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The Race at Broadstone Park
Extras from The Vyvernault Heir
“Harold! It’s this way,” trilled Holly, excitedly. She punctuated each word with a jump, making her neon green sports bag slap against her small back. A single strand of pink hair escaped the intricate knots Georgiana had braided. Today had been the subject of her daydreams for the past month.
Holly hopped toward the direction of the second unkempt field of Broadstone Park.
Three vampire schools and five human schools were coming together for a charity race. Ahead of them, James was following Henley, trying to sing a fighting song that he’d composed in many keys, with Henley hollering over the screech for him to stop.
Harold Hague winced at the unwelcome noise as he corrected his direction. He yanked on Holly’s arm and said, “But the humans are that way, Holly.”
“Harold, I’m in the vampire division,” Holly huffed. Her impatience doubled as she failed to pull her hand from his grasp. All night, thoughts of first place kept Holly from sleeping. Her mother had to check on her twice in the night because Holly kept releasing spikes of adrenaline.
Currently, Georgiana was speaking with Harold’s parents not too far from the parking lot behind Holly. Her mother’s boisterous laughter could be heard echoing across the parking lot.
“Why would you be in the vampire division?” asked Harold, appalled. “Did they put you in because of your parents? We should fix that. I can tell my dad.”
“No, it’s not a mistake, Harold! I registered for the vampire division.”
Harold wrinkled his nose. “But why? Do you like losing?”
“I’m going to win.”
Harold stopped walking and squinted at Holly’s forehead like he was studying a rare creature. “That’s stupid. You’re human. A human can’t win against vampires.”
“My parents are vampires. I’m a vampire,” said Holly.
“I can win the four hundred meters, Harold, just trust me!” Holly gave Harold a dazzling smile that gave him the impression that if Holly stood still long enough, the flowers would shoot turn toward her to capture the warmth from a closer, brighter sun.
Harold’s lungs froze at her blind optimism, which could intoxicate the fattest pessimist. In a daze, he let himself be pulled by her eager hand toward the vampire division, wanting to believe in her truth.
Harold’s lungs froze at her blind optimism, which could intoxicate the fattest pessimist. In a daze, he let himself be pulled by her eager hand toward the vampire division, wanting to believe in her truth.
But their tracks were four times as big as the human tracks.
Every year, human children raced in either the fifty-meter dash or the run-until-you-drop jog, which had no end time. In contrast, vampire children had the option to race in the 400-meter, the 1500-meter, or the 5000-meter. Organizers planned the divisions to end at the same time.
Georgiana approached, waving her popcorn, hopping in every direction. “We’ll be in the front row,” she said to Holly.
“Mommy! I’m going to come in first, I can feel it,” grunted Holly, her fists and head vibrating with anticipation.
Pride burned in Georgiana’s orange eyes. Her nostrils flared, and she hugged her baby tightly. “That’s right! You’re a vampire, and no one’s going to get you down. You’re just as good as any of them.” Upon separation, Georgiana kissed her daughter’s cheek with enough exuberance to suction the light from the sky. Holly giggled, hardly noticing the tremendous energy she’d just given her mother.
Harold’s hand slipped too firmly back into Holly’s, and Georgiana blinked her tears away. She smiled at Harold, who always watched Holly with the protectiveness of a mother goose. She patted the boy’s head, but she didn’t notice how tightly he shut his eyes and gritted his teeth.
Holly’s wide tangerine eyes stared up at her mother’s. Her excitement faded a little when she shyly asked, “Is Daddy going to make it?” She knew she shouldn’t ask, because it always drained the humor from her mother’s face.
Staring at the ground, Georgiana replied, “No, my dear, Daddy is taking care of some business. He couldn’t catch a flight back in time.”
“Where is he?” asked Harold with unblinking eyes.
“Well,” said Georgiana, clearing her throat. “Here and there.
“When is he coming back?” Harold’s gaze flicked toward his parents, who were moving at a glacial pace in his direction. It was like the two walking Hagues couldn’t hear the joyous sounds of laughter all around them. They were more distracted with the dirt smudging the sheen of their shoes. Clutching at one another, they glared at the earth, as if daring it to open up and swallow them.
