Free Vampires: The Recent Undead by Paula Guran Page B

can’t process it, so afterwards I have to go throw it up like some bulimic. It’s so gross. Annalee—she works at the coffee shop with me—caught me doing it one time and it was really awkward. She’s all, “Don’t do this to yourself. Trust me, you’re not fat. You need help to deal with it. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
    “It’s not what you think,” I tell her. “I’ve just got a touch of stomach flu.”
    “Every time you eat you throw up,” she says, and I’m thinking, what? Are you keeping tabs on me? How weird is that? But I know she just means well.
    I guess the other thing I’m going to miss is growing old. I’ll always look sixteen, but inside I age the same as you. What happens when I’m all old and ancient? The only guys that’ll be my age—you know, in their thirties and forties—interested in being with me then are going to be these pedophile freaks. And who wants to hang out with sixteen-year-old boys forever?
    But I didn’t choose it and I’m not the kind to get all weepy and do myself in. I figure, if this is what I am, then I might as well make myself useful getting rid of losers like you and your brother. I guess I read too many superhero comics when I was a kid or something.
    And I really want this chance to give Cassie a shot at a better life. Well, a different one, anyway. She deserves to see what it’s like to walk around without her leg brace and bronchodilator.
    Maybe she’ll join me in this little crusade of mine, but it’ll have to be her choice. Just like getting turned has to be her choice. I’ll give her the skinny, the bad and the good, and she can decide. And it’s not like we have to kill anybody. I only do it when losers like you don’t leave me any choice. Most times, I just feed on someone until they get so weak they just can’t hurt anybody for a long time. I check up on them from time to time—a girl gets hungry, after all—and if they’ve gone back to their evil ways, I turn them into these anemics again. They usually figure it out. When they don’t . . . well, that’s what stakes are for, right?
    My weakness? I guess I can tell you that. It’s anything to do with Easter. I used to be an Easter maniac—I loved every bit of it. I guess because it’s like Halloween, a serious candy holiday, but without the costumes. I was never one for dressing up and scary stuff never turned me on. Good thing, the way things worked out. Imagine if the very thought of vamps and ghouls was my nemesis. I’d be long gone by now. But Easter’s tough. I have to avoid the stores—which is not easy, but better than trying to avoid Christmas—and play sick on the day itself.
    - 10 -
    Apples saw Gage’s eyes move under his lids. She didn’t get up from where she was kneeling on the ground beside his shoulder, just reached over for her now-sharpened stake and lifted it. Gage’s eyes opened.
    “How . . . how do you live with yourself . . . ?” he asked.
    Apples shivered. She’d never stopped to think that he could actually hear everything she’d been saying. She’d only talked to pass the time. Because there was no one else she could talk to about it.
    “The only other choice is where you’re going,” she said.
    “I welcome it.”
    When he said that, forgotten memories returned to her. The nightmare she’d had to undergo through her own three days of change from dead human to what she was now. It was like swimming through mud, trying to escape the clinging knowledge of the worst that people were capable of doing to each other, but drowning in it at the same time. Not for three days, but for what felt like an eternity. It had been such a horrifying experience that the only way she’d managed to deal with it was by simply blocking it away.
    How had she forgotten?
    Better yet, how could she forget it again? The sooner the better.
    “That’s because you’re a loser,” she said.
    “And you’re going to do this to your sister.”
    “You don’t know