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Sarah can be a real freak, sometimes.
Probably has something to do with being born in ye-olde-Victorian-times, but, still, he’s shocked his sister can pass for a normal person on the regular. And the numero-uno, first and foremost, ultimate dead giveaway that she’s not is the dress. That stupid dress. Long, frilly, with a corset and everything. White, probably, but stained and washed so many times that it’s now more cream, bordering on yellow.
“It’s freakin’ weird, Sarah,” he tells her over dinner one night. “Makes you look like an old lady.”
“I am an old lady, Jeff,” she retorts. “Older than you, you know. You really should learn some respect.”
He pulls a face at her, and that’s what makes his mom frown. “Jeffrey! That is not polite!”
“Sorry, Ma,” he mutters, before taking another gulp of his drink. He winces as she grabs his face, dabbing at a spill on the edge of his lip with a napkin. “Ma–” he starts.
“Don’t apologise to me,” Sheila tells him. “Apologise to your sister.”
He rolls his eyes. “Fine. Sorry, Sarah,” he huffs, “but look, I’m not being a jerk. You gotta keep up with the times if you want to bring home more people.”
Sarah frowns. “I have ‘kept up with the times’, Jeff,” she says. “ I, for one, don’t still use the term groovy.”
Jeff scoffs. He said it a week ago, and, man, that was a mistake. He turns towards Sheila. “Mom, when’s the last time Sarah updated her wardrobe?”
His mother finally stops her fussing with his face, leaning back as she considers the question. “Hm,” she muses. “Now, it must have been around…oh, 1959? Just after you joined the family, I think.” She frowns. “Oh. I do see your point, dear.”
“I’m afraid I don’t see the issue.” His father’s voice grows louder as he returns from the kitchen, another bottle in hand. He takes a seat across from them. “If Sarah wishes to keep her current wardrobe, then what is the harm?”
“Precisely, Father,” Sarah chimes in. While Sheila’s looking at her, Jeff takes the opportunity to make another face. Sarah just smiles back at him, a glint in her eyes.
Jeff holds back a dramatic sigh. “Becauuuuuse,” he starts, returning Sarah’s tight grin with his own, “all the girls she likes to go after are gonna think she’s some kind of weirdo creep.” Which isn’t that far from the truth, he mentally adds. He’ll save that one for when their parents aren’t around. “If you wanna get them to let their guard down, you’re gonna have to dress like them.”
Sarah has stopped smiling, and is looking at him in a very hard sorta way. Yikes. He’s probably gonna be jumped in his sleep tomorrow. But it’s all worth it, because his mom’s nodding encouragingly, and his dad’s got a thoughtful look on his face. He’s won this one.
He shoots a grin at her, and she fumes.
He doesn’t get why she’s so upset about this little thing. She’s usually pretty good with change, especially for a vampire. Whenever they move house, or change names, she slides real smooth into fitting in. But this time, it’s just clothes. He throws out his own, no problem. Yeah, the 50’s were pretty damn slick, and he hated to lose some of those jackets, but still. Just clothes. And the 80’s, well, they were pretty “wicked” in terms of fashion sense, as teenagers these days would say.
“I hate this decade,” Sarah hisses, dropping a skirt on the floor.
They’re at that mall again, the one they usually use to find a group of kids before luring them back to the house. Usually they’d split up, cover more ground. But this time they’ve got a different mission. For Sarah, apparently, it’s more of a battle.
She pulls another out from the rack, and makes another face. “So short,” she growls.
“Aw, scandalized?”
She glares at him. “I don’t like feeling my legs chafe, if you must know.”
“Okay, okay, got it.” He’s already holding a stack of jeans and shirts that feel pretty nice to wear. Couple of undershirts that remind him of the before-times. A pair of sunglasses sit on his head, and he feels pretty good, until he remembers the pair Tony has started sporting. Ugh. Tony . Maybe Jeff won’t wear these so often.
“Forget it.” Sarah shoves a shirt back onto the rack and begins heading for the front of the store. “I’ve changed my speech patterns to fit in with these people. That’s good enough.”
“You sure?”
“Yes.”
“You know, Mom and Dad said—”
Sarah stops, and looks at him. Stares. Something about her expression makes him shut up, real quick. Damn, she’s too good at that. The creepy stare. The “I can kill you if I want to” stare.
Finally, she glances away. She grabs a denim jacket from a nearby table, looks at it, and begins to head to the counter.
“That is totally not your style.”
“Well, nothing here is.”
Point taken.
“Hey, sis, you good— oh, damn.”
He’s entered Sarah’s room (the one in the basement, of course, not the facade upstairs) to find her yanking things out of her closet and throwing them into a pile on the floor. There’s a lot of lace-y stuff, a lot of poofs. “You uh, you don’t need to do that.”
She doesn’t look at him. “Well, nothing I have is right.”
He rolls his eyes. “Jeez. Talk about a drama queen.”
