April 15

ARE MEMORIES WHO WE ARE?

It’s one of those things you never really think about, right? Am I me because, well, I’m just ME, or is it because of what I’ve been through? What I remember?

Claire and Myrnin did their weird tinkering with weird machines, and next thing you know, people started losing their memories. Not their minds, just their memories…although in some cases it was the same thing, because when the world isn’t the way you left it yesterday, it can lead to some serious derangement.

Me? I woke up and forgot all about where I was going or what I was doing … and next thing I knew, I remembered being in high school. Having a crush on Michael. Missing Shane, because he’d just left town. And hating my parents.

I had good reason to hate my parents, trust me, ‘k? They tried to sell me off to a really nasty vamp with a taste for kids when I was just fourteen. I didn’t let them, but I couldn’t stop what happened to my brother. So yeah, I hate them. Not my mom so much, she’s just weak and scared, but my dad … he’s my dad, but I still … it’s hard.

But I went home, and Dad wasn’t there. Just Mom, looking lost. My room was all packed full of crap, and my stuff was gone, but weirdly, I kind of shrugged and got on with it, because that was how things were in my house. I just figured my Dad had gotten pissed again and thrown it all out. Wouldn’t be the first time.

It spooks me how much I accepted, so easily, when it was all just some kind of malfunction. Michael didn’t adjust very well, but me, I fell right into it. What does that mean? Does it mean I’m the same person with or without those memories? I still loved him, even though I’d lost the time we had together.

Weird. And way too thinky. I should leave this stuff to Claire.

May 18

SERIOUSLY, AYN RAND? SERIOUSLY?

Shane just decided that he was going to torture me by doing absolutely everything he could to be the anti-Shane.

This mainly involves all his chores, wearing a button-down shirt and an honest-to-God sweater vest, slicking back his hair, reading Ayn Rand, and asking if we have any brie, over and over and over.

He’s such an unbelievable jerk sometimes. Honestly, all I said was that he was uncultured. He didn’t have to go nuts about it.

Tonight he’s making me watch a marathon of French films. I didn’t think he knew France existed, except as a place girls wanted to go. Kudos for that, I guess.

Tomorrow he’ll be back to his old self. I hope. Or else I might have to explain to Claire how I killed her boyfriend …

July 20

SUMMER SUCKS.

Man, summer sucks. But I got a new bikini!

Hot AND creepy, right? Wish we had a swimming pool.

Summer in Texas SUCKS. I’m just sayin’ … what fool crossing the plains decided that this was a good place to stop? Vampire fools, who travel at night, I’ll bet ya. Who don’t feel the heat.

Have GOT to get the A/C fixed.

December 17

HE IS SO DEAD TO ME.

I saw my first real TWU WUV yesterday. He was sitting in the park feeding his dog pieces of a pretzel, looking like a normal guy. Which he is, in terms of not being a vamp or anything.

Normal, okay. But with a serious, severe case of being a bastard, and he doesn’t even have the excuse of being a bloodsucker.

His name is Ethan. He was the older, romantic dude when I was the age of stupid, and I let him — yeah, I did. I let him. Seemed like a smart thing to do at the time; Brandon was after me, and the last thing I wanted was to end up playing his sacrificial virgin. So Ethan kind of seemed like a good solution. He seemed nice.

He wasn’t. Not at all. Which I didn’t figure out nearly fast enough, and when I did, it wasn’t like he cared.

So I sat on the low stone wall that runs around the park, eating my peanuts, watching my old bad boyfriend feed his dog. He had a girlfriend. She came running up, kissed him like he was an actual okay guy, and sat down with his arm draped over her shoulders. I knew her in the vague kind of way we all know each other, in Morganville. As in, not really.

I wanted to walk over and kick him in the crotch and scream in his face, and that surprised me. I mean, no big, right? So what. Life sucks, and I got over it years ago anyway. Right?

He looked different. I mean, different than I remembered, which probably wasn’t that reliable a memory anyway. I’d spent a lot of time crying.

I wasn’t crying now. No, not now.

Not about him, ever again. Ass.

Shane keeps asking me about “the guy.” That would be Ethan. But I’m not going to tell Shane, because that would be a chickenshit thing to do, right? You know Shane. He’s all about the vengeance. Me, I’m more about the snarky glares.

