All of Zoe’s human classmates, seated, were talking nervously with each other when the door of the classroom opened. The talking stopped as one vampire after another filled the small space in front of the classroom.  Each vampire was quite different from one another. Some were tall, others small, hair colors included red, brown, and blonde, and their clothing wasn’t of any one style. More surprisingly, they looked like humans. When that thought crossed Zoe’s mind, she realized that maybe before today she could have met a vampire at any point in passing, but then there wouldn’t be a need to invite a small group of humans to their mansion. 

The teacher, Ms. Rachel Todd, after briefly introducing herself as a human among other things, walked towards the nearest empty seat and paused to call a name out. She waited for the vampire student to move towards the seat before moving on to the next seat. Zoe’s vampire partner was Josh, a young man with short brown hair who wore a graphic t-shirt, jeans, and sneakers. When Josh pulled the seat to sit down; Zoe did not make eye contact with him, welcome him, or introduce herself to him. Ms. Todd provided the human students’ names to the vampires in the class, while each human student sat still and pale, blood pressure dropping, with their throats so dry they wouldn’t have been able to utter a word. The vampire kids didn’t acknowledge the lack of courtesy. They also avoided eye contact and didn’t utter a word to their human partners. Ms. Todd explained that this partner setup was specially created to minimize risks to the human students and thus is permanent until the human students could be safe with each vampire in the class. 

Vampires consume human blood for nourishment. That was the fact that humans and vampires are faced with. Zoe, like her fellow students, doubted the situation they agreed to be in, but so far, the classroom filled half with humans and half with vampires, minus the teacher was stable, lacking any sort of indication of the beginnings of chaos, chaos that could lead to a human’s death.