“You know… soon… I hope.” Georgiana waved her hand to distract Harold from the stricken expression she couldn’t hide, but Holly recognized it, and it terrified her. At home, Holly pretended not to see her mother fussing over the clocks. Georgiana never entered or exited any room without checking her watch. Until Holly’s father came home, they sat in the living room, pretending to watch the colorful movies that the remote chose. Holly wished her father would come home and make the house happy again.
Brushing the staticky hair from her face, Holly tugged at Georgiana’s hand with both of her own to resuscitate her mind back to the present. “Mommy, if I win, can you run to the finish line to hug me? I think if you run fast, the teachers can’t catch you.”
A smile tugged at the corners of Georgiana’s mouth, and she nodded.
The second after the starter pistol popped, Holly already five steps behind. At first, no one noticed the struggling human child. At the 90-meter mark, a sharp pain stabbed her side. It felt like her organs were revolting, attempting to burst through their confining body. Holly put a hand to her liver.
Derisive murmurs and laughter rose from the vampire crowd. The stand’s movement shifted from the raucous vertical cheering to the uneasy shuffle from side to side.
“Maud, what is that?” exclaimed a vampire in an all-black tracksuit that clashed horribly with her purse, which was the shape of a watermelon—a neon purple watermelon.
A woman in an obnoxious visor the size of Saturn’s rings sneered, “Heavens, Nicolette, another human encroaching on the few events we have.” People behind her grumbled about the view every time she moved her head.
“But isn’t it an accident?” replied the woman in the tracksuit. “I think it’s great a human wants to join us.”
“But instead of inviting us to their plentiful events, why must they show up to the one event where we can just be ourselves?”
“It’s just a child.”
“It’s a little funny, though. Look at those slow little legs. The girl might as well be walking.”
“I feel so sorry for her. It must have been a mistake.
“We need to speak up about this. But because of her, all our other events will be delayed! Besides, what if she tripped one of the other kids going full speed? If she got hurt, it would be blamed on vampires.”
“It’s in bad taste.”
Spectators of all ages were grumbling. “Arnold, why is a human in our races?” asked a girl in pigtails. Her curls were tightly twisted on either side of her head, and she sneered toward Holly’s running figure.
“Because she’s stupid. Accident or on purpose, either way it’s dangerous and foolish.” Arnold nodded at the irritable faces around them and said, “I’d say this stunt backfired.” His caterpillar eyebrows were a single summer away from connecting in the middle.
Georgiana heard them all. She sniffed disdainfully, keeping her chin up and her eyes on her daughter. Harold stared menacingly at each person who complained. His face was too smooth, even for a child. He had the bearing of an adult calculating his revenge. The other kids avoided his notice and stayed very still when Harold turned toward their vicinity.
Next to them, Mr. and Mrs. Hague draped their frames over their palms balanced by an elbow on their knees. If it weren’t for their blinks, they could have been statues, immovable by the world’s concerns.
All the while, Holly focused her remaining energy on reaching the goal. She ignored the low hum of dissatisfaction and the fingers pointing at her. The pain in her right side multiplied to her lungs, muscles, and throat. Limping and gasping for breath, Holly regretted underestimating the 400 meters. On paper, this had seemed so easy.
At home, Holly had run up and down the stairs until she frayed the runner, and her mother had to pull it out. Her weak ankle was getting sore again. She’d sprained it running away from bullies five weeks ago, and she never told her mother. Holly didn’t want to be like her father, who seemed to only ever worry Georgiana.
Holly was the strong one in the family.
She limped through the finish line in a movement that was more swimming than jogging.
She was done, but she didn’t stop. The spectators watched her run into her mother’s arms like a son returning from war. In the silence, they heard her voice.
“Mommy! I did it! It hurt a lot, but I didn’t give up. I wish I could always run with other vampires. I wouldn’t mind all the pain if I could.”
Harold tried to share his bag of blood gummies with Holly, but some of the vampires were outraged. Half of the parents were concerned that a human was eating high quantities of blood that typically caused iron overdoses. The other half—the jealous half—muttered under their breaths about why a vampire should be feeding a human when humans had plenty to eat. Blood supply was restricted. Purchase, storage, and transport were carefully monitored. Seeing a human eating blood candy infuriated the vampires who thought blood scarcity was just around the corner.
So Holly rejected the third offer. She and Harold had always eaten them since they were young. She only got sick once when they finished a whole bag by themselves.