Now she looks at him, with a hard glare, again. She growls. “Agh, Jeff, you—” She shakes her head, rubbing her face.
“Woah.” He’s rarely seen Sarah this emotional. Usually, she’s all business — and creepy smiles. “Well, um, dinner’s ready? If you’re interested?”
“I’m not.” She sits down in a nearby chair with all the proper-ness he’s used to seeing, except her shoulders seem strained and stiff.
Well, damn it. He grabs another chair and pulls it next to hers. “You wanna, I don’t know, talk about it?”
Sarah scoffs, and looks away. But she doesn’t move. Just shakes her head in frustration. Finally, she speaks. “It was easier before you got here.”
“What was?”
“I don’t know. Everything? When it was just mother and father and I.” She slouches a little in the chair. Very weird. “Things didn’t change so fast. It was easier to adapt.”
Oh, now he sees. “Sarah,” he groans. “You’re blaming me for the freakin’ passage of time.”
“I am not,” she retorts. “I’m not a fool. It’s just…” She shakes her head, again. “I like how things used to be. I don’t like having to change so fast.”
Old lady, Jeff thinks. “Well, I guess that’s just what happens. Doesn’t mean you have to change everything.”
“Doesn’t it?” She traces the hem of her sleeve with a single finger. “You’re the one telling me to get with the times.”
“Okay, well. Doesn’t mean you have to…lose everything.”
She looks up at him. “I suppose not,” she muses. “But it’s challenging. How am I supposed to keep… certain things safe?”
“Well, I’ll never let you forget about some things, that’s for sure.”
Sarah chuckles slightly. “Oh, I know you won’t.”
They’re both quiet, for a moment. He wonders how the family got on before he joined. He taps his foot. “Can’t imagine having to be alone in facing Mom and Dad’s grossness.”
Sarah turns and stares at him, aghast. “They are not gross! They are romantic!”
“Look, I might not have been born when they started hooking up, but I’m pretty sure old-timey romance didn’t involve half the makeout shit they do. So really, when you think about it, they’re more up to date than either of us.”
She slaps at his arm, eliciting a reflexive “ow” from him, but they’re both smiling, now.
During hunts, he makes his way through every store in that mall. Even the ones for girls, despite the annoyance of the guys he’s with. Doesn’t matter if they’re annoyed, they’ll be dead soon enough, anyway. Still, nothing. Just short skirts and denim jackets, junk of every colour and size, but…
They’re on the second level of the mall, and he’s lingering by the window of a store’s display.
One of the teenagers in this new group elbows him. He’s supposed to learn their names, makes it easier to get their trust, Sarah does that well. But Jeff can’t be bothered to remember this one’s name right now.
“Halloween shopping?” the guy asks him.
He’s bouncing his leg all through dinner the next evening, until Sheila finally places a hand on his knee. “Now, dear, what are you so anxious about?”
“Nothin’, Mom,” he says. “Just excited.”
Sarah looks at him. “Excited? For what?”
He grins at her. “Oh, you’ll see.”
She scowls. “Now I’m just concerned.”
He laughs in response. “Don’t be.”
“Now I’m even more concerned.”
“Hey, whatever you wanna spend your headspace on. But it’s no big deal. Promise.”
Sarah keeps narrowed eyes on him all through dinner. After, he pulls her over to the hall closet – not the trap one, of course, the actually functional one.
“What are you hiding in here?”
Jeff ignores her, and opens the closet, grabbing the white box and shoving it into her hands. “Here,” he says. “This should help.”
She frowns at him before lifting the lid off. Her expression softens, her eyes widen. “If this is a prank–” she starts.
He groans. “It’s not, I promise.”
She looks back up at him with a look of slight shock. A look that’s slowly shifting into excitement. “I’ll be right back,” she tells him, before dashing from the room.
When she comes back, she’s wearing it. The dress, that is. Still white, still frilly, but now no longer obviously out of place. It falls just below the knees, giving some semblance of elegance and modesty while still keeping the look slightly more modern. The sleeves aren’t as crazy long, either. They’re short enough to be practical as well as stylish.
She spins around, showing off. “It’s perfect,” she tells him. “I think. Ah, let me just…”
She digs through one of the boxes in the closet before producing a light pink ribbon. She ties it around her waist as a sort of belt. “Hm. What do you think?”
Pretty girly, he thinks. “It’s great,” he tells her. “Cute.”
She beams at him. “Where on earth did you manage to find this? I thought I’d checked all the shops at the mall.”
Jeff fidgets slightly on his feet. “Costume shop,” he mutters.
“What was that?”
He pushes the original tag for the dress into her hands. CREEPY VAMPIRE GIRL DRESS, it reads.
Sarah looks at him.
And giggles.
“You are a wonder,” she says. “Thank you.”
“Swear you’re not mad.”
“I swear.”
“Good.”
”Good,” she repeats. “I think it is.”
There’s something different after that. Something in the way she walks, and stands. Almost taller, stronger.
And, he’d almost say, happier.