Covet (Clann)

you and you didn’t really do anything wrong. She knows we’re friends. And it’s my birthday, not hers. I should be allowed to have all my friends at my own dang party.”
    Ron blinked a few times, eyebrows raised. “Well, since you put it like that.”
    We both got out of the car and headed across the lawn for the porch.
    At the front door, I paused, took a deep breath to brace myself for the next few hours, plastered on a smile and checked my reflection in the stained glass. Party mask in place? Check.
    “Here we go,” I muttered. Then I opened the door to an explosion of “happy birthday!” and hooting on party horns.
    Someone hit the play button on the stereo’s remote in the newly refinished living room to our left, cuing the beginning drumbeat of “We Are Young.”
    “You guys!” I shouted over the sound, my smile a little easier to hold in place. “Aww, you shouldn’t have!”
    Anne was tooting on a horn when she saw Ron enter the foyer after me. She stared at him, her horn blast dying away like the air escaping an inflated, untied balloon set free.
    “I had a little car trouble,” I explained to everyone. “Ron was nice enough to give me a ride home.”
    Sorry, I silently mouthed to Anne when her gaze finally darted back to me.
    She looked at him again. Then her chin rose. “Well, that sucks. About your truck, I mean. But hey, we’ve got cake and presents, so it’s all good, right?”
    “You poor baby,” Mom said, squeezing through the tightly packed foyer until she’d reached my side for a hug. “And on your birthday, too!”
    Thank you , I mouthed to Anne as Mom dragged me past my friends and dad to the kitchen, which had been decorated with huge draping swoops of curled crepe paper, hologram foil Happy Birthday banners, and balloons taped to every vertical surface imaginable, including the brand-new cabinets’ handles.
    In the center of the built-in banquet, which Dad had custom built to fit in the corner of the now-cavernous kitchen, sat the strangest birthday cake I’d ever seen. If you could even call it a cake.
    Mom used a long fireplace lighter to light its precariously placed candles, which were in the shape of a one and a seven and in true danger of falling off the back side.
    “It’s a fruit Jell-O mold!” Michelle said with a grin, her hands waving artfully around the wiggling, whip-cream-frosted mass as if she were a game show girl displaying a prize.
    I looked at Michelle, unable to stop a blank face of confusion from forming. Fruit Jell-O?
    “You know, since you liked the fruit dessert at Anne’s party,” Michelle added, her eyebrows pinching with worry.
    Standing behind her, Anne and Carrie both pointed silent fingers at Michelle’s back. Anne mouthed, “Sorry, we couldn’t stop her.”
    I had to press my lips together to stop a laugh from slipping out so Michelle wouldn’t think I was laughing at her. When the urge had safely passed, I gave Michelle the first fully genuine smile I’d managed to make all day. “Thank you so much. This is brilliant!”
    Even if I still couldn’t eat it, just the idea that Michelle cared enough to try and make a unique cake I might like brought quick tears to my eyes.
    “Aww, don’t cry, Sav.” Michelle circled the table to give me a sideways squeeze. “I promise it only took me like an hour last night to make it. But we should probably sing Happy Birthday quick before the heat of the candles melts it.”
    Everyone took that as their cue to start singing at the top of their lungs.
    Standing in the back corner of the room by the kitchen cabinets, Dad watched me with a funny twitching smile, as if trying not to laugh. I didn’t want to see the humor in this mess of a birthday party for a half vamp who probably couldn’t even age. But laughter bubbled up out of me all the same.
    Maybe a party was what I needed after all.
    When the song ended, Michelle said, “Hurry, make a wish!”
    And that’s when the brief moment of happiness came sinking back down.
    I knew exactly what I wanted.
    I wanted to be with Tristan again, but for it to be okay. To be openly dating him, no secrecy or hiding how we felt. Walking together in the halls between classes. Holding hands. Kissing in public. Going out to eat together without cowering in a corner booth and praying the entire time that no one would recognize us.
    And I wanted Nanna to be alive again.
    I couldn’t have any of that. So what was the point in wishing for it?
    Closing my