Jane Jones by Caissie St. Onge

Then I realized: if I just held on to my pass and said I’d forgotten to turn it in, I probably wouldn’t get into any trouble. If anybody even asked at all. I decided my day had already been long enough. I tucked the pass into my notebook, and when I reached the library, I just walked past the door and out the north exit of the school. The air, I noticed, was colder than I was.

five
    “Honey, I’m home!” I yelled as I banged through the back door of my house into the empty kitchen. When you’re a teen vampire stuck in a suburban wasteland, it’s the little things like being a smart-ass that really keep you going.
    My mother appeared in the doorway, finger to her lips. “Jane, your father is sleeping!” she hissed. “What are you doing home? I thought you were spending the last period of school reading quietly in the library.”
    I get it that mothers come equipped with some kind of sixth sense that tingles when something is up with their offspring, but this was a little ridiculous. Had decades of mom experience allowed her to actually start reading my thoughts? “How did you—”
    “Mrs. Rosebush from the school called.”
    “Oh, God …”
    “She said she was concerned because she heard youvomiting in the bathroom after lunch. I’m sure there must be some kind of mistake.”
    “No, I was in the bathroom. And there was puke.”
    “Jane, those kids didn’t goad you into drinking blood again, did they?”
    Logically, due to my being conscious, my mother must have known that wasn’t the case, but why not take an already embarrassing situation and compound it by bringing up another recently embarrassing situation, right?
    “No, Ma. They didn’t.”
    “Then why on earth were you sick?”
    I knew she wasn’t going to drop it until I gave her an answer, yet I still tried to avoid it. “It’s a long story, Ma.”
    She folded her arms. “Well, I’ve got all the time in eternity to hear it, so go ahead.”
    I sighed heavily. Scientists theorize that people sigh when they have low oxygen levels in their bodies. I theorize that teenagers, both human and vampire alike, have low oxygen in their bodies due to parental smothering.
    “I took a bite of a sandwich and I threw up. That’s it.”
    “A sandwich? Jane, you see your father come home from work feeling sick just from the smell of human food. What would possess you to take a bite of a sandwich?”
    I had been trying to keep my voice low so I wouldn’t wake my father, but frustration overwhelmed me. I said,louder than I should have, “
Ma!
I was working on a project with a boy over lunch. Just like you’re always pushing me to do. He’s a regular boy who brought a sandwich from home, made by
his
pushy mother. When he noticed I wasn’t eating anything, he pushily insisted that I share it. He wouldn’t drop it, so I had to take a bite. End of story!”
    Her face softened a bit, almost imperceptibly. She resumed speaking in a low tone.
    “I’m just very concerned. I know you’re almost a century old and it seems like you’ve been through everything. But because of who you are, and what you are, you still think like a child thinks—an intelligent and gifted girl, but still just a girl nonetheless. It worries me that you could be so easily pushed into doing things that you know will be bad for you.”
    I didn’t raise my voice again. There was no need to shout what I was about to say. “Well, you know what, Ma? It worries me that you can’t see the truth of the situation I’m in. You don’t want me to be pushed into anything unless it’s you doing the pushing. You want to have absolute control over my life and you’re constantly telling me what I should and shouldn’t do,
but
it’s the very things you tell me I should be doing that are getting me into trouble. Sometimes I wish you weren’t in my life at all.”
    The instant I said it, I wanted to take it back. I assumedthat my words would reignite her anger, but the way her forehead