A Sucker Born Every Minute Read online

  “That’s noble, I guess.”

  “Trust me, Whitney will be fine. It’s you I’m worried about.”

  “Why?”

  “You’re way too serious. This is a party, not a funeral. You need to relax. Laugh and smile a bit. Have a little fun.”

  “It might be easier to relax if you would back up a bit and give me some room to breathe.”

  “Ah. Am I intruding a little too much on your personal space?” He leaned forward and playfully touched the tip of his nose to mine.

  “Seeing how I just met you a few minutes ago, this is a little intense,” I said, and finally gave him a smile.

  He took a step back. “Better?”

  “Yeah. Much.” I exhaled with a long sigh.

  Ethan walked across the room to the mini fridge, knelt down and opened it. “You said you wanted a Diet Coke, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  While he was obscured by the refrigerator door, I took the opportunity to gawk at how clean and organized the room was. That, or the pronounced darkness was hiding any signs that frat boys lived there. Whitney had said that the Nu Alphas were a ‘philanthropic brotherhood,’ so I guessed they counted environmentally-friendly living among their good deeds. It seemed they were vigilant about keeping lights off in rooms not in use, and had installed low-watt light bulbs throughout the frat house.

  I turned my attention back to Ethan when I heard the pop of the aluminum tab on a soda can, followed by the familiar sound of the fizzy liquid spilling into a plastic cup. I stepped away from the door and met him halfway across the room as he delivered the drink to me.

  “Thanks,” I said, taking it from his hands. “No alcohol in this, right?”

  “Scout’s honor. Not a drop.”

  I sipped the soda, watching Ethan as he sat down on the foot of his bed. He tapped his hand on the bedspread as an invitation for me to join him.

  “I can still go find Whitney if that’s what you’re after.”

  “Jeez,” he laughed, holding up his palms defensively. “I’m just trying to be polite. I’d offer you a seat somewhere else, but this is all I’ve got.”

  He had a point. His room, while clean and nicely furnished, was still fairly small. The king size bed took up most of the floor space, leaving no room for any sitting furniture. Which was probably the whole point. I wondered how many girls Ethan had lured under his sheets with his routine that began with the ‘aw, shucks, there’s nowhere else for you to sit’ line. I doubted that he had to work this hard with most girls that he brought into his room. As I sat down next to him, he turned to face me and hit me with another smile that made my pulse quicken. There was no denying what a beautiful boy he was.

  Ethan rested his hand on my knee. I wasn’t sure what was getting ready to happen, but my heart was thumping so hard that I felt like it was going to burst outside of my chest. I took another sip of soda and clutched the cup with both hands to keep them from trembling.

  “Why are you so nervous?” he asked.

  “This just isn’t my thing,” I said sheepishly. “I don’t want to give you the wrong idea. I’m not a big party girl, and I don’t do casual hookups.”

  “Relax,” he said, giving my knee a little squeeze. “I never thought for a minute that you were a party girl, or that you were looking for anything casual.”

  “So why did you bring me into your room?” As I stared at him, my eyes went out of focus for a second. I blinked several times.

  “Don’t worry about it.” He took my drink from me and placed it on the floor. Then he cupped my face in his hands and kissed me gently on the lips. I started to kiss him back, but stopped when I realized that my head felt fuzzy. I wanted to reach up and pull his hands away from my face, but my arms wouldn’t cooperate.

  “You put something in my drink, didn’t you?”

  He bit my lower lip and tugged it playfully between his teeth. Then he traced my jawline with his lips. His mouth landed on my neck, where he kissed me again. “Shhhhh,” he said. “Relax.”

  I tried again to push him away, but my arms were too weak. They flopped loosely at my sides. “What did you do?” I whispered. “You said you and your brothers took a vow…”

  “We don’t mess with girls who have been drinking,” he said, and ran his tongue over the length of my collarbone. “I’ve been trying to ban alcohol in this house, but I guess it’s just so ingrained in the whole college experience that we can’t completely get rid of it. We don’t offer it at parties, but people bring it anyway. And a lot of girls, like your blonde friend, show up drunk already.”

  “You don’t want to mess with drunk girls, but you drugged me? How is that any diff… different?” I heard myself slurring my words and knew that I was in trouble.

  “Alcohol thins the blood. Makes it taste terrible, too.” He lifted me onto the bed, resting my head on a pillow. “I’m not after what you’re thinking.”

  “Ethan…”

  He kissed my cheek. “I’m sorry to do this to you, but I have to. I’m entitled to it. You see, I’m graduating in a few days, leaving here for good. All I want is just one night of indulgence; just one good memory of my college days to take out into the world with me. For the past four years, I’ve watched everyone else run around this campus – partying, drinking, drugging, screwing their brains out, experimenting with reckless abandon and enjoying their young adulthood with little to no consequences. I haven’t done any of that, Jerrika. I haven’t wanted to do any of that. All I’ve wanted to do is this, what I’m about to do to you right now. Everyone should have a celebration when they graduate from college, shouldn’t they? Well, this is mine. You are mine.”

