I didn’t see Buck until the afternoon that Sunday, after Dr. Martinez x-rayed me for the second time that weekend and proclaimed my bones completely healed. “If only we could bottle that ability,” she sighed, somewhat wistfully.
“I could take it instead of iron supplements,” I said, equally wistful. “Those things are nasty.”
She grinned. “That’s how you know it’s good for you.”
“Or maybe my body’s telling me that it’s poisonous slop that will slowly mutate me into some lower life form that subsists solely off a diet of the period four transition metals and I should not ingest it,” I reasoned, following her to the door. “I think I can feel myself melting into brown goo as we speak.”
“Yeah, yeah, iron supplements aren’t that bad,” she said. “Quit your bellyaching.”
“It is aching, with all that iron—”
“Will!”
I turned. Buck bounded down the hall, coming to an abrupt halt inches from my face. His grey eyes scanned me from head to toe. “You’re— you’re walking! And you don’t have the complexion of a cave fish anymore!”
“Gee, thanks. I’m glad to see you, too,” I said, as Dr. Martinez patted my shoulder and said she’d be down the hall with my mother.
Buck waited until I turned back to him, then blurted, “So it worked, then?”
I couldn’t help it; I beamed from ear to ear. “Yup.”
He grinned back. “You jerk. I was really worried, you know.”
“I know. Me, too.”
“So, you’re good now?” He stepped back to look me over again. “Like, good, good?”
“Well, until I need it again, yeah.”
He frowned. “‘Need it again’?”
“Yeah. Didn’t Lyre tell you? The Salvage is only a treatment, not a cure.”
He deflated a little. “No, he didn’t tell me. He said you should tell me. Patient confidentiality, my butt.”
“Well, I’m telling you, and I’m not fixed.”
He rolled his eyes. “You’re not broken, jeez. But you feel better? You look better.”
I grinned uncontrollably again. I’d been doing it all day. “Oh, yeah. So much better. My lungs feel massive. And I’m so awake. Who knew not having properly oxygenated blood made you exhausted? Also, I’m really hungry. I ate three pieces of pizza at lunch and I’m still hungry.”
Buck smirked. “That’s great. And you’re feeling chatty, too, I assume.”
“Ha. Yeah. That. I talked my nurse’s ear off. I almost feel bad, but I feel too good to feel bad. I ate a chocolate cookie at lunch, too, and it was a lot of sugar and I feel like expressing myself.”
“So, are you coming back to school?”
I nodded. “That’s the plan, anyway. Dr. Martinez has, like, two more tests to run and then I’m home free.”
“Woah. Really?”
“Yeah, really. The Salvage is amazing.”
We stood there staring at each other for a moment. I was grinning stupidly. My cheeks were starting to hurt from all the smiling I’d been doing today, but I didn’t care in the slightest. My whole face could have a muscle cramp and I’d keep grinning.
Buck’s smile dipped for a second. I stared. “Buck?”
He looked like he was trying to make up his mind. His mouth opened, forming the shape of a word, then shut again. Instead of speaking, he stepped forward with inhuman speed and threw his arms around my shoulders.
Buck had a normal circulatory system, but he had very little body heat. The sensation was odd, like being hugged by a mannequin in a Queen hoodie. But mannequins didn’t have heartbeats, and I could feel his.
I patted him sort of awkwardly on the back. “You’re okay, right?”
I felt him nod. “I’m just really glad you are.”
My throat tightened. “Dude, stop. I already did the weepy thing with my parents, and we’re in the middle of the hallway.”
“I’m not weepy!” he protested, shoving me away. “I’m just trying to be all open and stuff!”
“Openly weepy.”
“You wish. So, what, can we do those other tests now so you can leave and we can go watch that crap space movie? There might be no hot dogs, but I’ll take you to a fast food joint if you really want.”
“Oh, actually—” I raised a shoulder. “My mom’s making bœuf bourguignon and profiteroles tonight as a welcome-home kinda thing. I’m going to stay home.”
He grimaced slightly in disappointment. “Ah. Well, that’ll be good. Your mom’s a fantastic cook.”
