DEZI

Dezi smiled. He was so innocent, and she wasn’t going to tell him. "They’re talking. Come on, let’s find some food."

He grinned, he was new Made and always Hungry. "Okay, let’s go!"

She smiled and turned to Bran. "We’ll be back soon. Don’t bother them, they’re ‘talking.’"

He grinned. "Sure, I can hear them ‘talking.’ You guys have fun, but be back before dawn, okay? The boss-man wouldn’t like it if you goofed off and got yourselves flash-fried."

She nodded and led Chris to the door.

"Where are we going to go?" he asked.

"To school, where else," she said.

"What? School? Why?" He was shocked and disbelieving. He had thought he was never going to have to go to school ever again, yet here she was taking him there.

She grinned. "I saw a poster. There’s a school dance at the high school and I want to go. We can find some food there.

He nodded, smiling. "Sure, ‘food,’ just like Lianndra and Gregor ‘talking.’"

She looked at him quickly, but there was no expression on his face. Did he know what was really happening? Or did he think something else?

She shrugged and led the way downstairs to the limo and James Kern who was still waiting. Sometimes it was better not to know what another person thought about certain things. This was most likely one of those times.

CHRIS

Already the earth was beginning to warm and was in the first stages of spring, which meant the trees were fairly green leafed and the grass was coming in thick. The air was sweet with life.

The school wasn’t as big as the one he had gone to in the city, but it was pretty big. The campus was covered in green crabgrass, with these tall trees that had little yellow worms hanging down from their branches. It was kind of gross, but he and Dezi could make the worms move out of the way quickly with a little telepathic urging. He had to feel sorry for the poor mortals that had to deal with the worms on their own--by brushing them out of their hair or off of their shoulders.

The dance was in two parts, one part in the commons, which was part of the cafeteria, and the other in the gym, a whole other building. They decided to go to the part that was in the commons--it was the one that seemed to be the most exciting and popular. At least that was what it seemed like when they asked a bleached-blond girl who acted stoned, but who might just have naturally been that way.

It took them awhile to find the place, but that was okay, the night air was fresh and the sound of music filled their ears, throbbing and tantalizing with words just beyond their hearing--if they relied only on normal mortal hearing, which they did, for the moment. They were playing regular people, pretending that they were simply everyday and not what they were.

Dezi led the way cross campus to the door, and when they went in they found that the place was packed. Still, they used the same tactic on the mortals that they had used on the worms--a little wordless urging opened a circle around them that enabled them to pass through the crowd with no trouble.

There were a lot of guys and girls, which made it impossible for Chris not to evaluate their looks.

He looked around and couldn’t help the smug little smile that twitched his lips. Of all the girls here only one had any hope of even approaching Dezi’s beauty, and it wasn’t happening anytime soon. The girl had the worst haircut ever invented, a hacked off bob that made her already thin face seem skeletal and gross.

Looking at Dezi with her golden hair and dark blue eyes, he knew that he had the best girl in the world. All of the other guys here were looking at him enviously because the most beautiful and sexy girl in the room was hanging off his arm. The most beautiful girl here and she was his. He had a right to be smug.

She looked like someone from a movie, fresh-faced attractiveness combined with a body that made him squirm. She was the best girl in either guise she chose to wear. As a pale vampire with ash blond hair, she was like an angel come to earth with all the teachings of the Devil in her back pocket. As both Dezi the vampire and Dezi the girl, she was beautiful. As a mortal girl she had the kind of face that launched a thousand ships and made Marilyn Monroe look nothing like a sex goddess. She was the best of both worlds.

"I feel smug," she whispered in his ear. "All those girls are jealous because I’ve got the best looking guy in the room hanging off my arm."

He felt a thrill run through him. He felt the same way, only it was about her. It took him a second to realize that the reason he felt so great was because he knew that together they were the best looking couple in the room, the best looking couple that had probably ever entered the room.

In life he’d been a pleasant-faced guy that hadn’t had a clue about it, now he was someone that everyone was jealous of and admired. None of the other guys in the room could match him for attraction value because they didn’t have the same aura of mysterious otherworldliness that he had about him. They were guys that anyone could figure out in a second, with about as much depth to them as a kiddy pool. But Chris, he was an enigma because he was a vampire, because he was a stranger and simply because he was someone that none of these girls could ever have because he had Dezi, the girl that these guys could only dream about.

