Sixteen Going on Undead Read Online Free Page A

like that. I backed up, waving my hands in front of me, laughing with this half chuckle that Ronnie made fun of me for.
     
    “Wrong person. Sorry. Bye.” I spun away and high-tailed it toward the bathroom, but when I hit that door with the flat of my hands, I heard laughing inside, other employees who were either on break or ducking out for a few minutes.
     
    I looked to the left and saw this guy whose name I forgot because I was sure he’d forgotten mine or never heard it when we were introduced earlier. He’d looked right through me with glazed eyes. He was headed to the back exit with a trash bag in his hand. I raced toward him and snatched it away.
     
    “I’ll get that. Be back in a sec.” I ran out the door into the huge lot behind the grocery store and threw the trash into the Dumpster. When the store’s door banged shut on the guy’s shout of “hey,” I bent over and stooped to catch my breath.
     
    “Stupid, stupid, stupid.” Why had I acted like that? Why didn’t I just let it go? No big deal. He wasn’t the boy. I’ve heard people joking about other races like they all look alike, and black people get it a lot, and probably Asians. Some blacks felt the same about white people, but I could pick Lorcan out from a crowd. At least, I thought so after seeing him once. I mean the boy had been all in my face, cute. “Ugh! Stupid!” I screamed into the empty night.
     
    “You shouldn’t be out here alone.”
     
    I gasped and fell backward, landing on my butt. Just as I had thought, designer sneakers, the kind that cost at least a couple hundred. Licking my lips, I glanced up from his feet to his face. He was grinning down at me holding out a hand. I smacked it away and stood up on my own while wiping dirt from my jeans.
     
    “What do you want? Come to gloat at how I made a fool of myself?” I looked around, wondering how he had gotten out here since customers weren’t allowed in the back, and with that guy I’d snatched the trash from standing there, it wasn’t likely he’d let Lorcan get past. “Where’s your girlfriend?”
     
    He winked. “Are you jealous?”
     
    “Get real. I don’t know you.”
     
    “You acted like you did in the store.”
     
    “You attacked me!” I shouted and then forced myself to calm down. Come to think of it, he could do that again, right here where no one would see. I started backing up to the door, feeling behind me for the doorknob. For every step I took back, he came closer, lessening the space between us.
     
    My heart beat hard enough to hurt. I swallowed over and over but couldn’t get my throat wet. Moisture started in my armpits, and I tried to remember if I had slapped on some deodorant when I took a shower this afternoon before my shift. I was pretty sure I did since I was a stickler for that sort of thing. I might never have been kissed but it wasn’t because I stunk, that’s for sure. Then I started wondering, why was I thinking about being kissed at a time like this? I should be worried that I was about to die or something.
     
    Lorcan tsked and shook his head. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to hurt you. Not hungry. I’ve already sucked all the blood I need for the night.” He said the words, but the way he said them sounded like he was making fun of me. That didn’t change how I felt. I could tell myself all day and night vampires don’t exist and that I made it all up, but I was scared to death that it was true. I couldn’t make myself not believe it, no matter how hard I tried.
     
    He had me against the door now, his big hard body pressed close to me. I wanted to scream, but I couldn’t. The emotion in his eyes was intense like he had hypnotized me, not to make me do what I didn’t want to, but to keep me still. Or it could have all been in my mind. I scoured my brain for vampire facts and came up with none. I didn’t do paranormal. I didn’t like fantasy or sci-fi. In English class when we had been assigned to read Dracula,