“Saturday we went shopping on South Street,” she answered. “Is that right? South Street?”
“Was it all body jewelry and sex shops?”
“There was also a comic book store.”
Ophelia nodded. “South Street.”
South Street had felt a little more like home than the Main Line suburbs. There was bright, messy life on the streets. Colors. And here the colors had not been washed and scrubbed until they faded into taupe and eggshell.
Not that there weren’t still differences, big differences. There was an almost stultifying array of choices—kinds of people, kinds of foods. Here, amid the produce wallahs of the Italian Market, she’d counted six fruits she’d never even seen before and gasped at a line of ripe mangoes—their blushing skins looking suitably embarrassed to be spotted so far from home and in September. They practically shivered in the autumn air.
“What’d you do on Sunday?” asked Ophelia.
“Ah—I ruined Cat’s Sunday by asking to accompany the family to church.”
Cat overheard this and disengaged from the TV show argument, which had just devolved into personal attacks and name calling anyway. “I didn’t say you ruined my Sunday, yaar. I’m just disappointed. I thought you were going to be my Get Out of Church Free card for the whole year.”
“I am here to try new things.” Sejal smiled. “Tough shit for you!”
“Ho, ho!” Cat shouted.
“New things, huh?” Ophelia purred as she leaned in. “What kind of new things do you want to try?”
Cat puckered her lips in a silent whistle and turned back to the others. That left Sejal alone with Ophelia, so to speak, in this tangle of thorns that had suddenly grown up around them.
“I don’t know,” she said, looking at Cat. “Things.” She considered what to tell Ophelia about her visit with Doug and Jay when a shadow fell across her lap.
Doug’s head was blotting out the sun. Jay stood behind, looking vaguely apologetic.
Sejal hadn’t expected him to show up for lunch. He had rather pointedly ignored her in math class that morning. “Doug,” she said.
“Hey, Meatball, Jay,” said Sophie.
“I prefer ‘Doug,’” answered Doug, and he sat down at the base of the tree where the roots were packed in tight, intestinal coils.
“Okay,” said Sophie. “Doug. You look different. You got contacts! But there’s something else.”
Conversation wilted. Faces turned and became transfixed by this something else, this question of how exactly Doug had changed. Doug seemed unfazed by the attention, almost bored with it. Where he would have previously only had eyes for Sejal, he now examined Abby with all the careless detachment of the mean judge on a reality talent show.
“But, hey,” Cat broke the silence. “What about Jay? Isn’t his hair rad?”
Jay flinched as the group came back to themselves and stared at his head. He smiled sheepishly and bobbed it back and forth.
“That looks so good on you, Jay,” said Ophelia. “Although—and you know I’m only saying this because I like you—your new hair doesn’t really go with your Simpsons T-shirt.”
“Or your cargo shorts,” Sophie added.
“It’s like your head’s on the wrong action figure,” said Adam, and everyone laughed.
“Fuck you,” Doug said suddenly like a whip crack. “You don’t have to take that from him, Jay.”
“It was funny,” Jay mumbled. “He wasn’t being mean.”
“I really wasn’t,” said Adam. “I’m just, like, Jay’s too cool for his clothes now. That’s all.”
Doug gave a princely nod. Everyone seemed to avoid his gaze. Everyone except Abby.
“Jay and I are going to start a band,” Cat said. “Me on bass, him on theremin and MIDI. We’re inventing a new genre—early goth plus nerdcore. We’re gonna call it nerdcave.”
“What’s a theremin?” asked Sophie. “What’s a middy?”
And so they talked about electronic music, and they talked about nerdcave, and they talked about Cat and Jay’s theoretical band (which was now called Primordial Soup for the Teenage Soul) until Victor approached.
Even Sejal knew his name. He had been impossible to miss on campus. And though Cat had once referred to him as a “meathead asswipe,” even she stared now with unabashed longing.
“Hey, Victor,” said Adam.
“Can I talk to you a minute, Doug?” said Victor. “I have a homework question. About the chiroptera family.”
Doug made a face. Then he got up, and the two boys walked away. The drama group watched them depart in silence.
“I never noticed before,” Cat said finally, “but…don’t those two look kind of alike? In a really weird way?”
Sophie nodded. For a few moments the rest didn’t nod or say anything, but even their lack of reaction to such a patently absurd claim was in itself a kind of endorsement.
“It’s like they’re a ‘before’ and ‘after’ picture,” Adam said. But nobody laughed.
“You look better,” said Victor as they walked around to the far side of the gym. “Not as douchey. You get some neck?”
“Maybe,” said Doug. Get some neck?
“Maybe?”
“All right, no. But I did try some deer. It’s better than cow.”
“Huh,” said Victor while scratching his cheek. A cheek that had a blue grit of stubble, Doug noted—unlike his own face, which had never produced more than a thin cotton-candy fuzz on the sides of his jaw. And never would, he supposed. “You hunted a deer?” Victor continued. “Well, that’s…it’s not actually cool, but it’s closer to cool than before. Like, now maybe you can at least see ‘cool’ if you stand on something.”
“Thank you. Your brotherly encouragement is the fucking wind beneath my wings.”
Victor laughed. “Not a bad crowd,” he said, pointing his chin in the direction of the drama kids. “A couple of those girls are definitely fuckable.”