As a vampire he was someone different from what they were used to seeing, something they didn’t recognize, but couldn’t help but to adore. It was a rather electrifying feeling that made his nerves tingle. He’d never felt this good before, not ever.

For the first time in his life he was sure that he was the best looking guy anyone had ever seen, anyone in the room at least. It made him feel strangely invigorated, like he’d been exercising real hard and was on his second wind.

"Hi, my name’s Lana," a voice said from off his right elbow.

He turned to look into the guileless blue eyes of a girl that was about sixteen. Looking at these other kids he felt glad that he looked older and more mature than he really was.

He smiled at her, not even minding the way that she perused his body and fairly salivated. She probably thought that she had the charm and sexual power to lure him away from Dezi. She was a fruit.

"Hey," he said, nodding to her. "I’m Chris and this is my girlfriend Dezi," so butt out.

Dezi smiled at the girl in a friendly way; victors have room to be nice to the vanquished.

"Dezi? Wow, what a cool name," a suave voice said from behind them.

They turned to see a handsome boy of sixteen with sun-bleached blond hair, sun-browned skin and the kind of face that soap operas and modeling agencies look for. Still, that didn’t mean he could match Chris with his handsomeness and air of danger and the unknown.

Dezi smiled at him, a nice, pleasant smile that had nothing to do with shared attraction and sexual intimacy. Her smile was that of an older woman meeting a lovesick little boy whose feelings they didn’t really want to hurt. Still, the guy couldn’t just leave, he probably thought that it would make him look like a jerk or something. Of course, staying made him look like a jerk too. No one looks cool while butting in where they are neither wanted nor needed.

"My name’s Dominic, Dominic Anthony de Paulo." He said it as if he thought it should mean something to them. He thought that he was someone special and important.

Chris moved forward a bit so that he was a little ahead of Dezi. "What a pleasure to meet you," he said. "Can you go get us two sodas?"

The guy flushed bright red and said through gritted teeth, "Sure." He turned on his heel and headed for the refreshment table, his walk stiff and his shoulders tense.

"That was really mean," Dezi whispered in Chris’ ear, her voice sending a shiver down his spine. "Now all we have to do is get rid of the pesky Lana that won’t stop staring at you."

"Aw, can’t we keep her? I always wanted a pet," Chris whispered back, his voice filled with laughter.

"Jerk." They laughed, moving close together, their hands finding each other and clasping tightly.

"Do you want to dance?" he asked in a low voice, intimately.

She smiled. "Yes, just don’t step on my feet." They both laughed and came together.

Even though the music was fast, they moved slowly and stood extremely close, their arms around each other; Chris’ arms around her waist, hers around his shoulders. They moved back and forth, their heads’ together, thinking of no one else, just themselves and their togetherness. They didn’t even notice that the circle around them was widening and that couples had stopped dancing. Everyone stared at them and how beautiful they were. There was just something so romantic and otherworldly about them, something that drew the regular people and made them wish that they were like Dezi and Chris. They were a step away from what was normal, a journey along the dark road, the unattainable and wonderful that the world has to offer and what normal people simply could not comprehend no matter how much they worshipped them and dreamed.

"I love you," he whispered in her ear.

She sighed happily. "I love you as well. Ego diligar ku modae vos dae, ku modae vos faito, ku modae vos terfo, ku modae vos tuto. Ego diligar vos."

"What’s that mean?" he asked softly, his breath warm on her ear.

She smiled. "It means that ‘I love the way you are, the way you act, the way you move, the way you think. I love you’ in Demonspeak"

She felt him grin into her neck. "I love you too and I really want to, especially right now," he said.

She laughed. "Silly, we can’t do it right here on the dance floor with all these people watching."

"Why not?" he asked breathily, sliding his tongue into her ear and setting his right hand against her hip. There was a shuddering contact and she had to stifle a moan as he activated her pleasure centers. The Tap flowed through her and she shivered deliciously.

"Beast," she hissed and hit his shoulder with her fist, making him laugh and twitch his tongue.

She shivered and pulled away to look at him. His face was flushed with excess blood, his eyes were wide, and he looked like he was about to eat her. He reminded her of the big bad wolf, and she had to admit, she liked the look on him.

"Oversexed teenagers have no right to mingle with the upper-class of the undead," she said in the prissy voice of a teacher instructing a student.

He grinned. "Oversexed? Me? You’re the one that seduced a poor, innocent younger man, not me. You cradle robber you."

