“Hey.” Jack poked his head in, still hanging onto the bedroom door. “Are you up?”

“Yeah, I was just about to take a shower,” I held up my clothes for him to see. “Unless you wanted something?”

“No, go ahead and shower. But do you wanna watch a movie after?”

“Yeah, sure,” I shrugged. “Have you slept yet?” It was after six, and as far as I knew, he hadn’t gotten any sleep since he got back.

“Nah, I’m okay,” he shook his head. “I’ll talk to you after your shower then.”

“Uh, yeah, okay?”

With that, he left, shutting the bedroom door behind him. I stood there, holding my clothes in my arms, trying to figure out what was going on. I heard him knocking on the door across the hall. He got more nervous, which made me nervous, so I decided to wait to see how this turned out before I got in the shower.

“Yeah?” Peter opened his bedroom door sounding crabby, but that was Peter.

“I went to the video store and I, uh, rented Brideshead Revisited. I know you really like it, and I thought you might want to watch it with us. Me and Alice, I mean,” Jack said.

“Um… sure.” Peter sounded taken back, and so was I.

“Alice’s taking a shower, so it’ll be a little bit,” Jack said.

“Okay.”

“Okay.” There was kind of an awkward silence. Jack must’ve finally excused himself because Peter shut his door, and I heard Jack running back down the stairs.

In the shower, I sing very loudly (today it was the theme to Golden Girls), but even over the sound of my voice and the water running, I could still hear Mae screaming. This would later prove to be a godsend, when Peter explained to me that Brideshead Revisited is an eleven-hour long period piece that originally aired on the BBC in the 1980’s.

At the time, however, Mae’s desperate pleas were enough to scare the hell out of me.

- 18 -

Once I got out of the shower, I could hear well enough to ascertain that Mae wasn’t in immediate danger, and Ezra was trying to calm her. But something was the matter and I didn’t like it. I threw on a pair of my sweats and one of Jack’s oversized tee shirts, and hurried out the door.

“I wouldn’t go down there if I were you.” That was Bobby’s word of advice. He stood just outside of Milo’s door with a hoodie wrapped tightly around him. “It doesn’t sound pretty.”

“You aren’t bloody listening to me, Ezra! You never listen to me!” Mae shouted from downstairs.

“What’s going on?” I asked Bobby, hoping to gain some insight on the situation before diving into it.

“I don’t really know. Milo and Jack left on a blood run about fifteen minutes ago, and Mae and Ezra started fighting a few minutes after that,” Bobby shrugged.

A blood run meant that we were getting low on bag blood at the house, and they had gone to get some from a blood bank. My stomach grumbled at just the thought of blood, but Mae was yelling so much, I ignored it.

“Don’t tell me to calm down! I am not going to calm down!” Mae continued after Ezra mistakenly suggested she relax a bit. “This isn’t something that we should be reasonable about! This is life and death, Ezra!”

“I know that, Mae! That’s exactly why we need to think about this!” Ezra raised his voice, but there was nothing angry about it. He was just trying to be heard over her. “But everyone else in the house doesn’t need to hear us yelling.”

“I don’t care who hears anything!” Mae yelled, followed quickly by the sound of something glass smashing, like a vase. Matilda barked in response, and Mae snapped at her to shut up.

“See?” Bobby whispered, but the things that made him cower were exactly the reasons I felt like I had to intervene. Peter was still in his room, trying to sleep from the slow sound of his heart beat, so that left me as the only one to help out.

I went downstairs and found Matilda looking as worried as a dog can look. Mae stood to one side of the living room, and she was even worse than yesterday. Her hair was a frizzy mess, and her skin was blotchy from yelling and crying so much. She hadn’t changed her pajamas in days.

Glass was shattered all over floor in front of her. A heavy glass statue of a swan had sat on the mantle, and she would’ve had to have thrown it very hard to make it shatter like that.

“You’ve woken Alice,” Ezra told Mae, almost tiredly. He stood on the far side of the room across from her, wearing silk pajama pants and a tee shirt. Apparently, they had started fighting immediately after waking up.

“No, I was awake. I just got of the shower.” I tugged at my hair to demonstrate. It dripped wet down my back since I hadn’t had a chance to dry it.

“I don’t care if I wake her! I don’t care if I wake anybody!” Mae raised her head to the ceiling as if to wake anybody else that might be sleeping.

“Will you knock it off? This isn’t about them. This isn’t their fault,” Ezra said.

“How is it not about them?” She pointed at me, but she refused to look at me. “This is completely about them! They’re why you won’t do this!”

“No, that’s not true. They have no bearing on this,” he shook his head.

“Bloody hell they don’t! They have everything to do with it! You wouldn’t even turn Alice because her brother had just turned, and I know you wanted her to turn!” Mae gave him a knowing look that I didn’t understand, and he shook his head. “Don’t be so damn condescending, Ezra! I know you turned her brother for her! So why won’t you do this for me?”

“This is an entirely different situation, and I won’t do this. Absolutely not.” He was quiet, but his voice was so firm and finite.

“Dammit, Ezra!” Mae wailed, tears streaming down her cheeks. “You can’t deny me this! You have no right! No right!”

“I cannot allow this, Mae, and I am sorry.” He pursed his lips tightly but didn’t budge.

She looked ready to collapse, but he made no move towards her. I wanted to help, but I was afraid of how she might react to me. If Ezra wasn’t going to tend to her, then I didn’t think that I should either.

“You are not sorry! You are cold and you are cruel, and I cannot spend my life with you!” She was sobbing so hard she had to grip onto the back of the chair to keep from falling over. “I will not let you make this decision for me! You can’t!”