Besides.

I’ve got Michael. And Michael is better than ten of Bad Boyfriend Dude.

December 18

LAUNDRY AND TRUE CONFESSIONS

I was minding my own business this afternoon, doing a load of laundry — man, don’t you love the smell of fabric softener? It just makes the whole day seem weirdly nice — and who should come down into the basement but good old housemate Shane, toting a bag full of dirties. Now, this was an event. Normally, he and Michael just “forgot” to do their laundry, left it lying in the basement near the washers, and I did it for them. This time, Shane was suspiciously on the case.

Since I was clearly already in mid-chore, I expected him to drop his laundry and bug out. He didn’t. He parked it against the wall, and as far as I could tell, had no intention of doing anything but hanging around and watching the spin cycle with me.

Weird.

I was reading — Twilight, Stephenie Meyer — and I wasn’t paying him any real attention until Shane said, “So … can I ask you something personal?”

NEVER a good sign, especially when it’s delivered kind of casually, and the guy saying it won’t meet your eyes. Then again, if you’re perverse like me, it’s an opportunity to torment your normally not-very-sharey friend.

So I stuck a bookmark between the pages and gave Shane my full attention. “Shoot.”

For a long couple of seconds, I thought he was going to chicken out; he leaned against the wall, all shaggy hair and downcast eyes and thumbs dragging down the pockets of his baggy blue jeans. Cute, just not my type. I could definitely see why he was Claire’s, though.

Shane cleared his throat and said in the direction of his feet, “How old were you when you first did it?”

Oh. Right. “When you say did it — ”

Shane gave me an exasperated look. “Don’t give me the innocent act.”

“Moi? Never. By the way, usually when guys want to talk about my sex life, they bring me drinks first.”

Shane, poker-faced, handed over his freshly opened can of Coke. I chugged a thick, sweet mouthful, made sure to moan suggestively about it, and said, “I was fourteen.”

That surprised him enough to look up. “Seriously?”

“Yeah, I know. Stupid, right?”

“None of my business,” he shrugged. “But that seems pretty young.”

“Bad time at Casa de Rosser. Mom and Dad were giving me hell, I wanted to prove I was in charge of my life. Thought I was ready.”

“Were you?”

I gave him a look. “You’re kidding. Did you miss the part where I was fourteen?”

Shane seemed to hit the end of his conversational road, and he just stood there, looking vaguely uneasy. I finally took pity on him. I put the book aside and said, “He was nineteen. The guy.” Shane’s own age now, actually. “The thing is, any guy that age willing to go to bed with a fourteen year old virgin is kind of by definition an asshole, and guaranteed to be a terrible lover. So I guess I’m the poster child on how not to lose your virginity.”

“Who was the guy?” Shane’s question was directed back toward the ground, and too quiet. Sweet, but kind of scary, too. I knew where this question was heading.

“Oh, no way. I’m not letting you go beat his ass for being a lousy lay. I know you, Shane.”

“He was nineteen and you were fourteen,” he said. Disturbing, how quiet he was. “Don’t think bad technique is exactly his biggest crime.”

“When did you pin on a badge? Look, you must have come down here for something other than a trip down Bad Memory lane. So what do you want to know?”

He shifted uncomfortably, crossed his arms, and I thought for a second he was going to just bolt back up the stairs rather than commit. He edged toward the stairs, then decided to stay. He finally said, in a rush, “What did he do wrong? Your guy?”

I snorted. “What didn’t he? Oh, you’re looking for specifics, right. Well, here’s a big clue … first time sex hurts for a lot of girls. If your girl starts to cry, for God’s sake, stop. I don’t mean, like, leave, but at least give her a chance to get it together again.”

“Yours didn’t?”

“Let me put it this way: he barely noticed I was conscious, much less freaking out.” There was such a thing as being overly blunt, and I saw Shane wince. I took pity on him; he looked pretty miserable, and I wasn’t trying to scare him out of the idea completely. “Anyway. Advice from the front lines, just … be yourself. I know you, Shane. You’ll be fine. You and Claire both will be.”

He cleared his throat. “I — just don’t want to hurt her.”