She laughed and hugged him close, pressing her cheek against his. They were so close that their hipbones touched on either sides of their pelvis points like the secret whispers that flowed through time.

There was love and affection there, but there was something deeper as well. There was the knowledge of a teacher teaching a student the basics of life, the knowledge of power and the many things that it might be used for, and then there was their immortality. They knew they were going to live forever, that there was very little in the world that would be able to harm them, and that they had the chance to be together for a very long time. They had all the time in the world to be together, and they didn’t really want to waste a second of it.

He whispered nothing-words into her ear just to watch the way her skin quivered and shivered slightly at the brush of his lips, the warmth of his breath. He knew that she could have controlled the reaction in just the same way that he didn’t need to breathe, but the fact that she didn’t added to the eroticism of both the moment and of their close embrace.

When the song ended they pulled back, their hands automatically locking together at about waist level. They gazed into each others’ eyes, the knowledge of the ages passing between them. There was between them something older than time itself; it gleamed from them brighter than the brightest flame, purer than the brightest of immortal souls. It was something beautiful and wonderful, as well as horrible and terrible. They loved each other, yet in just a few minutes they knew that together they would hunt and Feed, just as the savages of past times had hunted their animal prey so mercilessly to feed the gnawing hunger within.

They were unstoppable in their power, like two leaping lions, hundreds of pounds hurdling through the air aimed at a specific target, their fangs and claws ready to rend and tear, to gorge on flesh and wallow in blood. Just as they were unstoppable, they were beautiful and graceful as well. They lured their prey close with their waif-like beauty and the promise of so much.

They gazed into each other’s eyes for a silent moment of communion, then turned as one to search out their choice of prey. There, a rather clumsy looking boy with ragged hair dyed yellow and thick rimmed glasses, standing by himself and staring into the distance.

Chris and Dezi shared a glance, then moved forward together, everything seeming to be in slow motion as they approached the unsuspecting boy who was sipping at a glass of red punch, his lips gleaming cherry red in the flaring strobe-like lights.

He jumped slightly as they came upon him, then smiled a surprisingly nice smile.

"Hi. You guys are new, huh?" His voice didn’t match his appearance, it was self-assured, the kind of voice that people followed, the kind of voice that would take control in an emergency situation.

Chris glanced out of the corner of his eye at Dezi. She smirked slightly. A smile tugged at the corners of his own lips. There was something about this boy that he liked, something strange and appealing. What was the word? Charisma, that was it. This boy was really very charismatic, no matter that he looked a little goofy.

"Yeah, we’re new here," Dezi said, giving the boy a flashing smile that just barely hid the glint of her fangs.

The boy looked at her for a second then turned to Chris with a smile. "My name’s Sebastian, who’re you?"

"I’m Chris and this is Dezi," he said, nodding his head at the vampire girl. She was still smiling, but there was a different light in her eyes, a light of boundless knowledge, as if she knew something about the boy that no one else did. In fact, maybe she did know something.

Chris looked at her for clues on how he should be acting, but she wasn’t giving anything away and Sebastian was still looking at him with that light in his eyes.

The look the boy was giving him was kind of like the way he had seen Lianndra look before he Fed. It was vaguely disturbing, yet at the same time there was something about it that made him feel good. Well, not good exactly, but rather as if he had a kind of power over the boy. He had the feeling that if he wanted he could have made the boy do anything he wished and it had nothing to do with the powers he had as a vampire.

The boy gave Dezi a rather absentminded smile, as if she was only a second thought compared to whatever else filled his mind and eyes with such a light.

It took Chris a minute to realize what he was seeing here. That light in the boy’s eye was passion, and it was directed toward him. He hadn’t ever really faced anything like this before. Sure, he had been proposition by older men in expensive cars, but that was something from another life. He had been mortal then, a rather innocent mortal boy that had been able to turn them down without even a thought as to what they really wanted from him.

If being a vampire had taught him one thing, it had taught him what mortals wanted most in their lives. They wanted warmth and affection, something they thought they saw when they looked into the eyes of a vampire. But all they really got was either the mark of a boundless hunger, or the silence of the grave. For the occasional few there was immortality, but even that was not what most of them really wanted. Endless life does not offer endless love, just a time without end to think about what one does not have, but dreams about sadly in the night when they are lonely and afraid of the darkness that will come.

This boy wanted the warmth of love; yearned for it with a savagery that was amazingly like the Hunger of a vampire. There was in him a darkness that was so dark that it was like light. Chris had never seen anything like this before, not in the eyes of a mortal anyway.