  I began to cry. “What are you going to do to me?”

  “It will all be over soon,” he said.

  “No,” I wept.

  A searing pain shot through my neck. I opened my mouth to scream, but nothing came out. I wasn’t sure if Ethan had turned out the light or if I had simply closed my eyes, but I felt myself fading into darkness and knew that there was no turning back.

  • • •

  I awoke in a hospital bed. Whitney was by my side, clutching my hand and crying inconsolably.

  “Jerrika,” she said, choking on her words, “I’m so sorry. It’s my fault. I should have listened to you, and I shouldn’t have made you go to that party. I’m so, so sorry…”

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “That Ethan guy. He almost killed you.”

  I felt an intense, raw pain in my neck, and reached up to find a thick mass of bandages taped under my jaw.

  “The police can’t find him,” Whitney wailed. “He left campus right after the party and no one knows where he went. The home address in his student file is bogus. None of his frat brothers will give up any information about him. He’s gone.”

  “What did he do?” I asked. “Did he cut my throat?”

  She shook her head. “He bit you. He drank your blood and almost drained you dry.” Tears spilled down her cheeks.

  “But I’m going to be okay,” I insisted. “Right?”

  Whitney squeezed my hand. “Jerrika,” she said in barely a whisper, “he gave you VAM.”

  “What?” I blinked several times, refusing to believe what she had said.

  “VAM,” she tearfully repeated. “The bloodfeeding disease.”

  Chapter Two

  Seven Years Later

  WITH THE EXCEPTION of the new roadside billboards, the long drive into my hometown of Blue Sky, North Carolina, was just as I remembered it.

  Thus far I had counted four of the billboards. They were mounted on the right side of the highway, approximately one mile apart from each other. The message was exactly the same on each one:

  The life of every creature is in its blood. That is why I have said to the people of Israel ‘You must never eat or drink blood, for the life of any creature is in its blood.’ So whoever consumes blood will be cut off from the community.

  – Leviticus 17:1
4

  I don’t know exactly when the billboards went up. I was certain they weren’t there the last time I came home, but that was a long time ago. More than seven years, in fact; just after I had finished my freshman year of college.

  After what happened during that last trip home, I left Blue Sky feeling certain I’d never come back again. I hadn’t returned since, and would not have been on my way back now had it not been necessary.

  I graduated last year from Tarheel State University in Raleigh with my Masters of Social Work, and it was time for me to start paying off the nearly $30,000 in student loan debt that I had racked up over my four years of undergrad followed by an additional three years of grad school. I cast my net far and wide in the search for a full-time job and sent my resume out to agencies all over the country, from the Carolinas to the California coast.

  Mine was the same Catch-22 that every new college grad faces: no one wanted to give me a job without paid work experience, but the only way I could get paid work experience was to get a job. One was impossible to get without the other. To make matters worse, I was quickly discovering that having a graduate degree had overqualified me for most entry level positions that I might have otherwise finagled my way into with just a few months’ worth of summer internships listed as previous work experience on my resume.

  I was starting to get nervous when I finally received an e-mail from a lady named Agnes Rhodes. In a rather vague message, she invited me to interview for an executive director position at a small, privately owned orphanage for ‘medically fragile’ children on the outskirts of a small town in western North Carolina.

  What town? I asked in my reply.

  I remember how the blood in my veins turned to ice when she gave me the answer: Blue Sky.

  Agnes went on to share in her e-mail reply that she had assembled a search committee of community leaders to find candidates for the position. The job required a Masters-educated social worker; certain functions of the position were reimbursed with government funding if the services were delivered by someone with my degree. And, Ages added, they were looking for a Blue Sky native. Someone who understood the history and culture of the small town, and was capable of ‘building bridges’ between the orphanage and the community. It was the mayor himself who sent out a search with the terms ‘MSW’ and ‘Blue Sky’ in a jobseeker database and came back to the committee with my resume. His thumbs-up bumped me to the top of the list of returned searches.

  Which made me wonder if the mayor had included ‘no career experience whatsoever’ as a third search term. I had the sneaking suspicion that ‘top of the list’ was a very tactful way of saying that my resume was the only one that had been found, given those search criteria.

  My next e-mailed question was just as direct. What, specifically, classifies the children as ‘medically fragile,’ if I may ask?

  Yes, it is appropriate for you to ask, Agnes replied. The children are infected with the VAM virus, also known as the bloodfeeding disease.

  As yet another billboard with the same condemning message came into view, it was crystal clear to me why the ‘building of bridges’ was needed between the orphanage and the town of Blue Sky.

  “Where did all these billboards come from?” asked Whitney. She frowned as she stared out of the passenger’s side window.

  “You just now noticed?” was my reply as we passed the fifth one.

  “No, I saw the others. I’m just getting a little freaked out by the repetition. Why so many with the same message? And who put them up? There’s no name, no website, no organization listed.”

  “Gotta love that,” I sighed. “Someone feels strongly enough to put their message out there for the whole world to see, but doesn’t have the guts to take credit for it.”

