school. There were lights on and shadows moving in the windows. Neither spoke as they crossed the street and walked past the marquee. The letters had been stolen; there was no school news.

Rose bushes lined the entrance. She couldn’t smell their fragrance but the sight of them, drenched by the downpour, gave her a lift. The double doors were painted with crosses; so were the walls and the windows. The taggers had written VAMPIRES SUCK GO TO HELL VAMPIRES on the walls.

There were two guards at the doors—a male teacher named Mr. Vernia and her English teacher, Mary Ann Francis. They hugged both Eli and Jilly hard, asked for news—asked how it was—then ushered them in.

It smelled, and the noise was unbelievable. Students, adults, little kids, and teachers—everyone was milling around; the noise was deafening. People who hated her ran up and hugged her, crying and saying how glad they were that she was alive. She realized she and Eli should have eaten a good meal before they’d come in. If they opened up their pack now, they would have to share.

Is that so bad, sharing?

“Jilly. Eli,” their principal, Ms. Howison, said when she spotted them. There were circles under her eyes and deep lines in her forehead. She looked like a skeleton. “Thank God.”

Ms. Howison had tried to keep her from coming back to school after rehab. But crises did strange things to people.

Eli skipped the pleasantries and pulled out all his pictures of Sean. Men and women, computer nerds and cheerleaders, carefully examined each one, even if they knew exactly who Sean was, before passing it on. No one had seen him.

Jilly got too tired to stay awake any longer. Principal Howison promised her that all the doors and windows had been covered with crosses and the ground was dotted with garlic bulbs and communion wafers. Jilly wondered if the rain had dissolved the wafers. How many molecules of holiness did you have to have to keep the monsters at bay?

Bazillions of cots were set up in the gym and sure enough, there were Red Cross volunteers. Eli and Jilly pulled two cots together, stashed their packs underneath, and lay down in their clothes. It was better than what she’d been sleeping on before she found Eli, at least.

Eli touched her face with his hands. “I’m so glad you’re here.”

“Me too,” she said, but what she meant was, I’m so glad you’re with me.

Eli fell asleep. She looked at the diffused light drifting across his face, making him glow. She wanted to kiss him but she didn’t want to wake him; correction, she didn’t want him to wake up and remind her that he didn’t love her that way.

Then she heard someone crying. It was muffled, as if they were trying not to make any noise. She raised her head slightly, and realized it was Ms. Howison.

Jilly disentangled herself from Eli slowly. Then she rocked quietly onto her side, planted her feet underneath herself, and sat up. She walked over to where the woman was sitting in a chair, facing the rows and rows of cots. She looked as if she’d just thrown up.

“Hey,” Jilly said uncertainly, “Ms. Howison.”

“Oh, God,” she whispered, lowering her gaze to her hands. “Oh, God. Jilly. You’re still here. I was hoping. . . .” She turned her head away.

“What?” Jilly asked.

She took a deep breath and let it out. She was shaking like crazy. “I need you to come with me for a second.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Just . . . come.” The principal wouldn’t look at her. Jilly shifted. “Please.”

Ms. Howison got up out of her chair and walked out of the gym. The overhead fluorescents were on. Jilly followed her past the coaches’ offices and then into the girls’ locker room, past the rows upon rows of lockers, and then through another door into the shower area.

Ms. Howison cleared her throat and said, “She’s here.” Then she stepped back and slammed the door between herself and Jilly.

Jilly tried to bolt.

Sean was there, and he was a vampire. All the color in his long, narrow face was gone. His eyes looked glazed, as if he was on drugs. And she should know.

He grabbed her, wrapping his arms around her like a boyfriend; she smelled his breath, like garbage. He wasn’t cold; he was room temperature. She was completely numb. Her heart was skipping beats.

She wet her pants.

“I’m glad to see you too,” he said, grinning at her.

She set me up. She gave me to him. That bitch.

He wrapped his hand around her bicep and dragged her forward. She burst into tears and started wailing. He clamped his other dead hand still over her mouth so hard she was afraid her front teeth were going to break off.

“Shut up,” he hissed, chuckling. “I’ve wanted to say that to you forever. Shut up, shut up, shut up.”

She kept whimpering. She couldn’t stop. Maybe he knew that; he dragged her along with his hand over her mouth. His fingernails dug into her arm and she knew he had broken the skin, but she didn’t feel it.

He walked her into a storage room where they kept cleaning supplies—brooms, mops, big jugs of cleaner. She started screaming behind his hand, and he slapped her, hard. Then he slammed her against the wall. With a gasp, she bounced back off and fell on her butt.

He slammed the door, leaving her in darkness. With a sob, she crawled to it and started to pound on it.

“Don’t,” he hissed on the other side.

He’s going to get Eli, she thought. Oh, God, he’s going to vampirize him. That’s what he’s here for.

Maybe he will let me go.

