I woke up from the nightmare at last.
I was sure it was another crazy dream. But my mind was filled with hazy thoughts. My head throbbed, my body ached. But at least, I was relieved knowing that it wasn't true. I craned my head to see my mom standing by my bed. Strangely, the room was too blinding bright that it made even a healthy person look sick. And the white fluorescent light stung my eyes, causing me to flinch away.
Mom quickly switched the lamp off, leaving just a dim of the yellowy one above the headboard. She was wearing her long white coat with a stethoscope hanging around her neck. If I still remembered it clearly, that was how she looked in her doctor uniform. It took me a while to collect my thoughts and realized where I was.
Of course, this place wasn't my room- with all the white walls, white sheet and the weird smells that got me on the verge of nausea. The hospital. This sure did not brighten things. I knew something was up.
"Mom?" I barely recognized my own voice. It came so airily weak.
"I'm right here, honey," she said in a grievous tone. "Everything's okay." Her reassuring voice contradicted with the painful look on her face. Her eyes had no light in them. That gave me alarm. I tried to sit up, but Mom stopped me.
"You'd better rest some more."
"Mom, why am I here?" I looked around myself in confusion. I had no memory of coming to this place. "Why am I in the hospital, mom? I remember that I was dreaming...about being really sick..." then I trailed off.
Something just clicked together as if my intelligent light bulb had been switched on. Why would I end up in the hospital if I was just dreaming about being sick? Unless it wasn't...
Suddenly, a horrible flashback rushed into my mind. I recalled the night we went to the carnival and then we were trapped by a street gang. Soon after that, I turned into something else, something, something ugly, except I had no idea what. I must have blacked out after that.
"Oh, mom!" I gasped, sitting up, "What's happened to me?" I began to panic; feeling the lump in my throat rise.
"Calm down, honey," she came to hold me, smoothing my hair gently, "Calm down. That's okay, it's normal." But I pulled away, wanting to know what was wrong with me.
"What was it, mom? What was it?" I insisted while tears began to well up in my eyes, "Why did you say 'it's normal'? No, mom, it's not normal. Why did I feel like...like... I'm a monster! Mom, get away from me!"
I shrunk back, shaking her hands off, but Mom came to grasp me again, trying to calm my sobbing. She held me in her arms for what seemed like forever, until I stopped choking on my emotional outburst that Mom decided to let me go. She took my hands in hers and looked me in the eyes. It seemed as if she was going to reveal the latest discovery of the eighth wonder.
"Vivienne, What you've been through...it's called 'Awakening'."
I blinked and then blinked some more.
But nothing logical came into mind. Even every neuron in my brain was racing back and forth searching for something related to Awakening, there was still nothing I had learned in school, had anything to do with this term.
"Is that a name of a new disease?" I asked in a shaken voice.
"No!" Mom said, "Honey, you don't catch any disease."
She bit her lips like she was trying to find the right word. Then she continued in a low whisper.
"In fact, you inherited it."
"I did?" I said. "How do you think I inherit it?" I asked.
My mom came to sit on the bed with me. She seemed to age a year older than I remembered, but the smell of the medicines that clung to her clothes couldn't affect the sweet motherly scent I recognized.
"I'm so sorry, honey," she said with a heavy sigh, "I did not expect it to come so early. I thought you could enjoy your human life longer."
I turned my face sharply to her.
"Wha...what...what do you mean?"
"I have spent almost seventeen years trying to protect you, but we still couldn't escape this fate," She went on in a scratchy tone, "Now I guess it's time that we have to come to terms with this."
Mom brushed a strand of hair from my face. She looked hesitated like she didn't know where to begin, but finally, she gave me a sad smile.
"It's because..." She finally said. "Your dad wasn't... a human."
I felt my heart drop a notch downward. My eyes goggled out while my mouth hung open like a goldfish. I wanted to say something for the sake of disbelief, but shock really got the best of my speech.
"Then...then what was he?" I asked, half wanting to know the answer, but half not wanting to know any of it.
"He was," Mom spoke at a slow rate of words, "- a vampire."
"Oh," I breathed and nodded back, but after the word sunk in, I jumped, "A vampire!!?"
"Sssh!...be quiet, honey," Mom hushed me, "Don't freak out. It's normal."
"No, mom! It's not! If my dad was a vampire, then what am I exactly?" I whined, feeling the icy shiver running down the back of my neck. I started to shake as if the whole place suddenly turned into a giant freezer.
Mom quickly wrapped her arms around me and gently rubbed my back. She was trying to stop me from purring like a drowned cat.
"Well, I'm a human, and your dad was a vampire, so what do you get according to Mendel's theory?"
I guess Mom just wanted to make things lighter by dropping an easy quiz on me, but now I couldn't find my strength to speak anymore. Mom had to lift my chin to make me look up and answer her.
"A hybrid," I replied at last.
"I assume you still do well in biology," She smiled dryly back.
"Do you mean I'm half-human and half-vampire?" I gulped to my own question.
"You already know the answer, sweetheart," Mom let out a short sigh, "After what happened to you, there's no doubt that you have inherited a vampiric gene. And now, well, you already experienced the Change."
"But mom, Mendel's beans didn't show any changes in color or form, at least not until their second generation, but I'm still the first generation!" I argued.
