Without a Sound

By the time we were finally done and were heading back to the car, I was absolutely exhausted. However, I still wasn’t done asking Celia questions. I waited until we were on the road to ask, “How did you and Gerard become vampires?”

Celia’s eye sparkled. “You can imagine all the things we felt when Mikey told us what he was and…” She paused, looking darker. “And what he did. Fear, wonder, awe, remorse, even jealousy for him being immortal. After a lot of thinking, we decided we wanted it too. To be honest, I think part of the reason Gerard wanted it was because he didn’t want Mikey to be alone when we eventually died.”

I was slightly surprised. Gerard was more thoughtful than he appeared to be, apparently.

“We asked Mikey to do it,” she told me.

My mouth dropped open. “Mikey changed you?” I asked in disbelief. I didn’t buy that. He was way too against it.

Celia chuckled at my expression. “I understand your surprise,” she said smugly. “Trust me, he strongly refused at first. I don’t really blame him. In his eyes, becoming a vampire is almost as bad as dying.”

“I think he believes it’s worse than dying,” I replied.

“Ah,” Celia retorted knowingly, “not quite. Maybe for him, but he would’ve rather had us become vampires than die.”

“How do you know?” I demanded.

“Because he chose,” she replied simply. “We told him that if he didn’t change us, we would go find another vampire to do it. He knew that would be dangerous, so he did it himself.”

I nodded, still unable to believe it. I leaned my head against the window and began to doze off. I jerked awake suddenly. After passing all the people with blood in them and still being able to sleep, I couldn’t sleep now. I felt the blood in Mikey’s veins.

Celia was extremely amused at this. “I still can’t believe you know it’s him just from his veins already,” she said, shaking her head.

“I think my senses – including my blood sense – were intensified while I was locked up,” I answered simply.

She took my answer at first, but she kept glancing at me curiously. I was sitting on the edge of my seat now, having a hard time concentrating on anything but Mikey.

“Have you memorized my vein patterns?” she asked.

“Uh, no… Sorry,” I answered reluctantly. “Maybe I just know his because he was the first person to be very close to me, maybe it’s because I drank his blood so many times, or maybe it’s because I’ve spent so much time around him and so little time with other people. I don’t know.”

She seemed not to know how to answer that, so we drove on in silence. I was fidgeting by the time we were on his rather long driveway. Celia was biting her lip, forcing herself not to laugh at me.

When we were close, Mikey got off the porch swing and ambled slowly towards the car.

“Hey, Mikey,” Celia called to him when we got out of the car.

“Hello, Celia. Welcome back, Charlotte.” He reserved an extra big smile for me. “Did you have fun?”

“Lots,” I replied.

“So much that we’re beat,” she added appropriately. I guess she was as tired as I was.

“Do you two want to go inside while I unload all your bags?” he asked us.

Celia shook her head. “No, we’ll help you unload them, and then I have to go.”

He nodded. It took us a few trips to take all the bags up to Sylvia’s room. After we set them down on the floor, Mikey glanced at the closet, grimaced, and muttered, “I’ll take care of that later.”

Celia and I looked at each other, but neither of us said anything about it.

“I should get going,” Celia said quickly, looking at her watch for effect.

“Alright. Thanks for taking her shopping,” he replied.

“Thanks for everything,” I added, smiling slightly.

“It was no problem. Call me, okay Charlotte? Even if you don’t have much to say.” After winking at me with the eye Mikey couldn’t see, she left.

Mikey looked at me strangely for a little bit. I tried to follow the feeling of Celia’s blood as she left and talk to Mikey at the same time.

“Are you hungry?” he asked.

“Celia fed me. Did you eat?” I countered.

“I wasn’t hungry.”

I frowned. So he wasn’t eating when I wasn’t here. I didn’t like that.

“Come on, then, let’s go watch a movie,” he urged, taking a step closer to the door.

I eyed the bed longingly, but I hadn’t seen Mikey all day. “I’m tired,” I explained.

“Please?” he pleaded. “You can fall asleep on the couch.”

I sighed dramatically. “Oh, okay,” I agreed, “but only if you make a whole lot of popcorn for both of us to eat.” For you to eat, I corrected conspiratorially in my head.

He rolled his eye. “Fine, I get it. Hold on. I’ll be right back.” He started to walk towards the door.

“Wait,” I said, reaching out to him. He turned around and came back, a questioning look on his face. “Thanks for letting me use your money,” I said gratefully.

“Money doesn’t mean anything,” was his answer. At that moment we both twitched involuntarily. Celia was out of our range, which meant we were out of hers. If that made any difference.

Taking a step closer to me, he added, “She didn’t bother you, did she? She didn’t tease you or made fun of you about anything?”

“Of course she did, but it wasn’t that bad, really,” I said curtly, not mentioning that she’d made fun of his cooking.

He took my hand. “Come on. Let’s get that popcorn.”

I was laying on the couch with my had on the arm and my knees curled up to my chest. Mikey was sitting at my feet. I was asleep five minutes into the movie. I don’t even remember what it was about.

When I woke up, something heavy was in my lap, but it didn’t scare me. After slowly prying my eyes open, I saw that it was Mikey’s head. His hand was on my knee, too.

It wasn’t a bad feeling. In fact, I kind of liked it, but that wasn’t the reason I wasn’t going to wake him up. I didn’t move a muscle as I looked down at him for fear of awakening him.

He just looked so serene, completely at ease. His eyes didn’t move rapidly behind his lids, he didn’t toss and turn, his face was smooth and showed no pain, and he wasn’t sweating. He was actually sleeping the way he claimed he never did.

The hours passed quickly. Soon the sunlight coming through the window made its way to his face, and he began to stir.