Read Online Bloodthirsty by Flynn Meaney - Free Book Online Page A

have something later.”
    What a terrible weekend for my father to buy a grill the size of Peyton Manning.
    I adopted a vampire lifestyle as I lounged around the house, isolating myself from others, reading a lot of books, and glowering at my mother when she ran over my foot with the Swiffer mop. Curiously, no one seemed to notice me acting any differently.
    Well, clearly I needed to step up the attitude. And I knew exactly how—with a deadly stare. Legends, movies, and X-rated books say a vampire’s stare is so powerful that by merely looking a mortal in the eyes he can bend that person to his will. I tested this theory on my brother. Don’t worry, he wasn’t hurt.
    Every morning of the summer Luke would leave for a run at seven AM. He’d return at eight, pounding up the staircase like a full corps of Marines, knocking the door open with a sweaty arm and ruining my REM sleep with the latest pop song blaring out of his iPod headphones. Lacking my discriminating taste in music, Luke always downloaded whatever was playing incessantly on the radio. On this Labor Day Monday, the last day of summer vacation, it was Lady Gaga, a club remix at max volume.
    Usually I would throw a pillow at Luke, miss him by six inches, roll over, and go back to sleep. Today as he lifted his t-shirt to wipe his face and then did a goofy dance to the song’s refrain, I sat up and fixed my eyes on him.
    “Turn it off,” I called out, loud enough for Luke to hear me.
    “Huh?” Luke lifted both hands to pop out his headphones, and when they dangled on his chest, they blared even louder.
    “Turn the music off,” I said.
    Then Luke got the full brunt of the ferocious vampire stare, which I’d been perfecting in my mom’s makeup mirror for three days. It was designed to either (a) melt him into a puddle of his own sweat, or (b) make him totally obedient to me. Initially it worked in the second respect. Luke met my eyes and came over to my bed. It was working! My powerful gaze was pulling Luke over to me. My powerful gaze was powerful! Then Luke sat on my bed and told me:
    “You have that crusty stuff in your eyes.”
    Luke reached toward my face. I lifted my arm to block him, but my vampire reflexes hadn’t kicked in yet, and I was too slow. Luke poked me in the eye.
    After Luke left for practice, my mother came in with the Dirt Devil, which I knew meant she wanted to have a heart-to-heart. She sat down on my bed and asked, “Is anything wrong, Finbar?”
    I raised an eyebrow skeptically, but then I remembered I was practicing vampire habits. What would Chauncey Castle say?
    “Is anything right?” I asked dramatically in return.
    “Finbar.” Now my mother’s eyes narrowed and she gripped the cross at her neck like she was in distress. “Are you on drugs?”
    “What does it matter what I am on?” I asked her. “All that matters is what I am….”
    “FINBAR!” my mother shrieked, popping up off the bed. “YOU’RE ON DRUGS!”
    This Chauncey Castle dialogue didn’t work so well in real life. Maybe there’s a reason Publishers Weekly called the book “skanky trash.”
    “I’m not on drugs, Mom,” I said. “Where do you even come up with this stuff?”
    “You’re moody, you’re not talking to any of us, and you’re eating less,” my mother said, then took a deep breath. “Are you doing pot?”
    “Mom, if I were doing pot, I would be eating more .”
    My mother aimed the Dirt Devil at my chest and switched it on, sucking on my black pajama shirt.
    “Only someone doing pot would know that!” she yelled over the vacuum’s roar.
    After my mom left, I finally hopped out of bed. I took advantage of Luke’s absence to perform an important pre–First Day of School task: decide what I was going to wear.
    How was I going to dress like a vampire? I had a pretty lousy history of trying to convince people I was someone other than who I was. Look at my childhood Halloweens. Every year I’d start in August, brainstorming the