From my house, Megan's neighborhood was in the opposite direction of both the school and Sidney's house. In the area of the city where we all lived, there was a clear progression of wealth as you traveled from my neighborhood to Sid's. My neighborhood was average. The house wasn't huge, and it wasn't new, but even so, it was more than my mom could have afforded on her paycheck. Apparently, my parents had bought it before I was born and paid a lot of it off, and now Mom and I were fortunate enough to keep living in it.

The houses got nicer as you got closer to the school, and when you passed the school and got closer to Sid's, the houses got closer to mansions.

Likewise, if you left my house and walked away from the school, the neighborhoods went downhill fast. That was what I experienced as I made my way to Megan's. I left the two-story houses behind as I turned onto the main road and walked south. Here, the houses were small, but the yards were well-kept. I walked a few more blocks, and suddenly the yards were not so well-kept. Then the houses got a little smaller. Then they got a little dirtier. There were more signs of neglect. Paint was peeling. Porches sagged.

I passed a green road sign that said “Bestworth Village,” and all at once it was like even the roads were being neglected. Asphalt was cracked under my feet. There were no sidewalks. There were few houses. Most roads led into one trailer park or another.

I turned down a road called Blue Jay into Megan's neighborhood. I passed one single-wide mobile home after another. At one, a pair of pit bulls ran up to a chain link fence and barked at me. The sudden noise, so painful to my sensitive ears, startled me. Without even thinking about it, I took my glasses off and glared at the dogs. They went quiet and backed away. Then they turned and ran up under the trailer through a hole in the skirting. I guess they decided they didn't want to mess with me, which, I'll admit, was kind of cool. I put the glasses back on and kept walking.

There was something odd about this neighborhood, aside from the obvious. There were kids everywhere. They were dirty, and a lot of them weren't wearing shoes. But they were riding bikes and yelling and running around and playing. It was so odd. I never saw kids playing in my neighborhood. It wasn't just like stepping into poverty. It was like stepping back in time.

They stared at me as I passed, but didn't say anything. Soon I found Megan's house. Number 14. This one had a solid-looking wooden porch with a bench on it and several potted plants. The plants were all growing over, totally wild, but it was a homier touch than the pit-bull greeting I'd gotten four houses back. I climbed the stairs and knocked on the door.

Megan opened the door herself, which was a relief. I didn't want to have to face her dad first, that was for sure. She seemed embarrassed, but she held the door open for me and gestured me in.

The moment she did, I felt an odd loosening inside me. Walls dropping. I hadn't actually tried to push my way into the house without a signal from her, but now that I knew what to look for I could feel barriers that would have stopped me giving way. I'd been invited. I didn't belong here, but I could enter.

I walked directly into a small living room. Megan shut the door behind me. Dark curtains blocked all light and there were no lamps on. The only light came from a TV on the other side of the room. Two huge recliners faced away from me and toward the TV.

“Come on,” Megan said to me quietly. “Let's go back to my---”

“Who the hell is it?” said a man. A bearded, beet-red face stuck up from behind one of the recliners and looked at me.

“Just my friend from school,” said Megan.

“You bringing boys over to this house?” It was hard to understand him. He wasn't exactly enunciating his syllables. That's when I realized he was drunk.

“Just this once. We have work to do and I didn't want you to have to drive me somewhere.”

“Work, huh?” He rotated the recliner so he could face me. He was wiry and wearing a dirty white T-shirt. He grinned at me, kind of nasty, but even though he was smiling he actually looked really mad. He said, “You don't need to work with my daughter. Why don't you go find some other slut and leave us alone?”

I puzzled over the phrase “other slut.” Was he saying his own daughter was a slut? Or was he just too drunk to hear himself?

“It's not what you think, Dad,” said Megan. Under her breath, she said, “It's never what you think.”

“Listen to me---” began her dad, but he was cut off by a woman sitting in the other recliner.

“Would you shut up, Scott? I can't hear the TV!”

“You shut up, Amanda! You're the one with the loudest goddamn mouth!”

A fight broke out between Megan's parents who, as far as I could tell, were both drunk. Megan took the opportunity to grab my arm, pull me through a kitchen area, and take me to her room at one end of the trailer. Once we were inside, she shut the door and sank back against it. Her parents were shouting in the living room, and everything her father said passed right through the door. Megan was, in fact, a slut. So was her mother. I was a son of a bitch and several things worse.