But why would he? He was the King of Bitter. And she would never leave without Eli.

She fumbled around for a light switch, found one, and turned on the blessed, wonderful light. Her arm was bleeding and it finally began to sting. She didn’t know if she wanted to feel anything. She wondered what it would be like when he—

The door burst open, and Sean came back inside. His eyes were glittering. He looked crazy. “Eli says hi.”

“No,” she begged. “Don’t do it. Please, Sean. Don’t change him.”

Sean blinked at her. Then he laughed. “Honey, that’s what love is all about, don’t you know?”

She doubled up her fists and bit her knuckles. He lifted a brow.

“I smell fresh bloo-ood,” he sang. “Yours. It smells great. If you were alone in the ocean, the sharks would come and chew you up. Alone in the forest, it would be the wolves. Alone in the city, and it’s us.”

Vampires. “How . . . how did this happen to you?”

He ignored her. “I’m going to give you a choice, girlfriend. The choice is this: You can change, or he can change. The other one of you . . . is the blood in the water.” He moved his shoulders. “I’ll let you pick.”

She stared at him. “What are you saying?”

“God, you are so stupid. So incredibly, moronically stupid. I could never figure out why he loved you.” He shook his head.

Why did it matter, she wondered, when Eli still loved him more?

“Does it even matter which way I choose?” she said. “You don’t even like me.” Of course he would change Eli and let her die.

“Maybe it doesn’t. Maybe I just want to see what you’d say,” he told her. “I’m giving him the same choice.”

She stared at him in mute terror.

“I told him that I would change you if he asked me to.” He folded his arms across his chest and leaned against the back of the door. He didn’t look different at all—he was the same surf-charmer Sean.

“You know I’ll say to change him,” she said. What did she have to live for, after all? Only Eli. And if he were gone. . . .

“Be right back,” he said, turning to go.

“Why are you doing this?” she asked.

He didn’t turn back around, just looked at her over his shoulder, as if she was being a nuisance.

“I don’t know why he’s so loyal to you. He doesn’t love you the way he loves me.”

“But he loves me,” she said, as she realized. “That’s why. . . .”

He turned around and stared at her. The expression on his face was the most frightening thing she had ever seen. She took another step back, and another. She bumped into the wall.

He raised his chin, opened the door, and left.

She paced. She thought about drinking the cleaner. She tried to break the mops and brooms to make a wooden stake. She couldn’t so much as crack one of them.

She fell to her knees and prayed to He/She/It/Them, Get us out of here get us out of here come in, God, come in, over. . . .

The door opened, and Sean came back in, grinning like someone who had finally, really, totally gotten what he wanted. Triumph was written all over his face. He looked taller. Meaner.

Ready to kill her.

“Eli will be changing,” he said. “GMTA. You both made the same choice.”

She jerked. No, he wouldn’t.

“And you’ll be his first meal. Have you ever seen a newly changed vampire? All they want to do is suck someone’s blood. That’s all I wanted to do.”

“You’re lying,” she said. “Eli would never. . . .”

But Eli would. He hadn’t even asked her if she wanted to leave his parents’ house to help him look for Sean. He had put her in harm’s way, for Sean. He didn’t love her the way he loved Sean. Lovers did things differently than friends.

“If it makes you feel any better, he feels terrible about it.” Sean sneered at her.

“He’s going to hate you for making him do this,” she said. “He’ll never forgive you.” She was talking to a vampire. To a vampire who was going to kill her. To a gay vampire who was going to turn Eli into a gay vampire.

She felt reality begin to slip away. This wasn’t happening.

“I’m going to get him now,” he said, going for a smile, not quite pulling it off. Irritated, he slammed the door.

She stood as still as one of the mops she couldn’t turn into a vampire stake. Her heart hammered in her chest and she had no idea how she could hear all that thumping and pumping because she was

at the door

pounding and screaming, begging to be let out.

Ms. Howison was going to have a change of heart and rally all the people in the gym and rescue her.

Sean was going to open the door and take her in his arms, and tell her that he’d been so mean to her because he actually loved her, not Eli. That he had only pretended to love Eli so he could stay close to her. And that he wouldn’t kill either of them, not if Jilly didn’t want him to.

Sean was going to tell her that he was sorry, both of them could be changed, and they would go on as they were, as a trio, only nicer, like Dorothy, the Tin Woodsman, and the Scarecrow.

Sean was going to see some other hot guy on the way back to Eli and fall in love with him instead, change him, and leave.

Eli was going to escape, and find her, and they would get out of New York together.

She pounded on the door as she remembered the night Eli had confessed that he had met someone else . . . a guy someone else . . . and he had cried because he didn’t want to hurt her, his best friend.

“I will always love you totally and forever, I promise,” he had said.

The door opened, and she scrambled backward away from it as fast as she could. Her elbow rammed into a container of cleaner. Throw it at them. Do something. Save yourself.

