call, cited in many animal behavior books.
And I’ll see.
He will, girlfriend. I feel it in my bones.
Irma was playing Marie LaVeau now, the infamous New Orleans Voodoo priestess. That was the nice thing about having an inner girlfriend since before puberty; she could be multicultural.
I drove away with a pounding head, not even noticing where Ric Montoya had gone. But I had his number. Literally. Hooking up with a “just normal” guy would be great for a change.
Between the pulsing of every blood vessel in my head and trying to remember my way back to the Araby Motel in the dark, I didn’t notice anything different about me until I felt a telltale warm trickle between my legs.
Shit! I was either having my period off-schedule, which would be weird because I’d been on the Pill forever to control killer cramps, or I was really, really into Ric Montoya. Or vice versa.
Or maybe both, if they didn’t cancel each other out.
Oh, joy.
Chapter Ten
I woke up the next day and checked the Araby Motel’s scratchy sheets first thing.
My panties had passed the period test last night. No blood. My dreams had been vaguely gory, sometimes a prelude to my periods, but the sheets passed too.
No “virginal” spot of blood, m’Lord. She is fit to marry a King. Of course she could just be pregnant . . .
I sighed, trying to come to grips with my sudden new Sunset Park side: sexy chick.
I’d always tried to act like a hip modern girl, especially once I’d got out into the working world, but sometimes I thought I was an oddball escapee from some forgotten fairy tale. I didn’t remember a lot about my “wonder” years when things like hormones and periods and what guys might want appeared on the horizon.
Any shrink could tell you that never being adopted might lead to self-esteem issues. On top of that, my vamp-attracting coloring meant I’d had to stand up solo and secretly to the older bad boys who kept recycling back to the orphanage from foster home after foster home. All of them had long tails of initials in their case files, and half of them were OOW (out-of-wedlock) unwanted half-vampire spawn.
Every jaunt in and out of the institution just made them nastier.
Our Lady of the Lake convent school was a relief in
getting away from the bad boys, being a girls’ school, but
the other students all had homes and families and their own
venom-tongued ways of tormenting someone different.
By the time I hit college, working like a stevedore to earn living expenses, a social life was an afterthought. Somewhere, sometime after my institutional stays, I had the impression that I was no longer a virgin, in terms of not bleeding if you pricked me. Imagine how the fairy tale would have gone if Sleeping Beauty couldn’t bleed? But I didn’t remember when or how or who. Or what.
I also didn’t remember a couple of heavy drinking college parties very well either. Maybe then. Whatever had happened, if it had, I came out of it with memory loss, nightmares, and such an aversion to vampire lunges and to lying on my back that the dentist had to work on me sitting up.
During my last year at the group home, my dreams of a humiliating and terrifying “alien abduction” pelvic exam began, mixed up with vamp boy attacks. That drove me in high school to the underground drug sellers for the “others.” A lot of teen female werewolves had period difficulties during their “change,” and I could get the Pill without a prescription or a pelvic, since many doctors still wouldn’t treat supernaturals. No one ever questioned my supernatural credentials. They were selling meds like street drugs. Besides, who would want to masquerade as an outcast? All this shady rigmarole to get the Pill made me feel neurotic and squeamish and childish. From what I’d heard, women my age had abortions with less angst than I produced for a P.E.
So it wasn’t that I didn’t want male company or affection or that I didn’t dream that someday my
And I’ll see.
He will, girlfriend. I feel it in my bones.
Irma was playing Marie LaVeau now, the infamous New Orleans Voodoo priestess. That was the nice thing about having an inner girlfriend since before puberty; she could be multicultural.
I drove away with a pounding head, not even noticing where Ric Montoya had gone. But I had his number. Literally. Hooking up with a “just normal” guy would be great for a change.
Between the pulsing of every blood vessel in my head and trying to remember my way back to the Araby Motel in the dark, I didn’t notice anything different about me until I felt a telltale warm trickle between my legs.
Shit! I was either having my period off-schedule, which would be weird because I’d been on the Pill forever to control killer cramps, or I was really, really into Ric Montoya. Or vice versa.
Or maybe both, if they didn’t cancel each other out.
Oh, joy.
Chapter Ten
I woke up the next day and checked the Araby Motel’s scratchy sheets first thing.
My panties had passed the period test last night. No blood. My dreams had been vaguely gory, sometimes a prelude to my periods, but the sheets passed too.
No “virginal” spot of blood, m’Lord. She is fit to marry a King. Of course she could just be pregnant . . .
I sighed, trying to come to grips with my sudden new Sunset Park side: sexy chick.
I’d always tried to act like a hip modern girl, especially once I’d got out into the working world, but sometimes I thought I was an oddball escapee from some forgotten fairy tale. I didn’t remember a lot about my “wonder” years when things like hormones and periods and what guys might want appeared on the horizon.
Any shrink could tell you that never being adopted might lead to self-esteem issues. On top of that, my vamp-attracting coloring meant I’d had to stand up solo and secretly to the older bad boys who kept recycling back to the orphanage from foster home after foster home. All of them had long tails of initials in their case files, and half of them were OOW (out-of-wedlock) unwanted half-vampire spawn.
Every jaunt in and out of the institution just made them nastier.
Our Lady of the Lake convent school was a relief in
getting away from the bad boys, being a girls’ school, but
the other students all had homes and families and their own
venom-tongued ways of tormenting someone different.
By the time I hit college, working like a stevedore to earn living expenses, a social life was an afterthought. Somewhere, sometime after my institutional stays, I had the impression that I was no longer a virgin, in terms of not bleeding if you pricked me. Imagine how the fairy tale would have gone if Sleeping Beauty couldn’t bleed? But I didn’t remember when or how or who. Or what.
I also didn’t remember a couple of heavy drinking college parties very well either. Maybe then. Whatever had happened, if it had, I came out of it with memory loss, nightmares, and such an aversion to vampire lunges and to lying on my back that the dentist had to work on me sitting up.
During my last year at the group home, my dreams of a humiliating and terrifying “alien abduction” pelvic exam began, mixed up with vamp boy attacks. That drove me in high school to the underground drug sellers for the “others.” A lot of teen female werewolves had period difficulties during their “change,” and I could get the Pill without a prescription or a pelvic, since many doctors still wouldn’t treat supernaturals. No one ever questioned my supernatural credentials. They were selling meds like street drugs. Besides, who would want to masquerade as an outcast? All this shady rigmarole to get the Pill made me feel neurotic and squeamish and childish. From what I’d heard, women my age had abortions with less angst than I produced for a P.E.
So it wasn’t that I didn’t want male company or affection or that I didn’t dream that someday my
Similar Books