I nodded in earnest agreement. “Yeah. Are you coming?”
Buck blinked at me.
I sighed heavily.
“Oh. Really?” He grinned. “Yes! Any excuse to eat your mom’s food is a good excuse. When do I show up?”
I shrugged. “If you wait, you could just follow me home.”
Buck smiled. I smiled too. I’d be smiling for the rest of the week. “Let’s go find the doctor and get you out of here,” he said.
After some blood work and a thorough physical examination, Dr. Martinez declared me healthier than I’d ever been. She discharged me under the condition that I call in every night to report any signs of my illness, and that I come in on Thursday for another physical evaluation.
Buck followed me to my parents’ car. My mom was in a fantastic mood as she drove the two of us back to my house, regaling us of the intricacies of her dinner plans along the way. My mother loved to cook and bake, but between her job and my illness she didn’t have enough time or energy to cook more than a one-pot meal every night. But now—
“Have you ever had profiteroles, Buck?”
“Hmm? No, ma’am.”
“Oh, well, then. You’re going to love them, I think. They’re choux pastry filled with pastry cream or ice cream and topped with chocolate sauce. You can fill it with other things, or course, but I usually do vanilla ice cream. It’s much easier to get a tub out of the freezer than it is to make pastry cream, ha.”
“Woah. They sound fantastic.”
“They are. Will used to ask for them for his birthday, instead of a cake. Then he got it into his head that he wanted brownies. Brownies! I mean, chocolate cake, fine, that’s all well and good. But brownies?”
I winced. “Mom, I know, it was a moment of weakness—”
“Downright insulting, it was—”
“You make really good brownies, though, and I was a middle schooler—”
“At least you didn’t ask for a mix. That would’ve done me in.” She sighed. “Anyways. Buck, do you celebrate birthdays?”
He shook his head. His red hair shimmered in the afternoon sunlight like light off a garnet. “Not really. But we’ve started doing a celebration thing every time I move up a grade, so I guess that’s sort of similar.”
“What about favorite desserts?” I asked. We didn’t talk about food much…
…probably because it gave Buck a golden opportunity to say things like— “Small children.”
My mother did a double take in the rearview. I sighed. “He’s not serious.”
“Am I?”
I corrected myself. “He’s probably not serious.”
“It’s apfelkuchen, actually,” Buck said. “My favorite dessert. I’ve never eaten a small child.”
I tried to pronounce the word like he did, but failed miserably. “Ahpell-kooken?”
He rolled his grey eyes. “That was atrocious, Will.”
“Yeah, I know. What is it?”
“A crumbly cake with apple pieces baked into the top. It’s good with ice cream.”
“It sounds German.”
“It is.” He turned away from me so I couldn’t see his face as he said, “My mom used to make it.”
Perhaps he’d turned away so he couldn’t see my face, because I’m sure I looked like I’d just been slapped. In the driver’s seat, my mother made a small noise.
Buck hardly ever talked about his human life. All the people he’d known and loved were dead, and I got the impression that whatever path it was that had led to his becoming a vampire had been a painful one. It made me upset every time I thought about it.
I got the sense that Buck would whack me (gently) if I started getting weird and soppy, so I refrained from telling him something stupid. “Is it good?”
He turned back around. He was smiling. “Yeah. Like shortbread, but softer. And she did all these cool patterns with the apple slices. Flowers and stuff.”
“I like shortbread. And apples. And cool patterns.”
“You’d love it.”
Silence descended. I didn’t know how to break it, but it was comfortable, so I didn’t try. Instead, I watched trees flash by. The maples had fully opened their leaves. My time as a junior was almost over.
My mother finally broke the silence by giving an alarmed shout. We jumped. “Crap!” she cried. “I need beef!”
It was nighttime, and Buck and I were parked in front of the TV. We’d been watching a random space movie to make up for the one I’d missed, but now the screen was dark and Buck was asleep.
I opened my computer on my lap and typed ‘apfell kuken’ into the search bar.
