I saw her frown when she collected my paper, but I tried to duck out to recess anyway.
“Lincoln!” she called as I was bolting for the door.
“Yes, ma’am?”
“Stay in, please.”
When the room was cleared of everyone but her and me, she held out my test and said, “Can you explain this?”
So I told her about Colby’s demon feather.
“Why didn’t you just ask her to use a different pencil?”
“I’ve asked her lots of times! She says it’s her lucky feather.”
“Couldn’t you have turned away?” She shook her head. “What did you do the whole time?”
I didn’t want to say “Nothing,” so it slipped out about the story. And since I was nervous, more slipped out than I wanted.
“Lincoln,” she said with a sigh. “Don’t these sound like excuses to you?” The corners of her mouth twitched like they wanted to get up but were just too tired. “Do we need to talk to your parents about getting you a tutor?”
“No, ma’am! I know how to do this stuff.”
Her mouth rolled over into a frown. “Lincoln.”
“I swear, ma’am! It was the feather!”
“Fine,” she said after studying me for a bit. “It was the feather.” Then she sat me down at the table nearest her, put my test and a pencil in front of me, and said, “You’ve got until recess is over.”
I never worked a math test so fast in my life. And when recess was done, so was I.
Ms. Miller took the test from me with an eyebrow stretched high, then checked it over quick with a red pen in her hand.
A red pen that only touched paper once.
She looked up at me, then wrote 96% and circled a big red A at the top. And when everyone was in from recess, she told Colby she couldn’t use her demon feather pencil anymore.
“That’s unconstitutional!” Colby cried, and she somehow twisted freedom of speech into freedom of feathers and got all uppity about her rights.
“Why don’t I just switch seats with her?” Rayne asked, and once everyone was done being stunned by how nice it was for her to offer and what an easy fix it was, Rayne switched with Colby, putting that demon feather as far away from me as it could get on our borderless continent.
“Thanks,” I told Rayne when she was all settled in.
“Sure,” Rayne said, and gave me a smile that was one part twinkle and nine parts shy.
A smile that made my cheeks burn hot.
A strange thing happened after Rayne switched with Colby.
Kandi started stalking me.
She’d mostly left me alone after she’d followed me that day in early October. Oh, I’d see her giving me the spy-eye every now and then. My eyes hurt just seeing her do it, but maybe her eye muscles are looser than everyone else’s. Maybe they’re all limbered up from getting stretched around.
I don’t really care that she does the spy-eye on me ’cause she seems to do it to everyone. I stuck out my tongue at her once when I caught her, but I felt stupid after, so now I just hit her with a straight-on stare, which makes her stop.
So Kandi hadn’t said much to me for about a month, but during lunch after the switch, she found me in the cafeteria and sat right across from me.
“Hi!” she said, sort of squiggling in her seat.
I kinda forgot to say hi back and just stared. I’m not used to talking to folks during lunch, especially not girls. I’m used to eating quick and getting over to the media center.
Kandi laughed. “What’s the matter?”
I looked at my tray. “Uh…I’m almost done?”
She laughed again. “So? Just hang out and talk.” She took a bite of her mac ’n’ cheese. “How’s your story coming?”
Her fingernails weren’t painted like candy corn anymore. They were little turkeys with the tails all fanned out. “How do you do that?” I asked, ’cause the detail was crazy.
She put out a hand for me to admire. “You like?”
I was more confused. Or puzzled. Or maybe even mystified. Yeah, mystified fit the bill. “How long did that take you?” I asked.
She pulled back her hand. “You didn’t answer my question.”
I finished off my milk. “You didn’t answer mine first.”
“No, you didn’t answer mine first.”
I thought back and she was right. She’d asked me about my story. But the story about Annie and Howler was done, and I didn’t want to waste time talking about my new story, I wanted to get back to writing it. I was at a heart-stopping spot where my main guy, Lucas, had barely escaped a killer by getting on the roof of a cabin. But the killer knew he was there and was climbing the side of the cabin by jabbing hunting knives into the wood as he went up, up, up. The wind was howling through the trees, so Lucas couldn’t hear the killer coming.
That’s where I’d had to stop. And since getting back to Lucas and the killer was something I wanted to do way more than talking in circles with Kandi, I stood up and told her, “Gotta go,” and left.
I have a secret hideout in the media center. It’s hidden by shelves of books in the far back corner, and above the shelves, clear up to the ceiling, the walls are painted with blue sky and clouds.
The librarian, Ms. Raven, goes crazy with decorations. Every inch of the walls is painted, and there are big cutouts of characters standing around the place, and smaller ones hanging from the ceiling. There’s the Reading Tree area, with a life-sized tree in the middle of a big cubby of picture books. I’ve seen little kids sitting around it on mats with books in their laps like they’re havin’ a picture-book picnic.
But back to my secret hideout.
It has a beanbag chair, soft as feathers, and that’s what I sit in to write. Some lunches I wind up spending the time just staring at the painted sky and clouds, thinking about my story, but others I spend scribblin’ the entire time.