I got that. It was kind of sweet, really. “You want somebody else to hurt her for you? Wow. I don’t know if that’s selfish or creepy.”

“What?”

I shrugged and picked up the book, leafing through to where I’d left the placeholder. “Somebody’s going to be her first, and it’s going to be pretty soon — next year, the year after. If you don’t screw it up, it’ll probably be you.”

Shane reclaimed his Coke and chugged it, then three-pointed the empty can into the bin in the corner. “And on that note, thanks for scaring the hell out of me. It’s so nice we had this little talk. Let’s not ever do it again.” And he headed up the stairs, moving fast.

“What, no thank you?” I called after him. “You came to me, just remember that!”

“I’m trying hard to forget it!”

“Hey, Shane?” I raised my voice. He kept going. “Roses and a little Barry White work great, too. Just saying!”

“Shut up!”

“Also, strawberry-flavored — ”

“Shut up!”

Mission accomplished. I had made Shane flee the field of battle, and the laundry room was mine, all mine. I picked up Twilight and stretched out with a sigh of deep satisfaction. That lasted right up until I realized Shane had managed to completely distract me from the fact that he’d left his laundry behind.

Guys. You’ve got to love them. They can be such cowards … but then again, Shane had worked up the courage to ask the question. Not typical guy behavior.

Maybe soon, I’ll actually get them to do their own laundry.

December 18

MICHAEL!!!!!

Seriously, Shane, DO NOT READ THIS!

PERSONAL AND PRIVATE DO NOT READ THIS MEANS YOU, SHANE COLLINS!!!!!! SERIOUSLY!!!!

The sun’s coming up, and I’m sitting here writing because I need to tell somebody, and nobody else is awake. I haven’t slept all night.

Michael came to see me last night, and we had a lot to talk about, starting with him coming back from the frickin’ DEAD, and me… me wanting him not to be dead, ever again. There was kissing. Sweet, hot kissing, and Michael’s not that much of a gentleman even though I think he’d like to be; he was at second base pretty damn fast, which was okay with me, really, so okay I was glad I’d worn a low-cut top with laces. I got his shirt off, too, and wow. WOW. He has the most beautiful skin. I just couldn’t stop touching it.

Seriously — he’s such a hottie, right? YES.

I think he needed to feel … alive again. And yes, it’s ironic that he picked me to do that with, because hello, Goth? But man, it was warm and hot and HOTTER, and pretty soon we were having The Talk, you know the one, about whether or not I was a virgin, because by that time, we were well into third base territory and both thinking hard about things that were not baseball.

And I started crying. CRYING, like some punk-ass schoolgirl. I guess it was just … oh, everything. I hadn’t had time to breathe since I’d found out Michael was, you know, half-dead and all, and then Shane’s dad had blown in, and his biker friend had tried to bend me over the bed, and … yeah. It was just a lot.

I think Michael was shocked, but he did the manly thing: he held me. We got under the covers and pressed up close together, still half-dressed, and I swear, it felt like there was nothing in the world but him and me. I felt … safe. Peaceful, once I’d stopped crying.

He told me he’d only asked because he didn’t want to hurt me, if we were going to, you know. Which was sweet. But there was this question in his eyes, like he really wanted to know why being asked made me go all psychotic, and for the first time, I blurted it all out.

I told him about Brandon. About him prowling around my house when I was young — too young to know better — and my parents looking the other way because he was our Protector, and what Brandon wanted, he got. Even if he wanted your kids.

I found out later that they did know, it wasn’t just willful ignorance. That my dad sold access to me for a promotion at the bottling company. I don’t know what he got for Jason. Cheap, huh? You’d think he’d at least hold out for a key to the executive bathroom or something.

I’m not talking about fang marks, no, Brandon was careful about that. He had rules to live by, too, and biting kids was something that would have gotten him punished, big time. But everything else … I’d have done anything to keep him away. I did, in fact. I knew he’d go after Jason, and that Jason wouldn’t be able to fight him off.

And like my parents, I didn’t do anything to stop it. I saved myself.

So I told all that to Michael, whispering it with our lips close together, and he held me. He didn’t say anything, and I couldn’t see his face; we’d turned the lights off by then. He was so quiet. I felt like I’d blown it, like he was going to just say sorry, big mistake, and put his shirt back on and go … I was sure, in fact. Why would he ever want to be with me? Why would anyone, after that?

