Crimson
The high shriek of the whistle screeched in my ear.
I jumped and dropped my flute, suddenly realizing that, while standing at attention on the field, I had fallen asleep.
“Crimson! Get your head out of your ass!” Ms. Doyle, the band director, yelled at me. “Pick up your flute and get back to attention.”
I bent to pick my flute up, and, as she turned away and walked back to her podium, muttered, “I know what I’d like to do with my flute.”
The girls around me giggled softly, immediately cutting off when Doyle snapped an evil look at them from her podium.
“Now that we’re all awake,” she yelled across the field, “let’s run it again, from the top.”
The entire band groaned. We had spent all last week, our very last precious week of summer, on this very field practicing our performance for this year. Now it was the first day of school, and we were being forced to arrive before the rest of the school to march for an hour. I despised Ms. Doyle, and so did everyone else.
She blew her whistle once to silence us, then started conducting and we performed the whole show. Lucky for me, several other girls played the flute, because I was too winded from marching to actually blow air into mine.
After practice ended, we all lumbered off the field and back to the band room. My legs felt like jello, and my throat was drier than the Santa Cruz River. And not to mention the outfit I had planned so perfectly for the first day back to school was now soaked in sweat.
“Crimson, I can’t believe you fell asleep, right there, standing up at attention!” Tiana said with a laugh. Tiana was my closest friend in the band, but our friendship was limited to band activities because band was all we had in common. She was a thicker girl with a pretty face and hair like chocolate ribbons. “I mean, I thought I noticed you starting to wobble, but I never actually thought you were asleep.”
“Yeah,” I yawned. “This is just insane. What kind of psycho has her students come to school at five-thirty in the morning to march for an hour?”
When we got back to the band room, I carelessly abandoned my flute inside, then ran to the half-empty cafeteria. A lone girl with a blonde ponytail and glasses sat at our old table, and I skipped along to join her.
“Hey, Amber!” I greeted with renewed cheerfulness.
She looked up from the manga comic lying on the table before her.
“Crimson!” she peeped. She jumped up to give me a hug. “Oh, I haven’t seen you in so long.”
“We just talked on the phone yesterday,” I said.
“Yeah, but I haven’t actually seen you for a month,” she said. “Ugh, and just look at your hair! It’s at least four inches longer. I wish my hair grew like that.” She reached out to flick a lock of my dark red-brown hair.
I sat down and smiled, forever unsure how to react when complimented.
Within the next five minutes, the cafeteria filled with people and the other two members of our gang, Robert, and Reina, arrived. Robert was a tall male diva with flamboyantly blond-streaked black hair who we often forgot was the opposite sex (does it need to be stated that he’s gay?). And Reina, the sweetest girl I’d ever met, was my absolute best friend.
“Oh, Crimson,” Reina called my attention over the roar of students. “You said you were looking for a motorcycle, so I went on Craig’s List and found a bunch of different ones for you to consider.”
“Thanks, Reina,” I said, taking the list and looking it over, even though I already had my heart set on the beautiful bright silver and black Ninja at Performance Cycle Center. But sadly, I had slaved all summer working a part-time job to save up for it and still came up short.
“A motorcycle?” Amber asked, surprised. “Why do you want a motorcycle?”
“Are you kidding?” I replied. “Tucson is so boring. I need some excitement.”
“I hear that,” Robert said. “This town is such a drag.” He looked away, toward the breakfast line. “I don’t know about you guys, but I’m gonna get in line before it gets too long. You comin’?”
“Nah, I’m gonna wait till the line goes down,” I said.
He shrugged and proceeded to the line forming against the wall.
“So, Crimson, we have two classes together, right?” Reina asked.
“Yeah, Art and Calculus,” I said.
“What other classes do you have?”
“Physics, English, band, and psychology.”
“You have psychology?” Amber asked, breaking away from her comic again. “That sounds like fun. I should have signed up for that class.”
“You have to be a senior,” I informed her.
“Oh. Darn.”
Amber was a junior, a year behind Reina, Robert and me.
“Great, now that just reminds me that this will be our last year together,” she pouted. “You’re going to graduate and leave me here by myself.”
