Mostly, we sat around while Tina Messinger, one of the first humans to graduate with an advanced degree in Undead Studies from UC Berkeley, pontificated about us to us.
Tina saw herself as a sort of therapist/spirit guide/guidance counselor, but she spent far too much time explaining how well qualified she was to understand our undead point of view. I didn’t think it would be helpful to point out that if she were truly well qualified, she would know how annoying we found it to have our point of view humansplained to us.
Following the first wave of vampires coming out of the closet, it had been rather amusing to watch the various levels of academics nearly swoon when they realized how many of their colleagues were undead passing as human. Honestly, why did they think so many of them had requested to teach evening classes?
And now I was expected to sit through an orientation for undergraduate vampires. I didn’t even have the pleasure of Jamie’s company, as he’d already taken a version of the course at the community college where he’d taken his first classes. Other than glomming on to his circle of friends, he was relatively unfazed by our arrival on campus anyway. His unflappable nature was part of what I loved about him. I was bothered by everything. I overthought. I overreacted. But Jamie just rolled with things. It would be wrong to think him simple, but he cut to the heart of matters in a way that I struggled with.
Tina was not impressed that in the course of “explaining my distress” to Brianna over my lost body wash, I’d broken her bed, a desk, and Brianna’s collarbone. Brianna had gotten a few shots in but only after our floor’s vampire RA, a former bodybuilder who wrestled professionally in the 1970s under the name “the Iron Bear,” kicked down our locked door and pulled me off her. The Iron Bear, also known as Sidney Applebaum, didn’t appreciate Brianna’s unsportsmanlike behavior and allowed me two retaliatory punches in return. And since he didn’t specify “no broken bones,” Brianna was now nursing three splintered ribs and a punctured lung. They would heal, but her every movement would be agony for the next couple of hours.
Sidney was now standing between our chairs and the door to Tina’s office as we sat in front of her desk and received the full range of her thoroughly disappointed facial expressions.
I’d put on some clothes, because apparently, my having beaten Brianna’s pretentious ass while I was half-naked was off-putting for some people. I did the “walk of shame” to Tina’s office in one of the jeans-and-tank-top ensembles that were now my coed uniform. While they were adorable, Jamie said my elaborate costumes made me stand out among my classmates as a “weirdo.” Also, my ass happened to look spectacular in skinny jeans.
I crossed my arms over my chest and focused on the strange collection of intentionally vampire-centric tchotchkes decorating Tina’s office. Lots of casually draped scarves, exotic pillows, and fanged figurines were supposed to suggest world travel but mostly screamed, “I went to a well-stocked flea market.”
Tina sat in her desk chair, fingers steepled in front of her barely lined face. She might have been a handsome woman, had she taken the time to tame her wild, frizzy brown hair and found a pair of glasses that properly framed her expressive brown eyes. Even in our comparative human years, this woman was barely old enough to be my mother, and yet she was lecturing me as if she was about to take away our TV and dessert privileges.
“Galadriel, can you understand why Ophelia might feel upset and intruded upon when you use her toiletries without asking?”
I tried to restrain my eye roll as Tina used Brianna’s assumed name. I really did. But I failed.
“I didn’t even use that much of her stupid body wash.” Brianna huffed, blowing her dyed-black hair out of her slowly fading black eye.
I hissed, baring my still-elongated