Аманда Хокинг - Wisdom

On my end, the conversation was awkward. I’d taken advantage of her, like she had been some drunken one night stand, and that made me feel dirty in all the wrong ways.

Towards the end, she thanked me for biting her.

“As strange as it sounds, that’s the closest I’ve felt to anyone in a really long time,” Jane said. Her voice was tinny from the bad connection with the landline at the rehab center. “I don’t mean in a perverse way, but… Everything I did, I was just looking to feel like someone cared about me, I think. And you were the first person that ever did. I could feel it.

“So, thank you.” She laughed nervously. “God, that sounds so stupid to say. But whatever. I’m really gonna work this shit, and I’ll be out in a few weeks. And then we totally need to go shopping.”

After that, we managed to fall into something that felt like what our friendship had been, before Jane went crazy partying and I went crazy with vampires. She called me a few more times when she was in rehab, and she wrote me a few letters.

She was getting better. She was going to be the Jane that I had missed for the past three or four years. She was going to be my best friend again.

We got the first flight out of Australia, and the twenty hours of flying didn’t help anything. I felt like some kind of stiff zombie the whole way.

Even Milo had shed a few tears when he found out, but I couldn’t muster any. I couldn’t seem to feel anything.

The flight had given me plenty of time to try to sort through my feelings of denial. Milo tried to talk about it. When that failed, he tried to talk about anything at all, but I couldn’t make myself talk. I felt blank inside.

It just didn’t seem possible that Jane could be dead. With all the stuff she had been into lately, I always half-expected her death, but I never really believed it would be real. I talked to her last week, and she was doing so much better. She was finally getting her life on track.

Jack waited for us at the airport. He stood at the bottom of the escalator, looking uncertain.

When he saw me, his whole face lit up, but there was still an unusual sadness in his blue eyes. I jogged down the escalator, pushing past people that swore at me, and I dove into his arms. I wrapped my arms and legs around him and let him lift me off the ground.

“I’m so glad you’re home,” he said into my hair, holding me to him. It wasn’t until that moment that I was able to cry.

Milo drove the car back to the house so I could curl up in the backseat with Jack.

Jack and I had made plans to move out a few months ago, but once everyone took off, we didn’t have any reason. We decided to stay in the house for as long as we lived in Minneapolis, but it was looking like it wouldn’t be for that much longer. Probably just until Milo finished the school year.

It was unbelievable how much I had missed home. I would’ve cried out of relief if I wasn’t already crying. Jack helped me carry my things up to our room. I curled up in his arms on the bed, and he stroked my hair.

“What happened?” I asked when I had myself under control. I’d talked to him once on the phone before we left, but the connection was sketchy, so he hadn’t been able to say much about Jane.

“I don’t know all the details,” Jack said. I had my head on his chest, so his voice rumbled in my ear. “I only read about it in the paper.”

“It was in the paper?” I tilted my head up at him.

“Yeah.” He hesitated, and his worried eyes met mine. “I heard about it on the news, but I didn’t know it was Jane until Olivia called to tell me about it. Then I read about it in the paper.”

“Oh my god!” I sat up, and he kept his hand on my back. “What the hell happened where it was in the paper and the news and Olivia called?”

“You remember that girl they found in December?” Jack sat up a little more, but he did his best to remain as calm possible. This bothered him more than he’d openly admit, but I could feel what he felt, so I knew.

“That wasn’t Jane. I’ve talked to her since then,” I said quickly. Hope surfaced, but he shook his head.

“No, that wasn’t Jane,” he said. “But since that girl died, they’ve found two more just like that. I guess it’d been on the news, but I hadn’t been paying that much attention.”

“What does that have to do with Jane?” I asked.

“These girls were killed in a certain way, left in a certain way.” He rubbed my back, preemptively comforting me. “The police won’t give out specific details, but they’ve all been teenage girls, around your age. And they’ve all been left out in the open in downtown Minneapolis.”

“What do you mean?”

“Usually, killers hide their victims, I guess, but these ones have been laid out on the sidewalks,” Jack explained. “Jane was left on the sidewalk on Hennepin Avenue. Olivia saw the police when they found her.” V, the vampire club that Olivia owned, was right off of Hennepin.

“You mean…” I swallowed hard. The room started to sway, and Jack put his arm around me. “A serial killer murdered Jane?”

“Yeah, that’s what they think.”

“It wasn’t a vampire?” I looked up at him.

“I don’t know. Olivia couldn’t get close enough to find out but nobody really knows much of anything. The paper had a lot of rhetoric, but not a lot of fact.”

“Well what did they say?”

“They were profiling the victims, and the police talked about all the efforts they’re making to stop this.” He studied me, and I stared down at the bed. “It’s not your fault, Alice. Whatever happened with Jane. You didn’t do anything.”

I had introduced Jane to vampires and brought her down the path with me. It’d be impossible for me not to take some of the blame about what had become of her.

“Did the paper say when the funeral is?” I asked, ignoring him.

“Tomorrow, at four. Did you want me to go with you?”

“I don’t know.” I shook my head. “I don’t even know if I want to go.”

“Why wouldn’t you go?” Jack asked.

“Because I’m a vampire!”

Just sitting didn’t feel right anymore, so I stood up, and Jack watched me. I paced the room and pulled at the sleeves of my sweater. My hair felt greasy and sweaty, and I needed to shower and sleep.

But I wanted to run and move. I wanted to do something that mattered, that could fix what happened to Jane.

“Alice.” Jack didn’t get off the bed, but he moved to the edge so he could reach out and touch me. He held out his hand towards me, and for a minute, I didn’t want to take it. I felt like crawling out of my skin.

“I don’t know what to do,” I said. “I don’t even know what to feel. I mean… Jane pissed me off, a lot. She could be so vapid and willfully stupid that I’d want to smack her.

But she was so loyal. And all the shit she’s been going through the past few months, that’s my fault. I brought her into this!”

“Alice, no,” he shook his head. He took my hand and tried to pull me to him, but I refused. “Jane already had problems. Before this, it was drinking and sex.”

“But drinking and sex aren’t what got her killed!” I yelled.

“You don’t know what got her killed,” he said gently. When I tried to turn away from, he took my other hand and forced me to look at him. “I’m not saying that you and Jane were the greatest friends, but you cared about her and did the best you could by her. And she knew that, and she cared about you too.”

That only made me cry harder, and I let him pull me onto his lap. Normally, his love overpowered my emotions, but I could only feel my own guilt and confusion. Jack held me in his arms for a long time. The exhaustion of the trip wore me down, and I fell asleep.