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Spring of 2012

My Mom's A Vampire

PROLOGUE

I=m hiding out in the girls= bathroom where I lock myself into a stall. I just can=t see how my life can get any worse than it is right now. Today alone has been a string of small disasters.

This morning I stub my toe on a toolbox left in the kitchen floor after one of Mom=s failed attempts at home repairs. I squall in pain as the nail on my big toe breaks to the skin and bleeds. I=m surprised Mom doesn=t wake up when I scream loud enough to wake the dead. I=m glad she didn=t wake up though because I just don=t like the way Mom looks at me when I bleed.

Sometimes I get nervous with the way she looks at me when I hurt myself especially when I bleed. She=s no longer the mom that should kiss boo boo=s to make them all better.

As always Mom=s behind on laundry, so finding a clean matching set of clothes is time consuming. I end up settling on a pair of jeans, retro T-shirt and flip-flops. So, I don=t look like a fashion model, but I=m comfortable.

On the way to school, I step into some chewing gum. I scrape off what I can and then walk the rest of the way with one shoe sticking to the ground. I mean, come on, doesn=t anyone know how to dispose of their gum without hurting other people?

By the time I get to school, all goes well until second period, when my pen explodes in my carryall, staining my books and homework. I save what work I can and rewrite as much as I can in third period Social Studies, in the dark, during one of Mrs. Jenson=s caliber movies.

By lunch I=m ready to leave.

I=m carrying my lunch tray, laden with the worst food the cafeteria has to offer, across the room to sit with my BFF Chloe. I see Chloe in the distance, saving a spot for me at the last

table at the far end of the room, when I notice Chad Ryan look my way. Chad Ryan, the most sought after boy in school, with his tousled blonde hair and cornflower blue eyes. He takes my breath away.

Right when I notice him looking my way, I hesitate in my confident stride B my bra strap breaks B spooking me enough to drop my tray onto the floor B right in front of Chad Ryan! I=m so embarrassed, I leave my mess and run straight to the girls= room.

And as if being thirteen isn=t hard enough with the pressure of impending high school and fitting into a new social order B I have the all-consuming pressures of home life. Being raised by a single parent with an alternate lifestyle B well, maybe alternate isn=t the right word. Maybe unique or eccentric? Maybe there isn=t a good word to use. What kind of word can I use to describe life with a vampire mom? Yes, my mother is a vampire.

That=s right B a vampire.

Mom=s not some gothic wannabe or some overzealous Buffy the Vampire Slayer aficionado. As far as I know, vampire slayers don=t even exist. However, Mom use to tell me the same thing about vampires and other monsters.

Don=t get me wrong, just because she=s a vampire doesn=t make her a bad person. She mostly drinks pig=s blood, which is the closest thing to human blood available, a fact that isn=t something a girl my age should know. But when I learn in science how similar pigs are to humans, I laid off the pork products.

Mom wasn=t always a vampire. It happened almost three years ago. I was sleeping over at Chloe=s house while my parents drove down to Las Vegas for the weekend. On the walk back to their hotel, a vampire, killing my dad and turning my mom, attacked them.

I spent two weeks at Chloe=s house while Mom Arecovered@ from the incident. Chloe’s mom was really cool and offered her help during the grieving and healing process. I=m not sure exactly what went on in those first couple of weeks. I saw my mom at the funeral and then returned to Chloe=s house because Mom said she wasn=t ready for me to come home just yet. I was too caught up in my own grief to notice any strange behavior that I could not=t attribute to grief.

Mom continued her job at the hospital where she worked as a registered nurse since B forever. It=s not like we had to worry about money anymore though. Dad had some kind of insurance on the house that in event of his death, it would be fully paid for. Then he had a huge life insurance policy that would set both of us for life. Mom won=t tell me exactly how much there is B but she says that as long as we spend the money sensibly, we=ll be okay. She even opened a bank account for me that I can=t touch until I=m twenty-one.

That sort of sucks.

Of course Mom wouldn=t voluntarily admit she was a vampire. This was something I had to piece together myself. I had to collect the evidence and then confront her with it. In the beginning, she could barely look at me, much more give me any of those long embracing hugs she use to give me. And when she stopped going outside on sunny days, I use to think that was why she was so pale.

The shades on the windows were always drawn until she had them all replaced with special tinted windows that she insisted was to save energy in the house. Then she replaced all the lights in the house with the dimmest bulbs available, except in my bedroom. She even disposed of all the mirrors, except the one clinging to my bathroom wall. Then I noticed that all of the wooden furniture and various household items were being replaced by metal or plastic wood grain materials. Mom won=t even allow pencils in the house.

All things considered, she=s still my mom and I love her. She does her best to take care of me. I wish there were support groups for kids with monsters as parents.

I always imagine myself in a room full of people, walking up to the podium and saying, AMy name is Tress Fury and my mom=s a vampire.@

As if being a teenager isn’t hard enough, imagine what life is like being a teenager and having a vampire as a mom.

Book One of the Full Moon Chronicles.

When Tress was seven, her parents went on a trip to Las Vegas, where a vampire killed her dad and turned her mom into a creature of the night.

Finding comfort in the company her best friend Chloe, who eventually figures out that her best friends mom is a vampire and tries desperately to convince her that she's in danger. Tress is faced with the burden of coming clean and confessing to everything or staying strong and keeping her secret.

Then when her mom’s sire comes back to confront her, Tress’s secret is revealed. And when it seems that life can't get any worse, she learns that the school bad boy Steve Walker is more than he appears to be.