There is hunger and there is thirst, but this transcended all knowledge that he had of what the world should be. Sure, he knew that there were monsters that hunted the night, he was one of them in point of fact, but this boy was a whole other kind of monster, one that was passionate in his starvation for love.

What Chris saw in Sebastian’s eyes was not someone that just wanted the love of another warm body during the chill that comes long after midnight. This was someone that wanted so much more, this was someone that wanted to possess another being, mind, body and soul. This boy was near enough to being a vampire that it wasn’t even funny. He might not kill his prey, but he surely fed off of them until they were near the brink of death and despair; he emptied them, then dropped the leftover husks that were once living creatures to find another. He was like a black widow, ever in search for a mate.

There was no smile on Chris’ face now, all he could do was look into the bright green eyes of the boy and wish that he could look away, that he could run from the room and never have to see such a person ever again. He could tell by the puzzlement radiating from her, that Dezi did not see what he saw when she looked at the boy. She only saw innocent infatuation with the beautiful, the human need to draw beauty close and push ugliness aside. She did not see that Sebastian was not really a boy, but a creature, a soulless hunter, a psychopath searching for another victim. She did not see what Chris saw. She did not see that she should be afraid.

DEZI

Another thing that struck her as wrong with the whole situation was the way the boy was smiling. It was as if he didn’t see the disgusted horror in Chris’ eyes, which was pretty hard to miss, since it was slowly moving to cover his whole face.

Dezi looked hard at Sebastian and narrowed her eyes speculatively. It was hard to believe that she hadn’t seen it before. It was so obvious in the way he stood, the intense way he looked at Chris and the almost painful strength of his charisma.

She had seen his kind before and knew that he thought he had found himself another victim, another obsession, another beautiful young man that he would manage to posses in a way that no mortal should. He was just another serial killer; she had seen them before and had no doubt that she would see them again. It was just sad that Chris would have to meet his first one so soon after his Making; he was still a child after all and should have been allowed the naïvety of youth for even just a few more short years.

She tightened her grip on his hand, reminding him that she was still there, that he wouldn’t have to face this alone. The maternal feeling that suddenly filled her was not something that she was really used to, but she found that there was something about it that she rather liked. She probably would have made a good mother, or maybe she wouldn’t have--where and when she had grown up had not been very kind to its children, cruelties happened all the time. Mothers would give birth to seven children, and if two lived they were considered lucky. She would not have been able to stand that. Immortality was so much easier to handle than real life.

Anyway, she was here to help Chris get through his first run-in with a killer. The worst part would be when Sebastian revealed the fact that he didn’t even know that he was a killer, something that she knew was going to happen. It always did.

There is a certain light in the eyes of a killer that doesn’t know consciously that they’ve ever killed. Something that makes every drawing of blood easier and better, like practice does with sex. The only problem with this kind of killer was that they were harder to kill if you have a moral kind of mind. They literally have not ever killed anybody, their other half did, the evil half that takes over in their moment of weakness when the blood of others calls to them for the freedom that a knife offers it.

She had always found something about their blood chillingly cold, even as the warmth of it filled her. She knew that Lianndra suffered from no such moral restraints, blood was blood and he drank it all, even if he had been acting a little weird lately. Moments of introspection were part of who Lianndra was, he would spend years thinking through every little action he was about to make, and then it would all fall away and he would be the same old Lianndra, evil to the core, or so he thought of himself.

She had watched him, seen the way that he had talked himself out of certain kills, the way that he had shied away from some deaths. He was complex, one minute one person, another the next. He was like a sociopath, mirroring the world that he lived in to get the things that he wanted, caring for no one and nothing, not even himself. Yet at the same time, he thought about everything and everyone, angling things so that even in his most powerful moments of "evil," good radiated from him and the things that he did. It was strange the way that life almost twisted itself to make the things he did better than they were. Made it so that even as he cried tears of shame for the things he had done, those tears changed in midair to diamonds of goodness that rippled outward and made everything better and dear.

In some moments she wished that she could be like him, living in the moment even while planning for the future, but she couldn’t. Even for a vampire, he was strange, as if he had come into being filled with all of the knowledge of the world, or as if he had been brought over from some other plane of existence. He was like a young godling forced to live the life of a regular being, without all of the power and greatness that he usually enjoyed, but with the light of it still filling him to the brink of overflowing.

