The Dorkiest Vampire

My mother happily drove me over to the Vespasien’s home around three o’clock in the afternoon Saturday. The plan was that I would eat supper with the Vespasiens and then hang out with Mick until about nine o’clock in order to get in some good viewing with the telescope. Ritchie spent the majority of the morning about Mick being my boyfriend, while my mother and father insisted to him that boys and girls could just be friend. It was funny enough when, after he finished teasing me, Ritchie scampered off to take Sue-Beth to the bookstore for the remainder of the afternoon.

I was increasingly nervous the closer we got to the Vespasien’s house that afternoon. Mick had been over to our house several times in the past, but I had never been over to his. I wondered what type of home his strange family lived in, especially after all of the rumors that cropped up about how they had decorated and renovated St. Françoise House over the summer.

Mom pulled the car to a stop in the circular drive ay right in front of the wooden steps leading to the wrap around porch. She offered me a comforting smile as we both got out of the car and headed up to the front door. I had never really been over to hang out at a friends house before, mainly because before Mick came to town, I didn’t really have any friends. Sure, there had been plenty of playdates during my childhood my parents had forced me on, but those didn’t count since most of the other children didn’t want to play with me and I didn’t really care for them either. After ringing the bell, the door was immediately thrown open by Louise Vespasien.

“Good afternoon,” she drawled in her European-sounding accent. “Welcome!” She invited us in and the called for Mick so he would know I was here.

“Your home is very lovely,” my mother said.

“Thank you,” Mrs. Vespasien smiled. “I’m so very glad you could come. Michael should be coming down the stairs any minute now. Can I offer you anything?”

“Oh, I don’t want to be any trouble…” my mother smiled. She glanced down the hallway. “Is that side table an antique?”

“Yes, one of the many pieces we acquired from Europe,” Mrs. Vespasien nodded. “Would you like the grand tour?”

“That would be lovely.”

Mick sheepishly appeared on the stairs and made his way over to where I was standing. He looked up at his mother nervously and then to mine as well before his eyes went back to rest on the floor. Mrs. Vespasien put her arms comfortingly around her son’s shoulders and smiled.

“Michael, dear, be so kind as to show Riley around?” Mrs. Vespasien said softly. “I’m going to be taking her mother around downstairs to show her the house.” Mick nodded before motioning to me. I followed him down the hallway as our mother’s started to talk about home décor.

“Sorry about my mom… she gets really excited when people know their antiques…” Mick blushed.

“My dad’s a historian and my mom’s a home decorator,” I replied. “They love antiques, so don’t worry. So, what do you wanna do?”

“Well, I still need to fish the telescope out of the attic,” Mick shrugged. “I’ve kind of been forgetting to do it. How about I give you the grand tour first, though?”

“Okay,” I nodded.

Mick showed me the back of the first floor first, including the locked office his father spent most of his time in, the family game room with tons of video games, high end stereo equipment, and a pool table. There were two living rooms downstairs and a library as well as the massive dining room and kitchen. There was a small trap door in the floor of the kitchen, which Mick said led to the wine cellar he wasn’t allowed to go in. We rounded up the main large staircase where Mick showed me his parents’ bedroom, the guest bedrooms, his mother’s arts and crafts room and finally his bedroom.

I had never been in a teenage boy’s room before, with the exception of my brother’s, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. Instead of having posters of cars, sports figures, and pretty girls on this wall, I was relieved to find Mick had movie posters from several super hero films, a bunch of cartoon and video game related paraphernalia, and his floor was littered with various books, graphic novels, and clothes. He seemed a little embarrassed about the mess and then quickly ushered me back into the hallway.

“So… I guess we should find the telescope,” Mick said. “It’s up in the attic.”

“Alright,” I nodded.

I followed Mick to a small, winding metal staircase in an easy to miss corner of the second floor. The staircase had cobwebs and creaked if you put too much weigh on one side or the other. At the top was a door so thin and short, it was a wonder any normal human being could fit through it. Once inside the attic, we were met with musty smells along with boxes and boxes of items, old furniture, and tons of antique furniture that seemed much too large to fit through the tiny attic door.

“I’ll begin looking over here and I guess you can start over there,” Mick shrugged. I nodded and commenced the search.

