Deadly Offer by Caroline B. Cooney Page B

joy that she felt nothing else could ever exist in her except gladness. She liked a boy, and a boy liked her. What else is there?
    She laughed all the way back to her house.
    The laugh stayed on her face, like an echo in the air. The curve of her smile kept her face alight and aloft.
    She was still laughing when she came in her own door, and the vampire said, “I was out tonight. Did you feel me? Did you know I was there?”
    He smiled, framed by the huge, carved doorway, and his smile increased to match the door. His mouth filled more of his face than usual. His teeth were long and sharp as garden stakes.
    “Get out of here!” Althea hissed. Forget the questions she had wanted to ask him! She was furious with him for existing, for making her think about what she had done. How could she find peace of mind if she was forced to remember?
    “I beg your pardon,” said the vampire. “I live here.”
    “It’s my house!” she shouted. She stamped her foot. The porch shook a little from the force of her pounding foot, but the vampire was not affected.
    “It’s mine,” said the vampire, lingering on the sentence. Then softly, he echoed himself, drooling over the words, “It’s mine.”
    Althea could not get in her own door. He filled it. His swirling black cape went right up to the edges of it, like pond scum.
    “And you,” said the vampire, smiling cruelly, “you are mine, also.”

Chapter 15
    S HE WAS DOING HER math homework when the phone rang. Page 78. Quadratic equations lined up like little vehicles trying to cross the page. The book was very white, and the numbers printed very clearly, very thinly, like a message.
    “Hi, Althea?” said an eager girl’s voice. “It’s Becky.”
    “Hi, Becky!” cried Althea.
    A girlfriend was phoning. It had been years! Years since the joy of having a best friend to call up and gossip with. Althea beamed into the telephone, as if it had been invented just for her.
    “I had such a good time at Pizza Hut, didn’t you?” said Becky.
    “It was great, wasn’t it? Isn’t Michael funny? Isn’t Ryan terrific?”
    “Oh, yes, and afterward, after you left with the boys—well, I stayed on awhile and got to know Kimmie-Jo and Dusty so much better. Kimmie-Jo told me all about this terrific place where she gets her hair done. Dusty thinks I should maybe get mine a little more layered in the back. Dusty thinks I need more volume in my hair.”
    Althea loved to talk about hair. She told Becky that she, personally, thought Becky’s hair was extremely attractive, the way it clung to her head, and Althea loved the ponytail, which was exactly the right length, shoulder length. Becky could curl her hair for elegant occasions, but if Becky cut it layered, she would have volume, but no ponytail. And was that really what Becky was after?
    Becky said she was really after a boyfriend, and hair volume kind of ran second to that.
    They laughed shrilly and eagerly into the phones, and got into more comfortable positions, because this was a conversation with all-night potential. Althea was sorry she had no snack next to the phone. Althea frowned at her quadratic equations and did one.
    After they were done with hair, they moved on to makeup and clothing, and then they got to the important part: what Althea had done with Michael and Ryan. Althea told Becky everything, while Becky sighed in vicarious pleasure at each description. “ … and then he took his hand off my shoulder and touched my hair,” said Althea.
    “How did he touch it?” Becky said. “I mean, did he run his hand over it, or through it, or what?”
    Althea did another quadratic equation. A really good equation, thought Althea, is a girlfriend on the phone asking what you did with a boyfriend in the car.
    They discussed exactly what happened, Becky moaning with envy. They pondered whether Althea, too, needed more volume in her hair and should go with Becky to the new hairstylist. Then Becky was struck by the thought that