Forever Fifteen (The Lucia Alberti Series) Read online

  Forever Fifteen

  A Novel

  Part I of the Lucia Alberti Trilogy

  By KIMBERLY STEELE

  Get author news, recent publications at KimberlySteele.net

  Visit the Official Website ForeverFifteen.com

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  The Lucia Alberti Trilogy: Part I

  By Kimberly Steele

  Original Copyright © 2005

  Fourth Edition Copyright © 2012

  FOREVERFIFTEEN.COM

  All rights reserved by Kimberly Steele. No part of this publication can be reproduced, resold, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers and/or authors.

  FOREWORD

  Forever Fifteen was born of a dream I had in 2002, a dream that was part nightmare. I never intended it to be anything but a short story, for I had never completed even the shortest of stories unless forced to in grammar school. But once I started, Forever Fifteen seemed to fly out of me like a bat out of hell, virtually writing itself. It was finished by the end of that year, each character having assuming a permanent identity in my imagination. Forever Fifteen's characters can be seen proliferating in any affluent suburb near you: the middle class family struggling to survive in a uber-posh neighborhood while supporting three kids, the listless sixteen year old gifted student who decides Nazi fashion is “cool” for a week, the over-involved Ivy League bound kid next door, and the remodeling-obsessed ice queen sadly more interested in keeping up with the Joneses than with loving her own family. My concept of the reluctant vampire sprung from a rabid obsession with medieval history, especially the pre-Renaissance era of the Black Plague. To recreate the era, I deliberately tried to avoid creating a thinly disguised bodice ripper where an “empowered” woman mouthed off to prospective suitors in jerkins and tights, in other words, a typical romance novel. Bold women certainly existed in the Middle Ages—Chaucer's Canterbury Tales is evidence of this—but meek women were probably the norm, good Christian family ladies who wanted nothing more than to serve God and have children. This is where my character, Lucia, is coming from. The modern parts of the book were inspired by my worldview of high school as pure, unadulterated Hell. I did not have to dig deep in my imagination to create the status-obsessed suburban environment of Lucy's modern life. I enjoyed depicting the dichotomy of the peace and safety of the suburbs while also showing its dark side in the form of high school villain Katy Pfister, who, by the way, never gets her comeuppance like some of the other characters do. I hope that you can find an escape in Forever Fifteen. It remains a bizarre idea to me that Lucy Alberti could ever become so detailed or so real, but I'm certainly glad to have made her acquaintance. Enjoy.

  Kimberly Steele

  Chicago, Illinois

  The characters, events, and places depicted in Forever Fifteen are purely the figments of the author's over-active imagination. Any resemblance to real people or situations is purely coincidental.

  CHAPTER 1: LUCY GETS A DETENTION

  “Lucy and John! I'll see you both in detention this afternoon in two-oh-four,” snapped Sara Darnell, Lincoln High School's only female Physical Science teacher.

  She had asked to borrow his pencil out of dire necessity. Ms. Sara Darnell was a sprightly, svelte twenty-five year old who was known for serving detentions at meter maid frequency, if only to be taken marginally more seriously by the predominantly male Lincoln High Science Department.

  Lucy clutched the pencil in defeat. Detention would mean coming home late, which spelled distraction and trouble on the night of a kill. At least the sun would not be as bright, which was a welcome reprieve from the mercilessly bright early summer days which had invigorated every man, woman, and child in the suburbs but were wearing Lucy down into acute fatigue, along with her hunger.

  Her target was a fifty-four year old man who lived with his mother, an obese neighborhood woman, a widow named Dawn Plote. Both had lived rather quietly until a scandal had opened up a can of worms for the son, allegations of child abduction, reported sightings of a white van around nearby elementary schools.

  Lucy had passed the house once on the sidewalk, on a rare day when he was shoveling snow. She could smell the sweet girl child he had buried in the garage in autumn, even under the frozen ground. Raymond Plote would only be missed by his mother.

  Detention was merry for the other detainees.

  The season was ripe for mating, she thought to herself bitterly. Even in her own sorry skin-and-bones state of wraithlike pallor and gray under eye circles she was drawing unwanted attention from would-be admirers.

  It was hard to gain weight when you hated to eat.

  During detention she orchestrated Ray Plote's murder. If he stayed in the basement apartment as was his usual habit, she would have no problem. If he decided to watch television upstairs with his mother, she would probably retire before he did, but she was a light sleeper. Lucy did not want to have to kill the mother, as she hated more than anything to kill women, no matter what their sins. So if they decided to watch television, there would be problems getting him out of the house, she would have to strangle him with piano wire, there was possibly of a struggle. If Ray left the house, it would be easy. She would lure him, as he was an easily tempted child predator who could even more easily be turned into prey.

  The larger problem at hand was drugging her foster sister, Shari, into a deep sleep. She hated tricking Shari, whose joy for life was the only thing that made her naive enough to fall for laced iced tea or hot cocoa, depending on the season. Sweet sixteen year old Shari, who never once figured out the morning sleep hangovers she suffered monthly. Lucy slept in the same room as Shari, only ten feet away. It was comforting to have her there, snoring gently. Her acrid rose perfume oil that hung in the air that smelled like a head shop, her V.C. Andrews novels, her collection of old teddy bears, Paddington minus his yellow hat, a yellowing white bear won in a carnival with one eye missing. Shari was to be protected, to be dissuaded from driving in cars with older boys at night, to be steered away from dope and beer and certain friends who had no plans to work or to go to college.