“Sorry,” said Megan.

“It's okay.”

“Give them a second and they'll forget you were ever here.”

Sure enough, the fight lost its steam and, after a minute, everything was quiet again. I could imagine Megan's parents sinking back into their recliners, their mouths hanging open as they watched “real live” court cases on TV.

“They're not so bad when they're sober,” said Megan. “My dad's a really good carpenter.”

“I saw the porch.”

“Yeah.”

I looked around the room. It was small and cluttered, but the clutter was organized, if that makes sense. A twin bed was half-covered with stuffed animals and character plushes. Small potted plants lined both windowsills. Two shelves were packed with books. A nightstand was covered with candles and an incense stick burned with purple-blue smoke. Smelled strong but not awful. I recognized it as part of Megan's own scent.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

There was a second heartbeat in here, too, but smaller. An animal. Smelled like a cat. I looked toward the sound until I found it in a corner formed by the wall and the edge of a bookshelf. It was more of a kitten, really. And its eyes were huge. It was terrified of me. Which was too bad. I like cats.

“Wanna sit down?” Megan said.

I didn't want to sit on her bed and take the chance that her dad would barge in and get the wrong idea, so I sat on the floor. Megan joined me on the carpet. She made a clicking sound with her tongue and wiggled her fingers toward the cat.

“Rosie, come here.”

The cat refused to move. Megan frowned.

“Usually she's pretty friendly,” she said. “Maybe she doesn't like your glasses.”

“Maybe.” I took them off. The cat didn't budge, but Megan was already turning toward me.

“Do you want a soda?”

“No, thanks,” I said.

“Muffin?”

“I'm fine.”

“Oh.” Her fingers found a strand of her hair and she twisted it. “So, what did you need help with?”

I took a deep breath. How the heck was I supposed to do this? The only person I'd ever told before was Sidney, and that was when I was starving and out of my mind.

[https://img.wattpad.com/dde1dfde17ce306e9aeb55bc9e8f7b1e5df8f9b5/68747470733a2f2f73332e616d617a6f6e6177732e636f6d2f776174747061642d6d656469612d736572766963652f53746f7279496d6167652f584d51376c326b504365346b77773d3d2d313336383532303837392e313737613836323333363534343866303933393639373735303839392e706e67]

I said, “First, I have to tell you something about myself. And it's really, really important that you don't tell anyone else. Because almost nobody knows.”

“Not even Porter and Zachary?”

I blinked. Zachary was Zero's real name. Zachary Rodriguez. But nobody ever used it.

“Especially not them,” I said.

“All right, I won't tell.”

“Promise?”

“Sure.”

“Okay.” I glanced at Rosie. She was still frozen in the corner. I had a feeling she would have taken a chance and darted for the bed if I weren't in between. I said, “Do you remember Monday when Porter said I got beat up?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Well, I didn't really get 'beat up.' I mean, I did, but it's not like I got jumped by some thug. Porter didn't know that I actually got attacked.” I ran my fingers through my hair and exhaled. I added, “By a vampire.”

Her face went blank. I'd seen this look before. On Parva, when I surprised her by guessing what she was. I doubted that was the same emotion Megan was feeling.

“A vampire?” Megan said.

“Yes. I know it's hard to believe, but it's true. She bit me and injected something into my throat.” I made fangs with my fingers and demonstrated against my neck. “A venom or something. It went all through my body and it---it changed me.”

“Into a vampire?” Megan guessed. I was grateful for the help.

“Yes.”

“So, now you're a vampire?”

“Yes.”

Megan sat there for a moment, half-smiling. She said, “This is a joke, isn't it? You guys are messing with me.”

“No, we're not. The guys aren't even in on it. I mean, it's not a joke.”

She wasn't smiling anymore. Now she just looked hurt.

“You're messing with me. You think I'm a crazy witch girl, and now you're just trying to see if I'm stupid enough to believe you're a vampire.”

That hurt, because the guys and I had called her exactly those things before. “No, Megan, I'm not lying to you. Honest to god, I am a vampire.”

“Yeah, right.”

“Look, you can ask Emily Harding. Ask Sidney Cross. Those are people I've bitten. Not even on purpose. I was just hungry. I bit Emily before I even knew what I was.”

“And now you're here to bite me?”

“No, I'm trying to avoid biting people. That's why I need your help.”

