Free Nightlight by The Harvard Lampoon Page A

the rest of the afternoon?” He swayed woozily.
    I nodded with resolve. “My emotional well-being depends on you too much to be away from you.”
    “Thank God,” he said. “I wished you had told me that before I flushed my meds down the toilet, though. I really wished you had told me that before.” He tossed me a tiny hammock. “If at any point while we are hiking I crawl into the vegetation or other nookish space, just sling that around your shoulder and cradle me for a while.”
    I put it in my purse and unlocked my truck. I stepped up to open the door and immediately fell down.
So
Belle.
    “You seem exhausted,” Edwart said as we got in the car.
    “Yeah, I couldn’t sleep that well last night.”
    “Neither could I,” he said as we sped off.
    “Yeah, those night leeches are becoming a major concern, aren’t they.”
    “Oh, Belle,” he laughed softly, “When you talk like that, I become afraid, and if you continue to do so, I will feel compelled to tell the authorities.” His laugh was like the jingle of a thousand manly sirens.
    I pulled into the parking lot at the end of our block.
    “Here we are,” I announced. “The Deadman trailhead.” I jumped out of the car, inflated my core stability ball and started my stretches.
    “Will your dad be okay if we hike off the trail?” Edwart asked. “On this road?”
    “What Jim doesn’t know can’t hurt him.” I flopped my stomach onto the ball and did the stretch where you let it go wherever it wants.
    “You didn’t inform your dad where you would be? Geez, Belle! I don’t know how much of this risk-taking I can take!” He started wheezing and his nose gushed with blood.
    “Great. And now this,” he said in the nasal voice of Alvin the Chipmunk, holding his nose.
    I brought him over to the ball and propped his head against it.
    “What if you didn’t come home before dinnertime?” he continued to chastise. “What if Jim didn’t make an extra plate of dinner for you because he thought you already ate?
Then
where would you be?”
    “He knows I’m with you.”
    “Fat lot of use that’ll be when we’re marooned on the road.
Forever
. It’s a good thing my parents inserted a chip in my arm that tells them where I am and lists the possible ways I could go missing.”
    “I’m sorry,” I said, but I wasn’t really. When guys gnash their teeth and knit their brows in a broody, furious expression, it means they have found their soul mate. Plus,his anger had set off his overactive sweat glands, causing him to tear off his shirt. As he stood up to march down the road, squatting here and there to examine the terrain, the musculature of his arms wobbled like string cheese.
    In the sky was a single cloud, thin and disc-like, precisely covering the sun. I looked over at Edwart. It occurred to me that I had never seen him in direct sunlight. Interestingly enough, I had also never seen him sparkle. Could the two be related? I had a theory that sunlight drastically alters a vampire’s appearance; much like green lighting makes them appear sickly.
    “Ready when you are,” I called, peeling off a layer in the hot (but significantly not bright) heat. Edwart turned and I screamed. Yet again, he was wearing the same top as me—a white, skinny-strapped camisole. How hadn’t I noticed that until he turned around? Sometimes, the cape my imagination constantly projects onto his back distorts how I perceive reality.
    Still, Edwart had made some improvements. He had cut the shirt down the middle and applied a zipper, which he now zipped down to his belly button. His bared flesh gleamed translucent, revealing the blue veins beneath his two-haired chest. The shirt fit perfectly to his concave belly, outlining every protruding rib-bone and leaving nothing to the imagination. His neck radiated like a god from all the rhinestones he had glued to the top’s neckline. I looked down at my plain, zipperless camisole. I was beginning to weary of Edwart’s competitive