My younger sister hurls―quite literally hurls―a copy of Wuthering Heights across the kitchen at the opposite wall. It lands with its pages splayed.
“*Frankie*,” I scold. I’ve tried to teach my sister to control her temper, but she’s been bombastic since our parents disappeared two years ago. Ever since then I've done my best to take care of her. Sort of a Lilo and Stitch situation. Minus Hawaii.
“*What*?” she asks. “It sucked. There was no plot twist!”
“We don’t treat books like that.”
“I thought it was going to be like Jane Eyre with some sort of a surprise ending. This one was all boring though.”
“There’s not always a twist.” I pick the book off the floor and flip through the pages to make sure none of them are torn. “Hang on, where did you get this?”
“Ms. Gina.” Frankie shrugs. *Our next-door neighbor.* “She’s been letting me go over after school and borrow some of her old books.”
I flip to the front page out of curiosity. “There’s a signature… *Bronte.* Wait, I think this is a first edition.”
“Probably. She says she bought it when it first came out.”
“That can’t be possible. Ms. Gina would have to be like three hundred.”
“She’s old. She’s probably just forgetting things.” Frankie shrugs again and marches for her room. “Either way, the book was trash.”
The next few weeks Frankie keeps going to Ms. Gina’s after school. I’m glad for it. I’m always exhausted after working twelve-hour overnight shifts to support us. And it’s good for Frankie to have another positive adult in her life that isn’t her older sister. Ms. Gina’s been our kindly, elderly neighbor for years, since even before my parents disappeared.
On one of the rare days I wake up before the evening, I see Ms. Gina working in her garden. It’s odd. The day is sweltering, but she has a long-sleeve jacket pulled all the way over her neck, and a hood shadowing her face.
“Need help?” I call out.
She turns to me, shielding her eyes with her gloved hands. “No that’s alright, dearie!”
Ms. Gina returns to yanking out blood-red beets from the ground. I tip my sunhat at her and continue on my walk.
*Old people and their odd internal temperatures.*
I start trying to wake up early and see Frankie in the evenings. Kids her age have started going missing in surrounding towns recently, and I want to make sure she feels safe. After a few days of this, I start to notice how calm she's been recently. Her explosions come less. She’s mellowing out. Maturing. Maybe her afternoons with Ms. Gina are helping?
Except…
Except is it that she’s maturing, or is she just more tired?
Her complexion is turning more pale and sickly by the day. Her usual girlish energy is dimming to fatigue, and she wears more and more black.
“Are you fine?” I ask her one day.
“I haven't been sleeping well. I probably have insomnia.”
“Maybe―maybe start taking naps after school? Skip going to Ms. Gina’s?”
“But I *like* visiting her.”
“I know, but―”
“AGH!” Frankie shrieks and slams her bedroom door on me.
Fine. I don’t have to be her parent all the time. I can let her make her own decisions.
*Don’t be paranoid,* I tell myself day after day.
But then one night, we’re eating take-out and I notice something on her neck. A set of two small cuts just above her collarbone, scabbed over but still fresh. Instinctively, I reach for them, but she jerks away and glares.
“What are those?” I ask.
“Nothing.”
I raise my eyebrows and she huffs. “Fine,” she says. “My friend thought it would be funny to try stapling my neck in class. That’s it. Stop worrying.”
“Okay,” I say.
But the next day after work I make a stop before going home. I knock on Ms. Gina’s door in the middle of the afternoon.
“Hello darling,” she says. The lights are out in her living room.
My heart pounds. “Can I come in? I have something for you.”
“Oh! Um. It’s just I’m not really in a state to entertain guests at the moment.”
“Just for a second.”
“Well―alright then. I suppose that would be the polite thing.” She turns away as if to survey her disorganized entryway. Soundlessly, I slip the wooden stake from its hiding spot in my sleeve, raise it above my head, and step over the threshold…
Ms. Gina turns back to me. Her forehead collides with a head-level coat rack jutting from the wall. “Oh!” She reaches her hand up to the gash in her forehead, and it comes away shining with blood. *Human* blood.
I feel ridiculous.
Frankie really does just have insomnia.
Her dumb friend really did just try to staple her neck.
After Ms. Gina has bandaged herself and apologized profusely that she can’t have me inside right now, she bids me farewell at the entryway. “Sincerest apologies, but come back anytime―what was it you said you had for me?”
“This.” I hand her the copy of Wuthering Heights. “It’s been on our counter for ages, but I think it’s yours. Frankie wasn’t the biggest fan actually. She said she wanted a surprise at the end.”
“There’s not always a twist,” my neighbor informs me.
“There isn’t.”
It’s only later that night, when Frankie is dead asleep and the short hand is nearing the three mark, that I finally slink from my bed. I slip through Ms. Gina’s unlocked window, sink my teeth into her sleeping neck, and suck her dry just like I did to my parents.
In the quiet of her room, I wipe my mouth in satisfaction. “[But sometimes there is](https://www.reddit.com/r/lucasGandola/comments/1lklmnq/welcome/).”
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