Megan got to her feet and strode to the door. She put her hand on the knob, and I expected her to fling it open and tell me to get out. But she paused there and dropped her head. Her faded hair, last dyed some months ago, hung to her elbows.

“I don't know why you would try something like this on me,” she said. “I've only ever been nice to you.”

“Megan, look at me.” I stood up, too, and walked toward her. I was going to have to show her my fangs. Just thinking about it made them throb and lengthen. It didn't help that I was hungry. Bringing them out wasn't the hard part. The hard part would be putting them back in.

She wouldn't turn around. “I think you should go.”

“Megan---”

“No.”

“Fine, but would you at least look at your cat?”

Rosie, who was wary when I was sitting still, was terrified now that I was moving around. She stood in the corner, as arched and as bristly as I'd ever seen a cat. Her ears were so flat it looked like she didn't have any.

I took a step toward the cat. The cat pulled itself deeper into the corner and hissed. Alarmed, Megan looked at Rosie. Then she looked at me. She saw my teeth and her eyes got huge. She actually looked a little bit like Rosie.

“Oh, my god,” said Megan.

“Believe me now?”

“Those aren't real.”

“Your cat thinks they are.”

Megan took a step closer to me. That surprised me. I thought she was too freaked out to do that. But she was staring at my face with intense curiosity. She took another step.

“They're not real.”

“They're real.”

“Oh, my god, your eyes. They're so scary. It's like all that's there is black.” She was right in front of me. So close that I could see her heart beating in her throat. The musky, seductive scent of human was in my nostrils. My fangs throbbed. They were ready. I couldn't stop staring at her throat.

“I think you should step back,” I heard myself whisper. I should say it louder. She might not hear.

She said, “What?”

“Step back.” Something in my face must have convinced Megan that I was serious because she backed up all the way to the door. I tore my gaze from her throat and made myself turn away. She smelled so good. Why hadn't I ever noticed?

“Are you okay?” she said.

“I was trying to avoid this.”

“I'm sorry.”

“No, it's---” I took a shaky breath. Tried to steady myself. “I don't know why I expected you to believe me without---”

“No, I should have believed you.”

“If you had, that would have been crazy.”

“I guess I still don't know what you want from me.”

“I'm trying to see if there's a way I can get blood without biting people.”

“Isn't the blood-drinking the bad part? I mean, if you're going to drink blood anyway, why not just bite somebody?”

I felt the question all through my bones, like an offer. Damn it.

I said, “It's complicated. Got some bad side effects.”

“Oh. So, what do I do?”

“Do you think you could, maybe, put some blood into something I can drink from?”

“Like a cup?”

“Yes.”

“Like, cut myself and put the blood in a cup?”

She kept saying it, and I kept getting tugged between excitement and humiliation. “Yes.”

“I guess I can try.”

“Okay. Please.”

She disappeared from the room. I could hear her rummaging in the next room, a bathroom. Then I heard her in the kitchen. She came back with a glass, paper towels, and a knife, and then she went to her dresser and produced a pack of blades for an art knife. Like razor blades. There was fear in her eyes, but she was trying to be cool.

“I don't know what to use. To cut.”

“Probably the razor blade.”

We sat down again. Megan's fingers trembled as she pulled a razor blade from the pack. She held the blade between thumb and forefinger, but then she hesitated.

“I'm not sure what to do,” she said.

“I can do it,” I said, which startled her. Startled me, too.

“Do you know how?”

I nodded. I knew exactly which artery to cut. There was one in the forearm that would bleed prolifically but not dangerously. I'd found it while happily biting away at Sidney the first time.

“If you're sure . . .” She passed me the blade. I turned her hand over and revealed her wrist. I let instinct lead me to the artery, and then I placed the corner of the blade against her skin. Megan jumped.

“Wait, I don't know,” she said. “This doesn't seem safe.”

“Don't worry, I won't cut anything important.”

“But you're not a doctor. How do you know?”

I looked her in the eyes and said, “Trust me, I know.” I said it very soothingly. Very calmly. And then I realized I was doing that same thing to her that I'd done to Sidney. Hypnotizing her or controlling her. Which I didn't want to do. I made myself shake loose whatever hold I had over her mind.

“Just hurry up,” she said. “Or I won't be able to let you do it.”

I obliged. I pinned her hand to the ground and, in one quick move, dug the corner of the blade into her wrist.