My hideout’s not actually secret as much as it is someplace no one else seems to go. Mostly, kids are at the computers. There are rows of them up front near Ms. Raven’s desk, so that’s where all the action is. Ms. Raven’s nice, but what I like best is that she’s quit askin’ if she can help me. Now she just waves hello and lets me be.
And that’s exactly what she did when I came in at lunch after ditching Kandi and her turkey-tail nails. Ms. Raven was over by the student stations, so I did a little double take when I passed by her desk ’cause there was a kid sitting at her computer.
There’s no mistakin’ whose computer it is ’cause there’s an engraved brass plaque stating CARRIE C. RAVEN, LMS on it, and it has a big black bird perched on top.
I might’ve said something about him being back there, but Ms. Raven was lookin’ right at us, so she already knew he was there. Then it clicked. “You her son?” I asked. It just came out.
“No!” he said. “She’s helping me research.”
The scowl on his face was tellin’ me to move along—something I was more’n happy to do. I had a hero to save. A killer to stop. I needed to get Lucas off of that roof!
I didn’t know I’d made Kandi mad until we were back in the classroom after lunch. Even then it took a little while to sink in because my mind was still on my story. I’d only had fifteen minutes in the beanbag chair, and the killer was now about to crest the roof while Lucas frantically looked for a way down.
“Did you hear me?” Kandi asked with a huff.
“Huh?” I asked back, ’cause I had no idea that she’d said anything.
“You were really mean to me,” she said, and was she ever pouting!
“Uh…sorry. I didn’t mean to be.”
“Well, you were,” she said, and stomped off.
Next to me, Rayne put a clip back in her hair and giggled.
I looked at her. “What?”
“She’s not used to that.”
“Used to what?”
Colby had her feather pencil out, ready for action. “Being ignored,” she said without even looking
at me.
Wynne leaned closer across our continent and whispered, “Can we pay you to keep doing it?” and the three of them giggled.
I didn’t get it, but I also didn’t care. It seemed like gossipy girl stuff to me. And then Ms. Miller started us on a timed write. My favorite weather is…, she wrote on the board, and like a switch going off, I forgot everything else and started writing.
When time was up, Kandi volunteered to collect the papers, and I could tell her eyes were slurping up words from the pages as she walked them up to Ms. Miller.
“She’s reading yours,” Rayne said, pulling the same hair clip back out.
“Who says it’s mine?” I asked.
“Invasion of privacy,” Colby called over her shoulder as she watched Kandi move toward Ms. Miller’s desk.
Wynne was watching Kandi, too, and when she turned back around, she leaned forward and whispered, “You should complain.”
“Who says it’s mine?” I asked again, and this time they all answered me with looks that said I was dumber’n a load of bricks.
Which I guess I am, ’cause once again, I didn’t hear Kandi coming up behind me on my way to Brookside. Lucas was still on the rooftop in my mind, and I was trying to figure out how to get him down alive when she spooked me with “Don’t you love this weather?”
I jumped. She laughed.
“Stop that!” I spat out.
“Why are you so skittery?”
“I’m not! I was just thinking!”
“About…?”
“Look,” I said, stopping dead in my tracks. “What do you want?”
“Nothing! I’m just in a great mood!” She gave me a big, sunny smile and said, “I think it’s the weather. I just love the wind.” She put her arms out and twirled around. “All that…energy!”
My jaw went for a dangle.
“What?” she asked.
“You read my paper.”
“What are you talking about?” she asked, but guilt was stamped all over her face.
I gave her the stink-eye. “Don’t lie!”
“Okay! So what if I read it?” she laughed. “It’s not like it was personal.” I was still giving her the stink-eye, so she said, “You’re a good writer, Lincoln, you really are.”
Then she twirled around and ran away.
After Kandi followed me the second time, I kept a wary eye out for her and even took to going a longer way, just to throw her off my trail. I hid out from her at school, too, and after a while she started ignoring me back, which was a huge relief.
It took over two weeks, but finally one Friday it felt safe enough to take the shorter walk to Brookside, and I got there in time to see an ambulance parked by the main doors with its lights flashing and the engine running.
I hurried inside, but the East Wing and the West Wing were both closed, so I couldn’t tell which side of the place the ambulance was for. I would have asked Geri when I signed in, but she was on the phone, recruitin’ folks for the Alzheimer’s Walk that was happening in early December. Not that she would have told me much. She never does, unless the subject is the weather. But I would have asked anyway, especially since I’ve figured out that there’s a vampire in Room 102.
Go ahead and laugh, but I’m not messing around. Room 102 has two beds. One of them’s for Mrs. White—she’s the vampire. The other’s for somebody who has no idea they’re about to die.
It’s a sneaky situation, because Mrs. White doesn’t look like a vampire. She actually looks like the one who’s had all her blood drained. Her face is gray and bony, her hair is white and wispy, and her hands are one hundred percent knuckles.
She also acts dead. She just lies there, day after day, bony-faced and wispy-haired, asleep in her special motorized bed.
Ma explained to me that Mrs. White has a special bed because she’s on hospice, which she also explained was a nice way of saying she’s going to die. Very soon. Like, any day. Only Mrs. White hasn’t died. Instead, she’s outlived six roommates since Ma started working there.
