Suck It Up by Brian Meehl

bun top on the burger. “You’re a vampire.” She lifted it and squeezed juice onto the plate. “But we’ve got plenty of drippings.”
    â€œPortia,” Penny cautioned, “don’t be rude.”
    â€œRude? Who’s being rude?” She dropped the burger back on the plate. “It’s my night to make dinner. You don’t show. You don’t call. Then you come home with some goth who doesn’t even know how to dress the part.” She glared at Morning. “I mean, what’s your angle? Are you the coming of the antivampire?”
    Morning returned her glower with a pensive look. “Yeah, that’s one way of looking at it.” Before she could fire her next shot of venom, he turned to Penny. “You know, maybe I should stay at a hotel.”
    Portia’s eyes bugged wide. “What? He’s staying
here
?”
    â€œJust for one night,” Penny explained.
    â€œMom, I have to study. I can’t babysit him!”
    â€œNobody said you had to. I’ll entertain him.”
    â€œWhy should you entertain him when he could be a lot more entertained in a hotel room?”
    â€œHe’s too young to stay in a hotel by himself.”
    â€œYou put
me
in a hotel room by myself.”
    â€œThat’s because you snore and I needed a good night’s sleep.”
    â€œOh, great!” Portia eye-rolled. “Now he’s going to spend the night with his ear plastered to the wall waiting to hear me snore.”
    â€œDon’t be silly.”
    â€œDon’t be naive, Mom! He’s a teenage boy so saturated with testosterone he thinks anything a girl does is a turn-on!”
    Their cross talk was interrupted by the metallic pop of a ring top. They both snapped toward the sound. Morning’s silver case rested on the countertop. He held a small can with no label. Birnam had given him several unlabeled cans of Blood Lite for use before he came out to the world. He stuck a straw in the can and took a drink. The straw turned magenta.
    â€œWhat’s that?” Portia asked.
    He swallowed. “It’s like a protein drink.” He gave her an impish smile. “We’re all recovering from something. I’m a recovering eater.”
    Penny laughed.
    Portia didn’t know whether to laugh or call Bellevue to have the kid who really thought he was a vampire carted away in a straitjacket, with a two-jacket option to have her mother taken away as well for bringing home such a whackjob.
    Morning took another sip and stared at Portia. It was the first time he’d seen her when she wasn’t talking or chewing. She was prettier than he’d first thought.
    Portia stared back. Just because he’d cracked a good joke and thrown the ball back in her court didn’t mean she was going to look away. What really bugged her was the difference between his eyes and the rest of him. Everything about him—his gangly arms and legs, his plank of a body, his disheveled mop of hair, and his whiskerless face—said nerdy, attitude-riddled kid trying to slog his way across the messy flypaper of teendom. But there was something in his dark brown eyes that didn’t go with all that. It was like his eyes were older than the rest of him.
    Before she could decipher who he was, and what he was up to, she took her ball and left the game. “While you and the”—she air-quoted—“‘vampire’ are down here yukking it up, I’ll be studying.”
    Morning noticed that she air-quoted with just her index fingers. He wondered if in the ten months he’d been away from the city single-digit air-quotes had become the new thing.
    She grabbed her plate and climbed the spiral staircase off the kitchen. Portia was defaulting to her number one rule when meeting a guy for the first time:
Assume the worst.
Or more explicitly, every guy you meet is coming to bat to get to first, second, third, or all the way