Blood Kisses, Amber Marshall-Nichols [summer reading list txt] 📗

scanned then we can go,”
“Fine,” Lucy tossed a hundred pound note on the counter. “Keep the change to buy yourself a new decent personality,” with that, she whirled around and began to storm out the shop.
“Wait!” The cashier yelled her terrible sweep over fringe falling over her eye. She grinned wickedly then squeezed around the desk before skipping over to us with a pen, her enormous boobs bouncing out of her top. She wrote eleven digits on Lucy’s arm then leaned in to whisper “Call me, the name’s Becks”
“No,” Lucy looked appalled. I must have looked pissed too. “All you need to know is that Toby is a lower class twat with a massive ego, small feet and you and your friend ought to stay well away from him... for your own goods,’ Then she flicked her hair and left the awe struck bitch to pull her cell from her pocket and start texting Natalie- speedy as hell.

We ended up in the shopping centre’s food court. Well the bogs there. I’d shut myself in a cubicle to think. At first Lucy stood hammering her fists to the door pleading for me to come out, but then as she grew more impatient with my lack of response, she must have wandered over to the sinks, and of course mirrors, and decided to apply some more make-up. She’d begun to hum, that’s how I knew she was prettying herself up, because as vain as it sounds, she only hummed at her own reflection. Once she’d done, she was back at the cubicle door.
“He’s a weasel faced toe rag,” she hissed from outside. “He probably screwed half the girls on the hockey team, without any booze tipped down his neck,” That made me feel worse. Lucy’s foot began to tap. The tapping grew increasingly louder until a point where it could still be heard over the hand driers.
“Look this is getting ridiculous,” she finally said. “Are you even breathing in there?”
“Of course not,” I croaked. Lucy cleared her throat.
“Right well, umm are you crying?” I took the door off the latch and it swung open to reveal my hunched forward silhouette.
“Does it look like it?” I asked her.
“Right, no. I wish I looked like that when I had my heart torn out, you look like you’ve been done up by max factor, but me noooooo, my eyes go all puffy, my cheeks blotch, my nose runs and I can...”
“Lucy!” I cut her off “Why don’t you go home, I’m going to meet my mum at her office, I’ll ride home with her,”
“Okay,” she said “Erica text to say she’s now finishing work, I’ll catch the bus with her, are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m fine... looks like you’re sorted anyways,” I tried to smile but ended up cringing at myself. Lucy threaded her hand through mine and gave it a tight squeeze.
“Call me tonight okay? We need to talk school prep,”
“Oh god, school,” I groaned.
“It’ll be fine. Everything will be fine, it always is...” Then she pecked me on the cheek and skipped from the room, full of life, full of joy... as always. Full of two things I never had.

I decided to buy a CD. Something vastly different, way off my radar, something that would usually appal me. Flicking through the CD’s I found ‘Vampire Weekend’ which nearly made me laugh. My weekend as a vampire had so far been a dramatic fail. I ended up not buying a CD at all, and bought some new earphones instead. A boy about eighteen served me at the till. He was cute, tall dark and handsome as far as it goes. He had dimples, flushed cheeks, bright blue eyes and that hint of baby fat still left to his face. He was the type of guy I imagined in a suit with a blue tie, training to be a doctor or a dentist, one who regularly played golf with his daddy- not one that sold CD’s. The kind of guy my mum would’ve picked out for me. After I paid he asked for my name. I quickly checked behind me to see if there were going to be any impatient customers who’d object to our boy meets girl chit chat (there wasn’t), before answering.
“Anya, and to whom do I owe the pleasure?”
“ I’m Milo,” he said blushing. Someone snorted and a peculiar scent washed over me. It was a tangy smell, though both sweet and stench. It was like rotten potatoes and ponegrammetes both. Not like a human. A human’s were like treacle coated copper- in a mouth watering way. Then an animal’s was like... the same penny but bleached; having lost flavour. This though... was strange.
“You got a problem mate?” Said Milo; dragging me back to the present.
“No not at all, I just thought that was the name of the dude from the tweenies,” It could only have been two people that made me feel such disgust then. And both I’d separated when fighting over me. “I mean common, did your parents have no respect for your teen years?” Josh provoked the poor boy at the till.
“Josh that’s enough,” I glared.
“No, no, let him continue,” Milo smiled wickedly and his eyes suddenly turned charcoal black. He no longer looked like the clean cut mamma’s boy he did before.
“Well,” Josh was standing beside me now, his elbow leaned on the counter and a cocky grin smacked to his face.
“Before you say anything...” said Milo. “I’d like to point out that you’re the one that apparently knows the names of the tweenies, I mean what are you sixteen? You’re still a kid. Secondly, you’re on camera, so anything you start is recorded and sent to the cops”
“Sorry... Milo!” Josh made air quotes around his name as he walked out of the shop, I scurried after him, pulling him in to a corner. He raised his eyebrows at me when I shoved him against the wall and pressed myself to him. I grabbed his collar.
“Who in the heck do you think you are?” I snarled. He laughed.
“I’m Joshua Langett, I’ve been here six days and won several enemies,” He said it as though it were an achievement.
“You must have one fucked up life if you think that’s something to brag about,” I told him.
“Oh look... she swears,” My hand dropped from his neck. He was the smell. The weird smell was surrounding him.
“That was very rude,” I said stepping away.
“What? The scene in the shop or this little steamy conversation,”
“Both and this was not at all steamy,” I snapped. Josh leaned in close as though he would kiss me but instead placed his cheek to mine then whispered.
“Was too, and you loved it,” A weird feeling ran up my back as he stepped away and I felt weak at the knees as he walked away. The boy had so many sides to his personality; I didn’t actually know who I was angry with.

