Chapter 6: The Vampire Pirate's Daughter by Lynette Ferreira
She sits down again. “I’ll come with you.”
Laughing amused, and after she closes her door, I drive down the hill to my house, on the other side of the block.
I stop the car in the driveway in front of the garage and then we both get out of the car.
Politely I ask, “Do you want to come in? I have to change first.”
“Sure,” she agrees and follows me up to my room. When we walk into my room, she looks impressed, but for some peculiar reason, I feel embarrassed at the blatant display of wealth.
I walk to my closet while Carmine immediately swoops down on my music collection. I select an outfit and then excusing myself, I walk to my en-suite bathroom to change my clothes.
When I get back wearing a floral dress which hugs my body tightly and then flares out over my hips, Carmine is paging through my closet. She notices me walking in, smiling over her shoulder and then she exclaims, “That’s a pretty dress you’re wearing.”
I smile and say, “Thank you,” while looking down at the soft material.
She turns back to the cupboard, and she asks, “Would you mind if I tried this on?”
I try to see what dress she is talking about, but she is blocking my view, so I say, “No, I wouldn’t mind.” I honestly did not mind what she wore from my cupboard. Just like Amanda, most of the clothes in my cupboard I have never worn. Boredom drives us to the shops, and then we buy things we think are pretty but never get the chance to wear.
She pulls the dress from the hanger and I notice it is a simple mauve slip dress. She starts to dress in front of me and I look away uncomfortably. After she slips it over her head, she smooths the dress over her hips with her hands and the dress fits her perfectly. She decides to keep it on. The dress looks nice on her and it almost matches the purple, blue colour of her eyes.
She turns to me, her golden blonde hair bouncing around her face. “Are you sure you don’t mind?”
“No. I don’t think I have ever worn that dress anyway.” It had a little shine to it, and I did not like the formal look of the dress. I liked to be comfortable.
She suggests, “I look so pretty, and it would be a waste if nobody saw me in it. Let’s go to the mall.”
I am not usually this impulsive, but I need to make friends. Even though the dramas of people bore me, I like to be surrounded by their excitement and enthusiasm. Sometimes it rubs off onto me and I find a glimmer of exhilaration myself—living through them.
We walk out to my car again and then we drive the short distance out of the estate toward the mall. The music is loud and Carmine sings along at the top of her voice. Some words, especially the hip-hop songs, she does not know, but she makes them up as she goes along, and I cannot help smiling amused.
At the mall, she leads me to a café. The café is in the middle of this lifestyle mall. The restaurants and cafés surround the centre square, with a fountain in the middle. Trees line the perimeter of the square, so it does not feel as if you are in the middle of a bustling mall. Someone wrapped Christmas lights around the trunks of the trees, so at night they light up and make it fairy-magical.
When I walk into the café, the first thing I notice is Andrew.
Carmine looks over her shoulder at me, as she says, “Andrew is always here. He might as well have shares in the franchise.”
I smile nervously.
He is sitting with his back turned toward us. I am hoping to avoid them, but Carmine takes me by the hand and then she leads me to that specific table. We reach the table and Carmine blurt out, “Hey.”
I am standing close to her and I see Andrew notice me, but then just as quickly he looks at Carmine and a smile lights up his face. My stomach drops. I feel a weird sense of loss, a feeling I last experienced leaving Francois behind. A feeling I have forgotten.
Carmine slides into the booth across from Andrew and I slide in after her. I am sitting in front of Andrew and for me, time stops. His hands are resting on the table mere centimetres from mine. It feels weird, all these feelings rushing through me. I have never felt like this before, this total awareness of my entire body of another person I did not want to feed on.
I hear Andrew talk to me from a distance and clearing my mind, I hear him say, “You are Susie?”
“And you are Andrew?”
He nods and smiles. “I have seen you in class. You are new?”
I am either a fool or crazy, or both because I move my hand away from his quickly. Although his hand does not touch mine, I still feel a weird magnetism between us. To get away from the feeling which seems to consume me, I bump against the glass of orange juice standing near the edge of the table accidentally. We both go for it and obviously, I am faster. With lightning speed my hand folds around the glass and without the contents even being disturbed, I place it back on the table.
Andrew looks at me shocked while I decide to stop being such an idiot. I always thought love would be simple, but this is complicated. I realise that although he is my first, my perfect crush, it would be too difficult to have a relationship with someone outside of my community and now he is looking at me as if I am a freak.
Drinking my juice silently, I notice Andrew looking at me every now and again with puzzlement in his eyes. I can see the questions burning in them.
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