I didn’t know what to say, for I, too, was not entirely excited about the fact that I was graduating; I had no idea what I was going to do after high school was over. I had already been accepted to the University of Arizona and had been awarded three scholarships, but I didn’t know what I wanted to study, what future I wanted to follow. I had so many passions: astrophysics, archaeology, psychology, genetics…I couldn’t just choose one of them, and I couldn’t pursue them all. I was just stuck, and it made me a little anxious about my future.
I turned around and looked at the breakfast line. It was shorter now, so Reina and I got in line, and I got some cereal and an orange.
“So,” Amber started when we returned to the table, “is everyone coming to my house today? My parents are taking Abby to a play date tonight, so we’ll have the house to ourselves.” Abby was Amber’s six-year-old sister.
“Remind me, what’s going on?” Robert asked.
“Surprise movie screening,” Amber said mysteriously.
Robert shrugged, diva as ever. “Sure, I’ll come.”
“What about you, Crimson? You’re coming, right?” she asked me.
“Wouldn’t miss it,” I answered before popping a spoonful of cereal in my mouth.
“Great!” she grinned.
“So, Robert, who’s going to be your crush for this year?” I asked him playfully. Every year since Robert and I had become friends in freshmen year, he picked one boy to fawn over, on which to focus his gossip scanner. It was a bit of a game really.
“Hmm, I don’t know yet,” he answered thoughtfully. “But I think I’m bored with preppy guys,” Robert added. “They’re too stiff—ha-ha, you know what I mean.”
We all laughed.
“I kinda feel in the mood for a jock, maybe,” he said. “Like Stephen Tucker. He’s not gay—yet—but he is definitely a ten on the hotness scale. And he’s newly single; Brianna Cameron just dumped him! What do you think?”
Stephen Tucker. He would pick Stephen Tucker. Stephen was the quarterback of the football team. I had crushed on him all through middle school, then gave up when he started dating the head cheerleader. Of course, every now and then I checked him out at football games and wondered what it might be like to a date a guy like that, but for the most part, I was totally over him. Robert didn’t go to the same middle school as me, so he had no idea about my previous Stephen crush.
“Good choice,” I said. “I think your dating skills could use a bit of a challenge.” I winked at him.
The bell rang, too soon, and it was back to the band room for me.
Before I knew it, half the day was over, and I was walking with Robert to Physics, the only class we had together. The class was all the way on the other side of campus, so we ended up being a few minutes late, but our Stephen-King-look-alike of a teacher didn’t seem to notice.
Robert and I took the only empty lab table left.
“OMG!” Robert whispered. “You’re not going to believe this, but my crush is actually in this class!”
“What? Where?” I asked, my head bouncing all around.
Robert pointed to a boy sitting at the table in the adjacent corner of the room. And there was Stephen. Tall with short brown hair and green eyes. His thick arms were bulging from the short sleeves of his tight black t-shirt, which flauntingly defined his impressive chest muscles. Everything about him screamed, “I’m a football player.”
“God, I can’t believe this!” Robert went on. “It is total serendipity-doo!” He turned to me. “Now do you see what I mean? Isn’t he gorgeous?”
“I guess,” I answered with a shrug.
He dropped his jaw and looked at me like I was crazy.
“What do you mean, you guess? Have you no taste?”
“I have plenty of taste,” I protested. “I’m just not interested in his type.”
“Then what are you interested in? You know, as long as I’ve known you, you’ve never had a boyfriend. And it’s not like you couldn’t get one, honey. So, what’s the deal?”
I smirked and shook my head.
There was a time I would have joined Robert in his drooling over Stephen, but let’s just sat my aim has gotten much higher. I was no longer interested in high school boys. There was only one guy I would ever be interested in, the only guy in the whole world who was absolutely perfect…
But I didn’t get to finish my thought or answer Robert’s imploring expression, for the teacher started the class.
When Physics was over, I only had Art left. Reina was walking up to the classroom from the other direction just as I got close.
“Thank God it’s the last class of the day,” she said as we came together. “And art is easy, so I think it’s safe for me to turn my brain off.”
I laughed, and we stepped into the room.
“Wow, now this is real serendipity,” I said, mildly stunned as I stalled in the doorway.
“What do you mean?” Reina asked.
“Stephen Tucker is in this class.” I nodded my chin at him as he took a seat at the back of the room. “Me and Robert just had Physics with him also. Wait till I tell him, he is gonna freak!”