Sean and Eli stood close together. Sean had his arm around Eli, and Eli had on his baggy parka. Eli, as far as she could tell, was still human. His bangs were in his eyes.

He was looking at the floor, as if he couldn’t stand to look at her.

“No,” she whispered. But it must have been yes, he must have told Sean to change him. Sean was going to change him, and then he was going to kill her.

Her heart broke. She was on the verge of going completely crazy, all over again.

Sean took a step toward her. “If it makes you feel any better, it’s going to hurt when I change him,” he promised her. He sounded bizarrely sincere.

He shut the door. The three of them stood inside the cramped space. She was only two feet away.

Sean placed both hands on Eli’s shoulders and turned Eli toward him. Tears were streaming down Eli’s cheeks. He looked young and scared.

Sean threw back his head and hissed. Fangs extended from his mouth.

And Eli whipped his hand into the pocket of his parka; pulling out a jagged strip of wood—

—Yes!—

—and he glanced at Jilly—

—Yes!—

—and as Sean prepared to sing his fangs into Eli’s neck, Jilly rammed Sean as hard as she could. He must have seen it coming, must have guessed—but Eli got the stake into him, dead center in his unbeating heart.

Sean stared down at it, and then at Eli, as blood began to pour down the front of him. Then he laughed, once, and blew Eli a kiss.

He looked at Jilly—gargled, “Bitch,” his throat full of his own blood—then slid to the floor like a sack of garbage, inert, harmless.

Eli and Jilly stared at him. Neither spoke. She heard Eli panting.

Then Eli gathered her up. Kissed her.

Kissed her.

They clung to each other beside the dead vampire. And Eli threw himself over Sean, holding him, kissing him.

“Oh, my God, Sean,” he keened. “Oh, God, oh, God. Jilly.” He reached for her hand. She gave it to him, wrapping herself around him as he started to wail.

After he wore himself out, she tried to get up, thinking to see if there were more vampires, to check on Ms. Howison and the others, but he held her too tightly, and she wouldn’t have moved away from him for the world.

He held Sean tightly too. “I can’t believe it. How evil he was.” Eli’s voice was hoarse from all the sobbing.

“I know,” she said. “He was always—”

“Sean wasn’t even in there. When you’re changed, the vampirism infects you and steals your soul,” Eli went on. “You’re not there. You’re gone.”

Tears clung to the tip of his nose.

“Sean loved you, Jilly. He told me that a million times every day. He was so glad you’re my best friend.”

She started to say, “No, he hated me,” but suddenly she realized: that was going to be his coping mechanism. He was going to believe from now on that the Sean he knew and loved would have never made him kill his best friend.

She put her hand on the crown of his head and found herself thinking of the tapestry of the Jews at Masada in his parents’ living room. It was a pivotal moment in Jewish history, when cornered Jewish soldiers chose to leap over a cliff rather than submit to Roman rule. Mr. Stein talked about it now and then, and sometimes Jilly had wondered if what he was saying was that Eli should take his own life, rather than be gay. She couldn’t believe that, though, couldn’t stand even to suspect it. The rigidity of the adult world was what had made her crazy. The unbelievable insanity of Mr. Stein, who condemned his own son just because Eli couldn’t change into a heterosexual Jewish warrior and defy the invading sin of misplaced lust. At least, that was what her therapist had told her.

“You are brilliant, and you’re so . . . much,” Dr. Robles had declared. Dr. Robles, her savior. “People don’t change, Jilly. They just see things differently than they used to, and respond according to the way they already are. It’s all context. Reality. Is. Context.”

Dr. Robles had saved her because he didn’t try to change her. So she had never tried to change Eli.

She took a deep breath and thought about her hopeless love for him. And something shifted.

Her love was not hopeless. She loved him. It didn’t have to break her heart. It didn’t have to do anything but be there. Be there.

So she said, “Sean loved you so much.” Because that would help him the most.

“Thank you,” he whispered. “He loved you too. And I love you, Jilly.” He looked up at her, broken and crumpled like a rag—the boy she kissed in the eighth grade, a thousand million times, almost until her lips bled.

“And I love you,” she replied. “I love you more than my own life. I always have.” It was right to say that now. People didn’t change, and love didn’t, either. Where Eli was concerned, there was no context.

“Thank you,” he said. No embarrassment, no apologies; their love was what it was. Alone in a closet, with a dead vampire, hiding in a school because the rest of the city was overrun by vampires. . . .

She laid her head on his shoulder, and he laced his fingers with hers.

“Happy birthday, sweet sixteen,” he whispered. “My Jilly girl.”

“Thank you,” she whispered. It was the best present ever.

After a while, they opened the door. The sun was out, and for one instant, she thought she heard the trilling of a lark.

Then she realized that it was Eli’s cell phone.

Beepbeepbeepbeep. This is God, Jilly. I’m back on the job amen.