Youngblood, p.2
Youngblood, page 2
I’d gotten in.
I’d actually gotten in.
My skin went tingly all over, and my head felt dizzy, only this time it wasn’t hunger, but a head rush of excitement that didn’t feel real.
The Harcote School was one of the very best boarding schools in the country. In the human world, it was known to be ultraexclusive, with a single-digit admit rate. That was because humans didn’t know Harcote accepted only one kind of student: Youngblood vampires, born since the Peril.
Not just any Youngbloods—the Youngblood elite, descended from the richest and most powerful figures in Vampirdom.
And now, also: me.
I read the letter again and again, trying to sear that feeling of satisfaction into my brain. If I marked myself with it deeply enough, I might carry it forever. Because when I scrolled to the financial aid offer, I’d have to give up the dream of attending Harcote once and for all.
Tuition was tens of thousands of dollars a year, and financial aid was notoriously nonexistent, no matter what forms you submitted with your application. That didn’t matter to the kids who went to Harcote: they were the children of Vampire Captains of Industry and Vampire Zillionaires, and their fangmakers—the vampires who turned their parents—were probably legendary. I was the daughter of a Vampire Nurse Practitioner, and as for my dad, he’d made it through the worst of the Peril, only to lose his life feeding on a human when money ran too short to afford Hema. That put elite private school tuition pretty far out of reach. Even if we could have afforded it, my mom was convinced that I had no place at Harcote.
It didn’t matter that I’d dreamed of going there since long before my fangs had come in.
My mom and I had never fit in with Vampirdom. It wasn’t just that she’d always sent me to public school, when most Youngbloods had private tutors, or that our bank account eternally hovered just above zero. We didn’t have the pedigree that Vampirdom celebrated. Before the Peril, my mom told me, your fangmaker defined who you were in our world. Your fangmaker was an older vampire who selected you for the immortal life and passed along that gift by turning you. A true fangmaker taught a new vampire how to hunt and feed, how to glamour humans and use vampiric charisma, how to adjust to unending life. Basically, how to vampire. Fangmaker and fangborn shared an eternal bond. Now that new vampires were born, not turned, that tradition had been adapted: your parents’ fangmakers were yours too. When other vampires asked about my pedigree—or used to ask, because I hadn’t met one in years—I told them both my fangmakers had been lost in the Peril and steered the conversation to my dad’s fangmaker; he really hadn’t survived. My mom’s fangmaker was entirely off-limits. The truth was, we didn’t know if he’d succumbed to the virus or if he was still among the ever-living, never-dying. We didn’t even know if he was a he. That was because my mom didn’t know who her fangmaker was, period.
My mom hadn’t been chosen for this life, and her immortality hadn’t been given as a gift. Her fangmaker hadn’t meant to turn her at all: he’d fed on her and left her for dead. For years she’d thought she was the only vampire in existence.
When she finally found others, she realized she’d been better off that way. They treated her like she didn’t deserve to be one of them, like her immortal life was a mistake and the vampire that bit her should have finished the job. They wanted nothing to do with her.
That’s why she’d begun to lie—lies I’d inherited, and always told too.
Except once.
It came back to bite me quick enough. I had plenty of time to think about my fuckup too, on the cross-country drive, as we left behind the life we’d had in Virginia for a fresh start in California. In Sacramento my mom promised (herself—I was not consulted) that she was done with other vampires. We’d been here three years, and outside of Donovan, I didn’t know a single vampire in the entire state.
At first, I was happy to leave Vampirdom behind, after how I’d been burned. But as I got older and my vampiric features couldn’t be ignored, the isolation started to grind me down. Maybe it was wrong to want approval from a world that had rejected me, but I couldn’t help the diamond of ambition that hardened in my gut when I thought of Harcote. The school would obliterate everything that made me different, less-than. I’d truly belong.
It wasn’t a feeling my mom was sympathetic to. At all. She said applying was out of the question. Anyway, we’d never be able to pay.
This year, I was done with asking permission. I filled out and submitted the application myself, in secret.
I blew out a sigh. Better to get the bad part over with. I scrolled to the financial aid offer.
Financial Aid
Funding provided per year, for two years (Third and Fourth), conditional on compliance with the Harcote School Honor Code:
—Annual tuition and fees: provided in full.
—Room, board, uniform: provided in full.
—Additional expenses, including textbooks, computing needs, costs related to clubs, sports teams, or educational travel: provided in full, at request, no limit.
—Travel stipend for relocation to Harcote campus and one home visit per term: provided in full.
—Incidental expenses, including new clothes and other necessary items prior to arrival on campus: provided in full, at request, no limit.
All funds furnished by anonymous donation.
Elation, bright and hot, surged through me. I pressed my lips between my teeth. It didn’t feel right to grin in that dismal waiting room.
“What are you so happy about?”
My mom stood in the hall. She was pale and gaunt at the end of the long day, but she was wearing a curious grin.
I leaped up. “Mom, I’m going to Harcote—I got in!”
