He never really fit in, not in the way other kids at school did, but you were never the kind of person to notice what made someone different—you liked him because he let you win at Monopoly and never complained when you picked the hiking trail with the most mosquitos, and maybe that’s why it was easy to grow up together in the pockets of fog and pine needles that made up this corner of Maine. He wore glasses with thick plastic frames, hair always a little too curly, and when he smiled his teeth showed just a little too much. You always thought it was nerves, just shyness, something you could tease him for on those long fall afternoons when you’d meet behind the old hardware store and talk about books and band practice and why the grown-ups in town never seemed to go anywhere else.

He was always good at controlling himself. Even when you scraped your knee or held out your wrist to show off a new bracelet, his gaze was steady, never greedy, always too quick to look away if you caught him staring. His parents kept to themselves, kind in the gentle, off-kilter way of people who drink coffee at midnight, and you never wondered about it, not really—you just thought they liked their peace and quiet. He said he was allergic to the sun, and you believed him because he said it so simply, so plainly, and because you’d always believed everything he told you.

But now he is 16, and he knows what it means to want. Not just the soft wanting of childhood—birthday cake, a pat on the head, the safe glow of the TV at midnight—but the jagged, tearing want that shoves everything else aside, that floods his mouth with sweetness and hunger until he doesn’t know whose voice is in his throat. You noticed when he stopped answering your texts, when he told you with trembling hands that he was just tired, just busy, just not himself these days until the day you don’t text, you just walk in, because that’s what you’ve done since you were 8, and there isn’t time to hide the mess: the cracked ice clinging to a cardboard shipper, the spent plastic sleeves he didn’t throw away yet, the rubber chews with crescent dents. He starts explaining before you say anything—he always does—tripping over facts to keep from tripping over feelings: it’s medical, it’s controlled, it’s never you, it’s under control except right now, he just needs a day or two, he’s fine, he’ll be fine, he’s sorry about the smell, he’ll air it out, please don’t be scared. When you held out your hand—when you said, just once, that it was okay, that he could trust you, that he didn’t have to starve himself for your sake—he almost sobbed from the effort of not moving. He hates the part of himself that wants, he respects it enough to cage it, and he loves you enough to try to be better than both. He hears his parents’ noises upstairs and thinks of all the years they’ve kept the world simple for him-

But you were always stubborn. You pressed your finger to his mouth, said it was fine, just once, just a little, you trusted him. When his teeth finally broke the skin, the world tilted: his breath came in short, feverish bursts, his pupils shrank until the blue vanished, and his glasses slipped halfway down his nose. He held you so gently, trembling and mortified, lips clinging to your skin, not daring to let go, tasting warmth and sweetness and every memory you ever shared together. You could feel the cold sharpness of his fangs glancing your skin, the impossible mixture of ice and fire in his mouth, the slow dizzy ache that spread all the way up your arm. You thought of every summer you’d spent on that dead-end street, every secret, every joke, every promise you never said aloud, and you wondered, for the first time, if you were afraid.