I went to my room early that night under the pretense that I was tired and wanted to get a good night’s sleep before returning to school the next day, but I lay awake staring at the ceiling for what seemed like hours. My sister and I had carried on a meaningless conversation earlier in the day, and I went back over every detail, trying to figure out if there was anything at all that could be a clue as to what might be going on with her. There was nothing. I even attempted to take her pulse at one point, pretending just to want to hold on to her arm, but her heartbeat seemed normal. If she was on some sort of illicit drugs, wouldn’t her heart be racing?
Glancing at the clock, I saw that it was almost 11:00 and groaned. The alarm would be going off way too soon. I closed my eyes and tried to think of nothing, but that was difficult when visions of vampires filled my brain, and I had so many conversations replaying.
A few minutes later, I heard my sister’s window open and close very quickly again. Cadence said something I didn’t understand, and Aaron replied. Whatever he said must’ve been hilarious because Cadence was giggling. Her bed squeaked, and then I heard footsteps over by the window. I assumed they were sitting in her chairs again and wondered how long this conversation might take and if I would hear a single word that made any sense to me.
The answers were “a long time,” and essentially, “no.” There wasn’t much to be heard through the wall this time. It was as if they both thought I might be listening in so they kept their voices down. I made out an odd word here and there, nothing too important, though I did catch Eliza’s name more than once, and I thought I heard Cadence say something about shopping. Eliza seemed like the kinda girl who’d like to do a little shopping, I thought.
It was well past midnight when Aaron finally left. I didn’t really hear the window open or close this time, but I did hear him hit the ground outside. I would’ve liked to run over to the window to see if he dashed away the same as he had the first time, but the distant sound of an engine confirmed he’d done the same thing as he had before. No one could cover that much ground that quickly, regardless of what kind of drugs they might be taking. That left little doubt in my mind that the sickening scenario Lucy and I had come up with had to be about the only answer.
I heard my sister let out a loud sigh and thought she was definitely smitten with that guy. It seemed to me like the feeling must be mutual, though I couldn’t be sure. I still thought there was a chance he was batting for the other team, and Cadence was just trying to make a conversion.
None of that really mattered, however, if he was a vampire. Especially if my sister was one, too. I needed to talk to Lucy to see if she’d come up with anything. Maybe there was a chance vampires weren’t really what I thought they were and there was some coven of helpful vampires. My mind returned to Twilight. Maybe I needed to watch that movie again. I’d read the books, too, but I didn’t have time to go back through all of that again, not when my sister could be leaving any day.
There was also the matter that I’d have to talk to Dr. Sanderson again the next day. I knew he’d do his best to make sure I was thinking what everyone else wanted me to be. I hoped I’d be powerful enough to fight him off and maybe get some answers myself. Was there a possibility I could be honest with him? He was a professional after all, wasn’t he?
I rolled over again. At least with all of this craziness going on, I didn’t have time to worry about what everyone at school the next day might think of me and my sister. Hopefully, the rest of the student body would be so distraught about Drew, no one would think to ask me about Cadence.
First period. I didn’t even make it through first period before I was asked a ton of questions about my sister. Our teacher, Mrs. Neally, allowed us a few minutes at the end of the period to “chat quietly” while she graded a pop quiz she’d given us first thing on the day back from a long break, which was just awesome by itself, and as soon as they had the opportunity, everyone in the two rows on either side of me turned, staring.
“So… how’s your sister?” Bridgette Turner, a girl on my cheerleading squad, asked, her green eyes narrow like she was digging for dirt.
“She’s sad,” I replied with a shrug.
“I heard they made her drop out of college because she’s on the brink of a nervous breakdown.” Dustin Pollard is such a goon. I turned and glared at him.
“You heard wrong. She decided to take a little break, that’s all. She’ll go back.”
“I heard Jack Cook is a basket case,” Lloyd Tulley proclaimed loud enough to get a shush from Mrs. Neally who was puzzling over our quizzes. In a somewhat quieter voice, he added, “At least he was able to go back to school today, though.”
I opened my mouth to say something in Jack’s defense, but before I could get a single word out, a familiar voice from right behind me said, “Hey, why don’t you guys just leave Cassidy alone, huh? This can’t be easy on her either.”
I turned to smile at Liam, hoping my cheeks weren’t as red as they felt. He nodded at me, his blue eyes twinkling, and as his head shifted, his long, blond bangs fluttered in the breeze. I took a deep breath. Perfection in a pair of blue jeans. “Thanks, Liam.”
“You bet, Cass.” He continued to smile at me. “And… can you help me with algebra again, later on this week?”
“Uh, yeah. Of course,” I stuttered, wondering if his help had anything to do with needing mine. “Just let me know what day.” I had piano lessons on Thursday, but he already knew that. Since football season was over, I didn’t have anything else on my schedule, and I didn’t mind helping him out. It was nice just to be in his presence, though I got the impression he knew that.
The rest of the day was similar to first period. Even in the hallways, kids I didn’t really even know came up to me and asked if I knew anything else, anything different than what they’d heard. One girl reported that Sidney, one of my sister’s friends, had passed out at the funeral. I didn’t think that was true. Someone else said that Jack had screamed at the coffin as they were lowering it into the ground and then punched a tree. I was pretty sure that my sister would’ve mentioned that, although there was a lot that was going unreported, at least to me, lately.
“Why can’t anyone think of another topic to discuss?” Emma asked before taking a bite of her sandwich. She had the same thing for lunch every single day. Ham and cheese sandwich, Cheetos Puffs, apple, bottle of water, Little Debbie Zebra Cake.