Apfelkuchen, the internet corrected. German apple cake. Eggs, butter, apples, sugar, all-purpose flour— it didn’t look too hard. I squinted at the recipe. What was a springform? I was pretty sure my mom had one, but I couldn’t remember what it looked like.
Cream sugar and butter. Break eggs—
Break—
I swallowed hard. In my swirl of relief and happiness, I’d all but forgotten about what Lyre had discovered. He’d said I’d probably live a normal lifespan, so I hadn’t cared much, but—
The Shattering.
How was I dying from something only vampires could have?
I clicked on the search bar again and typed in ‘the shattering’. When I pressed enter, a surprising number of books and movies came up. After scrolling for a minute and finding nothing helpful, I added ‘vampiric skill’ to the end of my search.
There were less results this time. I found websites and articles on the Salvage, a few speculations on whether vampires were gods in disguise, and— nothing else.
I briefly entertained the idea that Lyre was just messing with me.
But Buck hadn’t known what was going on when I’d broken the ground. How was the human internet supposed to know more than a vampire about a vampiric ability?
So, that was a dead end. But maybe there were articles about random explosions or torn-up earth. I searched for unexplained explosions. Most of the articles that came up were on something called skyquakes, which were when loud booms randomly occur, seemingly from the sky.
That wasn’t right. I couldn’t remember it well, but aside from my scream, the Shattering had been soundless.
I searched for inexplicable craters next. I got a lot of results about alien landings and a few articles on meteorite impacts. Nothing else.
This wasn’t working. Either Lyre was lying— which I doubted— or the Shattering was rare enough that it left almost no historical mark.
“Okay, I’m dreadfully curious, now,” Buck’s voice said from right behind my shoulder. “What’s all this?”
I leapt a mile. I had not heard him wake up, nor had I heard the sounds of him moving behind the couch to peer over my shoulder. I put a hand to my racing heart. “Jeez! How long were you just standing there?”
“Around the time you clicked on that sketchy website about the hidden divinity of vampires. Your computer totally has a virus now. Some old dude in a basement is probably siphoning all your money as we speak.”
I blew my hair out of my face. “I don’t have any money to siphon off. Make some noise next time, will you? I nearly inhaled my tongue.”
“Ew. But, seriously, what’re you searching for?”
I picked at a loose thread on the couch. “Lyre said he found something in my blood.”
“What? You mean, like, anemia or something?”
“No. You remember when I… exploded?”
“And all your bones broke?”
“Fractured,” I corrected. “But yes. That. It’s called the Shattering, apparently. It’s a vampiric skill. And it’s killing me.”
“Vampiric—” Buck lurched away, almost faster than I could see. I twitched at the sudden movement. “It’s not because I’m— I’m here, is it?”
“What? No!” I rolled my eyes at him. “I have it, not you. And I’ve had it since I was born, dude. You didn’t do anything.”
“Oh.” He vaulted over the back of the couch and landed amidst the cushions, jostling me like I was on a boat. “Good.”
“Anyway,” I sighed, closing my computer. “I couldn’t find anything. Hopefully the Salvage will just carry me through a decent life and I’ll die at eighty-nine or something.”
“Mmm.”
We sat in silence as I listened to Buck stir the idea of the Shattering around his head. It was dark and quiet in the TV room; my parents had long since gone upstairs. Buck was over so often that they didn’t feel the need to see him off anymore. He usually ended up staying the night, anyway.
My eyes grew heavy, and I yawned. “I’m gonna sleep,” I reported. “I’m tired. And I have school tomorrow.”
Buck clicked his tongue. “Dammit. I forgot about that.”
I grabbed a thick knit blanket and threw it at him. “See you in the morning. Do you need pajamas?”
“Naw. G’night.”
“Don’t let the couch-bugs bite.”
“Har.”
He wrapped the blanket around his shoulders, and I went upstairs. After brushing my teeth, I flopped onto my creaky bed and stared up at the darkened ceiling. There had to be… something, right? Something to tell me why I carried, impossibly, a vampire trait. Something to tell me how to get rid of it, or at least how to live with it.