After filing through some fifty-year-old newspapers, a bunch of boxes with old cassettes and videotapes, and several tons of Christmas decorations, I found an old trunk. It was must and looked like it was ancient. I managed to open it up with a quite but creaking noise to find a collection of woman’s things that looked out of another century. There was a beautiful white nightgown, a pair of kid skin gloves, and a fan. There was also a tiny bottle of perfume with just a little bit left in it. I thought about opening it up and sniffing it, but decided against it.

“Who’s did these belong to? Did they come with the house?” I asked Mick curiously. He looked over to where I was sitting, frowned, and then looked away.

“No,” he said, keeping himself preoccupied in looking for the telescope. “Those things belonged to my sister.”

“I didn’t know you had a sister,” I said, looking around for a picture or something. “She must like old things, huh?”

“Yeah, I guess,” Mick shrugged. “I never met her…”

“How could you never meet your own sister?” I asked, puzzled.

“She died before I was born…” Mick replied. I thought back. His parents did look a lot older than mine. It was possible they could have had a daughter a while back.

“What happened?” I asked before pausing and adding: “if you don’t mind me asking…”

“I don’t really know,” Mick shrugged. “My parents never really want to talk about it. They had to when I found her stuff in the attic of one of our old houses and I started asking questions. They never kept any photos of her out or anything… I’ve only pieced it together from things I’ve overheard now and then… I guess it was hard on them…”

“I guess it should be,” I nodded.

“Anyway, apparently, she fell in with a pretty bad crowd of people and got suckered into some stuff…” Mick shrugged.

“Drugs and alcohol?” I suggested. Mick shrugged again, neither confirming nor denying my suspicions.

“Anyway, she did something… I don’t know what and someone was killed because of it…” Mick said. “And it gets really fuzzy after that… I hear different stories from both of them. My mom always said she couldn’t live after she caused an accident that killed someone she cared about. My dad said she died in the accident too… It’s almost like they don’t know what really happened to each other…”

“That’s horrible,” I said.

“Yeah,” Mick nodded. “My parents had a hard time having kids, so they thought she was the only kid they would ever have. Then, about five years later, I came along and basically shocked them.”

“That’s probably why they’re so overprotective of you,” I replied.

“I guess,” Mick shrugged. He tossed aside some empty boxes. “Oh, here’s the telescope…”

I helped Mick lug the telescope down the thin attic stairs and to the balcony where we set it up for later viewing. As I helped Mick set up the stand and adjust all of the knobs, I wondered what it must feel like to know you had a sibling you had never met, you had died long before you even came into existence. I felt a deep sorrow for Mr. and Mrs. Vespasien, thinking they had lost the only child they would ever have and now probably living everyday with the fear their only son might fall victim to a similar fate. It made a lot of sense why they went to such great lengths for Mick’s safety and happiness, uprooting and moving to places they felt he might be more comfortable.

Once we had finished up setting up the telescope, we headed downstairs to eat dinner with the family. My mother had gone and the two of us helped Mrs. Vespasien set the table and then bring in the various dishes she had prepared. Mr. Vespasien emerged from his study halfway through and helped us finish setting up. I had a soda with my meal while Mr. and Mrs. Vespasien opted for glasses of what appeared to be wine. Mick had a bottle of his weird mineral water. Steak was for supper and while mine was well-done, I couldn’t help but notice that the Vespasien family as a whole seemed to opt for rawer meat.

“So, Aurelie,” Mrs. Vespasien smiled, “are you getting adjusted to high school well enough?”

“Yes ma’am,” I nodded, “though I think it helps a little that I have my older brother there to look out for me. I’m glad he is nice instead of trying to avoid me or make things worse.”

“Michael is enjoying school as well,” Mrs. Vespasien smiled, “aren’t you, mon petit écureuil?” Mick blushed a little and his father waved his mother off.

“Louise, we’ve been over this,” Mr. Vespasien rolled his eyes. “Mick is not a little boy any more. You need start treating him as a grown up.”

“Il sera toujours mon petit garçon.” Mrs. Vespasien intoned. Mick seemed to try and hide behind the flower arrangement on the table.

“Ne pas embarrasser le garçon, Louise. Il a un ami ici.” Mr. Vespasien said annoyed. “En outre, il est trop vieux pour être votre peu écureuil.”

“Il sera toujours mon petit écureuil.” Mrs. Vespasien huffed indignantly. I noticed Mick was now as red as I had ever seen him. I wasn’t sure what his parents were talking about, but I had a feeling it had something to do with Mick being embarrassed by how much his mother babied him.