Chapter 4

It was 6.00am- Monday 8th June. I was lying in bed, brutally and indefinitely wide-awake. Not like most teenagers on their first day back at school. I didn’t normally sit in bed with a book at 6.00 o’clock in the morning. Okay, lie, but the reading part is true. I generally don’t sleep so I sit in bed at six in the morning almost every day, unless I’m running. Today however, I was sitting in bed and reading, for a reason. To calm my nerves. Icky! School. I shouldn’t have anything to worry about really, I have a few good friends, my grades are way above average, I am ranked socially high, run track for the school team (extra curricular gets you everywhere) Help with the school council, and tutor some of the boys soccer team. (Pwahh) But somehow, this term was going to be adequately different. The new boy, Josh, was going to be in several of my classes. Mum had taken the liberty of charming the school secretary into believing she was a long distant relation in order to get hold of his timetable. We had at least three periods together, just today. Then there was the gossip about Toby which was surely going to spread, making things up to Lucy, working with my ex friend Taine who loathed my every bone, and actually having to listen to lectures on topics I already have glued inside my head, over and over again.
On the plus side, I did have my benefits where the average teenage girl did not. I could get ready in a whole of ten minutes. Imagine watching the average teenage girl getting ready in the morning, putting on her make-up, doing hair, eating breakfast, and rushing around for her books and her keys. Now fast forward that XX8, minus the breakfast and the frantic rushing around for keys etc, and I am done. I don’t even have to wash my hair. Vampire’s hair doesn’t get greasy. (I wash it anyway of course!)
I tended to my makeup as soon as I left the cosy tent that was my bed. Yes, I was naturally insanely pretty. No need to be vain, but all vampires are, though like any girl, I see it more in other vamps, and I envy human girls for not being perfect, flaws make a person, and they make them normal. That’s all I’ve wanted from this life. Normality. So that’s why I wear make-up. It’s what every other teenager does. Plant it one until their orange, spot free, eyes enhanced, lips plumped and cheeks glittered. I tend to tone it down a bit. My skin’s so white it looks ridiculous if I wear anything like foundation as my neck and arms are still as white as paper. I wear mascara; I liked a mass of thick black-as-midnight lashes. I wear red lipstick, very vampire-ish you might say, and eyeliner sometimes. That’s as normal as it gets for me.
Luckily we have a uniform. Yes I said luckily. It means I can identify myself as the same as everyone else. There’s no judging, no pointing. The uniform is simple, Blazers, shirts or polo shirts, ties, trousers and black shoes for the boys. Girls likewise but they prefer us to wear skirts as it makes us look ‘smart’. Though their definition of skirts are dorky and long; We think this is because they want us to look hideous against the teachers’ themselves- who all have terrible dress sense and most likely make their clothes themselves, and to appear unappealing to boys so that we all stay single or lesbian therefore don’t become sexually active and the parents blame them when one of us pops a kid in biology. Of course, that doesn’t apply to me so I allow myself to wear a shorter skirt then persuade the teacher’s I’m Christian and wont engage in sex until I’m married to a fat priest. Heck, I’m not against religion, but I’m not opposed to wearing granny skirts, and it’s true, I’m not going to have sex, so why not? It’s all about show and don’t tell these days anyway.
Then was the dilemma of whether to run or get the bus. Running on the one side takes my mind off things (And doesn’t ruin my hair either), but on the other side, I have to be in a decent enough mood to gather speed and I wasn’t experiencing a particularly good ‘run to school’ jibe. So bus it was. This meant my iPod was going to be removed from my sock draw and shoved in my blazer pocket.
Standing at the bus stop