Short: Never Play Trivia with My Mother

Never play trivia with my mother. She is surrounded by ghosts and they tell her everything. My father, constantly working night shift at the morgue, is a vampire. He works hard at being a modern vampire. We lived life as normally as possible, but it was never easy.

When I was 11, I asked him how much blood he drank at work. I could see the muscles in his jaw flex, but he took a deep breath and said calmly, "None."

"Then why do you work there?"

He looked at my mother longingly, as if she was an island and he was a drowning man. His gaze steadied and he turned back to me. "To prove that I can." My mother nodded approvingly and took another sip from her second martini.

At 14, I dyed my fine fair hair matte black, chopping at it to make it look like it had been cut with blunt scissors in an insane asylum. I went all-in on black makeup. Eyeshadow beneath my eyes gave me the look of a haunted Victorian child. Black lipliner and a steady hand made it look as if I'd been sloppily drinking blood—cringeful mockery of my father I now realize.

At dinner, my father, who was a quiet man and had become a dedicated vegan the year earlier, was aghast at my ghouslishness and ordered me to "act normal."

Mother, about to say something, listened to the counsel of her ghosts and looked at me with tilted head and an expression that said, "Well?"

Hmph, I thought, then "Hmphed" audibly and sneeringly. "Normal? We *aren't* normal, Dad. Mom communes with ghosts on the reg and we all know she doesn't *need* to--"

Mother looked at me placidly over her dinner martini. "They're lonely, dear. Who else is going to talk to them?"

"Humph! And *you*, father, you crave human blood you won't ever allow yourself to have. It like you want to torture yourself, working nights at the morgue."

My father remained silent. I fumed and stabbed my peas pointedly to illustrate my frustrations. Mother sipped her way through the rest of the dinner.

Later, as father washed and I dried, I asked him again: why work at the morgue?

His look was sorrowful. He gently deposited the dish he was washing back in the sink. His eyes searched out my own and called to me, begging me to listen. He inhaled, holding his breath for a brief moment, and said, "I do it for your mother."

I was unimpressed. Oh, right, I thought, sacrificing yourself for the family, is that it? Well, dad, stop with the temptation-defying martyr act and get a different job, get a *better* job. It doesn't take a genius to think of that.

I gave him the most withering look a 14-year-old could muster, compressing my whole, so-obvious-to-me argument into, "Oh, *really?*"

"Yes," he said, closing his eyes. "I try to tell the ghosts there to leave her alone."