Pulling the wrinkled bag into his lap, Harold said quietly, “Holly, can I ask you a question?” Their parents had gone to find some snacks at the concessions.
Holly turned from high-fiving a few other kids, and replied, “Yeah!”
“Why are you so happy when you came in last? Wasn’t your goal to come in first? It was even the easiest race. I don’t get it.”
“I’m not happy that I came in last. I’m happy because this is my first time racing against other vampires.”
“Other vampires? But you’re human. You are physically, genetically human.”
“No! I’m a vampire! And today, other people saw that too.” She ignored Nyle’s interest in her conversation on the other side of Henley.
Harold frowned, confusion marring his face. “I’m pretty sure they saw a human running with their kids. They’ll always see you as human.”
“No, they won’t.”
Holly’s confidence in those words wiped the doubt from Harold’s face. Her eyes trapped the sunlight inside, and the pale orange irises left no room for dark, dubious thoughts. It could have taken anyone’s breath away.
Even as she was powerless to stop half her braids from sticking at odd angles, Harold saw her as the world’s most powerful girl. She was the only girl he knew that created her own truths despite evidence to the opposition. And the hope in her untarnished eyes was so compelling, it bent the universe to her will.
Never had a human raced with other vampires at any school.
Never had a human been documented as a vampire in their birth certificate.
Never had a human been allowed in vampire primary schools.
And never had a crowd of vampires been so welcoming of a human. Despite their protests, they wanted the acceptance of a human, and so she became one of their own. The naysayers came the quickest to Holly’s side to congratulate her on her accomplishment so untainted by the political machinations of the news.
She had no interest in a world that saw her as a human, so the world fell in line at the simple yet charming command of her innocent voice.
He didn’t say, “You have to turn,” because he realized that she never had to. Harold would never see her as a vampire, but it didn’t matter, because everyone else would. Holly could cast him aside if she knew, so he kept quiet, desperate to keep the might of god by his side.
Against all logic, Harold wanted to believe.
The park was quiet now. A curtain of night shrouded the hills and trees from the city beyond the fence. Remains of human trash lay peacefully in the dumpster. Thanks to a few vampire teens, the area where humans had raced today was spotless. But the teens were only instructed to clean the human side, so the vampire area still had some crumpled political flyers and forgotten ribbons littering the grass.
Only ten people were still in the park. Three of them were Hagues. Mrs. Hague was already glaring at the state of her thin, droopy lips in the compact mirror. Most of her patience faded with her lipstick, and now what remained of it, she breathed out through her flared nostrils. The only makeup still clinging on was the mascara coating her eyes. Her eyes were so far apart from each other that they were more on the sides of her face than the front, and they seemed to sag under the weight of the mascara.
The other two Hagues were in the shadow of the dense foliage, speaking over a lump in Harold’s hands.
“Are you done, son?” asked Harold’s father, annoyed. In his dark blue suit, he looked as impeccable as the faces on a coin. The only flaw in his appearance was his crooked teeth. His fangs tilted outward because he liked to rip open the skin of the humans he drank from. “Your mother’s tired.”
“Yeah,” answered Harold coolly, and he let go of what was in his hands. The body of the only boy who hadn’t congratulated Holly fell to the ground. The light from Mr. Hague’s cellphone hit Arnold’s lifeless eyes, and for a moment, the brightness replaced the spark where his soul used to be. It gave the illusion that words were just a breath away. But Mr. Hague’s phone blinked, and the magic vanished.
The cold body slipped into the comforting blanket of darkness.
Mr. Hague whistled to a man hiding in the corner of the parking lot away from the cameras. The mustached man’s name was Quentin, and he pulled out a piece of foil and snubbed his cigarette out before putting it away in his pocket.
He pulled out a rough cloth and headed in their direction.
Mrs. Hague, a giraffe of a woman, towered over the car in her yellow dress as she poked her head out. “We’ve wasted so much time. I had a meeting tonight. No more detours,” she rasped, her dry mouth suffocating her consonants. When she was done speaking, the excessive skin beneath her nose swung down and jiggled as she sat back into the car.
“Wipe your hands somewhere. People will see.” Mr. Hague climbed into the car and closed the door.
Harold stared at his bloodstained hands and muttered, “No, they won’t.”