She wished that she could kill and laugh in the delight of death, but she couldn’t. She enjoyed the hunt and the power of the Feed, but she couldn’t really enjoy the life that she lived, not in the same way that Lianndra did. He was always changing and evolving, he was never the same person from one moment to the next; one minute he was so simple that he was almost transparent, then in the next he would be so complex that it was like one big headache for the universe.

There was something about righting the wrongs in the world that made her feel good, but still she felt sadness for those that killed without knowing they were murderers. Lianndra would have just laughed it off and danced in the blood of a torn artery, like a demon child in the firelight, but she couldn’t do it. She wished that she could, but she just couldn’t enjoy killing someone that cried out that they were innocent with the belief of their statement pounding in their blood as she drank. It was just too chilling for her to understand.

She had enjoyed the blood of many--she Fed on innocents and sinners all the time--but she could barely hold down the blood of those that fooled themselves into thinking that what they did was right, even as they knew in their hearts and souls that it was wrong. She hoped that Chris would not suffer from her weakness, that he could be strong and save other mortals the pain that this boy offered with his love.

There was so much death in the world and she knew that she contributed to it, but she could only hope that she could rid the world of even just a tiny portion of its misery and pain. Sebastian was a murderer, even if he hadn’t really killed anyone yet. Instead he had done things far worse than simply ending someone’s life: he had stolen from them their very will to live, he had made people beg for death, plead for the ending of their pain and misery. He targeted their weaknesses and used them, thinking to himself that he was only trying to find love. He emptied people of all they could give, then left them that way, empty and alone without even the self-deceiving thought that they had something to hold onto.

He was a monster of the worst kind, and coming from a vampire that was pretty bad. He didn’t just take what his lovers offered so freely, he tore it from their hands and left them nothing. His obsession was the strength that filled him, the blood and bones of what he was. There are creatures in the world that have no right to exist, they take and don’t give back anything at all, and that was what this boy was. He was a taker, a thief that entered into the night and stole the dreams from the sleeping children of the world.

And he was here, standing before her with that shit-eating grin on his face, as if he could just eat them both up without even a thought. Little did he know that this time they would eat him up. He had found something a little too big for his trap to catch, like a tiger walking into a spider-web--nothing that fragile was going to hold it, and the spider was going to get a very unpleasant surprise when it came running to see what it had caught.

"Come on, let’s all go outside," she said, something that new acquaintances usually don’t automatically say. Especially not when the most they have ever shared are names.

Still, Sebastian was so caught up in his obsessiveness that he immediately agreed. "Sure, let’s go outside." With that he took Chris’ hand, clasping it tightly in his, a gesture that people don’t usually share that soon in a relationship.

~let him hold your hand,~ Dezi said, not even looking at Chris, focusing instead on the door that led out to the darkness and the privacy that they needed for what they were going to do.

Chris’ other hand twitched in her grasp; he really wanted to let go of the sticky-sweaty hand that clamped down so very tightly. ~why? please dezi, i really don’t like this. couldn’t we just pick someone else? this guy gives me the creeps,~ there was panic in his MindVoice. He was feeling the affects of being the hunted for once and didn’t like it.

She squeezed his hand comfortingly. ~listen to me chris, this is something that we have to do, not so much for ourselves, but for whatever victims he might lure to their dooms. imagine if someone had been there to stop ted bundy of jeffrey dahmer before they had really gotten started; perhaps the world would have been better off. it certainly couldn’t have been any worse.~

He looked at her with wide and pleading eyes, but she didn’t want to give Sebastian a chance to realize that something strange was going on and get away.

Quickly she led the two boys across the room and through the door into the darkness, searching for a quiet corner where they could be alone.

CHRISTINE

She watched as Dominic and Lana tried to have their way with them, but she could easily tell that it was not going to happen. These creatures were as far beyond them as angels are above demons; it was never going to happen. And even as she watched, they blew Lana and Dominic off, then began to dance together slowly.

She held her breath as she looked at them. They were the most beautiful creatures she had ever seen, delicate yet strong, looking only at each other. They were like one being in two bodies, two sides of the same coin. They were wonderful and terrible: wonderful because they were what they were, and terrible because they were what they were. They were like embodied temptation, never to fulfill the promises they offered. There was never going to be anyone for them but each other.