Reina laughed.
“Oh, Crim, I was wondering if we could work on our math homework together today,” she said. “I know I will definitely need help. After three months of vacation, thinking hurts.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean,” I said. “You can come over to my house after school before we go to Amber’s house, okay?”
“You’re a lifesaver,” she said.
When the first day back to school had finally come to a close, Reina and I walked to my house together. The walk seemed longer than usual because it was so hot. I had forgotten how pretty this neighborhood could be after monsoon season. Vibrant green paloverde trees and tall palm trees were in every yard. Magenta bougainvilleas climbed the walls of several houses, and dainty dark butterflies promenaded over bright Birds of Paradise. It never failed to amaze me that these things could thrive in the Tucson heat while I was being baked alive.
When we finally got to my house, I ran up the drive and into the shade under the front porch, then hurried inside and tossed my bag on the couch. I dropped down in front of the coffee table across from Reina and folded my knees beneath me.
We worked on the problems for about two hours, until the sound of jingling keys and a doorknob turning brought us out of our math homework haze. Having the most perfect timing ever, my mother got home just as we wrote down the solution to the last problem. It was never really certain what time she would get home; she was a computer programmer for Raytheon, and sometimes she wouldn’t come home until eight or nine.
“Hi, girls,” she greeted. Dressed in business casual with shoulder-length auburn hair that was streaked through with gray, Mom looked nothing like the computer nerd she truly was. While many of her coworkers looked a decade over their age, the gray highlights in her hair were the only thing to suggest that my mother was over forty.
“Hey, Mom,” I said at the same time Reina said, “Hi, Ms. Wilkinson.”
She came into the living room and put her purse at the foot of the couch.
“How was your first day of school?” she asked.
“Oh, you know, syllabuses, lame introductions, rules, blah, blah, blah…” I said indolently.
She snickered. “I’m glad to see you’re so involved in your studies. What sounds good for dinner?”
“We are going to Amber’s house tonight,” I told her. “So you’re on your own.”
Mom sighed and then went into the kitchen to rummage around the cupboards.
“What time are we supposed to be at Amber’s again?” Reina asked.
“Six, which reminds me, I have to grab a book for Amber from my room,” I said. “She asked if she could borrow The Temptress Arianna, so she can read it after we watch the movie version and point out the flaws—you know how nerdy she gets about these things.”
Reina laughed. “Yeah, she went nuts over the Harry Potter movie flaws.”
I snickered and said, “I’ll be right back, and then we can head out.”
She nodded, and I hurried to my room.
I flipped the switch that was by the door, and the dark, romantic glamour of my room was illuminated. The vampiric posters grinned wickedly at me from their posts on the red walls around my bed, which was draped messily in dark red sheets.
I went to my bookshelf and scanned the names on the spines until I spotted the right book. Just as I removed it from the shelf, my desktop computer, which was pretty much always left on, pinged with an instant message. I wiggled the mouse to wake up the black screen and opened the message.
Cometgirl1: Anything new with your “boyfriend”?
It was from Haley, my sixteen-year-old cousin, and my confidante. She lived in Springfield, Illinois with her mom, but she and I still talked just as much as we did before they moved there.
The word in quotations, “boyfriend,” was our little secret code word.
I sent a reply to her.
Crimson_vampire616: No, just counting the days until the trip.
I waited for her to reply, my eyes wandering over the books on my bookshelf. Each and every one of them belonged to my favorite series of paranormal fiction novels: Nicholae Albaric.
Nicholae Albaric was a vampire. He was born in 1750 in London, then was made into a vampire at the age of twenty by a vampire named Corran. Only days after his rebirth, his maker Corran was killed by another vampire named Laramie to settle an old score. But Laramie felt bad for the young fledgling and decided to take him under his wing.
After many other dark and morbid adventures, Nicholae became the most legendary vampire in the world. No vampire would dare oppose him, and all had either great respect for him or petty antipathy at his recklessness.
My friends and I were completely in love with the Nicholae novels, as were millions of others the world over. But I knew something about the novels that no one else knew: they were not fiction at all!
