Page 67 of Foes & Cons
Never. I’ve never staked a vampire.
BUD LEROY
Never, always. Potato, potato.
Vampire Falls. Season one, episode six – “Did You See?”
Fucked, I tell you.
Thankfully, Vivian skated off the other side of the stage, so I didn’t have to come to face to face with her, which was probably a good thing because I don’t think it’s a good idea to look directly into the eyes of a goddess.
“Babe!” snaps Roxy, slapping the clipboard on the side of her leg.
“Huh?” I say.
Roxy’s trying to talk me through my set again, but I’m a little distracted. You know, by the VMA level performance just now.
“Are you taking this in?” She pulls the curtain back and watches the Headset People hauling stuff onto the stage. “We have literal minutes until they’re set up for you.”
I shrug. It’s all I can muster (I’ve always wondered about the usage of that word, and this feels like the right time). I watch everyone moving drums and ramps back and forth, but all I really see is Vivian. It’s like she moved so fast around the stage she’s left fragments of herself behind to remind people what they saw was real, and not a hot girl mirage.
I look down at my costume, created with such love and passion for a show that means everything to me, but now is just a symbol of my failure. I pull the headband from my hair.
“What the hell are you doing?” says Roxy, tearing it from my hand.
“What’s the point?” I say, ducking out of her way as she tries to put it back on me. “I can’t followthat!”
She looks at me for a moment, her shoulders sagging a little.
“RuPaul couldn’t follow that, babe. I’m sorry. But it wasn’t really what this is all about, was it? She just blinded people with her hair and incredible, incredible,incrediblelegs. I mean . . . balance.”
“So that’s it then?” I say.
Roxy shakes her head. “You have to try, babe. Come on.”
“What’s the point?” I repeat, falling into Roxy as one of the Headset People barges past me. “He didn’t even see me and I’m standing right here. Wearing acape. I’m just going to humiliate myself if I go out there.”
I can tell from the placement of Roxy’s eyebrows that she’s torn between shoving me on stage to at least try and out-perform Vivian and scooping me up and running back to our room where she’d tuck me in bed and hand-feed me Haribo. She looks at a couple of guys shifting the last item on stage, as the song playing for the crowd comes to an end. She puts her hand on my shoulder and opens her mouth to speak.
“All set back here?”
We look round at Fake McKinley, who’s not actually Fake McKinley for the first time since we’ve met him but is wearing a pair of black joggers and a black T-shirt. The T-shirt is tight, tight, tight, and he isrippedunder his werewolf costume. Not that I’m in the frame of mind to appreciate that right now. OK, I totally take a few seconds to appreciate it.
Roxy gives him a look, and he ducks his head so he can seebehind me then looks back at her, his palms up.
“Where are the swords and the sticks?” he asks.
I look down at my boots, guilt swelling in my stomach when I think about the input my parents had into creating them.
“She doesn’t want to do it,” Roxy says.
“Why the hell not?”
This is the most engaged I think I’ve seen Fake McKinley, like, ever. The muscles in his jaw are tight (not as tight as his T-shirt, though) and he’s looking down at me with such intensity I think if he really concentrated, he could make laser beams come out of his eyes.
He puts his hand on my shoulder, turning me to face him. I suspect he considers crouching down to talk to me but decides against it.
“What’s going on with you, Eliza?”
