The blood drinking would not begin till after midnight, which was good because it gave Daphne time to prepare.
They say that your first experience is unforgettable, a gateway to everything else.
Daphne was 14, so she was old enough to participate if she wanted to. But she could also choose to wait.
“You don’t want to rush it,” Serafina had told her.
Serafina was older and a prefect and the only other girl from Daphne’s depressed farming town, so, by default, they were best friends.
I watch her reel against the crowd toward the edge of the bridge. She leans over the steel barrier, eyes hypnotised by the river below. No one seems to notice her, their faces fixed to illuminated screens. She raises a high heel onto the railing, then another.
*
Past closing time and a huddle of heads peer
down into a velvet drawstring bag, a game
.
of chance, a game of luck, a game of stones
to be bingo called, by prospect and by plot,
.
three women of generational difference
cast about inside for a new cleaned jewel,