Now I’m a doting elder relative? I’d rather be a vampire.

I tried to mimic her matter-of-factness. Instead, I rambled and circumspected. I bent the truth as I (or we) knew it, and I didn’t realize it then, but I did so for my own mental self-preservation. An edited gist: “I didn’t mean harm with the photo. I didn’t mean anything by it. I’d woken up because I couldn’t breathe, and it felt like something was sitting on my chest. It was like how my sleep apnea felt years later. Then I went down to the kitchen for some water and thought I’d look in on you. You were on the couch with your jacket over you. Trick of the light, or dark, I guess, but you looked older, too, like, way older. And in the dark your jacket looked like something sitting on your chest. Like in the Mercy Brown story you told me for the history paper, with her sister perched on her chest stealing her breath. When I saw it, or thought I saw it, all I could think to do was to take a picture, for proof right? Stupid, I know, but it didn’t feel stupid then. And I ran away when you woke up. Sorry for running.”

When I finished Mercy stared at me, blinking intermittently. A camera shutter closing and closing.

I blurted out a statement-question and shrugged with my who-me? palms held up. “Glad we could get all that off our chests?”

We fell into a tears-streaming-can’t-breathe laughing fit. After eventually composing ourselves, we shared friendship platitudes. We agreed how stupid and melodramatic we were about the sleepover night and her basement break-in, and we offered generalized apologies, ultimately as meaningless as a handshake greeting because we weren’t willing to say what it was exactly we were sorry about—and still, what exactly was I sorry for? Our glasses raised to a retroactive détente.

???? Was I supposed to say sorry for the freaky vampirism?

We played a drinking game through the second horror movie, some shitty slasher. We had to drink whenever there was a fake-out scare before a kill (drinking for the kill was optional) or a line of dialogue that we both agreed was ludicrous. We were both ludicrous by the time the movie ended.

As Mercy swapped out DVDs she said she had the best idea ever. The next movie in her queue she pulled from a previously unopened, red Netflix rental envelope. It was the ’80s campy vampire classic Fright Night.

I said, “This is your best idea?”

“Mood setting for my best idea.”

“Ever?”

“Ever.”

I grumble-protested that if I was still conscious by the end of the movie, the scene where the girlfriend turns into a vampire and reveals gaping great-white-shark jaws and teeth would give me nightmares.

Mercy grabbed me by the shoulders, shook me, and shouted, “Exactly my point!”

I’m a fun drunk who just wants to help.

“I’m still waiting for the point.”