“Alice, I’m sorry about all of this,” Milo said sincerely, and softness returned to his face. I hated him for it, because just then, I really wanted to be mad, and I couldn’t. “I know how much trouble this is for you, and I never meant for that.”

“Don’t be silly,” I shook my head. “None of this is your fault. You are a victim of circumstance.”

“I’ll see you soon, okay?” Milo promised.

“Yeah, I know,” I lied. He looked at me expectantly for a moment. “I would hug you if, y’know, I could. But you’ll get it under control soon. Okay?”

“Yeah,” Milo smiled wanly.

Jack held the door open for him, and gave me one last apologetic look as Milo escaped out into the hall. “I’ll talk to you soon. Have fun.”

Once the door shut, it hit me. I was alone in the apartment. Thanks to Milo’s complete lack of a social life, I could count the times I’d been home alone on two hands. The only time was when I skipped school, and Milo still went. Otherwise, he was always here.

And he was never going to be here again.

A few minutes ago, I mustered some pretty wicked anger at him, but it was all gone. The reality of everything sunk in.

No one would be here to lecture me about bedtimes or homework, or scoff at me when I watched reality TV, or make me supper.

For the first time in over sixteen years, I was alone. My little brother was really gone.

-  9 -

After becoming accustomed to the subzero temperatures at Jack’s, I was dying in my own apartment. To beat the heat, I drenched my tank top and underwear in cold water and put them on. It was the closest thing I had to a lake in my backyard.

To pass the time, I buried myself in Peter’s biography, although I wasn’t convinced that he had actually written it. Jack seemed sure of it, and he had been offended by me reading A Brief History of Vampyres.

Still, it was hard to think of Peter wanting to write anything down. Whenever I was around him, he wanted nothing to do with expressing himself, but Ezra had said he had been a different man before the love of his life died.

I felt strangely betrayed at the thought of Elise, Peter’s girlfriend that’d been murdered a long time ago. She was his one true love, or something ridiculous like that.

Every part of my being claimed that I was meant for him, and because of her, because of a vampire that had died before I was even born, he refused me. I will never be with him, and the way things are going now, I’ll never be anything except a lone corpse in the ground.

So far in the book, Peter has yet to mention Elise, and I hope he doesn’t. Jack said he was very young when he wrote it, so he probably hadn’t even met her yet.

He explained how he turned, what he could remember of it. Apparently, the transformation was something hard to articulate.

“My mind was an excited fog. It felt like I was waking up and falling asleep at the same time. My body was shifting and dying. There were times where I could literally feel my organs sliding about, as if my gut had been cut open and filled with eels.

“I couldn’t decipher dreams from reality, and I recall singing ‘Ava Maria’ repeatedly so I could hear my own voice. The sound of it meant that I was still there, that there was still some part of me on this earth.”

Imagine, Peter writhing in a bed as his body died. His beautiful face contorting and twisting with pain, and through it all, he’s singing. I’m sure that he had an amazing voice, but it seemed strange to think he would sing.

I often tried to figure out why Peter had turned Jack. They were opposites in nearly every way, and Peter was always running off on his own. He didn’t seem to have the inclination for companionship, not like Jack did. It didn’t make sense that he would turn someone knowing the attachment that would create with him.

In the book, Peter says almost nothing of his mortal life. Only going as far as to say that he was riding a horse that bucked him. The horse took off, and he was left dying on the side of the road. A stranger came upon him, and seeing the shape Peter was in, decided that turning him was the only way to save his life.

After that, Peter describes an intense feeling of loyalty and affection for the vampire.

“It wasn’t like anything I had ever felt before. In my previous life, I had a father, a brother, friends. But no other bond had ever felt this strong. I could sense everything that he felt, as if I was feeling it for myself. When he went too far away from me, there would be an awful panic inside, as if I wouldn’t be able to survive without him.

“There was nothing carnal about it, however. It was as if I was an extension of him. Being away from him would be as painful as being severed from my own limbs.

“Fortunately, he treated me with respect and dignity, like an equal or a brother. Many other fledgling vampyres did not acquire such a happy fate.”

That explained a bit more about what was going on with Milo and Jack, but it didn’t make me feel any better about it. I knew eventually that it would fade, as it had with Peter and Ezra, but even in the book, Peter did nothing to illuminate a time frame.

He moved onto the first time he saw a young man turn into a vampire. He described a disturbing scene that I wasn’t excited to repeat for myself.

I lay in bed, reading the book and listening to Elliott Smith. As the sun set on the third day, I still hadn’t heard from either Milo or Jack. I made it halfway through Peter’s book, and I was trying to read slowly.

Night settled on my room, making it too dark for me to read, and I stared at my phone, willing it to ring.

Milo needed time to get the hang of being a vampire, and his new jealous streak made it more dangerous for me to hang around Jack, but this was ridiculous. They both promised to talk to me soon, and it had been three days.

One entire day was spent consoling my mother when she learned that Milo left without really saying goodbye. After crying a lot, she started drinking even more, and ended up yelling profanities at me and throwing things.

On top of everything, school was less than two weeks away. Once summer vacation drew to a close, I’d have to deal with curfews and school that’d keep me away from Jack and Milo even more.

I was going to spend the rest of my life cooped up inside this apartment by myself, and they didn’t even have the decency to call and give me one last blowout before deserting me for the rest of time.

In some form of misplaced pride, I’d been waiting for one of them to call or text me. But I was tired of waiting. I couldn’t stand the thought of spending another night suffocating in my tiny room.