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leave such a gift and Michael because he couldn’t believe Ronan would buy him a car on top of all the other presents he had given him. “Oh my God, Ronan!” Michael squealed. “I love it!”
    In complete amazement, Michael walked around the red Mercedes Benz SUV. He had wanted a car ever since he passed his driver’s test and got his license, but he never thought Ronan would be the one to fulfill his wish. He was right. “Sorry, love,” Ronan said. “It’s not from me.”
    â€œYou’re just being coy, mate,” Fritz said, “ ’Cause you wanted it to be a private surprise.”
    Even Ciaran thought Ronan was lying. “How did you ever convince Mum to spend so much money on someone other than herself?”
    Michael noticed that a card was tucked under the windshield wiper. He ripped open the envelope, read the handwritten message inside the card, and every beautiful birthday memory was wiped away, every happy moment that he had just shared with Ronan and his friends was erased. He felt like he had been punched in the stomach. “To my son. Ad infinitum! Happy Birthday. Love, Dad.” Michael spat out the words as if they were poison, and in his mind he was transported far from Double A to a padded room where he saw his father kill his mother, brutally and cleverly so that everyone would believe the body left behind was a suicide. The same father who now sent his love attached to a bright red car. He tore the card in two, flung the pieces into the air, and stormed upstairs with Ronan close behind him.
    â€œWhy the hell would he do such a thing?” Fritz asked.
    Picking up the pieces of the torn card and placing them together so she could read the note herself, Saoirse remarked, “He’s got some issues with his dad.”
    â€œSo bloody what! The bloke gave him a Benz! In red! It doesn’t even come in red, it had to be specially ordered!”
    Ciaran understood Fritz’s confusion, but he also understood Michael’s pain at receiving a gift from his father, whom he had completely written off. He knew that he couldn’t share their history with Fritz so he tried to channel his friend’s energy and make light of the situation. “Look at it this way, Fritz,” Ciaran said. “Since Michael doesn’t want it, maybe he’ll let you drive it.”
    That was all Fritz needed to hear to make him forget about Michael’s fury and abrupt departure.
    Â 
    Unfortunately, Michael couldn’t forget. He couldn’t forget witnessing his parents at their defining moments: his father committing an act of unconscionable violence and his mother begging God to save her son seconds before she died. Sitting on his bed next to Ronan in thick silence, it was with an unwanted sense of maturity that he realized no matter how hard he tried to move forward he could never fully escape his past.

chapter 3
    Summer was no longer the same.
    Deep within The Forest, Michael sat on the bank of a stream that led somewhere, nowhere, and watched the water glide over his submerged feet. Even though it was July the water felt cool, and Michael wasn’t sure if it was because the thick shade blocked out much of the sun’s rays, because the weather in this part of the world didn’t get too hot, or because as a vampire, temperature, like age, was an irrelevant concept. Watching the water trip over and through his toes, he had to admit it: he was confused. And it was all because of that stupid car.
    Well, the car wasn’t stupid—it was pretty amazing actually. It was everything Michael had ever hoped for. It was like somebody reached into his brain, picked out the car of his dreams and made it materialize. But why did that somebody have to be his father?
    It couldn’t have been a gift from Ronan? Or Edwige? Or even his grandfather? No, it had to come from the one person he wanted nothing to do with, the one person he wanted