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“Interest begets expectation; expectation begets disappointment.” — George Lass, Dead Like Me
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It was a nice park and one of her favorites. No one she knew ever went there, which was its best feature. Whenever she wanted to get away from her parents, her sister or her life in general, she went there.
She'd spent a good deal of time at the park lately. Since she'd dropped out of college, her mother, Joy, had been harassing her to get a job. George could care less about college or getting a job or anything else life had to offer her. Her philosophy was simple: no interest, no expectations, no worries. She was determined not to care about any of it, and she wasn't about to let her mom guilt her into looking for some dumb job where everyone pretended to be happy even though there was no point to anything they did all day.
Sitting there on the park bench, she soon became lost in her thoughts, most of them centered on how much she hated her mom. Some of her thoughts, however, focused on the dreams she'd been having lately. George didn't believe that the dreams could have some inner meaning that would help her lead a better life or any of that crap; they’d just been scary. She’d dreamed of monsters fabled to live under the bed and teenage girls, much like herself, who fought them and killed them. They’d scared the shit out of her, although she would have been the last to admit it.
"Hi."
George looked up, startled, at the face of the one-eyed man smiling down at her. "Hi?" She glanced around, trying to determine where the man had come from, only to realize that the park had become more crowded since she'd last bothered to look around.
"Georgia Lass, right?"
George's eyes narrowed in confusion. "Who are you?"
"Xander Harris." He sat down on the bench.
"How do you know my name?"
"I've been looking for you. I went by your house and your mom slammed a door in my face when I asked to talk to you. So, here I am after I did the looking-around thing and asked everyone if they knew who and where to find you, and when I found out that you came here a lot, I decided to come here."
George's stared in disbelief. She wondered if he even heard himself talk. "And you wanted to talk to me about what, now?"
Xander bit his lip, grimacing. He sighed. "I'm still new at this, so if this doesn't make any sense, tell me and I'll repeat it in a less-confusing way. Do you believe in vampires?"
Of course George didn't. Xander went on, though. He told her all about vampires, demons and the teenage girls who fought and killed them. Just like in her dreams.
Needless to say, she was freaked. She hastily stood up, feeling the need to get as far away from him as possible.
"Wait!" she heard him say, followed by a quieter, "Nice going, Harris, you really handled that well."
He got up and started following her.
George glanced behind her. "Fuck off!"
"Had any strange dreams lately?" he called.
George froze. No, no, no! If she turned around, she'd know it wasn't a dream. She'd know that they really were having a conversation about vampires, and that this stranger she'd never met before knew about the same dreams that had been freaking her out as much as he was.
George slowly turned around. "What if I did?"
And so he explained. She was a Slayer, “She who slayith the vampires, the demons and all of that.”
George didn't believe him at first. She didn't believe him even when he showed her the tiny pinprick scars on his neck that he got from a vampire almost biting him in his junior year of high school. But she didn't leave. She stood rooted to the spot, because something deep inside her wanted to believe him. She wanted an explanation for the dreams, for the strength and for the reflexes that had also come out of nowhere recently, and he was giving her one. An impossible one, but it was an explanation, nonetheless.
It ended up not mattering in the long run, because the next day, she died.