The Fledgling Read online

sure?” She moved in closer and pulled down one side of her halter top.

  The voice, the way she walked, and now that he saw her face full on…he stood up from his leaning posture, startled. “Michele? Michele Smith?”

  The girl froze in her steps and her eyes widened in surprise. She suddenly looked very girlish in spite of her provocative clothing and heavy make-up. “Oh no, you can’t know me,” she moaned in a pleading voice. She squinted and as a car turned a corner, its headlights shone on Marcus’ face. She gasped.

  “We go to the same school,” he said. Michele Smith – also a senior and in a few of his classes - what is she doing here, and dressed like this? Michele Smith was the type of student who blended in with the background. A mixed-race girl, she wore her thick, dark hair so that it always shadowed her face, no make-up, and dressed in baggy sweatshirts over loose-fitting jeans. Nevertheless, he had noticed her and her keen intelligence. With his well-developed aesthetic tastes, he recognized her innate beauty, invisible to most of the others at school. Line up all the girls at Beacon and remove their make-up, and Michele would outshine them all. He had never approached her because he sensed her desire to remain unnoticed.

  “No we don’t,” she said quickly. “I mean, what school do you go to, and that’s not my name.” The husky timbre of her voice increased to the high-pitched tones of anxiety.

  “Michele,” he said gently. “I know who you are. We have English together, and you sit two tables over in biology lab.”

  Her shoulders slumped and she covered her face with her hands. He thought she might be crying.

  “Hey, hey,” he said, still more gently, and walking up to her, he put his arm around her shoulders and guided her over to the wall of the building. He eased himself to the ground, pulling her to sit down next to him.

  She leaned forward over her knees, buried her face in her arms, and now sobbed openly.

  “Why are you crying? Hey, if you don’t want anyone to know you’re a prostitute, don’t worry. I’ll keep your secret.” He soothed her as best he could, rubbing her hunched shoulders.

  Michele choked on a sob, gulped, sniffed, and then sat up straight, brushing beneath her nose with her arm, and then wiping away the ruined mascara beneath her eyes with her fingers.

  “Why would you keep my secret, Marcus D’Capilla?” she asked in a tight voice.

  “You do recognize me.”

  “Of course,” she sniffed out. “How could I not recognize the hottest and most popular boy in school?”

  He ignored the rhetorical question. “Why wouldn’t I keep your secret?”

  “Because it could be the best joke of the year.” She shrugged in resignation, her brow creased in a frown.

  “Michele, you’re not a joke. I promise, really, I will not say a word of this.”

  She looked over at him with hope painfully transparent in her eyes. “You know how much fun the kids at our school would have with this.” She shuddered. “Me, a plain little nobody working as a hooker?”

  “They will never know; at least not from me,” he assured her once again.

  “Truly, you promise?”

  “Absolutely.” He smiled and reached over to press her hand. “And you’re not a plain little nobody.”

  She sniffed deeply, and then returned his smile with a weak one of her own. “You noticed me at school?”

  “Of course, didn’t I just tell you what classes we have together?”

  “Oh…thanks, I guess.” She looked down at her lap and tugged her short skirt as far down as it would go, about mid-thigh. Of all the kids at school, why did it have to be Marcus who discovered her secret profession? Marcus, who treated every girl at school with respect, who was not ashamed of his intelligence, and who had an aura about him of being something special – even as he hung out and joked mundanely with other kids. Sure, he was incredibly good-looking, but it was not his looks that had attracted her. It was something else…the kindness, his acceptance of kids who were different? She really didn’t know what made up his magnetism. What is he doing here? “Um, so what are you doing here?” she asked.

  “Waiting for my parents; they’re still in the club.”

  “Your parents brought you here?” Michele asked in a skeptical tone.

  Marcus realized his mistake, that it would certainly be unusual for parents to bring their underage child to an over-twenty-one club. “Uh, well, they’re trying to track down my uncle and keep him out of trouble. This is one of his hangouts.”

  “What does he look like? I know all the regulars and I can tell you if I saw him go in tonight,” Michele said, watching him with a suspicious look.

  “He has brown hair and brown eyes,” Marcus said, thinking that sounded pretty neutral.

