Page 3 of The Good Vampire’s Guide to Blood & Boyfriends

A few yards away, there was a murky smear of a stain that Brennan knew was blood. He knew because he could smell it. He knew because it was his blood from the other night. It was right at the spot of impact, right where he’d been standing.

There were skid marks from tires. Brennan could almost hear their squeal, the rumbling engine.

“BACKSTREET’S BACK, ALRIGHT!”

Brennan scrambled for his phone. The only person who ever called him was his mom, who worked a Very Important Job that kept her Very Busy, and who would call campus security if Brennan dodged more than one of her calls after everything in March.

His mom’s picture in the caller ID made his stomach clench in an anxiety-guilt hybrid. Instead of processing that, he answered.

“Hey, I have class,” Brennan said, which was not a lie. He should have been in class ten minutes ago, had he not been fleeing the library.

“Oh, don’t worry, I only have a few minutes, too. I have a meeting with a big Harvard guy about me speaking for the environmental conference and of course today’s the day the coffee place runs out of the good recycled paper cups and is using plastic. ”

“Wow, talk about Murphy’s Law,” Brennan deadpanned.

“It’s really that kind of day,” his mom agreed, his sarcasm so far over her head it was intercepting a flight to Boston Logan. She added, almost as an afterthought, “How are you? How do I make it video again? I want to see your face.”

Ah, yes. That was Brennan’s mom. Meredith Brooks, big-shot academic-slash-activist, running around yelling about the rising oceans and industrial carbon emissions, trying to save the planet.

That part was awesome. Always busy, always between meetings or classes, environmental scientist first, mom second. That part was less awesome.

Brennan grimaced and checked in his phone’s reflection to make sure there was no trace of blood on his face. Which was not something he’d ever thought he’d have to do before FaceTiming his mom.

It took a solid minute for his mom to get her own camera on, and then it was their two rectangle images set over each other, with his mom’s perfectly maintained blond hair pulled into a neat ponytail.

She was all tan and strong, natural energy.

It was no wonder she did well in the environmental space. She was so put-together.

And then there was Brennan. With his patchy-bleached hair, pale and gaunt with shadows under his eyes, he looked like a depressed, zombified shell of a human, which was scary-accurate considering his possibly-not-alive status.

“Oh good,” she said, paused, took in Brennan. Then, “You need a haircut.”

He did need a haircut. But would it even grow out anymore? Another question for his journal. Not quite as high a priority as some others.

“Yeah,” Brennan said. “Soon, yeah, I’m just getting used to the semester.”

“Tell me about it,” his mom said, and Brennan prepared for her to start monologuing. “Kirigan pushed off all the freshman courses to me, and was so condescending about it. But I do really enjoy the younger classes, helping them build that foundation.…”

Brennan tuned her out, focusing instead on the sound of wind rustling the trees.

His mom had finally accepted a tenure-track professor position a few months after Brennan started college.

Now she was enmeshed and thriving, though still a relative newbie.

He was proud of her, obviously, but he couldn’t help resenting her a little.

He spent his entire life moving from place to place because she didn’t want to settle down, and as soon as he moved out, she changed her mind.

People would tell Brennan that it took a special kind of person to get a master’s and two PhDs while being a single mother.

Brennan disagreed—it took two kinds of special people.

The first, a self-absorbed, book-smart mother, and the second, an overly self-sufficient latchkey kid cursed to grow up with attachment issues.

“—I’m really just trying to take it a day at a time,” she finished. Brennan hummed along to confirm he was listening, which he was not. “But anyway, you’re keeping up with school? Getting ahead on your readings?”

“Of course,” Brennan said. He’d started reading chapters as soon as his textbooks were available, but even that head start wouldn’t buy him much time with everything else going on.

“And how are you doing?”

He hated this question from her. She always asked it with the demeanor of checking something off her to-do list.

“I’m doing well,” Brennan hedged.

His mom scanned him from the screen, her face so close to the camera that he couldn’t see anything around her. She had two doctorates but didn’t know how to hold a phone so Brennan didn’t have to look directly up her nostrils.

“That’s so good to hear,” she said, and her voice was thick, and no, no, if she started crying Brennan would hang up—

“I’m so glad you’re doing well,” she continued around a sniffle. “You know how I worry and how much last semester scared me.” She started crying. The camera showed her chin from below, perfectly highlighting her trembling lower lip.

“Oh, Mom, I’m—I’m really doing well. This semester will be different, I know it,” he said, instinctively going back to the mantra he’d been telling himself a few days ago. Now it felt like a bold-faced lie.