Six!
Every one of those roommates was in way better shape than Mrs. White. They could get up and sit at a table for dinner. They could use a toilet and take a shower and go to the Activities Room, all while Mrs. White just lay there, looking dead.
One by one, though, the roommates suddenly died.
And every one of them died during the night.
And every time one died, Mrs. White bounced back to life.
“Just when you think she’s the one who’ll be gone by morning, she bounces back,” Ma said after the third roommate, Cynthia, died back in early October. “I sat with her to distract her while they were clearing out Cynthia’s things. Her cheeks were rosy. She smiled and talked…even thanked me after I changed her!”
We were on the bus ride home. And maybe it’s ’cause we’d entered the month of ghouls and goblins, and spooky decorations were already up in store windows, but a funny idea about Mrs. White flashed into my brain. I kept my voice down as I broke the news to Ma. “That’s because she’s a vampire.”
Ma gave me one of her looks. “Lincoln!”
I gave her one of my looks.
So she frowned at me and said, “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. She can’t even get out of bed!”
“She doesn’t need to,” I whispered. “She’s a psychic vampire.”
“A what?”
“She sucks the life force out of folks,” I told her.
“And how does she do that?”
I gave her a little grin. “You need to ask her.”
I was just messing around, but less than two weeks later the next roommate mysteriously died during the night, and Ma kind of freaked out. “Mrs. White’s cheeks were all rosy again!” she whispered on the bus ride home. “They haven’t been rosy since the last time!”
“I told you,” I said with a little shrug, “she’s a psychic vampire.” But this time I wasn’t so sure I was messing around.
Then it happened again, and Ma really freaked out. “It’s not funny!” she said. “It’s the third one this month! It’s like…it’s like some sort of hoodoo.”
The fifth roommate dying had caused Ma to work late, so it was darker’n usual as we were walking home from the bus stop. My eyes were dartin’ around, taking in the creatures of the night hangin’ out in doorways. “So don’t go back in her room,” I said, wondering how powerful a psychic vampire could get.
Ma drew her coat in tighter. “I have to! It’s my job!”
I noticed the moon, shinin’ near full above us. “Well, just don’t go in her room after dark, then. And maybe wear some garlic.”
“Garlic? Really?” she asked.
I pointed out the moon. “Couldn’t hurt, right?”
I was expecting her to accuse me of having a wild imagination, but seein’ the moon did her in. “Oh, Lord!” she gasped.
She tried to dial it back, telling me we were just overreacting, but then she stopped at the corner market for some garlic. “Couldn’t hurt, right?”
Ma seemed fine the next morning, but the instant I got to Brookside that afternoon, she hauled me into the Clubhouse phone room and closed the door tight. “She noticed!” Ma gasped, and her eyes were wide as pies.
“Who noticed what?” I looked through the phone room window to see if anyone was watching, ’cause the room is small and being hauled into it felt mighty awkward.
“Mrs. White! She noticed the garlic!” Ma dropped her voice even more. “Her nose twitched! Like this,” she said, then did a twitchy thing with her nose that made her look like a rabbit trying to sneeze. “And she asked, ‘What is that foul odor?’ ”
I took a little step back ’cause Ma was smelling mighty garlicky. “Had she messed her diaper?”
“Yes! And she still noticed it! She acted like she was afraid of it!”
“Maybe she was talking about her smell?”
“She never talks about her smell, and her smell’s a whole lot
worse than garlic!”
“So…did you tell her?”
Her eyes about popped out. “That I was warding off her psychic vampire powers with garlic?!” She looked out the window to make sure no one had heard, ’cause it had come out so loud. But worse than someone hearing, the Brookside director, Mr. Freize, was entering the Clubhouse. “Oh, Lord,” Ma gasped. She shoved me down in the phone chair. “Stay right here until I come get you. Look busy! Do your homework!”
“Ma, you should—”
“Hush!” she said, and hurried out of the room.
So I didn’t get to tell her how garlicky she smelled.
I didn’t get to tell her that she should steer clear of the director.
Too bad, too, ’cause she was all mortified on the ride home. “Did it really smell that strong?” she asked.
“Oh, yeah.”
“I shouldn’t have peeled them.”
“You peeled them?”
“I didn’t know! I’ve never had to ward off vampires before!”
“And them? How many did you have on you?”
“Never mind!” she snapped. Then she muttered, “They must’ve warmed up after I started working.” She looked out the window. “It’s not an easy job, you know.”
We rode along for a while, quiet, until finally I asked, “You got rid of them, right?”
“Of course I got rid of them!”
She wasn’t in the mood to hear it, but I felt like I needed to tell her. “It still smells, Ma.”
That night she took a shower until the hot water was all gone. And the next day Mrs. White had a brand-new roommate, named Mary. “She’s sweet and gentle, and her daughter seems so nice,” Ma told me with tears in her eyes.
Sure enough, near the end of her second week, Sweet Mary died unexpectedly during the night. November was starting off the same way October had, and I couldn’t help wondering again how powerful a psychic vampire could get. Especially with the nights getting longer. Did it give her more time to use her powers? Would she be reaching through walls soon?