Birth of the Vampire (The Vanderlind Realm) Read Online Free PDF Page B

Especially in cold weather. I had to let it warm up a bit. Fortunately, I had some cover from Uncle Kevin’s truck, which was parked closest to the house. There was some snow accumulation on the car, but nothing I couldn’t deal with by using the front and back wipers. I could stop and clear all the windows once I was a few blocks away.
    Just as I was easing out of the driveway, Ashley came charging out of the side door. She was waving at me frantically and calling, “I need a ride. Hey, Haley. I need a ride.”
    I had the radio on, but I could hear her easily enough. I smiled and waved at her, but kept on going as if I had no idea she was doing anything but waving me on my way. She’d managed to get to her dad’s house on foot, so she could find a way back without my assistance. After four or five blocks, I pulled over and quickly cleaned off all the windows with my ice scraper. There was no reason for me to get in an accident just because I didn’t want to get a shake-down from my cousin.
    Back in the car, I looked at my phone again. It was probably the two-hundredth time I had checked it since waking up that morning. I pretended like I was wondering about the time, but I knew I was actually hoping for a text from Tommy. There was nothing, of course. It was just a few minutes after ten, so it was conceivable he wasn’t even awake yet, but I still felt my stomach drop in disappointment. Were we going to the party together or not?
    As it was, I would be showing up to work almost an hour early. I tried to think of somewhere else to go, but Christmas Eve wasn’t exactly the day when I wanted to kill some time at the mall or hide out at the library. I figured I might as well ask Debbie if I could clock in early and maybe scrub some dishes or something. Waitresses don’t make a good hourly. We didn’t even make the federal hourly minimum wage. Our income was mostly tip dependant. But I figured an extra two bucks and a few cents was better than nothing, and there was always the risk I might actually spend money if I went anywhere else.
    The restaurant was called Darlene’s Diner, even though the owner’s name was Debbie. She lived upstairs but spent most of her life behind the counter. I asked her about it once, and she said, “No one’s going to stop to eat at a place called Debbie’s Diner. It sounds too perky. People who eat at diners want a little grit.” She’d been running the place longer than I’d been on the planet, so maybe she was right. Or maybe her mother was named Darlene. With Debbie, it was hard to tell.
    “What are you doing here?” Debbie asked, glancing at her watch as I walked in the back of the diner. “You’re not on the schedule until eleven.”
    “I know,” I said, peeling off my winter coat and slinging my bag into my locker. “But I don’t have anywhere else to go, and I figured maybe I could clock in early and just do some dishes.”
    Debbie frowned. She’d been a smoker for forty-five years, and her face definitely showed the wear. There were vertical wrinkles around her mouth—the kind that women only get from years of pursing their lips over a cigarette. She’d given it up when she turned sixty, but she still had a bit of the smoker stink about her. I guess all the nicotine hadn’t leached out of her skin yet. “Don’t you have any friends you should be hanging out with?” she asked, “When I was your age, I was always going to the mall with my friends. Or at least looking around for a little trouble. You need to live a little while you’re still young.”
    I gave her a pained look. We’d had this conversation before. She knew I was a friendless loser, and I didn’t understand why she felt the need to keep bringing it up.
    “I’m sorry,” she said after a moment of me just looking at her. “Of course, you can clock in. Just go ahead and scrub anything you want.”
    Debbie was one of the few people I actually felt close to in Tiburon. She was kind of an old biker