“I just want you to be happy and do well, okay? I can’t go through something like that again.”

That one hit Brennan right in the gut. Somewhere, the Dr. Morris in his head was saying something about narcissistic, emotionally immature parents, but Brennan couldn’t hear her. He stood up, needing to move, pace, run.

“You don’t have to worry about that,” Brennan said. “I’m on top of things. Look, I should go—”

“Okay, me, too, but you know you have my credit card for anything you need, you don’t have to ask.”

He made it a few feet before something else caught his eye, something bright pink in the grass to the side of the road.

Brennan crouched and picked it up. A pink scrunchie. No tags, no labels, nothing distinguishable. But it was something. It might have even been the thing the girl was looking for. Why, though? What did she want? What did she know ?

“Brennan? Did you hear me?”

Brennan shoved the scrunchie in his pocket. A problem for later. More questions for the journal.

“I don’t need anything,” Brennan insisted.

She was already paying his rent since he’d lost his tutoring gig last semester.

He knew she had money now and they were in a realm of living comfortably, but clipping coupons and counting quarters to get groceries when your mom forgot to (and then went to an out-of-town conference without you) was a habit that died hard.

“You need to eat. Coffee doesn’t count. Order some DoorDash on me. Any night of the week. You look like you’re starving. I must look like a terrible mother.”

She hung up, and Brennan stared at the CALL ENDED screen for a moment too long.

He went through a slideshow in his mind of reasons he loved, respected, and was proud of his mother.

She was a hard worker, she instilled a value of knowledge in him, and sometimes when he was a kid she’d pull him out of school to take field trips to the zoo or the aquarium or the library because she always said life outside of the classroom was as important as life within one.

And with that appreciative disclaimer out of the way, he allowed himself to shift to the stormy cloud of negativity that he really felt. He let the anger drive his feet as he headed home.

That was one thing Brennan couldn’t stand about surviving his attempted suicide in March: everyone wanted to relate it back to them.

He had barely processed his own feelings about trying to off himself before he had to juggle everyone else’s—the concern, the worry, the How can I help?

s and the But you’re better now, right? s.

All he wanted to do since then was move on, but with each passing month, people kept wanting to hear that he was doing better, that he was good.

But to be honest? He’d been fucking better.

Except no one wanted to hear that. Hell, Brennan didn’t want to hear it, either.

Brennan’s throat returned to its natural state of severe burning, and that was when he sped past the angst and bullshit and focused on something else his mom had said.

Because Brennan knew what it felt like to drink water when you were hungry.

When he was twelve, he had his first existential crisis, and spent days and nights mainlining Gatorade and familiarizing himself with every popular idea of life after death.

He didn’t realize he hadn’t eaten for a week until he passed out in front of thirty unforgiving seventh graders while presenting a book report on The Book Thief.

Drinking the blood of animals felt a lot like that. Enough to soothe the ache for a moment, but not enough to stop it. And Brennan had a theory about what would satisfy the craving.

Worse, that voice of the girl crying in the library rang in his head.

Someone had gone missing around the same time Brennan woke up and realized he was a vampire.

Brennan maybe needed human blood to live, and he maybe had a block of lost memory between getting hit by a car and waking up in his apartment, a totally reasonable eight hours during which to commit murder.

In typical Brennan fashion, he briefly contemplated suicide.

In a cool, totally low-key and logical fashion, thank you very much.

But he guessed somehow, somewhere along the way, some of the therapy must have worked, because not being alive wasn’t an appealing option.

At least, it was less appealing than being— undead .

And really, just that feeling was novel. As someone who tried to kill himself six months ago, “optimistic” wasn’t a word he freely associated with himself, but this semester he’d been almost hopeful.

The guilt and the angst were par for the course. But trying to do something about it? Having hope? Wanting to keep fighting? To keep living ?

That was pretty new to Brennan. He’d only just gotten those things back.

Brennan shuffled back toward the bridge and sat down on it with his back to the rocks like he used to do. He squeezed his eyes shut. Did eight counts of a breathing exercise he’d learned from the therapists at the in-patient facility he went to after his attempt. Opened his eyes.

He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out the journal he now stowed there at all times.

If Brennan dared to want to exist on this planet, he’d have to drink human blood. Which meant morally gray situations and committing minor felonies, things Brennan generally tried to avoid.

He couldn’t drag anyone else into this shit the way he used to drag people into his moods or make his mother worry. This was his problem, and he’d figure it out on his own. And he’d do it well : if he had to be a vampire, he’d be the best damn vampire this side of the prime meridian.

Because yeah, of course he had a plan.

It might even work.