Parker nodded. “Heading out to grab a beer, then picking up my date, probably getting a bite to eat and then a little—”
I raised a hand, stop-sign style. “Don’t,” I started. “I don’t want to hear about your big-breasted concubines.”
Parker’s face split into that half grin, which tonight I found grating. “How’d you know she’s big-breasted?”
“You’re right. I might be abnormal, but you’re down right stereotypical. Give Bambi my best.” I snatched the manila file folder that Parker held out to me and stuffed it into my shoulder bag. “See you tomorrow.”
I was fuming when I pushed through the double doors of the police station and into the cold night air. I gulped heavily and then blinked, surprised by the moist trails on my cheeks.
Was I crying?
I sniffed angrily, then wiped my nose on my sweater sleeve, rubbing the tears away with my fists. I would not cry over Parker Hayes. I would not cry over that demon-hating asshole. I was just tired.
And completely normal.
I speed-dialed Lorraine on my cell phone and let her know that I wouldn’t be able to make it to her party tonight. “But put me down for a juicer and a salad spinner,” I said before hanging up. Normal people juiced fruit and spun salads, right?
Stupid Parker Hayes.
I drove home with my radio blaring, trying to quell the hot anger that roiled in my stomach, but with every turn I saw Parker, saw that stupid half grin and heard his comments about my abnormal life roll through my head.
Normalcy had always been a problem for me—not that I didn’t try. Like every other eight-year-old girl I wanted a princess party. I remembered how Grandmother swathed the house with white twinkle lights and countless yards of pale pink tulle. She set out glittery crowns and little paper cups filled with pink M&M’s, but where most little girls would have been okay with a paper cutout of a fire-breathing dragon in front of their Crayola castle, Grandmother figured, why bother with fake when she knew a perfectly good dragon who lived in the Sunset and owed her a favor? The party was going well until Nelia Henderson (yes, that Mrs. Henderson—fresh from the UDA) lumbered in, forked tongue flicking, tendrils of smoke curling up from her nostrils.
At first my party guests were thrilled—even the uber-popular Allison Baker (my wildcard invitation and whose friendship, I prayed, would vault me into normal social standing) squealed with delight. It was controlled chaos until Mrs. Henderson downed a bottle of grape soda and then burped fruit-scented fire right down the center of my pretty pink princess table. Allison Baker never spoke to me again—not even after her singed eyebrows grew back.
School wasn’t any better. I despised Mother and Father’s Day, when my teachers would look at me with those stupidly sad expressions and suggest that I make cards for my grandmother instead. My grandmother, who would show up for parents night dressed in a ridiculous array of rainbow-colored scarves and tinkling gold jewelry and stand alongside all the other little girls’ mothers, who were dressed in pastel twin sets and elegant pearl studs, their slim, un-wrinkled throats wrapped with dainty pearl rope necklaces. Grandmother would always talk too loud or laugh too loud, and I was labeled the girl with the weird grandma—and the girl with no parents. It was Cathy Stevens in the seventh grade who dubbed me “Special Sophie”—said with a snicker and a wave of her Barbie-blond hair.
By high school I had tested into an exclusive private school where the girls on the brochure had waist-length, stick-straight hair and wore cardigan sweaters and pleated skirts. I thought it was my Special Sophie escape. Chelsea, the twelfth-grader who led the Mercy High tour, talked about how all the girls in the school were like sisters, and I had visions of sleepovers and field trips and normal best friends with pink skin and heartbeats. I kept up my “normal” fa?ade through spring semester by having the carpool drop me off in a slice of suburbia nine blocks away from Grandmother’s house with the blinking neon eye in the window. My normal fa?ade was effectively shattered when a group of popular girls thought it would be a hoot to have their palms read—and walked right into my living room. My school pictures hung on the wall between pictures of Grandmother hugging a warlock and shaking hands with a centaur, so my plan to act as a curious patron was dashed. I finished out my high school life as Loser Lawson, and the moronic monikers and life abnormalities just went on from there. Now I was nearly thirty-three years old, living with a vampire, being hunted by something else, and being hounded by an obnoxious but blindingly hot cop.
“Yeah,” I snorted, “I can do normal.”
By the time I got home I was spitting mad. I kicked open my front door and tossed my shoulder bag onto the floor, the manila file folder tumbling out, splaying crime-scene photos all over the hallway floor.