Though I gazed up for the better part of an hour, I found no answers scrawled up on the murky drywall. Perhaps I’d never find them.
“I could take it instead of iron supplements,” I said, equally wistful. “Those things are nasty.”
She grinned. “That’s how you know it’s good for you.”
“Or maybe my body’s telling me that it’s poisonous slop that will slowly mutate me into some lower life form that subsists solely off a diet of the period four transition metals and I should not ingest it,” I reasoned, following her to the door. “I think I can feel myself melting into brown goo as we speak.”
“Yeah, yeah, iron supplements aren’t that bad,” she said. “Quit your bellyaching.”
“It is aching, with all that iron—”
“Will!”
I turned. Buck bounded down the hall, coming to an abrupt halt inches from my face. His grey eyes scanned me from head to toe. “You’re— you’re walking! And you don’t have the complexion of a cave fish anymore!”
“Gee, thanks. I’m glad to see you, too,” I said, as Dr. Martinez patted my shoulder and said she’d be down the hall with my mother.
Buck waited until I turned back to him, then blurted, “So it worked, then?”
I couldn’t help it; I beamed from ear to ear. “Yup.”
He grinned back. “You jerk. I was really worried, you know.”
“I know. Me, too.”
“So, you’re good now?” He stepped back to look me over again. “Like, good, good?”
“Well, until I need it again, yeah.”
He frowned. “‘Need it again’?”
“Yeah. Didn’t Lyre tell you? The Salvage is only a treatment, not a cure.”
He deflated a little. “No, he didn’t tell me. He said you should tell me. Patient confidentiality, my butt.”
“Well, I’m telling you, and I’m not fixed.”
He rolled his eyes. “You’re not broken, jeez. But you feel better? You look better.”
I grinned uncontrollably again. I’d been doing it all day. “Oh, yeah. So much better. My lungs feel massive. And I’m so awake. Who knew not having properly oxygenated blood made you exhausted? Also, I’m really hungry. I ate three pieces of pizza at lunch and I’m still hungry.”
Buck smirked. “That’s great. And you’re feeling chatty, too, I assume.”
“Ha. Yeah. That. I talked my nurse’s ear off. I almost feel bad, but I feel too good to feel bad. I ate a chocolate cookie at lunch, too, and it was a lot of sugar and I feel like expressing myself.”
“So, are you coming back to school?”
I nodded. “That’s the plan, anyway. Dr. Martinez has, like, two more tests to run and then I’m home free.”
“Woah. Really?”
“Yeah, really. The Salvage is amazing.”
We stood there staring at each other for a moment. I was grinning stupidly. My cheeks were starting to hurt from all the smiling I’d been doing today, but I didn’t care in the slightest. My whole face could have a muscle cramp and I’d keep grinning.
Buck’s smile dipped for a second. I stared. “Buck?”
He looked like he was trying to make up his mind. His mouth opened, forming the shape of a word, then shut again. Instead of speaking, he stepped forward with inhuman speed and threw his arms around my shoulders.
Buck had a normal circulatory system, but he had very little body heat. The sensation was odd, like being hugged by a mannequin in a Queen hoodie. But mannequins didn’t have heartbeats, and I could feel his.
I patted him sort of awkwardly on the back. “You’re okay, right?”
I felt him nod. “I’m just really glad you are.”
My throat tightened. “Dude, stop. I already did the weepy thing with my parents, and we’re in the middle of the hallway.”
“I’m not weepy!” he protested, shoving me away. “I’m just trying to be all open and stuff!”
“Openly weepy.”
“You wish. So, what, can we do those other tests now so you can leave and we can go watch that crap space movie? There might be no hot dogs, but I’ll take you to a fast food joint if you really want.”
“Oh, actually—” I raised a shoulder. “My mom’s making bœuf bourguignon and profiteroles tonight as a welcome-home kinda thing. I’m going to stay home.”
He grimaced slightly in disappointment. “Ah. Well, that’ll be good. Your mom’s a fantastic cook.”
I nodded in earnest agreement. “Yeah. Are you coming?”
