And that could easily be fixed with just a phone call.

2

Deadhead

More than a few months ago I’d waved good-bye to my mother at Dullsville’s Greyhound bus stop and boarded the Hipsterville-bound bus to visit my ultraconservative father’s hippie sister, Aunt Libby.

Today I was on a Prozac high, minus the Prozac, ecstatic to return to the funky town of Hipsterville—home to unique coffee shops, with handmade coffee mugs and fresh scones (not the overincorporated cutout kinds with focus-group canned-in music), goth and hipster boutiques, and the perfectly morbid Coffin Club. I was excited to see Aunt Libby again, but even more important, I was only a few hours away from being reunited, or so I hoped, with my number-one vampire-mate.

I passed the bus ride doodling in my Olivia Outcast journal, imagining my reunion with Alexander. We’d meet inside the Coffin Club, where pale mannequins with bat wings hung from the ceiling and ghostlike fog permeated the air. Alexander would be waiting for me in the middle of the packed dance floor, with a single black rose. I’d run into his arms and he’d envelop me in them like a gothic Juliet. He’d lean into me and greet me with a long, seductive kiss, sending chills from my head to my combat boots. We’d dance the night away to the twisted sounds of the Skeletons until my legs could no longer hold me up. Alexander and I would venture off into a tiny church’s graveyard, and we’d climb into a vacant crypt, where an empty coffin would be awaiting us. He’d close the lid on our night as dawn approached, and we’d snuggle together in darkness.

I was halfway through an episode of The Munsters on Billy Boy’s borrowed (or rather bribed) iPod when I noticed the two-mile exit sign for Hipsterville.

Last time I arrived in Hipsterville, sunny skies and puffy blue clouds hung over the town. This time I was met with ominous clouds and a fierce downpour.