Her face spasmed with anger: her eyes bulged and her lips pulled back. Just as quick, she composed herself. She set her mouth in a firm line and tightened her fist around the strap of her purse and walked right past me, right through the waiting room and out into the parking lot. The door of the clinic swung shut before I could follow.
2
KAT
“Did you hear what I said?” I jogged after my mom. She was power walking through the parking lot and was almost at the car when I caught up.
Standing at the passenger side, she gave me a hard look, sucking in her cheeks so they looked hollow. “Kat, unlock the car.”
“I got into Harcote,” I repeated.
“I understood you the first time. Please unlock the car.”
“That’s all you have to say?” I held the car keys tight in my fist. “Not even like, ‘Congratulations, Kat, my only daughter, for getting into one of the most competitive high schools in the country’?”
“Yes, Kat, congratulations on going behind my back to apply when I expressly told you not to. With a mind like that, it’s no wonder they admitted you.”
Her words stung—badly—but worse was the look in her eyes, a pointed anger that told me she’d only said a fraction of what she was really thinking. “I don’t understand,” I stammered. “I thought you’d be proud of me.”
Heat radiating from the roof of the car sent ripples through her face when she looked back at me. “I’m always proud of you, Kat. But I’m not sending you to Harcote. Now, it’s been a long day, and I’m tired.”
Suddenly, a bolt of anger crackled through me, shearing away the hurt and confusion of a moment before. So my mom was tired? No shit. I was tired. I was tired of working at the stupid Snack Shack, serving people a hundred times richer than I’d ever be, when I could have gotten an internship or taken an extra class that would look good to colleges and eventually law schools; tired of worrying about money and Hema; tired of feeling like the only vampire under a century old in the entire state of California.
I was tired of wanting more and never getting it, and I was tired of being scared that my life would be like this forever—that for the rest of my immortality, it would never get better.
I ground my teeth, but I did as she’d asked. I drove us home in what I hoped was a scorching silence. It was a calculated prelude to the argument we’d have once we arrived. In my head, I played out a hundred different arguments, gaming out the best possible attack and how to parry her defenses. I waited until the door to the apartment was closed and she’d hung up her coat before I started in.
I was firm, rational, in control. “I know it’s super late in the summer, but they gave me full funding. The aid package covers full tuition, room and board, everything.”
“That doesn’t change the fact that you lied to me.”
“Technically, I never lied. You never asked.”
Her nostrils flared. “Silly me, never asking if you had secretly submitted any boarding school applications.”
“Fine. I did go behind your back, and that was wrong,” I conceded. “But now the situation is that I’ve been accepted and we can afford it. We might actually be able to save some money for once, if I was away at school and everything was taken care of.”
“It’s not just the money—or the timing, which is frankly ridiculous. I don’t want you in a boarding school, especially Harcote. All vampires, no humans. I want you to know a bigger world than that.”
“Since when is Sacramento a bigger world?” Judging from her glare, this was a misstep. I switched tactics. “And I am a vampire, Mom. Living with humans isn’t going to change that.”
“Where’s this coming from, Kat?” She held her hands out in front of her, like the this in question was an invisible presence in the room. “You have plenty of friends here.”
“Human friends, who I lie to every single day about who I am. Do you ever think how hard it is for me to spend my whole life not knowing a single vampire my own age?”
“I didn’t realize your life began when we moved to Sacramento, Kat. I seem to remember your spending quite a lot of time with a vampire your own age before we came out here.”
It cut deeper than it should have. It was true: before the move to California, we spent four years living with a vampire family. Well, not with them, but in their guesthouse, which was a thing they had because they lived on an actual estate. Their daughter had been my best friend—until she betrayed my trust and we were out on our asses.
“That was different,” I snapped. “We were just kids, not even really vampires yet. And you know I haven’t talked to her since we left. I need to be around other Youngbloods now, when it really matters.”
“You have me, and you’re lucky to have that. Vampires have always lived solitary lives, Kat. That’s the nature of turning.”
“And everyone agreed that wasn’t exactly a good thing. Why should I have to live like that when things are different now?” Before the Peril, vampires weren’t interested in children—vampiring was an adults-only activity, and pregnancy was hard to achieve in an immortal body that healed superfast. It was only since CFaD made turning impossible that vampires started having children. “There’s a whole generation of Youngblood vampires like me, and I’m out here, all alone.”
She was massaging her temples again. I was wearing her down. “Why are you getting so much financial aid?”
“Because we’re broke and the rest of them are rich. Because I deserve it.”
She leveled a weary look at me. “The world doesn’t work that way, and you know it.”
She was right: I did know that. I had for a long time. The walls of the small apartment felt too close, the air too still and hot. I ran my hands over my face. For reasons I couldn’t pinpoint, I’d lost the advantage. That was impossible, unacceptable, but I was so frustrated I couldn’t find a way to get back on track.
“Harcote could change my life, Mom!”
“I’ve tried to give you the best life I could.” Her eyes were glossy, and that set me reeling. She was always doing this, going frail and tragic, as if that was a legitimate way to win an argument instead of an embarrassing cop-out.
