Blood Orange Soda: Paranormal Romance (2 page)

“Hi, honey. Breakfast or dinner?”

She always gives us a choice. Toast and eggs smells better to me than the macaroni and tomato soup my mom has prepared. I ask for breakfast.

My sister is at the table, already sipping her soup as I take off my sweatshirt and hang it on a hook by the back door.

“How come your jacket is full of grass?” Kira asks.

“I dunno,” I shrug. “How come you reek of Justin Bieber perfume?”

“Were you in another fight?”

“Why not focus on the real question? Did you douse yourself in Justin Bieber or Taylor Swift?”

Mom turns the eggs and studies me from the stove. “Darius, what happened?”

“Nothing. How do you know I wasn’t rolling around in the grass making out with a girl?”

“What girl? Angel? Yeah, right,” Kira says. “You wish.”

She’s right. Affection from Angel or any girl at school would be great. I ignore my sister with a, “Whatever,” as I sit at the table.

Mom continues stalking me with her eyes. She knows my moods, and my defense mannerisms, even better than my sister does.

“You dressed very Goth today,” my mom says to me.

“So?”

“You went heavy on the eyeliner,” she says.

“It’s
guy
liner.”

“Take it from my purse? It’s eyeliner,” Mom says with a smirk.

“I was in a dark mood when I woke up this morning,” I reply. “It’s no big deal. Why are you two attacking me as soon as I walk through the door?”

“We’re not attacking you, Darius. We care about you.”

Mom slides two eggs onto a plate and hands them to me. These should’ve been her eggs, but she always feeds us first, even if it means she’s late for work. I would protest and insist that she take this plate, but we’ve been through this routine so many times, it’s gotten old. She serves the eggs watery, just the way I like them, and I slurp them down with toast.

“Angel might stop by later,” I say, to fill in the silence. “Maybe Weezer, too.”

“Oh, good,” Kira says.

“That’s fine. Make sure you two do your homework.” Mom sits at the table across from me. She’s decided on the macaroni and soup, which is an odd choice for breakfast. In her hand is a glass of water and a red pill, or what’s commonly referred to as a “Red,” and drops it into the water. The Red sinks to the bottom of her glass, dissolving into a watery, pinky hue of bubbles rising and popping at the surface. She drinks half of it with one long swallow, and I can almost taste the bitterness myself. Mom used to grill me every morning about my dose of Red. Had I taken my morning pill? Yes, I always insisted. Now that I’m fifteen and more responsible, she never questions me about it.

Reds are to Vampires what methadone is to heroin addicts—an analgesic to relieve cravings. Where addicts crave heroin, Vampires crave blood, and a Red is the only substitute that allows us to live mostly “normal” human lives, or what we call living as a “Normal.” Mom has been on Reds since I was born, fifteen years ago. I started once I entered puberty. Kira isn’t on the drug yet.

My mom swallows another sip and I wait for her to take her other medication to combat HIV2. She doesn’t disappoint, and reaches into her shirt pocket for two pills that she washes down with the Red. Mom is terminally ill, and courageously fighting to stay alive. She’s only thirty-eight years old, and stricken with a disease that has no cure.

“What time is Angel stopping by?” she asks.

Before I can answer, Kira and my mom launch into a side conversation about Angel, what a great babysitter she is, and how much they enjoy her company. Then Kira takes my mom off on a tangent about how cruel middle school is, and soon my sister is in tears and storming off to her room.

Mom takes a bite of her dinner and turns her attention to me.

“How come you weren’t so dramatic in middle school?”

“If you only knew how bad it really was,” I say to her. “I’m moody, but I’m a quiet moody.”

“Is everything all right?”

“Yeah, I’m cool.”

“Were you bullied again?”

“It’s nothing,” I say, knowing that she’ll still think it’s a big deal.

“Tell me, did he hurt you?” She rests a hand on my sore shoulder.

“A kid shoved me, that’s all.”

“Should I call—”

“No, do
not
call the school. It’ll only make it worse.”

“If you’d rather talk with Uncle Jack...”

