“Are you ignoring me because you’re still pissed off?”
Salma’s concerned face comes into focus. “I already told you I was sorry, Lore.” She frowns as she surveys me. “Also, how do you sleep so much and still look more tired than the rest of us?”
“Good one!” says Tiffany appreciatively.
“I didn’t say I was sleepingwell,” I say, not offering more than that.
“Well, we all decided we’re taking the night off from the LUB,” says Salma. “Trevor didn’t want to, but we outvoted him. We’ve been spending every night there going through hundreds of blank books, just because he’s convinced there’s a secret hidden somewhere, and if we don’t check every page, we could miss it.”
I flash to that green book again. What did Trevor find that’s convinced him there’s something written in those blank pages?
“But it’s only Wednesday,” Salma goes on, “and we’re already falling behind on both homework and sleep.”
I’ll finally start catching up on those things, too, now that I got rid of the vampire. I grab my phone off my desk, and part of me wants to pull up the video just to see him in the daylight. But I force myself to hide the device instead, stuffing it under my mattress when neither Salma nor Tiffany is looking.
It’s time to put William Pride out of my mind.
Yet all through American history, I can’t stop thinking of what he revealed about the past. It feels impossible that he was describing our world. If vampires really existed, there would be evidence. Others would have survived.
I miss most of Ms. Floreville’s lecture on the Roanoke Colony, too busy trying to convince myself that the things in our textbook are true.
Every time I assure myself that I’m not going to see the vampire again, the relief that ballooned in my chest earlier begins to deflate. While I’m glad I no longer have to worry about death by exsanguination, there’s something anticlimactic about my triumph.
Our whole civilization has been built on an existential lie, and I’ve lost my only chance to find the truth.
Now I will never know why he was in that coffin, or what other worlds may exist out there. I will never know who the Legion of Fire was or what it’s like to be a Familiar.
I will never feel my heart race as it did when he came near.
I ignore that last longing because I don’t want to know what it means. Am I seriously this romance-deprived that I’m romanticizing a monster just because he’s good-looking?
Ms. Floreville is discussing how the colonists of Roanoke vanished and became the Lost Colony. Sort of like how the vampires have vanished fromall historical records. I feel my eyelids growing heavy, and I let my neck go limp, my chin dropping as I drift off…
I feel a sharp poke in my side, and my eyes fly open.
Mr. Torres is staring at me expectantly from the front of the room. I don’t even remember walking into Spanish class. I peek at Salma, who’s glaring at me and pointing to a sentence in her textbook.
But sleepiness is still gnawing at me, and the print is a blur.
“Miss Navarro,” says a grimacing Mr. Torres, “if you cannot stay awake during class, I am afraid I’m going to have to—”
“It’s my fault, Mr. Torres!” Salma snaps to her feet, and I’m too stunned to stop her. “I—I was coughing all night, and I kept her up. I like to take naps after class, but Lorena doesn’t, so she’s running on very little sleep.”
Our teacher looks from her to me and sighs. “Okay, look—Miss Navarro, if this behavior repeats itself tomorrow, you will have a first strike on your record, is that clear?”
I nod in assent, and Salma sits back down.
“You only get two chances here,” says Mr. Torres. “Third strike means expulsion.”
I never got in trouble in class at my old school, so that last word reverberates through me, and my back stiffens with fear. I do a slightly better job of focusing in precalculus, which I don’t have with Salma, and then it’s finally lunchtime.
“We need to talk.” Salma finds me as soon as I leave the classroom, and it feels like déjàvu from yesterday, only she’s gripping my elbow like I’m a wayward toddler she wants to keep in her custody. The hall fills with more students, including Tiffany.
“What’s up?” she asks, noting how Salma is holding me.
“We’ll meet you at lunch,” says Sal.
Tiffany looks at me through slitted eyes, like she knows her banishment is my fault. As soon as her heelsclick-clackaway, Salma drags me in the other direction, to the ballroom-like sitting room that I cut through last night. In the daylight, with the chandeliers off, it looks less regal.