  “Whoever did it… they’re idiots,” said Whitney. After a long pause, she glanced over at me. “Are you okay, Jerrika?”

  “Yeah. Why wouldn’t I be?”

  She shrugged. “Just checking, that’s all.”

  “The signs don’t scare me.”

  But going back home to Blue Sky did.

  Although it had been my home for the first 18 years of my life, it was the last place on earth that I envisioned as my home now; the last place where I felt I could find happiness. But the bills for my student loans were piling up and the lease on our apartment in Raleigh was ending. It was time to move on, and happiness would have to wait.

  “We don’t have to stay here forever, you know,” said Whitney. “We can work here for a couple of years, get some experience to add to our resumes, then spread our wings and fly elsewhere.”

  Sometimes I wondered if she could read my mind. “Elsewhere,” I nodded, “as in different directions.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “I know, but we both know that it’s the goal.”

  “Well, eventually, yeah. But it’s not like I’m in any rush. I’m with you, Jer, for as long as you need me. I’m not going anywhere, not until everything is right for you.”

  “I know. And I appreciate it.”

  A sixth billboard appeared on the side of the road. Just then, a spotlight mounted above the sign flicked on by an automatic timer, casting a bright light down on Leviticus 17:14. I pressed down on the gas pedal and watched the sign blur as we zoomed past it. The sun had just begun to set in the summer sky, so I switched the headlights on.

  “Those signs are giving me the creeps,” Whitney confessed. “These people are really out to make a point.”

  “I see that.” Another, smaller billboard came into view, and I tightened my grip on the steering wheel.

  “What the hell is wrong with these people –” Whitney stopped talking midsentence as the wording on the sign became clear:

  Welcome to Blue Sky, North Carolina

  Population 24,234

  “A little town with dreams as big as the sky”

  “Wow,” was all that I could say.

  Whitney let out a loud sigh. “Wonder when they came up with that new slogan? It’s horrible. They could at least be honest. Like… ‘a little town that’s full of bigots.’ What do you think, Jer?”

  I grinned. “I think you’ve found your calling. If I land this job and we end up moving back here, you could probably get a job with the Chamber of Commerce as their marketing director or something along those lines.”

  “I’d be good at it, too. I’m all about truth in advertising.”

  We laughed.

  “I did search online already for jobs, just in case,” she said. “Good ol’ B.S. High has several teaching positions open right now. I guess I can finally throw in my bartender towel and put my degree to good use.”

  “It’s so sad, Whit. I still can’t believe that you made more money serving drinks in Raleigh than you ever could as a teacher.”

  “Oh, I can. There’s really not much of a difference between teaching and bartending. Whether it’s a room full of drunks or schoolchildren, it’s basically just babysitting and keeping the peace. The only difference is there’s a tip jar in the bar. That’s what makes the big difference in pay.”

  “Shameful.”

  “Truly. Oh, hey, slow down. Our turn is coming up.”

  “I know. I’ve only been to your parents’ house… what, a thousand or so times in my life?”

  “It’s just easy to miss, is all I’m saying.”

  I located the old state road, let off the gas and took a right. Towering, moss-draped oak trees lined the sides of the road, obscuring the view. I realized I would have driven right past it had my co-pilot not given me fair warning. It really had been that long since I had been home.

  I could almost picture us the summer we first met. Staring ahead of me, I envisioned us as children; two little six year-old ghosts of our former selves climbing the thick tree trunks and dangling from the branches. Even then, we had been polar opposites.

  Whitney had always been fearless and full of self-confidence, with grace and beauty to match. As a child she was
tall, slender and tanned, with sparkling blue eyes and blonde hair she almost always wore in pigtails. By contrast, I was pale, short, chubby and awkwardly built. I let my curly brown hair hang loose so I could hide my dark eyes behind it whenever I felt the need to be quiet or shy, or just wanted to disappear from the world around me.

  Which was often.

  I glanced over at my best friend in her tube top, cutoff denim shorts and flip-flopped feet on the dashboard. Minus the pigtails, not much had changed about her over the past 20 years. My eyes flicked to the rearview mirror and I stared at myself, wishing the same could be said about me.

  I was still pale, still had the same dark eyes and chestnut-brown hair.

  But I wasn’t chubby anymore. I hadn’t been since my freshman year of college. At five foot four, I was 100 pounds soaking wet. I missed the softness, the curves of my former body. They had been replaced with taut skin over sharp, angular bones. I often wondered if I was the only woman in the world who longed to return to a heavier size again. Life had been so much easier when friends hadn’t felt the need to stage interventions to ask me if I was using drugs, and doctors hadn’t started off my appointments by asking me if I had ever been diagnosed with an eating disorder.

  When those same doctors would read my medical history, their eyebrows would shoot up on their foreheads. They would nod with understanding and nervously grab for a pair of latex gloves from the dispensers on the wall before they’d even shake my hand. I always found that odd. They were doctors, after all. They were supposed to know better; that they couldn’t get the disease just by touching an infected person.