One
“So what are you, like a superhero or something?”
Dawn’s sneakers scuff the sidewalk, bored tone masking the awe of realizing her sister’s way cooler than she thought.
Buffy stops. Dawn’s eyes drift to the sharp stick in her hand. When she reaches for it, Buffy snatches it away. “I guess, sort of. I’m the Slayer.”
Dawn frowns. “What’s that?”
“You’re too young. It’ll give you nightmares.”
“Tell me … or I’m telling Mom you killed somebody in front of me.”
“Something. Not somebody.”
“Whatever.”
Buffy rolls her eyes, and Dawn knows she’s won. “Can you keep a secret, Dawnie?”
Two
He watches expressionlessly as she creeps in from where she’s been spying, a slight, pretty child in flowery pajamas, blue eyes narrowed as she approaches, cautious not of the bloodthirsty creature in her living room but of her mother making tea in the kitchen.
“I know what you are,” she whispers.
He raises an eyebrow. “Bully for you, platelet. What of it?”
“You don’t look evil.”
“You know evil, do you?”
“Do you want to drink my blood?”
He glares. “Bitty thing like you wouldn’t even fill me up.”
She sinks onto the couch.
“I won’t let Buffy kill you.”
Three
Her mom’s friend Pat smiles too much, and pets Dawn on the head like she’s four, and says bad things about Buffy. The worst is when her mom doesn’t argue.
Dawn used to daydream about her sister running away, how she’d inherit all her cool clothes even though most of them wouldn’t fit because she didn’t curve in the right places.
The house isn’t empty but it’s quiet. Mom doesn’t pretend very hard anymore.
Dawn hates Angel. Angelus. Whatever.
Curling up in her big sister’s empty bed, clutching Mr. Gordo, Dawn tells herself that, just maybe, she hates Buffy, too.
Four
Janice’s parents are married. She has a brother who’s a jerk usually, a lazy dog who sleeps on her bed, and the mega-dilemma of which guy to ask to the seventh grade dance.
Dawn envies normal.
Buffy’s still in bed, but the moaning has stopped. She looks up as Dawn slips in and peers at her cautiously.
Buffy frowns. “You spilled spaghetti sauce on my yellow sweater?”
Dawn winces, nods.
“Is that the worst thought you got?”
“Yeah.”
Buffy sighs. “Stay with me?”
She pats the bed, and Dawn flops down next to her, grinning.
Okay, maybe normal isn’t everything.
Five
Later, Dawn can’t recall anything special about the moment Buffy walked into the room. Not the electric silence when green eyes met blue, the fleeting free-falling confusion, the absolute emptiness of not knowing, not understanding … the same nots mirrored back at her in her (sister’s?) open stare.
“What are you doing here?” she asks. (Who are you? she doesn’t.)
Mom’s voice is a dash of cold water. “Buffy? If you’re going out, why don’t you take your sister?”
Dawn can’t recall, later, how it felt when the cosmic deadbolt slid home, as if with the turn of a key.
The End
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