Lucy and I always bought our lunch, and we were both glad that it was pizza day. There was an option where you could pick from a variety of fast food choices at the “salad bar” but when there was pizza on the tray, you got a lot more food for a lot less cash. The brownie squares we had for dessert even looked a little bit like the ones my mom made, though I bet they didn’t taste the same.
I’d already filled them both in on what little I’d gleaned the night before. Also, that morning, Cadence had told me she might not be there when I got back from school. She said she was going shopping with Eliza and might go straight to her new job, depending upon how things went. I had hugged her goodbye, but it wasn’t easy for me to think about what all of this really meant, and I doubted I’d have too many more opportunities to gather clues if my sister wasn’t home when I got there.
“Are you nervous about your discussion with Dr. Sanderson?” Lucy asked, picking the pepperonis off of her pizza. She preferred cheese, but they didn’t have any left by the time our lunch period, the last of the day, got our trays.
“I am,” I admitted. “I’m afraid he’ll be able to brainwash me again.”
“It’ll be fine,” Lucy assured me. “As soon as you get done talking to him, you’ll call me, and I’ll unfreeze you.”
Emma laughed. “Just like freeze tag. Remember when we used to play at recess?”
I giggled. Recess seemed like a million years ago. Sometimes I couldn’t even believe we were in high school. I heard parents talk all the time about how their kids were growing up too fast, and now that all of his had happened with Drew, I was beginning to realize they were right. “I hope you can thaw me out,” I replied. “And that I can get some more information from him.”
Lucy had revealed she’d found “tons” of information about “real” vampires online, though she wasn’t sure how reliable the information was. She was making notes that she would share with us later on, she’d explained, but for now, it didn’t seem like Cadence’s situation was quite as uncommon as I’d initially suspected. In fact, Lucy said, the more she read, the more plausible it seemed to her that my sister might actually be a vampire.
That hadn’t sat well with me, but I was at the point now where I was beginning to think that at least having an answer would be better than continuing to wonder what was going on with her. Even Emma seemed to think there was a slim chance that Lucy could be right, which had blown my mind. Apparently, she’d done as thorough a search as possible online for a street drug that might have the qualities this one would need to have, and she wasn’t able to find anything. She’d also said she’d found something else but hadn’t told us what in the hallway.
Lucy must’ve remembered at the same time I did. “Em, what were you going to tell us earlier? What did you find?”
“Oh, right.” Emma dusted her orange fingers off on the napkin her mother tucked into her lunchbox every morning. Emma’s mom still did a lot for her. “You won’t believe it. I don’t believe it, and I’m the one that found it.”
“Try us,” I said, thinking there wasn’t much I wouldn’t believe at this point.
“Okay.” Emma pulled out her phone. “I was looking for information about Dr. Joplin. There wasn’t much. I had to really dig. I didn’t know how old he might be, though I think he looks like he’s not old enough to be a doctor at all.” I agreed with her there. She had been flipping through her phone. “I kept going back until I found this.” She turned her phone around to face us, and Lucy and I huddled together to see the screen.
It was an old picture of a group of men in suits. I couldn’t tell exactly what I was looking at, though I assumed the picture had to be about a hundred years old. “What is it, Emma?” Lucy asked, her forehead as crinkled as mine.
Emma let out a deep breath and turned her phone to swipe. She turned it back around.
This time, the picture was zoomed in on just one man. It was much grainier, but he looked vaguely familiar. His hair was different. Rather than being tall and spiky, it was brushed to the side, more in line with the fashion of a century ago. I felt my mouth go dry. Though the picture was blurry, I was pretty sure this was the same guy I’d seen on Eliza’s social media friend’s list.
“Uh, so you think that’s the same Dr. Joplin that Eliza knows?” Lucy asked tentatively, glancing up at her friend, the same one who’d been convinced the day before there was no such thing as vampires.
Without a word, Emma withdrew her phone again and swiped. She turned it back to us.
There was no picture this time, just text. “Dr. James Joplin, Boston Massachusetts, graduate of Harvard Medical School, 1883, aged 15.”
I had to read it several times, trying to let it sink in with each pass, but the information seemed stuck somehow between my eyes and my brain.
“Wow,” Lucy finally uttered, and Emma withdrew her phone. “So… according to this… if that’s the same guy—and it looks like the same person, though his hair is different, and he looks slightly older—Jamie is, like….”
“A hundred and forty-six years old,” Emma concluded for us.
I took her word for it. Her math was never wrong. “How....?” That was all I could say.
“Maybe it’s his great-great-whatever-grandfather,” Lucy offered. I was suddenly confused. It was as if Emma agreed with me that this could be a case of vampires, and Lucy was the skeptic. But then I realized she was playing devil’s advocate.
“I could do a facial recognition test,” Emma offered. “I could scan both pictures and see if it’s the same guy.”
“Can you do that?” I asked. I knew Emma had access to computer programs most people did not, but I didn’t realize she had that sort of capability.
“Sure,” she shrugged. “I thought about doing it last night, but I wanted your opinions first.”
“Do it,” Lucy agreed. “And let us know.”
“Okay.” Emma put her phone in her pocket and checked the time before opening her Zebra Cake.
I tried to turn my attention back to my pizza but my stomach felt unsettled. I saw Liam across the cafeteria and wished he’d look in my direction. Maybe that perfect smile could calm my nerves.
“Stop staring,” Lucy mumbled, and I took a deep breath. I hoped my afternoon classes would go by quickly, all of them except for algebra, and that I could survive my discussion with Dr. Sanderson. I took a sip of water and tried not to dwell on the fact that my sister might be friends with a guy who was alive during both world wars. Everything just seemed to keep unraveling.