I discovered this truth by accident. Last summer, I had gone onto a people search website to look for my father. He and my mother divorced when I was six when the proof of his years of abusing me had been discovered. When I was eight, he completely went off the radar, owing my mom thousands of dollars in back pay for child support. Despite my three small scholarships, I still needed money to for college, and my single working mother just couldn’t afford it on her own. I had tried quite successfully, I believed, to put that part of my life behind me, to grow beyond my early circumstances. After all that my father had put us through, I felt he owed us at least enough to take the college strain off Mom’s shoulders. But at that particular instance, I hadn’t found any information on his whereabouts.
Disappointed, I figured I might as well check the validity of this search site. I typed in my name and hit search. My address and phone number popped up.
Then I typed in Amber’s name and Reina’s name, and sure enough, their information popped up.
At the time, one of the novels was on my desk beside the keyboard. I happened to see the name. Knowing nothing would come of it, yet being infinitely curious as always, I typed in the name Nicholae Albaric.
… …
A miniature Big Bang exploded in my mind. My respiratory system completely stopped functioning, and I stared, breathless, at the screen. Blood flooded my face, and my ears burned with it. I felt like I had just discovered the meaning of life.
Right there on the screen, not four inches from my eyes, was the address I had seen hundreds of times in the novels, yet never dreamed was valid:
Nicholae Albaric
12500 Lexington Ave
New York, NY 10010
I was so spellbound! But I had to be certain. I had to make sure that it wasn’t just a coincidence or some kind of trick.
I did a reverse address search on several of the other residences mentioned in his novels. The names of the owners of those houses were all variations of his name: Niklaus Albarik, Nicholas Albatross, N. Albarique. My excitement built higher and higher with each verification. Something that I had always secretly longed to be true was true! Nicholae was real! But it wasn’t enough to just have names and addresses. There was a possibility that someone had just used fake names. I had to be absolutely, positively certain.
The very next day, I brought over one of my old friends, Damien the Hacker. He was the instigator of all adolescent underground misbehavior on this side of Tucson. Most of what he did was hacking into the school’s computer system to change the grades of students—for a price—but he recently accomplished some form of hacker magic that got him on the federal radar, and he was on technological probation for the next year. When I told him I needed a favor done in exchange for a night’s use of my computer and internet, he gladly obliged.
When he came over, I told him that I needed to verify information about someone. I asked him to hack into any system or database that might prove my theory irrevocably true. I was a bit embarrassed when I gave him the name of the person in question, but vampires weren’t exactly Damien’s thing, so luckily the name didn’t ring a bell, and I didn’t have to worry about looking foolish.
For the rest of that afternoon, I watched as Damien worked his magic, worming through the DMV mainframes, public records, inheritance records, unlocking an intricate web of very carefully orchestrated history. He even found some of Nicholae’s bank accounts, all loaded with ridiculous wealth.
Everything was so flawlessly done that anyone who wasn’t specifically looking for a vampire wouldn’t have picked up on it. For the last two centuries, Nicholae would keep his assumed name for thirty years or so, then transfer his assets as an inheritance to another variation of his name. His bank account was one of the oldest on record, large and still growing. And the copies of the original deeds to his houses all dated back to the beginning of the eighteen-hundreds and had his signature on them.
I remember exactly what it felt like, the stupefaction of stumbling onto the most profound secret in my existence. The vampire I had been in love with from the moment I read the first line of his first book really existed! Vampires were real! It felt like this list had been waiting here all this time, just waiting for me to find it. And now I knew the truth.
Ever since that day about a year ago, I spent all my free time and energy investigating him. And now, I had a file brimming with everything there was to know about him, every address, land and cell phone number, email address, and all his aliases and pseudonyms.
Haley was the only person to whom I would ever trust enough to confide in. But she wasn’t crazy about vampires like I was. This awesome revelation only sparked a mild interest in her too-wise-for-her-age mind.
The blip of an IM brought me out of my flashback.
Cometgirl1: You’re not still planning on trying to meet him, are you?
I stared at the message for a long moment, biting my lips. I couldn’t answer her because the answer was yes. I was to go on a field trip to New York City in a few weeks with the marching band. Ms. Doyle had finally gotten her chance at the big time and signed us up for one of the country’s biggest marching competitions. This trip was the one and only reason I stayed in the band this year, the only reason for taking all of Doyle’s crap.
After the competition was over and Doyle was too distracted by post-success bliss to care what we did with our time, I was going to sneak away and meet Nicholae face to face! It was so perfect, and there was nothing on this earth that could keep me from going.