  The Becks were the best foster family that she had ever had. The mother, Cathy Beck, was as patient and as charitable of an individual that Lucy had ever known, a big kindly Polish-American woman with the heart of an angel. Her foster father, Larry, was the hard working son-of-a-bitch type with a disdain for suits. His job as a painter was wearing him down acutely as he aged. His fatigue was tacitly understood within the family; it was a phenomenon which everyone acknowledged as related to the trades. He was a good foster dad that had never so much as leered at her, not even once. She had had to do away with many a leering foster father since she had started frequenting foster homes in the middle of the century.

  Lost in thought, Lucy barely heard Mrs. Darnell's voice dismiss the group of ten miscreants when detention finally concluded at 4:35. She closed the book that she had been pretending to read and gathered her black umbrella and her backpack, a childish accoutrement she despised. She treaded down the hall swiftly but stopped abruptly when she heard a voice in back of her.

  “Lucy, wait up.”

  She whirled around by instinct, frightening the boy who she had borrowed the pencil from. John. Had he been trying to get her attention before that day, or did he simply want his silly pencil returned?

  “I'm John…you walking home?”

  She paused, stunned. “Want your pencil back?” She asked him warily, squinting.

  “Yes, uh, no.” He said with a
question in his voice, a question that revealed that he was intimidated, and not only that, but he had it bad. She felt scrawny, lanky, badly dressed in a baggy black T-shirt, sweaty, not at all beautiful; not even pretty.

  The odds were astounding and yet he had it bad.

  Teenage boys never change, she thought to herself. He was so horny that he could probably make love to a tree. Funny how all but the most cunning and promiscuous teenage girls never caught on, not in 1400, certainly not now.

  “Um, I was wondering if you wanted to join our study team for the Physics Class Final?” He said.

  Nothing like the direct approach, she thought.

  “Oh, that's okay, I do better if I study alone.”

  He paused in awkward silence as they walked outside the red double doors.

  “Can I walk you home then?” She was completely taken aback and did her best not to show it.

  “I guess so.”

  He had caught her in a moment of weakness; the hunger had made her emotional! She felt a terrible warmth surge from her loins. Her hormones were raging stupidly. The boy was bright and inquisitive as he was subtle. She had underestimated his animal ability to sense weakness.

  “Carry your books for you?” He asked.

  Such pretty manners, she thought. Some doting parent had taught him well.

  “No thanks.”

  She could have handled ten times the weight, and hoisted him on her back and carried him too. She was strong, not unlike a pack mule or a camel; she thought to herself and smirked. He caught the smirk. He was staring at her, openly gaping.

  What was his problem, she thought to herself. Did he like freaks? She opened her black umbrella, her giant sun deflector. He said nothing, even though it was not raining. The silence grew unbearable, so she asked, “What is your surname, John?”

  “My surname? You mean my last name?”

  “Yes.”

  “It's Diedermayer.”

  He perked up, ready to make conversation.

  “How old are you?”

  He looked at her engagingly. “I'm sixteen, I'm a junior like you. My birthday was on May first.”

  “May Day. My goodness gracious. Happy Birthday, then.” She replied.

  “Thanks. I get my driver's license tomorrow. I was afraid you wouldn't talk to me—you seem kind of shy—but I figured maybe I could still talk you into joining our study group, it goes all year…“

  That again. Such an obvious ruse, but the boys and girls would defend their pride to the bitter end, the facade of study groups during rutting season. His light brown hair was almost crew cut short. He looked like a French boy soldier she had once glimpsed marching towards his death in one of the battles they would later call the Hundred Years War. His face was aquiline but sweet, the years had not yet taken the blush from his cheeks and his lips were similarly rubefacient. His build was medium, he would never tower over his peers, yet his shoulders were broadening, betrayed by an undeveloped set of pectoral muscles underneath his button-down shirt that she could tell frustrated him.

  They conversed, or more or less she interviewed him. He was content to talk about himself, though in the back of his clever mind he already suspected that she was not offering any details about her life. He talked about his driver's license, how he would soon inherit his older brother's BMW. He was an active member of the Football Team, Forensics, Math Team, Hockey, and occasionally Baseball. Naturally he was a member of the National Honor Society and a straight A student on the Honor Roll. His father and mother were a lawyer and a doctor, respectively. He was way out of her league and it was downright odd that he had obliged himself to talk to her, let alone walk her home.

  She kept him talking all the way to the doorstep of the Beck's home, a small 1970s brown split-level in the old part of town. She sensed he might try and wane on her doorstep.

  “It's getting late John. Shouldn't you be getting home?”

  “It's not far.” he replied, though it was obvious that he was lying. “May I come in?” His bravado was increasing.

  “Actually, John, I really must get going.” She thought of her kill. “I've got some chores to do and I usually cook dinner on weeknights.”