Christine held her breath when they stopped dancing and crossed to talk to the weird boy, Sebastian Cranz. There was something wrong with that boy. He was in her junior English class and she felt as if bugs were crawling all over her skin whenever she even glanced in his direction. There was something gone missing deep inside of him, an emptiness that showed when she looked into his eyes. There was something wrong with his aura too--it was flickery and covered with dark patches, like it was diseased or something. She had never spoken to him, but she suspected that if she had, she wouldn’t have liked it overly much.

Her thoughts were interrupted when the couple started leading Sebastian toward the door. She absolutely had to know what was happening. There was something strange going on; all of her senses had suddenly gone to full-alert. This was something that she absolutely had to know about.

Not even thinking about what it must seem like to the people around her, she hurried across the room and followed them through the double doors, trying to see where they were going.

The night air was fresh and scented with the smell of the purple flowers the botany club had pinned up everywhere. It was a kind of tangy, musky scent that made her think of the summer she had spent with her great aunt Beatrice, or Aunt Bea as she had insisted on being called. That had been the summer when she was eight and her witch lessons had taken a more serious turn. Her family, which had been in the witching business for hundreds of years, was training her to someday be the Maiden.

It was a well-known fact that witchcraft had Three Aspects for the female side and Three Aspects for the male side. The female Aspects were the Maiden, the Mother and the Crone, and all three of them held great power. When the time came, the Maiden was moved up to the position of Mother, and the Mother was moved up to the position of Crone. So what that meant was that Christine’s family wanted her to be Crone someday, head of everything.

They wanted her to be the one to preside over the Inner Circle of witches and warlocks. It was well-known that the Crone held the power of all of the Crones that came before, which meant she would control the power of thousands of years worth of knowledge, knowledge she could use at will. Her family found that particularly good because it meant that someday they would be the most influential family in the Circle. They just couldn’t wait until they had all of that prestige, never mind if she was happy or not.

She didn’t really mind though, because she kind of wanted to be the Maiden, and then she would be the Mother and she would marry the male Aspect of equal power, the Hunter. The Three Male Aspects of power were the Gatherer, the Hunter and the Horned One, which was just a more powerful image of the Horned Hunter and was formed after the god.

Still, she wasn’t sure she really wanted to marry the Hunter. He was the most powerful male in his age group, but sometimes the Hunter was not a nice man. Strength did not always represent honesty and kindness, and since marriage meant she would have to give up her maiden status, she had to wonder if the Hunter was going to be gentle with her or if it would be something terrible and painful. The fact that the Crone ended up ruling over everything was a bit of compensation, but still. She had to wonder if perhaps there might be a man out there for her, someone that she would choose herself, a soul mate and equal in everything. She had to wonder if he would be everything she had always dreamed of.

If she gave up her freedom and became the Maiden she would no longer be offered the chance to choose who she wanted to be with. The choice would already be made for her and there was no such thing as infidelity after the ceremony she would have to go through. She would be stuck as the virtuous Maiden and the faithful Mother and if she wasn’t careful the miserable but powerful old Crone.

Being a powerful witch wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. She had to make a hard choice that would affect her whole future. If she had simply been a normal human she wouldn’t have to go through any of it, the choice would be hers, to be happy or unhappy, and if the latter, she could always get a divorce and try again. There was no such thing as divorce for the Mother.

She could always choose not to be the Maiden, but if she did that her family would be very upset with her, and then there wouldn’t be any turning back--no suddenly changing her mind and becoming the Maiden once her choice was set. She knew she could live with her family being angry, but she doubted she would be able to live with her own regrets at what might-have-been. Once you make that kind of choice, there is no going back, which meant good or bad, she was stuck.

The choice was too complicated, but she knew that when the time came she would make the right decision. But until then all she really had to do was focus on her magic lessons and her schoolwork. There was so much for her to learn that she didn’t really have a whole lot of time to worry about what was going to come in the future, not during the day anyway.

She did think about those things late at night while trying to fall asleep though, but it wasn’t the sort of thing that filled her life with worry. Not all of the time anyway. The way she saw it, if it wasn’t going to happen in the next ten minutes, why worry? Perhaps that was why she was so willing to involve herself in other peoples’ problems. The need to take her mind off her own. Of course, it could also just be the fact that she was what her grandmother called a "busybody." Whatever it was, she could see the kids moving up ahead like furtive shadows through the darkness, trying to find a secret corner where they could do whatever it was they wanted to do.

She hurried her steps, wincing slightly as her right foot slipped slightly on the grass and her tights got wet. She grimaced and "squished" along after them. If she was willing to spy, she had to be willing to pay the price for it, even if it meant wet feet.