“Can we please talk about something else?” Mick begged them.

“I apologize, Aurelie,” Mr. Vespasien said, shooting a glare at his wife. “We don’t usually hold conversations in other languages when we have guests present.”

“It’s alright,” I said, looking sideways at Mick, who seemed to want to slither under the table and die. “Thank you for having me over, by the way. Your home is lovely.”

“Thank you, my dear,” Mrs. Vespasien smiled warmly.

“How are your studies?” Mr. Vespasien asked. “Mick has said you are studying short stories?”

“Yes,” I nodded. “Things like ‘The Most Dangerous Game,’ ‘The Interlopers,’ “Harrison Bergeron’ and ‘the Scarlet Ibis.’ We’re supposed to be doing some O. Henry this week as well as some other passages in our literature book.”

“I remember reading ‘The Most Dangerous Game,’” Mr. Vespasien mused. “The one about the hunter that hunts human beings?”

“That is a disgusting story,” Mrs. Vespasien snorted.

“I think it has a valid psychological point,” Mr. Vespasien said. “About brain over brawn and that sort of thing.”

“I like ‘the Necklace,” Mick grimaced.

“Guy de Maupassant,” Mrs. Vespasien swooned slightly. “Now he was a writer.” Mr. Vespasien looked at her with a slight arch of her eyebrow.

“I’m partial to Edgar Allan Poe,” I shrugged. “I’m looking forward to doing the Twain and the Aesop fables. We’re supposed to be starting our mythology unit soon.”

“Well, I am very happy to know that the school is affording the both of you a decent education. A challenging one, even,” Mr. Vespasien said. “You cannot place a price on a good education.”

From that, the dinner talk shifted to Mrs. Vespasien’s latest arts and crafts projects and Mr. Vespasien’s recent long distance conversations with various friends, former co-workers, and the occasional relative., especially one Aunt Bérengère, who the mere mention of seemed to make Mick shiver. After pestering Mick to finish his vegetables, Mrs. Vespasien brought out a French silk pie for dessert. Once we finished dessert, Mr. and Mrs. Vespasien went to have coffee and read in the library, allowing Mick and I to continue with our telescope adventures.

“I’m sorry about my parents,” Mick blushed. “They’re… not used to other people being around. Hence why they don’t seem to know how to avoid embarrassing me.”

“It’s alright,” I said. “Parents are embarrassing. It’s sort of a law of science or something.”

“Thanks for understanding,” Mick said quietly.

“What was your mother calling you?” I asked.

“What?” Mick said, worriedly.

“She kept saying… what was it? Oh, ehnikyulary?” I frowned.

“Éécureuil,” Mick said with perfect pronunciation. “Mon petit écureuil.”

“Yeah. What does that mean?” I asked.

“She’s calling me her little squirrel,” Mick said embarrassedly.

“That’s cute,” I assured him.

“Not when she does it in front of the entire eighth grade. And again at a PTA meeting,” Mick grimaced.

“Hey, my mom didn’t stop calling me Riley-Poo in public until two years ago,” I replied. “I can sympathize.”

We played video games in the den until the sun started to go down and then we went up to where the telescope had been set up. Mick calibrated it just right and moved it around, allowing me to see various constellations and planets up close. The moon was particularly amazing with how well the craters showed up. We also got a decent look at Venus and somewhat blurry look at Mars. We spent about an hour outside before it started to get chilly.

After that, we packed up the telescope and headed inside so Mrs. Vespasien could take me home. Mick rode along, probably to prevent his mother from saying anything awkward to me on the ride. My mother greeted her when we arrived and the two chatted after Mick and I said our goodbyes and I slipped into the house. I was heading up to my room when my grandfather stopped me in the hall.

“You have fun with that weird kid?” Grandpa asked.

“Yeah,” I nodded. “He’s got a pretty nice telescope. Could see all sorts of things, especially since it was a pretty clear night.”

“He didn’t try to pull anything, did he?” Grandpa asked.

“No,” I shook my head.

“Wimp,” Grandpa scoffed before musing a moment.. “Eh, you probably would have knocked his lights out if he had, though. Smart kid then.”

“Goodnight, Grandpa,” I rolled my eyes.

“Night,” Grandpa smiled, giving me a tight hug before I went off to bed.