As if being a teenager isn’t hard enough, imagine what life is like being a teenager and having a vampire as a mom. That’s what Tress Fury has to deal with. 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.



Somehow Tress’s mom managed to keep enough of her humanity to stay around and care for her daughter as a single parent.



When Tress gets old enough to put the pieces together and discovers her mom didn’t survive the attack and she was a vampire, Tress is stuck with the pressure of keeping her mom’s secret.



Tress finds comfort in the company her best friend Chloe - who she shares everything with - but still she finds it hard to cope with the burden of her secret resting heavily on her shoulders.



Chloe eventually figures out that her best friends mom is a vampire and tries desperately to convince her that she's in danger. Now 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 Johnny Walker is more than he appears to be.

My Mom's A Vampire

by Donna Shelton





Chapter One



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 tool box 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 and 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 was 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 – my bra strap breaks – spooking me enough to drop my tray on the floor – 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 – I have the all consuming pressures of home life. Being raised by a single parent with an alternate lifestyle – 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 – a vampire.



Mom’s not some gothic wannabe or some overzealous Buffy The Vampire Slayer afficionado. 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 pigs blood, which is the closest thing to human blood available, a fact which isn’t something a girl my age should know. But when I learned in science how similar pigs are to humans, I laid off the pork products.



Mom wasn’t always a vampire. It happened almost six 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, they were attacked by a vampire, killing my dad and turning my mom.



I spent two weeks at Chloe’s house while mom "recovered" 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 yet. I was too caught up in my own grief to notice any strange behavior that I couldn’t attribute to grief.



Mom quit her job at the hospital where she worked as a registered nurse since – 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 – 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 over the years. 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 out 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 she could find, 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 was being replaced by metal or plastic woodgrain materials. Mom won’t even allow pencils into 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, "My name is Tress Fury and my mom’s a vampire."



***



I’m hiding in the girls bathroom where I lock myself into a stall so I can take off my shirt in private and try to fix my bra malfunction. When Chloe comes in.



"Are you in here?" Chloe’s voice echoes off the walls.



"I am." I can still feel how flushed I am. "Do you happen to have a first aid kit for bra’s?"



"Nope – but I do have a diaper pin from my aunts baby shower."



Chloe carries around this bag that is supposed to be a purse – but it’s actually an endless abyss of stuff. If you need it – Chloe has it in her bag. From writing material to feminine hygiene products to cosmetics. She even has a change of underwear, socks and a handheld tv with bad reception. She even carries a cigarette lighter and a condom – she doesn’t smoke and she’s a virgin. So, I stopped questioning the contents of her purse a long time ago. Chloe must have strong shoulders though because that bag has got to weigh forty pounds – if it’s an ounce! I hear her digging through her bag and then her hand appears under the stall door, holding an oversized safety pin with a plastic turtle at one end.



"As always, you’re a lifesaver." It only takes me a minute to pin the strap back on and slip back into my shirt.



"Yes, I am."



I unlock the door and step out of the stall. Chloe’s standing there with an amused look on her face. She looks as if she’s trying not to laugh.



"It sucks to be you," she says.



If she only knew.



"You should have seen your face. I was embarrassed for you." She says.



"Did he laugh?" My only immediate concern is Chad Ryan’s reaction to my blunder. I wanted to see how much damage was done.



Chloe looks at me as if she is thinking of a nice lie. A way to alleviate any embarrassment. She folds her arms across her chest and shifts her weight from one foot to the other. "I didn’t see him laugh. He stood up like he was going to help you up when you took off running."



I don’t know what to think. Chad Ryan was going to help me? That would have been a good way to start talking to him. If I was able to overcome the embarrassment. I walk over to the mirror and check myself. No food was spilled on my clothes – that’s a good thing. Maybe I can walk on out of here and go on to my next class and act like nothing happened. I only have to make it through three more classes before school is over. I don’t have to see Chad Ryan until my last class.



My face is still flushed. But I can live with that. I just have to calm down and relax. I should be relaxed enough by last period.



"Okay." I breathe. "I can do this."



"You ready?"



I nod.



"I have to get some books from my locker first."



As we step out of the bathroom, the halls are already swamped with kids. Hanging out by their lockers in the last few minutes of lunch, getting books and supplies from lockers and making a mad dash down the hall for some reason or another. No one is looking my way, no one is smirking, they all seem indifferent or oblivious to my lunch room blunder. That’s a relief.



We walk down to the end of the hall to my locker without incident. Chloe leans against the locker next to mine as I quickly twist through the combination lock and pull the door open.



"Uh oh," she says.



I look up and over to her. Chloe’s eye’s are fixated on something down the hall. I follow her gaze and see exactly what – or actually who - she’s looking at. Walking down the hall, solo as always, in his ripped jeans, leather studded jacket and worn gym shoes with the laces swinging loose and untethered is Johnny Walker. Even the jocks and self-proclaimed bad boys steer clear of Johnny Walker.



There’s been a flurry of rumors floating around the school since he transferred in a few months ago. They say he’s been shipped around from foster home to foster home, because no one can handle him. They say that every time he moves into a new neighborhood, people’s pets start disappearing. He supposedly spent two years in juvenile detention for shooting a man and has a police record a mile long for various offenses. Of course you know how rumors go, you can get a paper cut and by the time it gets around the entire school, you’ve lost an arm. But there is something about Johnny Walker that makes me believe the rumors are true . He seems to carry with him the atmosphere for badness.



He catches my stare as he walks towards me. I know I should look away, but for some reason I can’t. He points at me with one black polished finger and chuckles as he passes me. I can only hope that he was laughing at me from the lunch room incident and that he wasn’t planning on doing something to me later.



Once he passes, I grab what books I need until the end of the day. I slam the door shut and turn to Chloe and lean in to whisper.



"That was creepy."



"That boy is nothing but trouble." Chloe says watching him until he turns a corner.



I can’t argue with that. We walk on to our next class together just as the bell rings and find seats together in the back of the class room. All I can think of is getting through these next three hours so I can go home.