Free Bite Me by Donaya Haymond

incubation period. If we’re lucky, it
might be almost a year before the effects of. . . I mean before I start to
really deteriorate. Our insurance will cover the drugs, but my
lycanthropy means staying at a hospital is pretty much out—Nat
admitted I’m not going to do as well as a normal patient if I’m restricted
to home care.” Her optimism broke down, and her voice began to
quaver. “I am so sorry.”
“No! It’s not true! NO!” I couldn’t see or think. “We need a second
opinion. How do we know Dr. Silver’s that qualified?”
“He sent the sample to the general hospital for double checking.” She
hugged me tightly. “Don’t you dare change again.”
I didn’t change this time, since the thing I wanted least was to worry
my parents further. But I did cry. Most people have cried or have seen
someone crying like that at least once. It’s the terrible gulping, shrieking,
uncontrollable wail that feels like it will never end. It’s the grief that
makes all but the most empathetic people back away. It’s the pain that
makes the throat hoarse and the eyes burn. It also happens to be the only
sound I’ve ever come across that can wake a tired vampire sleeping
upstairs.
My father ran down to the living room, assuming the worst, and took in the scene. Mom had loosened her hair, which is the same color and texture as mine but much longer, and wrapped it around my shoulders like a security blanket the way she used to when I was small. She was crying too, but less vocally. Wisely she said nothing trite or moral, she just held me until I stopped screaming. It wasn’t hard for Dad to figure it out. Through the curtain of tears I glimpsed him sitting on the stairs, his
face buried in his hands.
Presently I calmed down enough to push Mom gently away and grab
a box of tissues so that I could breathe. Mom took one, blew her nose,
and went over to Dad.
“It’s not as bad as it looks,” she said to him, clasping his hand.
“Dianne will be okay.”
Dad whispered something to her, got up, and got one of the logs we
had stacked by the fireplace to light for Thanksgiving. He wordlessly
picked it up—it was the thickest one in the pile—and snapped it in half.
A shower of splinters fell onto the carpet. He snapped it again and again.
When it was nothing but a pile of matchsticks he shoved the pieces into
the fireplace, then began with another log. I watched him demolish the
woodpile with the distant sense that I should be amazed, too busy
feeling angry and sad and tired of it all for it to impress me any more
than that.
Strangely, Mom, usually the most easily upset one in the family, was
the calmest right now. Her words were even and reasonable. “Be careful,
Andy, don’t stake yourself with one of those shards by accident.” “Why? Why, Mom? It isn’t fair.” I thought about all the
Thanksgivings my mother would miss from now on; then started a fresh
bout of sobbing.
Unlike the other moments of fear or sadness we had experienced,
there was no transforming. We were not a vampire, a werewolf, and a
shape-shifter. This was human sorrow, and we were grieving as humans.
Forget monsters. Life is what really bites.

Chapter Nine
Drink With Me
I couldn’t sleep.
    The shadows crossing the walls were gingerly touching the Olympic posters and the photographs of novas and nebulas taken by the Hubble satellite. The shelf filled to overflowing with science fiction and fantasy books loomed over me. My small hoard of track and field trophies on the windowsill gleamed with borrowed, false glory. Dad sometimes affectionately claimed that the reflected light blinded him when he walked by. Dad. . .
    I was getting really tired of looking at the stuff in my room. In genetic and upbringing terms it was interesting that two very liberal-artsy individuals could produce a daughter who could sing “The Elements”, which lists the entire periodic table to the tune of “A Modern Major General” by Gilbert and Sullivan, ever since she