"Doing much today?"

"It's Saturday. Saturday morning I hang out and read. You know that."

I clutched the phone like a lifeline.

"Harold," I whispered into it. "I've got to come over. I've got to talk to you."

."Oh man! You've gotten to be such a drama queen. Ever since you got that part. What's wrong now! I'm reading the new Keith Laumer, and it's way good."

"I promise you," I said. "It's serious!"

"Can't we just talk on the phone?"

"Okay," said Harold, resignation filling his voice. "Come over and I'll make some sandwiches for lunch."

"And tea. Lots and lots of strong tea."

"Sure. I can arrange that."

I put the phone back into the cradle and heaved a sigh and a shudder.

I went back into the bathroom. My bathrobe was bunched up around my neck. I opened it.

The bite marks were still there. The swelling had gone done quite a bit, and the pain was gone. But yes, there they were two bite marks.

Not only had the pain gone, but, physically, I actually felt pretty good. My mental state, of course, was quite another matter.

Last night after I'd taken a look at the marks, I'd just taken some aspirin and stumbled back into bed. I was convinced that I was having a nightmare. I got into some pajamas, and buried myself in sheets and blankets and pillows, a blessed numbness flowing over me.

It hadn't been long before I was asleep. Not, fortunately, a sleep of nightmares, but a deep and dreamless sleep.

When I awoke, I felt great.

A feeling of peace and contentment covered me like a full length blanket. Often as not when I wake up, I'm a mess. I feel rotten, tired and cranky. I just want to throw my alarm clock at the world, tell it to go away and bury my head in my pillow. But not this morning. Now, I felt peaceful and refreshed, as though I'd slept the sleep of a baby.

Until, that is, I'd remembered about my neck.

I'd groaned. I felt a pang of fear.

A shiver went through me.

But the sun was coming in through my drapes, and I still physically felt fine. No, better than fine. I laid back in my bed, my arms tight around my pillow, and other thoughts swept through me.

I thought about that kiss.

I thought about my lips on Emory's, and how it felt. I thought about my body against his. I had never felt anything like that before, and now it wasn't so much a memory, as a flashback. It was overwhelming, enveloping. Something so immersive, I lost myself again.

That was, until I felt a little stir of pain in my neck again.

"Oh my God," I said.

And so to that mirror again, and so ascertaining the state of the tooth marks upon my neck.

After talking to Harold, I hurried back to the bathroom, where I took a long, hot shower. Then, bundled back up in my voluminous robe, its hood up and concealing the gaping holes in my neck, I hurried back to my room and closeted myself.

"What's wrong with me!" I muttered to myself as I sat at my desk, gazing at a pile of gothic romances. "I should be stricken with dread and horror. I should be quaking in my loafers!"

I went to the window and stared out.

The day was not gloomy.

In fact, the day was rather - nice.

It was one of those winter days after a snow storm when the air is clear and clean. Any clouds were long gone. A benign sun hung high in the sky. A family of robins were swooping about in the walnut and elm trees in the back yard. I opened the window and took a deep breath of the cold air. It was deeply full of the rich smell of wet soil and of the humps of snow that marched off into the woods at the beyond the neighboring house. Somehow, amidst the snow, I could taste the promise of spring, I could smell the seeds promising to sprout in April.

I blinked.

I shut the window.

What a rush. I felt very good, very good indeed!

And I had to talk to Harold. I just had to!

My bedroom was suddenly a prison that I had to escape from.

I dressed quickly. Fortunately, I had plenty of clean turtleneck sweaters. I selected a black one and donned it. Then a pair of jeans and tennis shoes. Brush hair, get coat....

I managed to avoid contact with parents and brother. Harold's house was quite a walk, but fortunately the roads were quite clear, so I took my bike. I suppose I could have borrowed one of our two cars as I had gotten my driver's license last month before Christmas, but frankly I didn't want to be tied to getting back home any time soon, and besides I really didn't like driving a car, especially with all the snow and ice about.

No, my bike was steady and sturdy and would do just fine.

And so it was that about a half hour later, I pedaled past Crossland Senior High. It sat like an alien spaceship from a planet of weird geometry newly landed in a winter wonderland. A ragged plume of gray smoke wound up from its top, reaching for the blue sky.

Everything seemed very solid and real now, but somehow all the same, everything felt brittle and unreal. Hidden deep in the shadows it would seem, were hidden levels of reality like caverns under rocks.

I shivered and peddled all the harder. I wanted to get to Harold's where I would feel safe.

The spell of insecurity passed just as soon as a pulled into Harold's driveway. I parked the bike in his breezeway and rang the door. His Dad, smoking a cigarette and dragging a big comfy book with him, smiled at me and let me in.

