With a sigh, I reached up and carefully removed my colored contact lens. Both of them gasped, but neither of them jerked away like I thought they would. “Jamie also says I have fangs, though they have never dropped,” I replied, standing so I could go to the mirror over my dresser and put my contact back in. It was still hard for me to do, but my new skills made it a little easier than it might’ve been if I were a mere human. I opened the saline I had sitting there and wetted it over the trash can before I carefully reinserted it into my eye. My friends waited patiently for me to come back.
“So… do you have to....” Lucy couldn’t finish the question, but as I resumed my seat, I knew what she had wanted to ask.
“No, I don’t have to drink blood, thank God,” I said. “So far, everything seems pretty normal except for my eye and my teeth—though I haven’t noticed any difference in those yet.” There was no way I was going to tell them about the voices. I wasn’t ready to talk about that.
“Where did you get the contact?” Emma asked.
“Christian made it for me.”
“So now you can run really fast and stuff?” Lucy’s smile looked forced, like she wanted me to stay focused on the positive, and I appreciated that.
“Yeah, I guess so. I haven’t really tried it yet.” It was sort of odd that I hadn’t felt like sprinting around to see how fast I could go or tried to break something just to see how easy it might be, but my muscles had been sore the last few days, and I think I was still in shock, doing my best to try to cling to my old self.
“You should. That’s cool,” Emma offered, which I appreciated. There weren’t a lot of things she thought were cool.
“How did your sister get away?” Lucy asked, and I was glad that we were back to the story.
“She managed to kill Zabrina with the help of a detective Giovani had kidnapped from the hospital. I guess she was locked in a cage with Gibbon, and he was trying to kill her. Zabrina had the keys to the cage, and when she got too close, Cadence ripped her head off and got the keys. She threw ash in Gibbon’s eyes and then unlocked the cage. Gibbon was so mad, he tossed her out, and then he ran away. Giovani came after Cadence, and she killed him, too.”
“Wow, that’s awesome,” Lucy said, smiling.
“What about Gibbon?” Emma asked. “Did anyone get him?”
“No, he got away,” I replied, exhaling loudly. “They’re trying to figure out where he might be.” I longed to have been able to say “we” instead of “they,” but that just wasn’t the case.
“That’s all just so incredible.” Lucy scooched back to the edge of the bed, clearly no longer apprehensive that I might bite her. “Here you were, thinking you’d just go spend some time with your sister, and everything changed, just like that.”
“Believe me, if there’s one thing I’ve learned through all of this it’s that everything can change in the blink of an eye,” I replied.
“Even your eye.” Emma had a sheepish look on her face, like she was proud of herself for coming up with that one, and we couldn’t help but laugh.
“True. Even my eye. I guess, there’s just nothing that surprises me now. If you told me Abraham Lincoln was sitting downstairs on my couch, I’d be like, I’ll get the hat polish, you know?”
“What’s hat polish?” Emma asked. “I don’t think that’s a thing.”
I rolled both of my eyes—normal and otherwise—at her. “I was just saying… I wouldn’t be surprised.”
“I’d be surprised. There’s no such thing as hat polish.” Emma disagreed.
“Would you be surprised if there was such a thing?” Lucy asked, standing up and straightening her skirt. I knew she was probably headed downstairs for more pizza. We’d rushed through dinner so that they could hear the story.
“I would be,” Emma admitted. “But I wouldn’t be if Abe Lincoln was here.”
“Let’s go see,” Lucy suggested. “And let’s go eat some more pizza.”
I stopped her just short of the door, gently grabbing her arm. “Listen, you guys. I think it goes without saying you can’t tell anyone about any of this, but… are you sure, you’re not scared of me or anything?”
“Why would we be?” Emma asked, staring at me with her forehead knit together. “You seem to be more Hunter than anything else. And like you said, if you wanted to kill us, you would’ve done it already.”
“Maybe Liam should be scared of you,” Lucy shrugged, “but we’re not.”
“Cool,” I said, letting go a breath I’d been holding unbeknownst to myself. They both hugged me, even though that was not Emma’s thing, and then Lucy opened the door and bounded toward the stairs. When that girl is hungry, you get out of the way. She’s a picky eater, but she loves her some cheese pizza. I followed along behind them, glad that even if everything else around me was completely different than it had been this time last year, at least my best friends were still the same. I’d definitely had enough surprises to last me a while. Hopefully, those would all be over for now and my poor shock system could take a well-deserved rest.
***
The football game was at home again this week, so we warmed up in front of the high school for about thirty minutes before the game—which consisted mostly of gossiping, something I’ve always tried to avoid, but really try to keep my nose out of these days since I’ve realized none of that junk is really important. I knew it was killing some of the other girls not to say anything about Liam, especially Jessica. She just kept looking at me and shaking her head, like she couldn’t believe how pathetic I am. I wanted to straighten her out but didn’t see the point. If she wanted to believe Liam White and his little black lies, then so be it.