I Can't Be A Vampire If I Don't Believe In Them

Three

I fell backwards into the queen sized bed and felt myself sink into the soft mattress. I will applaud whoever chose this bed for child me since it has to be one of the more comfortable mattresses I have been on. Alex gave a little laugh at my actions as he tossed the rag in his hand on me, "You can't be tired. There's still dust in this room."

"You shouldn't have let it get dusty." I replied as I tossed the rag back to him.

Luke walked back into the room with three bottles of water in his hands. He handed one to Alex before flopping back onto the bed beside me and handing a bottle of water to me, "No fighting, you two."

I rolled my eyes, "We're not fighting. Alex just won't tell me how old he really is."

I propped myself up on my elbows as I opened the cold bottle of water and sipping it. I heard Alex chuckle and I looked up at him to see him trying to get dust off of an old teddy bear that looked like it had been well loved, "I told you my age doesn't matter."

"I'm just curious, though. You look like you could be my older brother instead of parent." I replied as I fell back down onto the bed.

Alex gave a shrug, "My family has good genes, I guess."

"She didn't believe I'm thirty-four. So just tell her your age, Alex."

"I'm one hundred forty-two." Alex said, making me choke on my water.

I sat up to look at him. He won't tell me his age and he just blurts out some impossible age while looking like he doesn't care as he dusts my bookshelf, "We both know that's not your age."

Alex shrugged as he gave me a little smile, "Fine then, thirty,"

I rolled my eyes. He doesn't even look like he's twenty-two, so how is he thirty? I lied my head back on the bed, "If you hand me an ID and it says you are over twenty-one, I'm going to believe it is a fake ID. You can't be thirty."

I heard chuckles from both Alex and Luke. I looked over at Luke as he pinched the bridge of his nose. Alex grabbed my wrists and pulled me up before looking down at me. He pulled his wallet out of his back pocket, showing me his driver's license inside it. I looked down at the driver's license. It was new, according to the date on it. I looked at Alex's birthday. It read May 17, 1988. There's no way he can make someone fake his driver's license. And if he can, it won't look this real. I looked up at Alex, a little shocked he was telling me the truth, "How?"

"I told you my family has good genes." Alex said as he put his wallet back in his back pocket. I looked at the picture of Dad and me on the night stand as Alex went back to the bookshelf. Dad looked so young, he must have had me when he was young. I looked over to Luke to see him sitting up and looking at me. He moved his eyes to Alex as Alex made a deep sigh, "You know, Vincent had you when he was a teenager. He would have turned thirty-three this year."

I looked away from the picture, looking to Alex, "He was a teenager when I was born? How old was he? Why did he live here?"

Alex nodded, "He was seventeen, and Brooke, your mother, was sixteen. He lived with me because my parents took him in when his parents kicked him out. They weren't happy you were made out of wedlock and because of that, after Vincent's death when they were contacted to be your guardians they said they wanted you to go into an adoption center because you weren't related to them."

My own grandparents didn't care about me. They kicked my dad out of their house because he got my mom pregnant. They didn't even want me after he vanished. Did they even care their son was murdered?

Luke wrapped his arm around my shoulders as he scooted closer to me, "Vincent's parents were very old fashioned, Avery. After he impregnated Brooke, they took him out of their lives. They didn't care what happened to him, or to you."