Chapter Text
Gabriela, known by everyone as Ela, hated waking up early, however for her baby sister, she would do anything, even wake up at the unholy hour of 5 am to help her family surprise her baby sister early on her birthday. However, what she truly meant by helping was ensuring that her Vampire family did not mess up any of the food or the cake meant for the simple humans of the house. It seems that after 300+ years as vampires, you forget that food left overnight might not be the safest thing to eat.
Regardless, as she slowly entered Daisy's room, cake in hand, with the rest of the family, her breath was stolen as she saw the beaming smile on her sister's face. Especially as she accepts the hugs and kind words from the whole family. At last Daisy turned to her, eyes mostly on the cake and then, her gaze raised and the sisters locked eyes.
"Hay Belleza, you look so lovely. Have the happiest birthday ever, and I hope that your dreams come true" says Gabriela as she holds the cake up to Daisy's face for her to blow the candles.
"Daisy, wait, please please please, can you ask for a motorcycle for me?" said the youngest voice in the room. Everybody turned to look at Vicente as he happily looked at Daisy with his best puppy face. His face quickly fell when he saw the deadpan stare on the birthday girl's face.
"No way, Jose, you will just have to wait for your own birthday," she said as she crouched down slightly to poke at his nose. His puppy eyes fell, giving away to the houses deadly-est pout.
With that, Daisy turned around, looked at her family, smiled, closed her eyes and blew her candles. One thought stayed on Gabriela’s mind the rest of the morning as she wondered, what is her baby sister wishing for?
Later that same morning as they where getting ready to leave the house, the bell rung.
"Dais, don't forget your jacket, it's cold today. Besides, it might rain with a little bit of hale," said a voice coming from the kitchen. As she walked out, covering her long-sleeved skintight dark brown shirt with a fleeced-lined leather jacket.
"No big sis, you look so cool with that jacket, but then you look down and boom, high-waisted bell-bottom jeans AND converse, when are you gonna realize that skinny are today's fashion?" whined Vicente as he skipped down the stairs as he checked the contents of his backpack, tripping on the last stair.
"I don't know Vicente, they are quite comfy, besides, they fit wonderfully," laughed Gabriela as she twirled around. In the living room, she saw Daisy and their best friend talking, Lucia. She was animatedly gesturing to her notebook, which, on close inspection, had the pros and cons of being a vampire.
On the left side all the pros and on the right only one con. From her position she could not read it, but when she got closer, her brows furrowed. On the cons side, she read in big boxy letter the name MAX. She could feel her blood pressure rising just at the thought of that mans; no not a man, just a boys; name.
Because in her opinion, Her baby sister could do better than that scared little boy, how many times had he sent her texts or emails or even long ass letters to meet and talk about something "important", just for him to suddenly ask for the most mundane of favors.
Gabriela had overheard him and Alejandro (his best friend and her oldest one) talking about it a few weeks ago, and he said he was 'head over heels' for her. Yet, 8 months ago, Alejandro had told her he was infatuated with Maria from math and 11 months ago it was Jeycelin from science. In all those cases, he fumbled, eventually declared and broke up within a 3-month period.
She had to admit that this was his longest crush by far, and even Alejandro admitted that he was more poetic and romantic than usual, yet that did not clear him. She took her sister's happiness seriously, but as much as she wanted to shake her until she realized that she could do better, she had to let her make her own mistakes. Besides, what is the worst that could happen?
As Gabriela looked around she realized that Daisy and Lucia where gone, they must have slipped during her musing. As she was prepared to go look for them a high pitch scream came from upstairs
"ELA, Ela! He wants to meet up! After today's play tryouts at the ice cream place near here", came the excited voice of Daisy as she swung herself down the stairs and into her sister's arms. Jumping up and down as she clutched her phone.
"Ela, please, you have to help me. No one does eyeliner like you, and maybe you can curl my hair to make it look like yours, please, please," Daisy said as she roughly shacked her sister, her hair moved with enough force to make it spill out of her claw clip and fall around her shoulders in gentle curls.
"Dais, while yes, I will do your make-up, I am sure that you look like you will be the best, right? I think that the weird forming curls and the eyeliner you can leave for me, okay? Besides, remember, my makeup is specially formulated for my vampire skin, it won't to look as good for you. How about we take your makeup to Lucia's house, and we get you ready there?" said Gabriela as she calmed her sister down. Yeah, there was nothing wrong with her sister being in love, besides if he broke her heart, she had a lot of contacts to help her hide the body.
As the girls walked to Lucia's house, Ela texted her family that the house was empty for them to organize Daisy's surprise birthday party. The vampire would have loved to be there and control their wild mother but knew it would be too suspicious if she did not go to school. She just hoped the rest of them had enough common sense in them to make something Daisy would actually like.
At Lucia's house, it was a struggle to help Daisy get ready. A mix between Lucas' desire to make her be as pale as the dead, pun intended, and Daisy's nervousness made them take too much time getting her ready, and therefore have to run to school to arrive on time.
