Trembling time

“ Damn waste of my time talking to you Cari. You have no idea what your talking about do you?”
Wes heaved a great sigh raking spindly fingers through his rich black hair, tousling it effectively, before pinning me ineffectively with a glare. “ What?” I snapped in reply, annoyed at his absolute refusal to listen.
“ Listen stop being an ass for two seconds and listen ok?”
“ An ass?” he gaped incredulously. I didn’t know why he was pulling that innocent front on me. There was no one here to impress and he was translucent as his glasses to me.
“ See. Your displaying your ass side when you parrot me like that!”
His lip curled in annoyance and he reached up to rake his hair again and finding it ruffled released another melancholy groan and attempted to straighten it again.
“ I don’t see why I hang out with you”
“ Your just a masochist that’s all” I gave him a leering smile that nearly split my chapped lip in two.
“ Don’t worry. I wont tell.“
Damn lip. I thought as a side note, I could taste the battery acidic tang of blood on my teeth. I hate the taste of blood.
“ If I was a sex-addict or a murderer or any of that you would run with it for weeks. “ he snarled fighting and losing a battle to the dark foul tempered beast perched leisurely on his head.” it’d end up on a tabloid before I had even finished telling you. That’s why you’ll never be a blackmailer. You’ve got lips made of mesh. “ Get away fat-head. Your just riling it up” I ordered and batted his hands away, leaping into the fray, and combing out his tangles with my nails.
“ Such pleasantness. “ he said closing his eyes smartly. “ Is this what its like to be married?”
I biffed him over the head with one fist, which wouldn’t have actually been painful if I had let go of his scalp first.
“ Ahh! Cari!? Jeez!”
Wincing I stared at the black hairs wrapped around my fingernails. Hair on the head is cute, pretty or in worse cases, annoying. But hair off the head is evil. I shook it off my hand like it was a roach.
“ Sorry buddy” I cooed watching his face for real anger. He just looked wounded which was worse. I rubbed his shoulder comfortingly.
“ You should be confined somewhere. I don’t think you’ve had all your shots”
I shrugged good-naturedly warm relief thawing my blood down to normal levels. Humor was good. At least I could make him laugh.
“Well whatever I’ve got you’ve caught it by now, all the hanging out with me, you know. Bad for the cells.”
“ But seriously Cari” my friend began dark eyes on me like a lions gaze rests on some helpless gazelle. “ I don’t understand this empathy you have for vampires but I try to respect it. Usually. But tonight were going to a real fancy ball. My fathers big affair and your not my girlfriend so I can’t order you but-.”
“ Oh thank god” I gasped, swooned and collapsed onto the bed in a dead faint.
Or that’s what I would have done had we not mentioned the vampires. At this point I knew that humor had made its dramatic exit out of conversation. I knew he was going to ask me to do something I would hate. I knew he was going to ask because he trusted me to do it. Or at least to try. I thin I owed him that. For sticking beside me so long I think I owed him to be a better person. I wish that were as simple as it sounded.
But I am not a nice person.
I am not nurturing or comforting or compassionate.
But I could rise to this challenge.
“ Say no more. “ I said passively. “ I will avoid all the staff tonight”
His face melted into a warm mousey little smile.
“ Oh. Cari… thank you”
“ But- “ I said cutting him off with more venom in my tongue than was really necessary. “ if a vampire addresses me. Or I’m forced to talk to one, I’m not pretending. I’m not going to be uncivil just because the rest of the world is. “
He opened his mouth but I must have been wearing a concrete expression because his words died in his mouth. He gave me a tentative sort of smile. “ Alright. Fine. Just try okay? That’s all I’m asking” I looked down at the sparkling blue dress that I was currently trying to hide under my bulky black sweater. I couldn’t find my feet under the rippling fabric. A disappointing drawback to being short and wearing dresses.
“ You look-”
“ You say I look nice and ill hit you again.” I snapped, red with self-consciousness. He smiled at me glasses catching the light and blinding me.
“ I was just gonna say you look like you just hauled yourself out of a mosh pit but if you prefer-”
“ Nah stick with that one” I quipped linking my arm in his straightening his hair one last time and fastening a loose cuff.
“ I can come up with a cool alibi and everything. Think that they’ll buy that I’m a 80 year old child molester in a rockin’ body suit?”
He laughed in his mousey way. He looked way too young for his tux with his face genuinely happy like that. Then too quickly he was pushing the door open and hauling me out into the dimly lit hallway. My heart filled with cold dread and some sort of fear fiend snaked its way between my ribs and into my stomach where it clenched something there.
I wouldn’t be able to pull this off. I wouldn’t be able to stand the sight of those poor people. Being treated like animals. Being treated like slaves. I would ruin the evening. I was standing on a precipice and I knew I was going to fall. And take all my loved ones with me.
All of this because I didn’t believe that the dead don’t still have feelings.
That they can’t fell abuse and neglect.
Because I wouldn’t give up on them the way everyone else had.