She couldn’t have answered a single question about any of her classes that morning. She’d hardly gotten any sleep, and every time she so much as closed her eyes, they were there. She would see those things. That awful girl with the red eyes and those unnaturally long, sharp teeth. Vampires.

When Ben had said the word, you could have knocked her over with a feather. This is New York! Okay, it was the back woods upstate mountains of New York, but still! It’s not as if she were going to college in Transylvania or something. This type of thing only happened in really bad horror movies that she never even bothered to watch the whole way through. Maybe she should have stayed awake until the end, then at least she might have some idea what she was supposed to do in a situation like this! But in the movies, the vampire was always some suave mysterious rich guy in a cape, not a pack of street thugs who looked like they’d want your wallet more than your blood.

She ripped open her plastic packet of Caesar dressing and began to squeeze it over her salad as she watched the students flow in and out of the building. Where was Benjamin? She needed someone to reassure her of her sanity.

He came up from behind. He put his hand on her shoulder and she managed to squirt dressing clear over the table before she knew it was him. “Ben! Are you trying to give me a heart attack?” she scolded.

“It’s a bright sunny day ‘Liss. I think all of the vampires are still tucked snugly in their coffins right about now.” Ben dropped his lunch tray on the table and swung a leg over the bench next to her.

No one had ever called her ‘Liss before. She kind of liked it. It seemed his confident and casual attitude was back. Sure now, when she was not in the mood for it. “How can you make jokes? Aren’t you totally wigged out?”