You Suck: A Love Story

good,” Jody said.
    “It’s like I never noticed it before,” Tommy said.
    “You’d think it would smell sickening, since it’s indigestible,” Jody said. The last time she’d taken a sip of coffee, her vampire system had rejected it so violently that she ended up convulsively dry-heaving on the floor, feeling like forks were twisting inside of her.
    “This might work,” Tommy said. “You ready?”
    “Ready.”
    He poured a tablespoonful or so of coffee into a glass cup. Then he uncapped one of the syringes that held William’s blood and squirted a few drops into the coffee.
    “You first,” he said, swishing the cup around in front of her.
    “No, you,” Jody said. As good as the coffee smelled, the memory of her nausea held her back.
    Tommy shrugged and threw the coffee back like a tequila shooter, then set the cup down on the counter.
    Jody stepped back and snatched a tea towel off the fridge handle in preparation for the coffee’s return trip. Tommy rolled his eyes, shuddered, then grabbed his throat and fell to the floor, twitching and choking. “Dying,” he croaked. “Suffering and dying.”
    Jody was barefoot and didn’t want to stub her toe, so she pulled the kick to his ribs. “You suck, you know that.”
    Tommy rolled on the floor giggling, curling himself around her foot. “It works! It works! It works!” He
    sort of dog-humped her leg in rhythm and tugged at the hem of her robe. “You never have to be grumpy again!”
    Jody grinned. “Pour cups, grommet! Full cups.”
    Tommy climbed to his feet. “We don’t even know the blood-to-coffee ratio yet.”
    “Pour!” Jody was in the fridge in an instant, grabbing another syringe. “We’ll wing it.”
    The she heard the downstairs door open and spun on her heel. “William?”
    Tommy listened to the footfalls coming up the steps and shook his head. “Nope, too light.”
    They could hear the key fitting into the lock. “You said you didn’t give her a key,” Jody said.
    “I said I didn’t give her a key to the bedroom,” Tommy said.
    “Lord Flood, there’s a stinky dead guy with a huge cat on your landing,” said Abby Normal as she came through the door.
    THE CHRONICLES OF ABBYNORMAL:
    Dedicated Servant of the Vampyre Flood I have been to the lair of the vampyre Flood. I am part of the coven! Kinda. Okay, back up. So I like slept till eleven, because we’re on Christmas break, only it’s called winter break now because Jesus isAN OPPRESSIVE ZOMBIE BASTARD AND WE DO NOT BOW DOWN TO HIS BIRTHDAY!
    At least not atAllenGinsbergHigh School, we don’t. (Go, Fighting Beatniks!) But it’s all good, ’cause I’m going to have to get used to getting up later if I’m going to be a creature of the night.
    So, like first thing, I made some toast, and it burned, as black as my soul, and I was so bummed that my tears of despair fell like cold bits of crystal, to be destroyed on the unforgiving rocks of this miserable life.
    But then I saw that Mom had left a twenty out on the counter with a note:
    Allison (Allison is my day-slave name-my mom named me after some song by some Elvis guy, so I totally refuse to accept it), here’s your lunch money, and please stop at Walgreens and pick up some RID shampoo for Ronnie’s head lice. (Veronica is my sister, who is twelve and a total tumor on the ass of my existence.) So, I was like, Sweet! Starbucks!
    It took forever to pick what I was going to wear, and not just because I’d never rented an apartment before. The lightbulb burned out in my closet and we didn’t have any extras, so I had to take everything out in the living room to look at it in the light. Like the song says, I wear black on the outside to reflect the black I feel on the inside, but OMG, it’s impossible to tell one thing from another in a dark closet.
    Since it was going to be a business thing, I decided on my striped tights with my red PVC mini, my skull-and-crossbones hoodie, and my lime Converse All Stars. I went with just a plain stud in my nose, a barbell in my eyebrow, and a simple silver ring in my lip-understated and elegant. I carried my hot-pink biohazard messenger bag.
    Ronnie was all, “I wanna come with you, I wanna come with you,” but I pointed out that she was a scourge on humanity and that if she came along I would tell everyone on the bus she had lice, so she elected to stay home and watch toons. It was then that I ventured into the undiscovered country, and called the number that the vampyre