The Vampire Prince goes to High School (Book 1)

No Choice

Sonia and Carlos lead me outside to one the picnic benches and watched me sob. In between, I ate the ice-cream. I felt childish. Here I was crying and eating ice-cream at school. This was embarrassing.

"Cry or eat," Sonia said. "You can't do both."

Sniffing, I nodded. With the back of my hand, I wiped my tears but they just kept coming.

"Leave her alone," Carlos said. "She's been through a lot."

I nodded, unable to speak. As the ice-cream finished, I managed to calm down. Sonia gave me a tissue from her bag and I dabbed my eyes and nose. Underneath the warm sun, we sat in silence. What was there to say?

"Those corpses are nothing but trouble."

Carlos's slur made me flinch.

"I can't believe you have to go through something like this . . . again."

I heard Sonia smack Carlos's arm.

"What?" he asked. "Are we gonna pretend that Rin hasn't been attacked before? That thing was even a prince and he got away with it."

"This – is nothing like last time," I said. I couldn't meet their eyes. "When you're trying to help someone, you would think they wouldn't want to eat you."

With a sigh, I looked at them. "This is just one of the Prince's phases. Soon, he'll get bored and leave."

Neither of them seemed convinced but neither of them spoke. However, I wasn't quite done.

"I'm sorry for putting you guys through this. It's not really-"

"You didn't force me to do anything," Carlos interrupted. "Did you really want me to leave that blood sucker treat you like a snack?"

He had a point.

"Just – thanks."

Sonia shook her head. "You should have started with that."

I blinked away the tears. "Next time I will."

#

As soon as I walked into school the following day, I knew something was off. All the news vans around the school were silence and the Vampire Prince hadn't ambushed me. I was expecting him to jump out of somewhere and spook me. But that didn't happen. Instead, Sonia fell in step beside me and followed me to my locker. Surprisingly, there was nothing written on there today. I turned to Sonia.

"Cleaning that Sharpie must have been hard, right?" I asked.

"Don't look at me," Sonia said. She pointed with her chin.

I followed in the direction she had pointed and saw Carlos opening his own locker. My eyebrow raised on its own.

"Why?" I asked.

Sonia gave me a look. "We're friends," she said. "What did you expect him to do? We all heard the same conversation yesterday."

I turned to my locker. For some reason, I was having trouble processing all of this. Carlos did things because he liked me but as friends . . . sometimes it was hard to tell the difference between the two. Sure, he had saved me from getting munched on by the Prince – maybe because of guilt – but I knew that, regardless if it wasn't for me or guilt, he would have saved anyone else.

"The Prince isn't here today," Sonia whispered.

My heart lurched. Call me paranoid but I was certain it had something to do with what I showed him yesterday.

"Oh really?" I asked. To my ears, my voice sounded high pitched.

"I don't know how you stand him," Sonia continued. "You still have the thing, right?"