Buck blinked at me.
I sighed heavily.
“Oh. Really?” He grinned. “Yes! Any excuse to eat your mom’s food is a good excuse. When do I show up?”
I shrugged. “If you wait, you could just follow me home.”
Buck smiled. I smiled too. I’d be smiling for the rest of the week. “Let’s go find the doctor and get you out of here,” he said.
After some blood work and a thorough physical examination, Dr. Martinez declared me healthier than I’d ever been. She discharged me under the condition that I call in every night to report any signs of my illness, and that I come in on Thursday for another physical evaluation.
Buck followed me to my parents’ car. My mom was in a fantastic mood as she drove the two of us back to my house, regaling us of the intricacies of her dinner plans along the way. My mother loved to cook and bake, but between her job and my illness she didn’t have enough time or energy to cook more than a one-pot meal every night. But now—
“Have you ever had profiteroles, Buck?”
“Hmm? No, ma’am.”
“Oh, well, then. You’re going to love them, I think. They’re choux pastry filled with pastry cream or ice cream and topped with chocolate sauce. You can fill it with other things, or course, but I usually do vanilla ice cream. It’s much easier to get a tub out of the freezer than it is to make pastry cream, ha.”
“Woah. They sound fantastic.”
“They are. Will used to ask for them for his birthday, instead of a cake. Then he got it into his head that he wanted brownies. Brownies! I mean, chocolate cake, fine, that’s all well and good. But brownies?”
I winced. “Mom, I know, it was a moment of weakness—”
“Downright insulting, it was—”
“You make really good brownies, though, and I was a middle schooler—”
“At least you didn’t ask for a mix. That would’ve done me in.” She sighed. “Anyways. Buck, do you celebrate birthdays?”
He shook his head. His red hair shimmered in the afternoon sunlight like light off a garnet. “Not really. But we’ve started doing a celebration thing every time I move up a grade, so I guess that’s sort of similar.”
“What about favorite desserts?” I asked. We didn’t talk about food much…
…probably because it gave Buck a golden opportunity to say things like— “Small children.”
My mother did a double take in the rearview. I sighed. “He’s not serious.”
“Am I?”
I corrected myself. “He’s probably not serious.”
“It’s apfelkuchen, actually,” Buck said. “My favorite dessert. I’ve never eaten a small child.”
I tried to pronounce the word like he did, but failed miserably. “Ahpell-kooken?”
He rolled his grey eyes. “That was atrocious, Will.”
“Yeah, I know. What is it?”
“A crumbly cake with apple pieces baked into the top. It’s good with ice cream.”
“It sounds German.”
“It is.” He turned away from me so I couldn’t see his face as he said, “My mom used to make it.”
Perhaps he’d turned away so he couldn’t see my face, because I’m sure I looked like I’d just been slapped. In the driver’s seat, my mother made a small noise.
Buck hardly ever talked about his human life. All the people he’d known and loved were dead, and I got the impression that whatever path it was that had led to his becoming a vampire had been a painful one. It made me upset every time I thought about it.
I got the sense that Buck would whack me (gently) if I started getting weird and soppy, so I refrained from telling him something stupid. “Is it good?”
He turned back around. He was smiling. “Yeah. Like shortbread, but softer. And she did all these cool patterns with the apple slices. Flowers and stuff.”
“I like shortbread. And apples. And cool patterns.”
“You’d love it.”
Silence descended. I didn’t know how to break it, but it was comfortable, so I didn’t try. Instead, I watched trees flash by. The maples had fully opened their leaves. My time as a junior was almost over.
My mother finally broke the silence by giving an alarmed shout. We jumped. “Crap!” she cried. “I need beef!”
It was nighttime, and Buck and I were parked in front of the TV. We’d been watching a random space movie to make up for the one I’d missed, but now the screen was dark and Buck was asleep.
I opened my computer on my lap and typed ‘apfell kuken’ into the search bar.
Apfelkuchen, the internet corrected. German apple cake. Eggs, butter, apples, sugar, all-purpose flour— it didn’t look too hard. I squinted at the recipe. What was a springform? I was pretty sure my mom had one, but I couldn’t remember what it looked like.