As if knowing my thoughts, Haley sent another IM.
Cometgirl1: Crimson, do you understand how dangerous this is? He is a vampire. I know that you think you’ll be safe since you aren’t a criminal, but you never know what could happen. He could still kill you just for approaching him.
Nicholae was one of the good vampires. He only killed murderers, rapists, and thieves, and always men, never women. He had many standards for his prey, and I didn’t meet any of them. And besides, I knew him better than anyone else did, save, perhaps, the vampires who were personally acquainted with him. I knew that he wouldn’t kill me. He might be a little angry that a mortal had so easily found him, but he wouldn’t punish me for that. I was sure of it.
She sent another IM.
Cometgirl1: Please, just at least think this through. I’ll call you later…
I turned off my computer screen and went back out into the living room with Reina.
“Are you ready to go?” she asked.
“Hell yeah,” I said. “I’ve been dying to see this movie for months. I never got a chance to go to the movies to see it since I was working so much.” The party at Amber’s house was to be a screening of the latest movie based on the third novel in the Nicholae Albaric series: “The Temptress Arianna.”
In love with Nicholae’s beauty, the two-thousand-year-old vampire Arianna kidnapped him. She saw him as a possible mate, but she would only have the best, most cunning and powerful of vampires beside her. So, to test his endurance and willpower, she tortured him for weeks on end. Nicholae was not one to take that. One night, he outwitted Arianna and escaped her constraints. Then he drained her dry, taking her death into him and gaining the powers of her ancient blood.
The box offices had been sold out for weeks when the movie first came to theaters. Tonight would be the first chance for any us to watch the summer’s most anticipated movie.
Reina and I walked to Amber’s house, which was only a few blocks from mine. When we got there, Amber and Robert sat on the couch, arguing about something, and two pizza boxes lay on the coffee table.
“Hey girlfriends,” Robert greeted. “Ok, now that they’re here, will you please tell me what movie we are watching?” he complained to Amber.
“Alright, yes, we are watching ‘The Temptress Arianna’,” she said.
“Ooo, yay, Nicholae is my all-time vampire crush!”
I laughed. “Oh, and that reminds me,” I said. “Your human crush is in my art class.”
“What? No way, shut up!” he exclaimed.
I nodded.
“Damn, you are so lucky,” he pouted. “You have two classes with him, and I only have one. That’s so not fair.”
“Don’t worry. I’m pretty sure that girls like Brianna are more competition for you than I am,” I assured him.
Amber started the DVD while Reina and I squeezed in around Robert on the couch. We enjoyed two hours of action, blood, and intrigue, marveling over how well done the movie was. The scene where Nicholae first realized he had been captured was especially gripping.
He woke in a dungeon, wrists hanging from chains against a large wooden slab. His redheaded captor stepped into view, looking both seductive and deadly.
“Hello, Nicholae,” she said. “Nice to finally meet you.”
“Who are you?” he demanded. “What do you want with me?”
“You have spent the last century looking for your perfect mate,” she began. “Well, I have spent the last two millennia doing the same. Word of your exploits has spread, and I suspect you just might be a good match for me. My consort needs to be strong, and before I share my blood with you and make you my mate, your strength must be tested. Show me that you are worthy of me.”
And she proceeded to torment him until he escaped and killed her.
When the movie ended, we began raving over it.
“I love Nicholae,” Amber sighed dreamily.
“Girl, please,” Robert said, bobbing his head. “He is so mine.”
“In your dreams,” she said.
They started arguing, but I stayed out of it, smiling secretly to myself. It was so surreal, having all my friends talking about the mellifluous vampire, and yet being the only one to know that he was a real person. I wanted to tell them, to tell everyone, that I got closer to Nicholae than any of them could ever get. And if anyone had dibs on the real Nicholae, it was undoubtedly me.
“Well, I should probably get home,” I said. “I have band practice early in the morning. Do you need any help cleaning up here?”
“I’ll help her,” Robert said with a smile, putting his arm around her neck.
“Alright. Come on, Reina, I’ll walk you home.”
“Okies,” Reina said.
“See ya tomorrow, Amber,” I said, giving her a hug before I left with Reina and went out into the perfectly warm Arizona night.