“Don’t guilt-trip me when you’re the one in the wrong! Just because you’re happy pissing away your immortality here doesn’t mean I am. I’m not. I can’t live like this forever.”
Forever.
A familiar tightness throttled my breath in my chest—the grip of panic that seized me whenever I let myself think about it.
Humans talked about immortality like it was some amazing gift. It sounded nice if you were planning to spend it in a castle, sitting on a mountain of cash, with all the time in the world to fritter it away, like vampires in movies and books. That life seemed pretty good to me too.
It wasn’t the life I had.
Immortality looked a lot different when you were staring down decades of uncertainty. I had plans for the next few decades. Youngblood vampires aged like humans until the end of our teens; from then, the process slowed to a crawl. I might look like I was thirty by my hundredth birthday. That made it hard to make a life anywhere permanent. My plan was to do college and law school on loans, then scramble to make partner at a law firm. I’d spend a few years saving every cent I could, sneaking sips of Hema at my desk, until the fact that I still looked like a college freshman raised too many eyebrows. Then I’d do what other vampires had done before me: move somewhere new, set up a new life, and wait for the process to repeat itself. No lifelong friends, no watching anyone get old, no twenty-year high school reunions. It only went so far in getting what I really wanted: safety, stability, a life where I’d never worry about accidentally committing a murder-suicide if my bank account ran too low.
“I want to go, Mom,” I said, my voice ragged. This had to be my trump card. “I think Dad would have wanted this for me too. To make sure I don’t end up like him.”
Two thin lines appeared between her eyebrows, like they usually did when she was about to agree to something she thought was a bad idea. This was it—my yes was coming. Then she said, “I don’t agree that he would want Harcote for you. But he’d have faith you would find a way to get by without it.”
My body went rigid, my mouth fallen open. The whole time we’d been fighting, I’d had this engine of anger steaming inside me, but now I had slammed, full-speed, into a wall. I couldn’t argue with her about what my father would have wanted. He’d died before I was old enough to know. Most of the time I was okay with that, but right now, it felt like my mom was deliberately reminding me of what I’d lost.
“Believe me, Kat.” Her voice softened. “This is what’s best for us.”
I couldn’t even look at her as I grabbed the empty Hema bottles from the kitchen counter. “Donovan’s expecting me.”
* * *
—
This is what’s best for us.
Those words chased themselves in circles in my head as I drove to Donovan’s.
Harcote was a world-class school, a place of power and privilege and excellence, with classes that were college-level hard. Harcote students became someone, if they weren’t someone already. Every opportunity was at their fingertips, and the financial aid guaranteed that I would have the same.
How could my mom possibly believe Harcote wasn’t best for me?
I had to admit, there was something too good to be true about the financial aid, but I was one of the best students at my high school, and I’d written a knockout admissions essay. I had the merit, and I definitely had the need. My grip tightened on the steering wheel. The only thing standing in my way—that had ever been standing in my way—was her.
I pulled into the strip mall where Donovan’s was located and drove around back. From the front, Donovan’s was a dive bar with a glitchy neon sign and blacked-out windows. Out the back, Donovan ran a distribution for Hema, and we counted on him to give us a good rate. I pressed the buzzer, then waited among the dumpsters and wood pallets and cigarette butts. It smelled like trash, with a rank undertone of urine. I knocked an empty beer can away with my toe.
I wished I felt nervous or scared in that dark parking lot. Or disgusted. Or out of place.
But I didn’t.
Instead, all I felt was that familiar anxiety constricting my chest: an eternity like this, an immortality like this.
Forever. I was going to live forever like this.
The door swung open and Donovan poked his head out, the stub of a cigarette between his lips. “Hey there, Kat.”
He stepped out and lit a fresh cigarette off the butt. Donovan had an ageless look, imbued with vampiric charm that drew humans to him, although they couldn’t put their finger on why. Especially because he didn’t take care of himself: his hair was greasy, and a century of consequence-free chain-smoking meant that the stink of smoke emanated from his pores.
“Two bottles, right?”
“Yep.” I held out the two empties I’d brought.
“With a little discount for the bottle return . . .” He tapped at his phone with a nicotine-stained finger. “It’s three hundred and ten bucks.”
My stomach dropped. “That’s twenty bucks more than normal!”
Donovan let out a cloud of smoke and jabbed a fingernail toward some itch in his scalp. “CasTech sets the prices, babe. I’m just the middleman.”
“If I give you two hundred now, can you put the rest on our tab?”
Donovan grimaced apologetically. “You’re going to have to pay that tab down one day, you know? But I’ll do it for that pretty face of yours.”
I forced myself to smile while I counted the money. My stomach was at my shoes by the time I got to the last bill. “This is only one ninety. I thought I had more.”
“You’re killing me, Kat.” Donovan tossed his cigarette away. “Look, I do have some product I need to get rid of. I’ll do it for one ninety, fair and square.”
Donovan disappeared inside, then returned with two bottles. Inside, the Hema looked almost black. I tilted the bottle, watching how the thick liquid clung to the glass, then unscrewed the top of one and smelled it. I nearly spit into the street.