And then he kissed me again, and he told me that he wanted to show me that it didn’t have to be like that. Like it had been with my first guy, all tears and fear and pain. He wanted it to be right, and he wanted it to be perfect.

And, of course, by that time, it was close to sunrise, and no time for right or perfect or romance. So he just … stayed. And held me. And told me stories, wonderful stories about growing up Michael Glass, and I wanted to listen to him forever.

He disappeared right out of my bed at dawn. I tried to hang on to him. I really did.

So here I am, writing it down because I don’t think anything this good will ever, ever, ever happen to me again, and I want to remember it.

Because I love Michael, and I can’t wait to show him how much when night falls again.

UPDATE!

WHY does this keep happening to me? I think, yeah, finally, this is the night, and then … nothing. I’m starting to hate Shane for being such a stubborn jerk about his dad; family loyalty’s great and all, but when you’re the son of the Supreme Dickhead, you ought to know it and act accordingly, right? I’d sell him out in a second. I would.

I’m just afraid Claire’s going to get caught in the middle of all this. Before all this crap, I’d have gone to Oliver and asked him what to do, and he’d have come up with a solution; I always treated him like the Wizard of Oz or something, wise and all-knowing. Can’t go to Oliver anymore; he’s just another bad-ass vampire out for himself, the big bad wolf in disguise. I feel like I’ve lost someone special. The Oliver I knew and liked is dead. Well, he never really was, but same thing.

Shane’s dad is going to get us all in big, big trouble. I can feel it.

And I wish Michael would come and seduce me. Now. Maybe I should go downstairs, grab him, and drag him back here … no, too pushy.

Damn. What is he waiting for? Okay, yeah, there’s the little matter of people trying to kill us, but it’s not like that’s new around here.

Boy needs to get his priorities straight, I say.

January 15

THIS IS WHY THEY DONT LET ME COOK.

This is also why they don’t let me do home repair …

Oh MAN, am I in trouble. So, there was this light out, you know, in the oven? And instead of bugging the guys to do it, I figured that since I never actually cook, I’d earn my keep by changing the bulb. I mean, it was a bulb. How hard could it be?

Well, first off, I couldn’t figure how to get the bulb out. It didn’t unscrew. It wouldn’t turn. I figured maybe it was stuck, but how do you pull hard without ending up with a handful of broken glass? So I crawled into the oven to look at it.

And there was a screw, right there, so I figured, hey, unscrew that, the bulb comes right off.

I unscrewed it, and the whole damn thing fell off. I grabbed it and I was trying to figure out what to do when Shane grabbed me by my feet and pulled me out of the oven, and I let go and the wires sort of hit the metal oven and …

Let’s just say it was good I wasn’t in the oven at that point. Pop, sizzle, burn.

So for my good deed I just had to cough up a hundred bucks to the appliance repair guy. Plus an extra five for replacing the light.

Guh. I live here why? Michael says he’s more angry that I nearly got myself fried than about the oven. I think it scared the crap out of him.

Hey, that’s actually a plus. Right?

January 20

I LIKE THE COLD.

So, today I went to the graveyard. I love winter. It’s cold and gray and the trees are uncomplicated, no leaves fluttering around, just bones. Shane and I went walking to the cemetery. I love that place, although Shane just thinks it’s boring. It’s so old. So much history!

And yeah, so many dead people. I like reading the headstones. “James Wilmott, killed by his wife Heather. He deserved it.” It’s like a social studies lesson out there among the tombstones. They ought to give school tours.

Saw a vamp today outside of Vamptown … average height, dark hair, dark eyes. He was buying sheets at McMann’s. I wanted to ask him, “Don’t you have people to do that for you?” but he seemed embarrassed enough to be there. I mean, sure, there are a few who slum it with the breathing population, but not a lot of em, and I didn’t recognize him. If he comes in to Common Grounds, he does it during VIP hours, when it’s vamps only (and Oliver, of course).

He stared at me some. I guess he didn’t like the Goth look. Most of them don’t; somehow, they think I’m making fun of them.

Which I totally am.