This is actually a good idea. Mom’s older brother Jack is one of those cool uncles, not clueless and fake like most adults I know. Somehow, Jack has maintained his youth and passion for life, and he watches over our family ever since my dad ditched my mom when I was a toddler.

For me, Jack has been the surrogate dad who handles all the guy stuff, like the sex talk, how to drive a car, how to pick up girls, etc. Before I can answer, my mom pulls her phone from her purse and leaves him a voicemail.

“Hey, it’s me. If you have time, can you call Darius? Thanks!”

“I could have done that,” I say to her.

My phone vibrates in my pocket. It’s a text from Jack.

Jack:
You in trouble?

I reply:
No, it’s bully stuff. Got time to hang on Saturday?

Hardly a beat goes by before he replies:
Come to my place at 8 p.m. Don’t be early!

Jack is nocturnal, and rarely wakes up before 6:00 p.m. When he says not to arrive early, he means it.

I reply:
See you at 8:30.

“
Well?” Mom asks.

“Yeah, we’ll get together.”

“And? What else did he say?” Mom asks.

“Nothing, just be at his house after eight.”

“Jack knows how to handle bullies. He was a lot like you as a boy. He can help. But don’t listen to him when it comes to the Reds.”

I nod to ease her concerns. For the Vampire community, which has been dwindling steadily over the past twenty years, taking the Red has become a topic of debate. We suppress our bloodlust by swallowing the government-subsidized Red pill. Is it discrimination to ‘encourage’ a small subset of the U.S. population to take a daily medication? Yeah; but it pays well, and my mom collects $12,000 a year as long as we’re on the Reds, and as long as she holds a part-time job, which for her is at the local power plant.

“You’ll be late if you don’t leave soon,” I remind her.

She tosses the phone into her leather purse. “Try not to stay up too late. Keep daytime hours.”

“I’ll be in bed before 2:00 a.m.,” I promise.

“And check on your sister once in a while tonight,” Mom says before stepping out the back door.

The dishes are piled in the sink, the clock is ticking, and my mom’s counter-top TV is on the local news covering a story of another bank robbery. I walk over, turn up the volume, and watch as a male reporter describes the incident. Two masked gunmen stormed into a blood bank and robbed them of their inventory. While meth is the scourge of some towns across America, blood is the drug worth stealing in Vampire communities like St. Cloud. In fact, the DEA is more concerned about blood trafficking than drug trafficking, now that the government has made bite feeding illegal. All Vampires are required to register and receive a free monthly pint of feeding blood instead of biting for it.

Sounds like a perfect solution, right? Wrong! Many traditional Vampires refuse to drink the government’s
synthetic blood
. It’s not natural, and not fair to force it on Vampires, they claim. The only other solution is to take the Reds, which suppress your desire and need for blood. Buy real blood on the black market—or just bite for it.

My ribs are sore from Bao Wang’s abuse. Why does he stalk me so much? It’s not because I’m gay or a Stoner. He beat me because I’m a Goth on the Red pill. I’m not fully human and I’m not fully a Vampire, either. By now, everyone knows that gay people are born gay. It’s not a choice they make. But Goth kids are exploring their Vampire identities. We’re all on the Red pill, fighting our urges to bite, but showing the world that we have a big decision to make—and that’s what frustrates bullies like Bao Wang. He is who he is because his parents cast his genetic dice upon conception. I still hold my dice in my hand. If I stay on the Reds, I can live as a non-Vampire—a Normal. If I choose to stop taking the Reds, I’ll carry on the family legacy as a Vampire.

Which would you choose?

I grab my phone and go online to RenRen, where I search for Bao Wang’s profile page. I struggle with reading Chinese, even after three years of studying the language in school. Bao’s photo album is public so I browse through it, sifting through photos of him with his family in China. But then I come across a familiar American face. It’s a Goth kid with a bloody lip and a smirk on his face, flipping his middle finger. I like that photo. I like it so much I download it to my phone and repost it to Facebook.

The day wasn’t a total loss after all.

