Just like Hana promised, she taught Mia everything she knew about being a vampire. At first it had been really hard for Mia to transition. But after a little more than a year, Mia was finally starting to get comfortable with who she was. She'd discovered that she needed to go out about twice a week in order to be able to function. The only problem was that the town she lived in wasn't all that big. As far as Mia knew, Hana had been the only vampire in town. But now that there were two of them, that meant twice as many attacks. Hana had been worried that this might be a problem.
"You're going to have to be more careful." she'd told Mia.
"Why?" Mia had never been caught - she'd never even been close to having anyone suspect her. So what was Hana's problem?
"There's not really enough people here for both of us."
Mia narrowed her eyes. "What does that mean?" she asked.
"Nothing. Just that people are starting to get suspicious. I mean, if we lived in a bigger city, it wouldn't be a problem. But here, where everybody knows each other...Just be careful, ok? I don't want to have any problems."
Mia narrowed her eyes. After a minute she nodded, deciding not to say anything. She was annoyed at Hana for suggesting she wasn't being careful. After all, it was Hana's not being careful that had gotten Mia into this situation in the first place. But even though she thought it, Mia decided not to actually say anything. As much as she hated to admit it, Mia needed Hana; she was the only other vampire Mia knew.
Still, over the next few weeks, Hana stayed on edge. Mia had hoped Hana would calm down a bit, but she was convinced that there just weren't enough people in their town to support the both of them. Mia didn't see what the big deal was. Being so new to the whole thing, she wasn't used to looking for the signs that the people around her were getting worried. As she looked back on those conversations with Hana now, she couldn't believe she'd missed it.
If she hadn't been so reliant on Hana, Mia would have talked to her other friends more. She was sure she would have seen how worried everyone actually was. It wasn't until things got too bad to ignore that Mia finally saw what was going on.
It had been getting harder for Mia to find people out alone, but she managed to write it off as a coincidence. It was getting colder outside, so of course people wouldn't be out as much. But when people started actually avoiding her on the street, even Mia couldn't ignore that. Even in daylight - when she wasn't out hunting - people would stare at her. She even had a few people cross the street when she'd walk by. It wasn't long before everyone she knew was avoiding her like the plague. She asked Hana about it, but she just shrugged.
"I told you, there's not enough people here for both of us. They were bound to get suspicious sooner or later."
"Yeah, but why are they suspicious of me?" Mia could see people being worried in general, maybe even suspicious about her and Hana, but not worried about only her. Mia only hunted with Hana; if they thought something was wrong with Mia, why didn't they seem to have the same problems with Hana?
"People have been asking a lot of questions lately. And a lot of the students remember how you got attacked by something last year but weren't really hurt. They think something's wrong with you."
"And you didn't say anything?" Mia could almost understand how Hana hadn't stood up for her, even though the whole thing was her fault in the first place. But to not even tell Mia that people were saying these kinds of things? Who would do that to a friend?
"What do you want me to say? I'm sorry - I really do like you. But you're on your own with this one."
Mia couldn't believe that was the way Hana really felt. It was true Hana hadn't exactly been a great friend - after all, she'd attacked Mia in the middle of the night just because she was there. She'd taught Mia everything she knew, sure, but she wouldn't have had to do that if she hadn't messed up so bad in the first place.
It was obvious that Hana wasn't going to do anything to help her, but Mia thought she could handle it herself. She was extra careful, and she knew that nobody had seen her yet. So, people might be avoiding her, but no one was actually being hostile. Things would be ok.
When that changed, Mia wasn't sure what to do. At first, it was just the students at her school. She caught some of the older kids following her home once or twice. Soon it was every day. It didn't take long before they started calling out to her, taunting her the whole way home. The adults didn't actually say anything to her, but they were just as bad. Everywhere she went, they glared at her. She wasn't allowed to go over to anyone's house anymore - their parents wouldn't let her. Not that anyone wanted her around, anyway. Even Hana started to avoid her. Not because she was afraid of Mia or anything. She just knew how the town felt about Mia, and she'd decided to stick with them.
Now that Mia had lost all of her friends and the whole town thought something was wrong with her, it was getting harder and harder for her to go out. And not just at night - she was being followed almost everywhere. And even on the rare occasions when people weren't actively stalking her, she was still greeted with hostile stares. Every time she walked into a room, all eyes immediately focused on her.
So now, Mia had two problems. It was getting hard to find anyone out alone, and even when she did, there was a good chance that she was being followed herself. There had been more than a few times where she'd had to watch a perfect target walk by because a group of kids was following her home. This meant that Mia couldn't find people as often as she needed; instead of finding someone every three or four days, she was averaging five or six days.
She wouldn't have thought just a few days would make much of a difference, but it really did. And those days started to add up; if she'd only waited six days once or twice, it would have been ok. But since she was getting only about half the blood she needed, it was starting to affect her. Her judgment was off, and she wasn't as subtle as she normally would have been. Of course, this made any attacks she did manage to pull off frenzied, which, in turn, made people even less likely to go out. And it affected her in other ways, too. She was tired all the time - she just didn't have the energy she used to.
Mia wasn't sure how her parents never figured out what was going on - maybe they just thought it was the stress of the situation that made her act that way. But she was glad that they were always there for her, even when the rest of the town inexplicably turned on her. Things got bad enough that she finally started ditching school, just so she wouldn't have to face the students there. When her parents found out, they were understandably upset. They'd talked about what to do, and decided that they couldn't stay in this town any more.
Her parents had discussed moving down south - to Tokyo or Osaka. Her dad was a teacher at the local university, and he'd decided to see about transferring to one of the schools in a bigger city. But there weren't many openings at the time, and after a few weeks, Mia started to wonder if she'd ever get out of this town. Finally, one of her dad's coworkers told him about an opening in a decent-sized city in America. Her parents had had a long discussion, and decided that their best chance to make a new start would be there. They'd asked Mia what she thought about moving to another country, but she didn't care where they moved to. She was just glad that she wouldn't be here anymore.
Mia would have thought it'd be hard to move, not just to another city but to another country. Normally, it probably would have been. But things really were so bad in her hometown that she would have gladly moved to another planet. Still, the first day of school in this new city was harder than she'd expected. She'd walked through the doors, her stomach in knots. She'd gotten lost on her way to almost every class, and she'd jammed her locker shut and had to go to three classes without any of her books. But at least no one was glaring at her. It was such a relief to not have to worry about everyone picking on her that she didn't even worry about how many things were going wrong. She'd even managed to talk to a few people in her classes. She would never have believed it would be so nice just to talk to another kid in class.
In less than two weeks, she'd met a couple of friends and was starting to actually look forward to going to school again. Even hunting had gotten better. Now that she was in a bigger city, there were a lot more people to choose from. And even better was the fact that now she didn't have to worry about knowing almost everybody who lived here; it was so much easier to hunt when she didn't actually know the victims!
Her first couple months here had been interesting, to say the least. She'd met another vampire - Anna - and became good friends with her. Unlike Hana, Mia's new friend was much more interested in working with her as a team. Mia didn't feel like she had to compete any more, and she knew she wasn't going to be blindsided again. After less than a year, Mia was surprised to realize that she was probably better friends with this new girl than she'd been with anyone in her life. And with her second year of high school starting tomorrow, Mia could honestly say this was the first year she was looking forward to school since becoming a vampire.11Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡXzqi7eCvKD