Cream sugar and butter. Break eggs—
Break—
I swallowed hard. In my swirl of relief and happiness, I’d all but forgotten about what Lyre had discovered. He’d said I’d probably live a normal lifespan, so I hadn’t cared much, but—
The Shattering.
How was I dying from something only vampires could have?
I clicked on the search bar again and typed in ‘the shattering’. When I pressed enter, a surprising number of books and movies came up. After scrolling for a minute and finding nothing helpful, I added ‘vampiric skill’ to the end of my search.
There were less results this time. I found websites and articles on the Salvage, a few speculations on whether vampires were gods in disguise, and— nothing else.
I briefly entertained the idea that Lyre was just messing with me.
But Buck hadn’t known what was going on when I’d broken the ground. How was the human internet supposed to know more than a vampire about a vampiric ability?
So, that was a dead end. But maybe there were articles about random explosions or torn-up earth. I searched for unexplained explosions. Most of the articles that came up were on something called skyquakes, which were when loud booms randomly occur, seemingly from the sky.
That wasn’t right. I couldn’t remember it well, but aside from my scream, the Shattering had been soundless.
I searched for inexplicable craters next. I got a lot of results about alien landings and a few articles on meteorite impacts. Nothing else.
This wasn’t working. Either Lyre was lying— which I doubted— or the Shattering was rare enough that it left almost no historical mark.
“Okay, I’m dreadfully curious, now,” Buck’s voice said from right behind my shoulder. “What’s all this?”
I leapt a mile. I had not heard him wake up, nor had I heard the sounds of him moving behind the couch to peer over my shoulder. I put a hand to my racing heart. “Jeez! How long were you just standing there?”
“Around the time you clicked on that sketchy website about the hidden divinity of vampires. Your computer totally has a virus now. Some old dude in a basement is probably siphoning all your money as we speak.”
I blew my hair out of my face. “I don’t have any money to siphon off. Make some noise next time, will you? I nearly inhaled my tongue.”
“Ew. But, seriously, what’re you searching for?”
I picked at a loose thread on the couch. “Lyre said he found something in my blood.”
“What? You mean, like, anemia or something?”
“No. You remember when I… exploded?”
“And all your bones broke?”
“Fractured,” I corrected. “But yes. That. It’s called the Shattering, apparently. It’s a vampiric skill. And it’s killing me.”
“Vampiric—” Buck lurched away, almost faster than I could see. I twitched at the sudden movement. “It’s not because I’m— I’m here, is it?”
“What? No!” I rolled my eyes at him. “I have it, not you. And I’ve had it since I was born, dude. You didn’t do anything.”
“Oh.” He vaulted over the back of the couch and landed amidst the cushions, jostling me like I was on a boat. “Good.”
“Anyway,” I sighed, closing my computer. “I couldn’t find anything. Hopefully the Salvage will just carry me through a decent life and I’ll die at eighty-nine or something.”
“Mmm.”
We sat in silence as I listened to Buck stir the idea of the Shattering around his head. It was dark and quiet in the TV room; my parents had long since gone upstairs. Buck was over so often that they didn’t feel the need to see him off anymore. He usually ended up staying the night, anyway.
My eyes grew heavy, and I yawned. “I’m gonna sleep,” I reported. “I’m tired. And I have school tomorrow.”
Buck clicked his tongue. “Dammit. I forgot about that.”
I grabbed a thick knit blanket and threw it at him. “See you in the morning. Do you need pajamas?”
“Naw. G’night.”
“Don’t let the couch-bugs bite.”
“Har.”
He wrapped the blanket around his shoulders, and I went upstairs. After brushing my teeth, I flopped onto my creaky bed and stared up at the darkened ceiling. There had to be… something, right? Something to tell me why I carried, impossibly, a vampire trait. Something to tell me how to get rid of it, or at least how to live with it.
Though I gazed up for the better part of an hour, I found no answers scrawled up on the murky drywall. Perhaps I’d never find them.
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