Angel and Weezer show up at my house after nine, both in a peculiar mood. They act as if they’ve been smoking something, but neither of them is a Stoner. Weezer, whose real name is Derek Wincer, got his nickname because he makes a wheezing sound when he laughs, and he laughs often. He’s another Goth struggling with what he’ll be when he grows up. He’s a self-proclaimed anarchist.

Weezer stumbles in behind Angel, laughing and wheezing. He’s wearing skinny jeans and a wifebeater. “Fuggars it’s cold,” he says.

“Wear a jacket next time,” Angel says.

“Not until it snows,” Weezer says. “Darius, what do you got to eat?”

Weezer pretends to hate everything and he’s always making up his own words, just to confuse people or piss them off. I take the bait. “Fuggars?”

“Yeah, as in, what you got to eat, mother-fuggar?”

“Mac and cheese. Why do I always feed you?”

“Fuggar, please! I’m a starving artist,” Weezer says, as he darts for the kitchen. “Carbs are my best friends.”

Angel and I head down to the basement where we store our band’s gear. The basement is unfinished, with a low ceiling and exposed pipes. It’s the perfect place for a garage band that doesn’t have an empty garage. I use this space as my room and my personal bat cave, away from my mom and sister.

Angel takes her seat at the drums and picks her sticks up off the rug. She spins the drumsticks around her fingers. She could’ve been a cheerleader or a baton thrower, but chooses to make music in my basement. How cool is that? I grab my bass and power the amp by flipping a switch with my bare foot.

“Let’s go, Weezer!” I shout.

“On my way,” he says from the top of the stairs.

“Grab your frickin’ guitar,” I call again.

“Oh, yeah.” He disappears for a few seconds and reappears, bounding down the steps with his guitar case, which is plastered with decals of skulls and his favorite bands: The Misfits, Gene Loves Jezebel and Skinny Puppy, to name a few.

What most Normals don’t understand about Goths is that we’re not all the same. And our differences are defined by our musical influences. Weezer and I are DeathRock Goths, not Metal Goths and not Glam Rock, either. Our music ranges from dark and ominous to campy and upbeat. DeathRock is really a post-Punk subgenre, and it should never be confused with Grunge or Emo music. Angel, like most Normals, leans toward garden variety Gothic Rock with bands like The Cure. But I digress…

Weezer sets his guitar case on the rug and opens it as if it’s a gift he’s unwrapping for the first time. It’s a black and blue Fender Strat, nothing particularly expensive, but how Weezer swings that axe makes it sound far more premium than the hundred bills he paid for it. He slides inside the strap and adjusts the guitar low on his bony hips.

“She’s cold,” Weezer says, caressing the guitar’s neck before he sets it back into the case. “Way too cold to play.”

Angel thumps the bass drum. “Oh come on—”

“It’ll warm up soon enough,” I say, picking a few bass lines.

“No, I won’t ruin the neck playing her when she’s ice,” Weezer says. “Wait a few minutes, jeezus.”

“You freaking prima donna,” Angel says, throwing one of her drumsticks at Weezer. He deflects it with his forearm, laughing and wheezing, then picks up the stick and chases after her.

Angel kicks her hi-hat cymbals over as she flees, giggling, and he tackles her onto my bed, which already has a pile of dirty laundry on it. They’re rolling around, laughing and flirting, and I’m feeling like a creepy voyeur. The moment is not CraigsListy-weird, but certainly what my sister would describe as “totes awkward.” I watch them flirt, and continue playing my bass.

Is he really hitting on her? Is that why those two were in such an odd mood when they arrived? Watching them makes me jealous.

“That’s enough!” Angel cries out through belly laughter. “I’ll pee my pants if you don’t stop tickling me.”

“Don’t pee my bed!” I shout.

“Yeah, Darius already has the bed-wetting covered,” Weezer says.

“Good one,” I reply. “At least I sleep with the light off. Whoever heard of a Goth afraid of the dark?”

Weezer sits up, embarrassed, and scratches his spiked black hair. “I’m still hungry. Darius, you can pick up where I left off.” He runs past me up the stairs, and I can hear him rummaging through the kitchen cupboards.