The young girl rushed to the bathroom for privacy, she always made sure to take her synthesized blood fifteen minutes before the set alarm. It was never good to miss a dose. As she exited the girl's bathroom, she saw Marylin talk to Daisy and Lucia and, as she got close, heard her venomous words.
"... Max De La Torre is my future boyfriend, so keep your paws off," basically spewed Marylin, yet when making eye contact with Gabriela, she straightened up, huffed, looked away and strutted off.
"What a fucking bitch, what crawled up her ass this morning?" murmured the teen as she walked with her friends to class, looking around, and shaking her head in greeting when she saw Alejandro.
"Ela!" exclaimed both of the humans loudly as they looked sharply at Gabriela as the hall monitor passed by, worried the black-haired girl was going to get in trouble.
"What am I not wrong? She needs to take a chill pill?" said the sarcastic vampire teen as they entered their class. Her friends sighted and rolled their eyes. They sat down and Valentina proceeded to dump her old leather satchel on the floor and took out her school supplies and her sketchbook.
She looked around the class and when she found that the teacher was not there, opened the page and started sketching designs for the school play costumes. Getting lost in the designs, she could not feel it as her sister and friends tried to discreetly nudge her.
"Well, Well, look at this, the oldest O'Brien is once again doodling away. Do you really want to fail my class again, Miss O´Brien? You are already one year older than most of your classmates. Don't make me fail you again." Came the annoying and rough voice of Mr. Ramirez, their math teacher. He was the most hated teacher in the whole school, even more than their weird headmaster or eccentric theater teacher. He was the only one who did not help her pass after last year's 'Incident'.
"No Mr.Ramirez" said Gabriela through gritted teeth. She then opened her notebook and focused forward, ignoring her friends' worried stares and the confused looks of the rest of her classmates. After all, Mr Ramirez would never know that those 3 months of missed class were the hardest of her existance, as she lost her life and became part of the undead, at just 17 years old. At least her baby sister got to live a bit longer.
After that really hard and stressful math lesson with Mr. Ramirez, Gabriela said goodbye to her friends and went to the backroom of the school teacher. She ended up being the third out of 4 kids waiting. Today was the pitch day for costume ideas, and she really wanted to get her ideas approved. She was extremely excited about working with her sister on something so big.
By the time she realized it was her turn to present, she squared her shoulders and walked confidently to the head of the table, handing prints of her sketches to the teachers in charge, actually more like glorified torturers, as she spoke
Her speech was short and sweet. She had asked around about these particular teachers and their personalities and heard that out of the three, two hated long speeches and fortunatly a friend told her the other had a migraine today and wanted to go home quickly. She hoped her speed bought her brownie points.
When she left the room, she noticed her hands were shaking slightly. As she took a deep breath and reassured herself that she had made it, she took her phone out of her pocket, yet it seemed that her friends were quicker as it chimed with an incoming message.
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Wannabe VampyGirl: Hey Dais got upset seeing Max and Marylin
sing together and we left the audition, meet us at the plaza
ps. Benjamin is also coming
Actually VampyGirl: Oks, I already finished pitching my ideas
to the costume comitee, will be there in five. Wait for me plis :)
Wannabe VampyGirl: Yes Mam, what you say Mam
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Gabriela shut her phone off giggling as she packed and walked toward the plaza. When she got near her friends, she saw the wild and chaotic way Daisy was jumping up and down. Knowing it could only mean one thing. Max said something. Suddenly, moody, she dragged her feet the rest of the way.
"Hi sis, bye sis, I have to go. He wants to meet now," was what Daisy practically screamed as she left running and jumped onto her bicycle. The vampire pouted as she was expecting to hear from her sister how her audition went. She shared a long-suffering look with Benjamin as Lucia waved goodbye wildly to Daisy's back.
"Well o well, at least we have more time to help my mom get the party ready,"Gabriela mumbled as they all changed their course to the O’Brien residence. Both of her friends hummed in agreement.
"How was your pitch? When will they choose the costumes for the play? Romeo and Vamplieta was it?" shyly asked Benjamin as they neared her neighborhood.
"Pretty good, I am pretty sure they will select my designs. They will tell me in about 2 or 3 days and, sadly, yes, it is Romeo and Juliet Vampire style," Gabriela softly said as a smirk took over her face. The irony was not lost on her.
"Besides that. How was her audition? Would I have loved to see it myself?" said Gabriela. They reached the house as she unlocked the front door to her house and let her friends in.
"It was amazing, she blew it. Oh, my! This is fantastic. The O’Brien sisters are working together on the school's best show up to date," squealed Lucia as the three friends arrived just to see a "Daisy's childhood" slideshow, The stopped and happily saw the slideshow of pictures slowly passing on the screen.
Suddenly, a loud scream shook the house.