Page 66 of So Thirsty

“And it works for you. It doesn’t work for me.”

“What does work for you? Settling and playing it safe and telling yourself that living, actually living, isn’t worth the risk? You let one mistake, one bad judgment call, scare or shame you into permanent inaction. You’re so afraid of doing the wrong thing that—”

“This isn’t actually living,” I say. “We’re vampires. Don’t you get it? This is what we do now.”

I point to the dead man.

“It is living, Sloane. Living is complicated and messy. To live is to fuck up and make mistakes—”

“This is more than a mistake!”

“Oh, whatever! Fine! Then go back to your air fryer and fucking Dyson stick vacuum and suburban delusion. Go back to Joel.”

Surprisingly, I’m more upset that she’d bring up the Dyson than that she’d bring up Joel. I knew I never should have told her how much I love that vacuum.

“We don’t have time for this.” I lift the man’s feet. “We should at least drag him into the woods.”

“Sure,” she says, scooping her arms under his. “Shit. He’s heavy.”

“How did you get him back here in the first place?”

“I don’t remember,” she says. “It was a blur.”

We carry him to the woods beyond the picnic tables. There’s a slope, and we drop him at the edge and let him roll. I wince as it happens, at the sounds of his lifeless body tumbling down the hill until he smacks against a tree.

“I’m sorry,” Naomi says, snapping off a branch to cover our footprints. At this point, why bother? “I’m sorry I said that thing about Joel. And the vacuum. That was low.”

“If you cleaned, you’d understand.”

“It hurts me that you think I’d lie to you about this. About him,” she says.

“I’m sorry,” I say, walking ahead of her so I don’t leave any more tracks.

“Did you really not see him? Didn’t hear him pull up?”

I shake my head, too ashamed to admit that I was preoccupied attempting to fight the pull of my thirst. And for what? Just to turn around and let it overtake me.

We make it back to the rest stop. There’s blood in the snow, so we scoop it up, treat it like a snow cone. The blood tastes good but the snow tastes sour. I’m realizing that everything that isn’t blood tastes sour.

We go into the women’s room, clean the blood off the sink, the mirror, and the floor with toilet paper, then flush the paper.

“Good enough?” she asks me. “If anyone finds his body, they’ll probably assume it was an animal.”

“They’d be half-right,” I mumble, washing my hands in the sink. There’s blood crusted on my cuticles, under my fingernails. “There’s no soap.”

“It’s almost eight now,” she says. “We could drive all night. Even if we take back roads, we could probably still make it to Pittsburgh.”

“Pittsburgh?”

“I need to see Lee,” she says, staring down at her phone screen. “Then we can head to North Carolina. Or, I don’t know. Mexico.”

“It’s a terrible idea to see Lee. One, because if anyone’s looking for us, they’ll go to Lee. Two, because it would put him in danger. Serious danger. Think about what just happened. What we just did. Are you insane?”

“Sloane. Please,” she says, looking me in the eye. In the soul, if I still have one. “I need to see him.”

“Naomi…”

“I know. But…please? If we’re going to start over, I need to say goodbye. Face-to-face. And he’ll hound me if I don’t. If I just disappear, he’ll make noise. You know he will.”