Marked

Charming thinks are more appropriate than the group of fun single women she used to hang with.
    I never liked him. Really. I'm not just saying that because I can't stand him now. From the first day I met him I saw only one thing―a fake. He fakes being a nice guy. He fakes being a good husband. He even fakes being a good father.
    He looks like every other dad-age guy. He has dark hair, skinny chicken legs, and is getting a gut. His eyes are like his soul, a washed-out, cold, brownish color.
    I walked into the family room to find him standing by the couch. My mother was crumpled near the end of it, clutching his hand. Her eyes were already red and watery. Great. She was going to play Hurt Hysterical Mother. It's an act she does well.
    John had begun to attempt to skewer me with his eyes, but my Mark distracted him. His face twisted in disgust.
    "Get thee behind me, Satan!" he quoted in what I like to think of as his sermon voice.
    I sighed. "It's not Satan. It's just me.”
    "Now is not the time for sarcasm, Zoey," Mom said.
    "I'll handle this, hon," the step-loser said, patting her shoulder absently before he turned his attention back to me. "I told you that your bad behavior and your attitude problem would catch up with you. I'm not even surprised it happened this soon.”
    I shook my head. I expected this. I really expected this, and still it was a shock. The entire world knew that there was nothing anyone could do to bring on the Change. The whole "if you get bit by a vampyre you'll die and become one" thing is strictly fiction. Scientists have been trying to figure out what causes the sequence of physical events that lead to vampyrism for years, hoping that if they figure it out they could cure it, or at the very least invent a vaccine to fight against it. So far, no such luck. But now John Heifer, my step-loser, had suddenly discovered that bad teenage behavior―specifically my bad behavior, which mostly consisted of an occasional lie, some pissed off thoughts and smart- ass comments directed primarily against my parents, and maybe some semi-harmless lust for Ashton Kutcher (sad to say he likes older women)―actually brought about this physical reaction in my body. Well, hell! Who knew?
    "This wasn't something I caused," I finally managed to say. "This wasn't done because of me. It was done to me. Every scientist on the planet agrees with that.”
    "Scientists are not all-knowing. They are not men of God.”
    I just stared at him. He was an Elder of the People of Faith, a position he was oh, so proud of. It was one of the reasons Mom had been attracted to him, and on a strictly logical level I could understand why. Being an Elder meant that a man was successful. He had the right job. A nice house. The perfect family. He was supposed to do the right things and believe the right way. On paper he should have been a great choice for her new husband and our father. Too bad the paper wouldn't have shown the full story. And now, predictably, he was going to play the Elder card and throw God in my face. I would bet my cool new Steve Madden flats that it irritated God as much as it annoyed me.
    I tried again. "We studied this in AP biology. It's a physiological reaction that takes place in some teenagers' bodies as their hormone levels rise." I paused, thinking really hard and totally proud of myself for remembering something I learned last semester. "In certain people the hormones trigger something-or-other in a…a…" I thought harder and remembered: "a Junk DNA strand, which starts the whole Change." I smiled, not really at John, but because I was thrilled by my ability to recall stuff from a unit we'd been done with for months. I knew the smile was a mistake when I saw the familiar clenching of his jaw.
    "God's knowledge surpasses science, and it's blasphemous for you to say otherwise, young lady.”
    "I never said scientists are smarter than God!" I threw my hands up and tried to stifle a cough. "I'm just trying to explain this thing to you.”
    "I don't need to have anything explained to me by a sixteen-year-old.”
    Well, he was wearing those really bad pants and that awful shirt. Clearly he did need some things explained to him by a teenager, but I didn't think it was the right time to mention his unfortunate and obvious fashion impairment.
    "But John, honey, what are we going to do about her? What will the neighbors say?" Her face paled even more and she stifled a little sob. "What will people say at Meeting