Melissa de la Cruz - Bloody Valentine

“This guy bothering you, Legs?” Bendix Chase asked, happening upon them as the third bell rang.

“Did this guy just call you ‘Legs’?” Charles gaped.

“It’s all right,” Allegra said, sighing. “Bendix Chase, I don’t think you know my brother, Charlie.”

“Freshman?” Bendix asked, pumping Charles’s hand. “Good to meet you.”

“No. We’re twins,” Charles replied icily. “And I’m in your Shakespeare seminar.”

“Sure you guys are related?” Bendix winked. “I don’t see the resemblance.”

Charles turned red. “Of course we’re sure. Now, if you’d excuse us,” he said, turning away and pulling Allegra toward him.

“Hey, hey—there’s no need to be rude,” Bendix said mildly. “You dropped your book.” He handed Charles back a textbook that had slipped from his hold when he’d fallen to the ground. Charles neglected to thank him.

“There really isn’t, Charlie,” Allegra agreed. She moved away from him to stand next to Bendix, who swung an arm around her shoulders.

“I believe we have a Latin midterm today, my dear,” Bendix said. “Shall we?”

Allegra allowed the popular jock to lead her away. She would never have done so except that Charles had been so irritating. Served him right. She left her twin, who continued to stare at them, alone in the quadrangle.

Allegra was a top-notch student, but she was horrible at Latin. She found it difficult to differentiate the bastard Red Blood rendition of the Sacred Language from the real thing, and was constantly messing up. Latin had declensions and three genders, which just didn’t make sense to her. She could never keep the real language of the immortals straight from its human, quotidian version.

She stared at the angry red D –circled on the top of her test paper. That sucked. If she didn’t keep up her grades, Cordelia would pull her out of Endicott and put her back in Duchesne. She would be right where she started: a virtual prisoner of her mother’s grand expectations for her future and her future contributions to their race. Seriously, Cordelia spoke like a World War II demagogue sometimes. Not that Allegra had been in cycle then, but she read the Repository reports.

“Phew, that’s ugly,” Bendix remarked, upon stealing a look at her paper.

“What’d you get?” she asked, arching an eyebrow.

He waved his A+ in her direction with a smug smile.

Ugh. Why did he have to be so annoyingly perfect? There was nothing Allegra despised more than the word “perfect,” other than the people who personified it. She hated when people called her perfect, when they couldn’t see past her looks, past the waves of lustrous blond hair and the sun-kissed tan and the body. Why anyone could make such a big deal of such superficial things, she would never understand. She thought everyone was beautiful—and not just in some ridiculously saintly way wherein she believed everyone had a beautiful soul. No. Allegra truly believed most of the people she met were beautiful to look at—who cared about a few pounds here or there, or a crooked nose or a weird mole? She loved looking at people. She thought they were gorgeous.

She was just as bad as Bendix when it came down to it, wasn’t she? She was perfect to look at, and on top of that, she liked everybody. Sometimes she was so tired of being herself.

“I can help you with Latin, if you’d like,” Bendix offered as they gathered their things and began to make their way out of the classroom.

“You’re offering to tutor me?” That was new. A Red Blood offering to teach an immortal vampire new tricks. Charlie would sneer. Allegra shook her head. “I think I’ll be okay, thanks. Just have to bone up on my nouns.”

“Up to you. But you might not be aware, since you just transferred here, that if you don’t keep up a decent average you can kiss the field hockey team—and the division cham-pionships—good-bye,” Bendix said, holding the door open for her.

The man had a point.

Over the next few weeks, Allegra met Bendix at the main library for Latin lessons every other night. What started out as a sincere effort between the two of them to help Allegra learn the language, slowly turned into long and far-reaching discussions about anything and everything: the quality of the food served in the refectory (atrocious), their thoughts on the Palestinian crisis, whether “Abracadabra” by the Steve Miller Band was the worst or best song ever written (Bendix was for best, Allegra voted worst).

One evening, Bendix leaned over the Latin textbook and sighed. His blond bangs fell in his eyes, and Allegra stifled a desire to reach over and push them off his forehead. “Your folks coming up for Parents’ Day next week?” he asked. “You’re from New York, right?”

Allegra nodded and shook her head at the same time. “Mother is coming, of course. She’d never miss it. My dad…is away.” That seemed the easiest way to explain Lawrence’s absence. “You?”

“Nah. My mom has this board meeting, so she has to stay in San Francisco. Dad can’t be bothered. Wouldn’t want to interrupt his art.”

“Your dad’s an artist?”

“He makes found sculptures. So far he hasn’t sold one, probably because they look like trash. But don’t tell him that.”

“It doesn’t sound like you like either of them very much,” Allegra said, feeling sympathetic. She was very fond of both Lawrence and Cordelia. It was just that she hadn’t seen Lawrence in years, and Cordelia had morphed into a shrill, nervous old lady.

“That’s the thing of it. I do like my parents quite a bit, but they’ve never had a lot of time for me. Oops, did I say that? I hate when I get self-pitying.”

Allegra smiled. She opened her Latin textbook. “If you want, I’ll share Cordelia with you. She just loves meeting my friends. But I can’t speak for Charlie.”

“What does your brother have against me, by the way? I never did anything to the guy,” he said, looking concerned.

“Oh…he’ll…get over it,” Allegra said. She coughed. “Anyway…back to Latin?”

“So, are you guys dating or what?” Birdie asked, when Allegra came home to their shared bedroom that evening shortly after midnight.

“Dating? Who? What are you talking about?” Allegra asked, blushing slightly as she put her books away. They never did get to declensions. Instead they had spent the evening talking about the merits of growing up in San Francisco versus New York. Allegra, a lifelong Manhattanite, had argued that “the city” was infinitely superior in every way—in cultural offerings, museums, restaurants—while Bendix defended the city by the bay for its foggy weather, inherent beauty, and liberal politics. Neither of them had been able to convince the other.

“You mean me and Ben?” she asked Birdie. “You think we’re a couple?”

“Oh, it’s ‘Ben’ now. Soon you’ll be calling him Benny,” her friend teased, rolling an herbal cigarette. It was the latest fashion. Allegra didn’t mind, except that it stank up the room, and Birdie tended to spray too much air freshener to cover it up during inspection. As a result, their room always smelled like a toilet.

Allegra grimaced. “Ew. Not a chance. We’re friends .”

Her roommate blew a huge smoke ring. “Please, everyone sees how you guys act around each other.”

“What? Are you kidding me?”

“Besides, you guys look ridiculously perfect together,” Birdie said with a grin. She had heard Allegra’s rants against the “p-word.”

“Good lord!” Allegra shuddered. She just did not see Ben in that way. She liked having someone to talk to, and enjoyed his company. Besides, they could never be together—she could never have feelings for him, not in that way. Birdie was a Red Blood; she didn’t know what she was talking about.