People say teenagers stink but they have no idea. There are some nice clean girls at school who smell like food. That's bad enough. But mostly they smell like a chemical soup of artificial fragrances and body odor, and these are the girls I'm talking about. The guys smell like human tear gas.

For the first half of that Monday, I kept my head down and focused on breathing. I did work when they gave it to me and tried to remember to record my homework assignments. It helped that I'm a good student when I'm not distracted. I had the system down and I just did it. But I didn't talk to or look at anybody unless I had to.

I sat with Porter and Zero at our usual table at lunch, along with this girl named Megan Geron. Porter got to business the minute I walked up. He never says things like “Hi.” He'll make a great CEO someday.

“Work on the arc?” he said.

I sat down and propped my face up on one hand. I wanted to put my head on the table and go to sleep, but I had to content myself with hiding behind the sunglasses. Sadists had designed the cafeteria and there were huge windows that let sunlight stream right in.

“Sort of,” I said.

He wasn't impressed. He'd want results, and he'd want them now. But before he could scold me, Megan cut into the conversation with something completely unrelated, as she so often did.

“I like your glasses, Nate. They're sexy.”

I looked up at her. Her eyes sparkled and her hair was wild. She looked like a cross between a woodland nymph and a crazy bag lady, and she usually talked that way, too.

“Thanks,” I said.

“Where's your lunch?”

I'd forgotten to bring a prop resembling lunch when I'd left this morning. Megan got up and came around the table so she could sit next to me. She was holding a couple of small, lumpy packages wrapped in aluminum foil.

“It's a good thing I brought you a muffin,” she said. “They're spice cake. I made them myself.”

She peeled the corners of the foil away from one of the lumps with a seductive flourish and handed me a brown thing with black specks in it.

“No, thanks,” I said, and I tried to hand the muffin back. “I'm not hungry.”

“It's going to hurt my feelings if you don't eat it,” she said.

Megan's been sitting with us since last year. We liked her at first, if only because she was a girl. Now we put up with her because we weren't sure how to get rid of her. Besides, I think Porter and Zero appreciated the continuing female presence in our group. We were geeks, but we weren't so hopeless that no woman would ever associate herself with us.

Which was an easy position for them to take. Remember how, at the beginning of this story, I said that the only girls who ever paid attention to me were psychologically unstable? Meet Megan.

I made myself accept the muffin. Megan's eyes were on me as I brought the muffin up to my mouth and took a tiny bite. Definitely spice cake. Tasted like potpourri.

"No, thanks," I said, and I tried to hand the muffin back [https://img.wattpad.com/3d69e82d56bf8f82d3200437d7d7083c44a930f8/68747470733a2f2f73332e616d617a6f6e6177732e636f6d2f776174747061642d6d656469612d736572766963652f53746f7279496d6167652f39333362525673756f4b586c49673d3d2d313336323333363534322e313737313932306638336563663566383531343037383439323331302e706e67?s=fit&w=1280&h=1280]

“It's good,” I said.

“It has an herb in it that contains a natural aphrodisiac.” Her eyes sparkled even more. “It's supposed to improve the libido.”

If only she knew how little help I needed with that most of the time. I put the muffin in the square of foil and set it on the table.

“Better not eat too much of it, then,” I said. “I'm at school.”

She laughed like I'd made some hilarious joke and she was in on it with me. Like if I ate the whole muffin I'd become so inflamed with passion that I'd end up taking her right there on the cafeteria table.

I was pretty sure she was crazy. I'll admit, when she first started hanging around I was flattered. I'd never been openly hit on by a girl before. But over time I began to grasp how desperate she was for attention. And then it wasn't flattering anymore. Just annoying.

“Can we move on from the muffin?” Porter said. “I want to talk about the story.”

“Honestly, I'm still not sure what's wrong with it," I said. "I need more time to figure it out.”

“We have a deadline, Nate. Zero and I are ready for a chapter.”

“I know.”

“Do you think Obsidian would push back the release of the next Zombie Bouken game just because the writers demand more time?”

“No, but---”

Someone sat down beside me. I hadn't noticed them coming because the place was swarming with kids already. Plus, the four people who had sat at this table since freshman year were already here. No one else was expected.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

Then I caught the smell, familiar and attractive, and I looked over. It was Sidney.

She took out her sandwich. Her chips and her soda. She set them out in front of herself. Then she popped open the soda and took a drink while we stared at her. After a minute, she looked up from the can.

“What?” she said.

Her eyes dared any of us to challenge her right to be there. The thing was, we didn't question her right to sit with us, we questioned her desire to. She was like Emily, in many ways. She might condescend to talk with us, briefly, at home, but at school we were Lame Little Brother n' Pals. She kept to her upperclassman friends and we kept to ourselves.

Porter was confused and tired of being interrupted, and since he couldn't take it out on Sidney he turned his attention to the easiest target.

“Okay, that's it,” he said to me. “What is the deal with the glasses? Did you get Lasik surgery?”

“My eyes are just irritated.”

“Something's up with you. You're slacking off on the story, you're dressing like Magnum P. I. . . .” He studied me like he'd found a fly in his sandwich. “You're off.”

Sidney reached across to Porter's lunch and snatched a fruit snack. “Chill out, Porter. You'd be off too if someone beat you up.”

Megan said, “Someone beat up Nate?”

I couldn't help but glare at Sid, but she might not have seen it for the glasses.

“Thanks a lot,” I said.