"It didn't show any change, that's why it made you look human for all these years," Mom said with a sad look on her face. "But it doesn't skip the next generation to show up. Somewhere in your body lied a sleeping DNA. And when it is awakened, it would spring out and changed your physical qualities. But you still have your human characteristics. Vivienne, you are a half-breed born from different true-breed parents, you have to accept who you are, and that's that, honey."
"I still don't get it," I murmured as if no amount of IQ in my brain could answer it.
"Honey, I can only tell you that the vampire genetics works like a caterpillar in the cocoon. This way it is not much stranger to explain how caterpillars turn into butterflies."
I wish there was someone who would lie to me about it or make up a story about it. I had lived all my life thinking of myself as nothing other than an average human being, but before I knew it, I became a creature that has to sink its teeth into people's flesh like a freaking leech. Then it hit me like a strike of lightning. I turned to my mom who was watching me digest the truth in my head."Mom, how did I get here? Where are Alyssa and Cammie?" My voice cracked with emotions."We found you lying unconscious in Alyssa's car," She told me and took a deep breath, "You have no idea how much that frightened me.""What was that, mom?" I asked."There was blood all over you," Mom spoke in a quiet tone. I could almost see the dreadful momen
Octavia walked gracefully forward, looking as sizzling as ever.She came to stand at the foot of my bed."Octavia? What are you doing here?" I asked cluelessly, but then I remember the fight and how she had helped us escape. "Oh my, don't tell me you get hurt, are you okay?""I'm good, thank you," she responded quickly. Octavia did look composedly unharmed. I let out a sigh of relief."Then why are you here in the hospital?" I asked again, feeling even more confused. Suddenly things began to make sense. I turned to look at Mom again."Mom...""She knows," she answered the question in my eyes.
How strange it was just to wake up in the morning. There was something creeping beneath the layer of my skin, in my pulse, racing through my body. I felt so much stronger, and that scared me.As I sat watching the dust motes dancing their way through the cracks of the window, the sound of light footsteps approached the door."Good morning, sunshine," my mom said pleasantly as she entered the room. A huge smile stitched across my face, but then there was something I seemed to come to."What's wrong, honey?" she asked, reading my face."Well, it's just that, 'sunshine' sounds too ironic for a vampire," I told her with a weak shrug."Oh, Vivienne," Mom brea
The next day was shining bright and blistering hot. Even with my sunglasses on, I could tell there wasn't a single pack of clouds in the sky. Standing before the sensors of the Ultara gate, I kept telling myself for a zillionth time that no one knew it, no one expected it."You look nervous," a melodious voice uttered behind me. I almost jumped out of my skin. I craned my head around to see Octavia in her usual dazzling self. She smiled innocently at me."What do you want?" I snapped."Viv, I just want to apologize about yesterday," she said, using my short name as if she owned it."Apology unaccepted," I muttered back. And when the laser scanners flashed green and the steel door slid open, I quickly walked off without giving a second
I was pretty convinced that I wasn't going to survive the lunch period. It seemed as if there were loudspeakers attached to every corner of the hall. And whenever someone walked past me, I found myself clenching my fists and held my breath.The mixed scents of the place were too mind-boggling. I forced myself to walk, but I always saw figures flitting in and out of the corner of my vision. My vampire instinct was begging me. My teeth were itching so bad, I just wanted to bite something, and that horrified me to no end. It took every ounce of my willpower to keep to myself. Now, I was starting to worry about these innocent freaks. They didn't know their lives were completely exposed to jeopardy because of my existence."Vivienne, you look as if you were watching a bunch of cannibals," Cammie said, jerking me to my sense
After lunch, I told Cammie that I wasn't ready to pick up Karate yet, and she believed me without a doubt. And that was because I had unfolded Octavia's note and read what she said in the finest penmanship I've ever seen.Meet me at the library,—OI cringed. What makes the girl think I would answer her call whenever she wants? She also drew a smiley face with fangs popping out. I was going to rip the note, but then I remember she had saved me with a tube of sunblock. I sighed in defeat. Besides I also wanted to go to the library in the first place. Maybe I should just go and get it over with.A moment later, I found myself wrapped in the crispy smell of gazillions books and dried wooden shelv
Finally, my seventeenth birthday arrived. Cammie and Alyssa agreed to come over to my house tonight to celebrate. But now as I was concentrating on the components of human cells and chromosomes on my lab table this morning, I sensed a rush of electric wave radiating from someone sliding into the chair near me. I turned to see an angelic face that belonged to no one but Octavia."What are you doing here?" I asked surprisingly."I'm taking a biology class," she simply said with a smirk. "So how's everything?""Still torture," I said truthfully. "But I'm getting better at it now.""You are," she agreed in a quiet tone. For some reason, her approval made me smile with pride. Then, Ms. Grace, our professor appeared. She wore her usual lab
We gathered at my house after school. Cammie and Alyssa had got the wildest decoration I'd ever seen in my house. I had to keep saying 'No' to five tiers of king-size cake that Alyssa was trying to get for me. Cammie had put sunflowers and balloons and a dozen birthday hats and tooter things, even though there were only a few of us attending the party. But the most ridiculous thing of all was, my two best friends spent a good portion of time dressingme!"Please, don't tell me to look at myself when you're done," I said while Cammie was applying some eyeliners and lip gloss on my face."You have to be a Cinderella tonight," Cammie told me."Well, then you both can be my stepsisters."