  Michele squinted at him and tilted her face as if to study him from a different angle. “No way,” she said under her breath to herself. “I never made the connection before. I mean, you were at school, and he comes here…but that’s why he seemed familiar to me.” Her eyes flew open, and color drained from her face as she scooted herself away from him.

  “What is it?” Marcus asked, confused at the sudden scent of fear emanating from her.

  “You look like your uncle,” she stated, “and that must be your aunt, the beautiful blonde lady who comes with him. You were the person who went in with them tonight. I only saw your back, but you’re wearing the same clothes.”

  “Those are my parents,” Marcus said without thinking.

  Michele’s hands flew up to cover her mouth, as she stared at him in horror.

  “What is it?” he asked again. “What is wrong?”

  “I know what you are,” she said in a squeaky voice.

  Marcus’s heart jumped and then thudded at her statement. She can’t possibly know! “Uh, a senior in high school?” he tried to sound light and unconcerned.

  “Please don’t bite me,” she squeaked again.

  She knows! “Michele, don’t be absurd. Why would I bite you?”

  “I tell you, I know what you are. You look just like your father, and a little like your mother too, and I saw them one night. I was with a client in the alley; one who likes to do it standing up, and I could see over his shoulder. Your parents walked by and some thug tried to jump them, but it turned out your parents jumped him. I saw your father bite that man. It happened so fast, but he was dead.” The words spilled out as Michele told the story she had kept to herself because she knew no one would believe her. But the incident haunted her thoughts day and night since she had witnessed the scene. “You’re a vampi…”

  “Sshh, sshh,” he hushed her, and caught her hand as it dropped from her mouth. “I’m not going to bite you. I promise.” She stared at him with wide, frightened eyes. Very pretty gold-brown eyes, he noticed. “We don’t like that word. We prefer Sangranista.”

  “You admit it, you are a…”

  Marcus leaned in and kissed her softly on the full lips of her open mouth, to silence the objectionable word. Another lesson from his parents: kisses from their kind worked on humans with an almost hypnotic effect; soothing their fright and gaining their trust. It seemed to be working. The shocked look of terror in her eyes melded into one of pleasure and adoring curiosity.

  She suddenly shifted onto her knees, grabbed his face and returned the kiss with a deep and passionate one of her own. “I’ve wanted to do that ever since the first day I laid eyes on you, Marcus D’Capilla.”

  Marcus studied the girl in her blotchy, ruined make-up, absurd wig, and ridiculous clothes. I like her! The kiss had been incredibly sweet! Marcus had made out with many girls of varying levels of skill at kissing. But he thought right now that this spontaneous, passionate, and genuine kiss was the best he had ever experienced.

  “Michele,” he said her name and liked how the word passed over his lips. “I know your secret and now you know mine. I promised to keep yours. Will you promise to keep mine?”

  She gazed at him with an expression of trust. “I promise.”
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  He smiled at her and she smiled back.

  “Well then.” They both shifted back against the wall, their shoulders touching. “Why are you working out here as a ‘lady of the night’?”

  “It’s complicated.”

  “Okay, I’m listening.”

  “Well, um…” Michele chewed on her lower lip as she considered how much of her personal life she wanted to reveal to Marcus. “Okay, I want to go to Columbia University. It’s expensive, you know.”

  “True.”

  “I need a job where I can make enough money for tuition and stuff. I’d never save enough money if I worked the usual kinds of jobs high school kids can get. Have you ever heard of anyone paying their way through college working at a place like McDonald’s?”

  “No, I guess not.” Marcus had never actually thought about having to work. He tilted his head, watching Michele nervously picking at the hem of her skirt. “But you’re smart. You should be able to get a scholarship or grant or something. There’s always student loans.”

  “Yeah, my grades are good…straight As; but they’re not good enough to get me a scholarship.”

  “Why not? You can’t get better grades than that.”

  “Because to apply for a scholarship you have to have your parents fill out all kinds of forms about their financial situation, like tax statements. My mother is basically a prostitute. How is she going to explain her income if I could even get her to fill out a form? She’s never filed taxes in her life.”

  “What about your dad?”

  Michele huffed out an