“I got your back, man,” she said lightly. But then, under the table, her fingertips came into contact with the back of my hand. She yanked her hand back like she had been burned, but that split-second was enough for me to finally understand what was going on. Sid was starting to feel it. The strange attraction that had drawn me and Emily together last night in a flurry of awkward groping was starting to work on Sid.

And it was working on me, too, only I hadn't realized it before. I was so stressed out from the insanity of school that I hadn't noticed how much I missed Sidney until she showed up. I was more comfortable with her beside me, and I knew she felt the same way.

Porter was watching me and Sidney with a distinct look of displeasure. I don't know what he was seeing, but he was good at detecting loops and refused to ever be out of one.

“Why are you over here?” he finally said to Sid. “Aren't you afraid people will realize we're related?”

“You told me this morning you wanted to talk about the art. Let's talk about the art.”

“I meant we could talk about the art tonight at Nate's house.”

This was the first I'd heard that anyone was coming over to my house tonight. Porter wasn't going to allow me to escape again.

Sidney laughed a little in disbelief. “I have plans tonight. I'm not spending my evening at Nate's house.” She said this like she might have said “at the nursing home.”

“I can come,” said Megan. She looked at me with big, slightly crazy eyes. “Can I come?”

I wanted to avoid this question so, to Sidney, I said, “Are you really going to do the art for us?”

“You come up with something that doesn't suck and I'll consider it.”

“Did Porter show you the story?”

“No, why? Does it suck?”

Porter jumped in. “We're working on it.”

This led to a conversation between Sidney and Porter about the art that took the heat off me and left me to focus on Sid. Now and then I brushed the skin of her arm without being obvious about it. She always pulled away, but, then, she also stayed and kept letting me do it. At the same time, Megan kept trying to get me to eat her magic muffins, and subtly or not-so-subtly invite herself to my house. I was careful to pretend I never quite understood what she was getting at.

When lunch was over, I followed Sidney outside. She saw me behind her and slowed to let me catch up. When I got there, she was smirking.

“Looks like somebody wouldn't mind becoming your number one donor,” she said. “If you know what I mean.”

“What? Who?”

“Are you blind? That girl back at the table.”

“Megan? You've got to be kidding me.”

“What's wrong with her? She wants you. And I'm pretty sure she thinks she's a witch. I bet she'll even feed your bats.”

“No, thank you. Look, I need to talk to you.”

She didn't even slow down. “I've got trig.”

“It's only going to take a minute.”

“I already told you, man. Once was enough.”

“Are you sure about that?”

She whipped around and glared at me, but I held her gaze and tried not to back down. After a minute, the anger melted away and left her thoughtful.

“What is this?” she said. “What's happening?”

“I don't know, but the same thing happened to Emily. And it got worse and worse until I ended up biting her again.”

“Did that fix it?”

“Only for a little while. I don't know what it means, but when I bit Emily the second time, something thunked between us and now I get this feeling that I'm never going to be able to leave her alone. Ever.”

“We call that a crush.”

“It's not a crush. It's something else. Something permanent. Like an addiction.” I looked around and the kids passing by and lowered my voice. “I know I'm going to end up biting her again.”

“And how does she feel about this?”

“I think she knows it, too, but she's in denial.”

Sid smiled grimly. “I kind of hate you right now.”

“Hate me? Why?”

“Because you can talk about Emily like she's your property, and she's not even your girlfriend. You're going to keep feeding on her and she's just going to have to get used to it.”

“Feeding? What am I, a vulture?”

“I was going for mosquito.”

“Look, Emily's not the only one who's going to have to get used to it. And I can't help what happened with her. But I'm telling you about it because you're starting to feel it, and it's going to get a lot worse. And I don't know, but maybe it'll go away if we don't give into it.” I swallowed. “I think it's too late for Emily.”

“Thanks for the warning.”

“And that's also why I don't want to do anything with Megan. I don't want to feel that thunk with her and know that it means she's never going away.”

“I know, right? It's important to be very selective about who we allow to become our life-long blood slaves.”

The bitterness in her voice confused me. I said, “Why do you want me to bite Megan?”

“I don't care who you bite, Nate. I'm just saying you're acting male about it and that makes me want to kick you in the shins. You have to be so picky about which girls you're going to take advantage of, and the one thing you don't bother to think about is what the girls themselves actually want.”

This was unbelievably unfair. In the past, I'm sure I would have just walked away, but I was trying so hard to do the right thing that to have her attack my integrity was more insulting than I could stand.

In the past, I'm sure I would have just walked away, but I was trying so hard to do the right thing that to have her attack my integrity was more insulting than I could stand [https://img.wattpad.com/442ff2c737d7d7bc73c33311f9da1fbfe586fda7/68747470733a2f2f73332e616d617a6f6e6177732e636f6d2f776174747061642d6d656469612d736572766963652f53746f7279496d6167652f5f635946715f416a47536e3774673d3d2d313336323333363534322e313737313931393863353838393066613435333438353839373736352e706e67?s=fit&w=1280&h=1280]

I said, “If I decided I was going to take advantage of you, you wouldn't be able to stop me. And I'm pretty sure the pack of jocks over there wouldn't be able to pry me off before I got what I wanted. So, see this space between us?” I gestured to the foot of air between our stomachs. “This is me considering what you want.”

“Not abusing your power doesn't make you nice or generous,” she said. “It makes you civilized.”

And then I did walk away. Because being that close to her had opened up my awareness of her. I wanted Sidney's blood. And she didn't want me to have it.

Civilization. So easy for someone like her to insist on it. A girl. A human. She didn't have barbarianism etched into her bones.