"Good day, Rebecca. I understand you're here for lunch. A basement lunch, I presume?"

I should hope so, I thought. I couldn't talk to the rest of Harold's family about what I had to say.

"We've really been enjoying your jazz records," I said.

"So I hear! That surprises me!"

"I think we'll listen to some Miles Davis or John Coltrane today."

"Be my guest, young lady! Be my guest!" he said, stepping aside and ushering me in.

Harold was in the kitchen making some baloney and cheese sandwiches, slathering on the Guldens' mustard thick.

"Just don't give me any of your special brand of cheese," I said.

What Harold would so was to take a pack of Kraft American cheese, the kind with thick individual slices. He'd take the slices out of the pack and then leave them in the refrigerator, exposed to the chilly Frigidaire air. In about a week or so the orange of the cheese would turn an angry reddish color and the cheese would get hard as a shingle. When they were ready, Harold would love to eat them this way.

"You don't have to worry about that," said Harold. "Those are mine, all mine." He patted a slice of caraway seed rye into place on the plate, then plucked out a couple of gerkins. "Milk as usual?" He asked.

"Sure."

Harold got out a tumbler and poured me some milk from a glass returnable half gallon bottle of High's milk. We'd walked to the store a few blocks away. The drug store next to it had a nice paperback rack that got in most of the new paperbacks. The magazine rack was where Harold got any science fiction magazines he didn't subscribe to.

Harold put all this on a couple of trays and we walked them down to the basement.

"Play some Miles Davis, will you Harold?" I said.

He looked at me oddly. "Okay. I guess my Dad would like that."

"It's not for your Dad."

Harold selected a disk and put it on the turntable. He blew some dust on the needle. Miles Davis trumpet sounds began to move from the speakers.

"A little bit louder, huh? I don't want your parents to hear what we're saying."

Harold sat down, picked up a sandwich and bit into it.

"Okay," he said, when the bite was half-chewed. "So what's so important?"

"It's Emory. He's a vampire!" I said.

Harold stopped chewing. He swallowed, then followed the swallow with milk. "Well sure. Yes. He's Dracula. Count Dracula."

I shook my head. "No. He's really a vampire."

I said it with such a straight face and so sincerely that Harold forgot to put his milk tumbler down.

"That's crazy. He's a little strange, sure, but he's not -"

"Okay, so I've got to tell you this. You're my best friend, and I've got to tell someone or I'm really going to go crazy. Last night I went to his house."

"Oh. Right. You got to meet his father. I've seen him on TV. Seems like a nice enough guy."

"Just terrific. Just great.. That's what I thought, anyway...but...like.."

I sputtered a bit.

What the heck, I thought. Harold knows me pretty well, and he knows I get crushes. He knows I'm interested in Emory.... And I really need help.

So, I told him the whole story.

Harold didn't eat the rest of his sandwich. His nonchalant, blase manner totally disappeared.

His eyes got wider and wider.

When I was finished, he got up.

"Where are you going?" I asked.

"I'm going to my Dad's workbench. He's got a wood lathe. I'm going to make a stake and I'm going to put it through that son of a bitch's heart!"

"Whoa!" I said. "Sit back down! Look, I'm not complaining! I'm just telling you!"

"What! He's going to kill you! And then I'm going to have to drive a stake into your heart!"

"We've been watching too much Dark Shadows."

"One of us has, anyway," said Harold. "What's going on? Look, I'm sorry. I'm just upset. Anyway, I haven't seen any evidence -"

"Well, okay. Just look at my neck!"

I was on the couch, and I wriggled a bit toward the light, unwrapping my neck. I peeled the turtleneck down and leaned over so that Harold could have a look.

Dutifully, he examined my neck.

Then he leaned back against the cushions, covering his face with a hand.

"Sheesh!" he said.

"Pretty awful, right?"

"You really had me going for a while, Rebecca. What is this, April Fool's Day in February?"

I was stunned. "You mean there are no marks there any more?"

"Oh, there are marks there," said Harold. "Like, hickey marks! You made out with him all right. Sheesh, what a shmoe I am!"

"Hickey? That's disgusting!"

"You're telling me!"

Flabbergasted and bemused, I got up and hurried over to the basement bathroom. I turned on the light and looked into the mirror, pulling down my black turtleneck.

Where just an hour or so ago, two polite fang marks shown clearly on my neck, now there was only a purple and red bruise.

And a mouth-shaped bruise at that.

Easily interpreted, as Harold said, for that peculiar sign of teenage activity, the "hickey."