  He looked crestfallen. Neither would she allow herself to feel guilty nor would she allow him to find a way into the house. At any moment, Cathy Beck could arrive home and see them, then he would be eating dinner with them, almost whether he liked it or not.

  “Hey, don't be a stranger, Lucy. I wanted to talk to you before when you first came to live here two years ago, but I never did.” She was surprised that he had noticed her existence as early as her arrival at the Beck house.

  “Thanks for walking me home.” She opened the front door with her keys, stepping inside. He had barely said, “Anytime,” before she shut the door rather rudely in his face. Thankfully only the children were home, so there was no one to take active notice that she had been accompanied on her way home from school. She stole the opportunity to peer at his departing figure from the closed curtains of the front room window, his shoulders slumped forward, his posture and his ego slightly deflated. He would be off her case just as soon as his fever for her broke and he found a lover, and she imagined he must have plenty of girls from ritzy families lining up to choose from. She watched for five minutes until he completely disappeared over Pine Crest, past the yellow fire hydrant and the dented stop sign. She shook her head.

  She liked to cook even though normal food was not nourishing to her. She liked to do it for Cathy Beck, so that she could relax after waitressing all day at the Big Apple with a homemade meal. She enjoyed preparing the evening meals, the smells of potatoes roasting in the oven, the stink of onions in the pan, the crackle of chicken frying. Most of all she enjoyed the gentle gratitude of her foster family members, even the teasing of Mike, her foster brother, who liked to play food critic to give her a hard time.

  The family always managed to make it home for supper, even though it was a dying custom. Supper was spaghetti and Italian sausage that night. It was everyone's favorite meal.

  “I saw you walking down the street with someone, Lucy. Who walked you home?” Mike asked her, his voice tinged with jealousy, as she passed the garlic bread.

  Lucy sighed. Cathy's eyebrows perked up. She was the consummate mother, even when extremely tired, she missed nothing.

  Lucy replied to Mike, “Nobody.”

  “Um, liar liar pants on fire.” Mike retorted churlishly.

  Cathy threw Mike a look. “Mike, don't call Lucy a liar.”

  “Well, if you must know, John Diedermayer from Science Class walked me home. I spent this afternoon in detention.”

  “Really.” Shari drawled as she looked up from her dissected sausage. Larry kept digging heartily into his spaghetti, not intrigued in the slightest.

  “What did you do?” Mike asked.

  “Borrowed a pencil.” Lucy replied sardonically.

  “You should go out with him. He's nice,” added Shari.

  “Let's not get ahead of ourselves, Shari. I'm not interested in him.”

  Mike seemed visibly happier at her remark. He had been formally adopted by the Becks at the age of twelve. He was now a sophomore at Lincoln, Lucy a Junior, and Shari a Senior. He had had a crush on Lucy since she had arrived, he seemed to find her attractive both for and despite her strangeness. She had remained patently unavailable to him. Assessing him as harmless, she had remained friendly, albeit aloof.

  CHAPTER 2: THE UNTIMELY DEMISE OF RAYMOND PLOTE

  Later that night after the dishes were washed and the garbage taken out, Lucy and the Beck's natural daughter retired to their shared bedroom. Shari draped herself lazily upon her unmade bed. Her straight strawberry blonde hair was exactly Cathy's.

  She had Cathy's predisposition to overweight and her hips were solid and thick under her jeans. Hips tended to be the bane of Shari's existence as she tried diet after diet to get rid of them. Her soft brown eyes, inherited from Larry, warmed an alrea
dy pretty face. She was the type that people of every age gravitated to, naturally affable and kind to everyone.

  “Ever thought about letting me do something with your hair?” Not needing an answer, Shari got up and whipped out a vented brush from an overstuffed drawer.

  “God, it's too curly for a brush. You don't want to look like Bozo.”

  Shari wanted to own her own hair salon as her mother Cathy had always wanted to.

  “My hair has a mind of its own. It's of no use.”

  They talked until midnight most nights. Tonight Lucy doled out outré physiological theories of boys and their overactive hormones. Shari laughed hysterically and was promptly shushed by Larry from the next room. As usual, Lucy traced over parts of her experiences in her confidences with Shari, skipping lightly over her own story as a pebble would over a lake.

  Shari regaled Lucy with soap operatic tales of boy-girl intrigues at the high school, then spoke of her aspirations for the future.

  “Do you think you'll ever get married, Lucy?” Lucy shifted uncomfortably as she pulled her makeshift nightgown—an old T-shirt—over her head.

  “Uh, I think I might, Shari. I don't know.”

  “I think twenty-nine would be a good age,” Shari replied, “plus I'm going to have two kids, Jared if it's a boy and Bethany Crystal if it's a girl.” She also wanted two dogs, a golden Labrador retriever and a cocker spaniel.

  Lucy went downstairs to prepare the hot cocoa that would be the last hot drink of the season, ruefully spiking the liquid with Nytol, just one tablet dissolved in a little warm water. She added extra chocolate powder to disguise the bitterness of the pill.

  She brought the cups of cocoa back to the bedroom.

  “Did you girls finish your homework?” Cathy's head appeared in the open door.