Doug looked lazily over his shoulder as if the thought hadn’t occurred to him. “That was real subtle—‘chiroptera family’? Are you trying to give us away?”
“Relax. Nobody knows that ‘chiroptera’ means bat.”
“I knew. Jay might know.”
Victor looked back at the tree. “You think he could figure out what I meant?”
“No,” said Doug, too quickly. He pretended to consider the possibility for a moment, and shook his head. “No. No way. Jay’s really rational. Like, scientific. I happen to know for a fact that he doesn’t believe in us.”
“Seriously? I know you two have been best friends since preschool or whatever. You used to talk about him all the time at the cabins in the summer. Made him sound a lot cooler than he actually is, too, but…admit it—you’ve told him, right?”
“I have not told him. Seriously. You think I want to get him killed?”
“Good,” said Victor, “’cause the other vamps really have their panties in a twist lately. Where were you guys yesterday?”
Doug frowned. He didn’t know what Victor was talking about, and he was conditioned to be distrustful of situations where he didn’t know what some taller and more popular boy was talking about. They always reeked of a setup. At worst they were a kind of entrapment. At best they were like a friendly hand to be yanked away at the most humiliating moment. But these sorts of stunts required an audience, and the boys were alone.
“Me and Jay?” Doug asked.
“You and Stephin David,” Victor explained. “We were all supposed to meet and talk about this Vampire Hunters thing, didn’t he tell you? Everyone’s freaked. The signora sent Asa. Borisov sent me. But you and David weren’t at his house at five-thirty.”
That’s true, thought Doug. We were walking around the park.
“Stephin didn’t say anything to me about it. I mean, he mentioned there was concern about the TV show, but he didn’t say anything about any meeting. Maybe he forgot.”
“Well, he owes me,” said Victor.
“I want the half hour back that I spent alone with that ghoul Asa. That guy’s depressing as boiled steak. And now Borisov’s got me watching that lame show for homework so I can report back to him.”
“I missed it,” Doug admitted, “but they still think I live in San Diego, right?”
“Right. Those fucktards couldn’t find a vampire in a phone booth.”
Doug nodded. Then he said, “You use a lot of colorful expressions.”
“Well, you know…we’re from Tennessee.”
Look at the two of us, thought Doug. Talking like we’re old friends. He sort of wished more people could look at the two of them, but on this side of the gym they were visible only to the crows and a band teacher in a golf cart.
“So what do you and David talk about?” asked Victor.
Last night we talked about whether I should kill you.
“Nothing much. He rambles. Tells me about the Civil War. I’m thinking of asking the signora if I can meet with someone else.”
“You should definitely go see her. She’ll want to talk to you about the show. She’ll want to talk to you about that other little stunt of yours last night.”
Doug started. Victor grinned his corn-fed grin.
“I knew it was you! Superhero powers, white cape and hood? Okay, that’s officially cool. You stopped an armed robbery! Up here, Batman!”
Victor held up his hand, and Doug slapped it awkwardly. It was a bit of a miss—too much fingers, not enough palm.
“Lost all your clothes, didn’t you? I figured that was why you didn’t have your poncho today.”
“Well,” Doug said, and he gave a glance back at what would plainly have been the drama tree had there not been a gym in the way. “I don’t think I’m going to be needing it anymore.”
Then Jay emerged from that same direction and approached them—stiffly and with that ridiculous new hairstyle and a look both of apprehension and concentration on his face. Like he was walking toward a bomb while trying to remember a telephone number.
Before Doug’s cat had died the previous winter, he’d become all too familiar with a particular smell, a kind of tangy feline musk she’d produced at the vet’s, during car rides, or whenever you tried to give her her ear medicine. A fear smell. He was getting a whiff of something like this now. And no wonder, he supposed—Jay looked terrified. Then Victor cleared his throat, and Doug turned his head.
It was altogether possible that Victor was making the smell. Doug inhaled deeply, tried to narrow in on it, but now it was gone. Gone, or else his nose, like a gracious host, was already pretending it hadn’t happened at all.
“Sorry to—Are you guys still talking?” Jay asked. “I need to talk to Doug, alone.”
Victor glanced from Jay to Doug. His face was inscrutable.
“We’re done,” he said, and walked off toward the parking lot.
Jay watched him go.
“You haven’t told me everything about Victor Bradley,” Jay said after a moment. “Have you?”
“There’s nothing to tell. What’s this about?”
“What’s this about? What was last night about? What’s everything about?”
Doug rolled his eyes. “I’m not really in the mood to discuss the meaning of life right now. I could probably find you some pamphlets in the counselor’s office—”
“You know what I’m talking about. You’re walking around suddenly like you got a stake up your butt.”
Doug glared at Jay’s serious face. But then the corner of Jay’s mouth twitched and a laugh came coughing out his nose. Doug lost it, too.
“A stake up my—How long have you been waiting to use that?”
“Just since last night.”
The boys stared at each other, smiles fading.
“You look better,” said Jay. “Did you…get some blood last night, or—”
“I think it would be better if I didn’t share every little detail of my life now,” Doug answered.
“Oh. Well.”
The truth, as Doug considered it, was that he had not become a vampire in the Poconos so many weeks ago. Last night had been like a ritual, and he told Jay so. Now he was a vampire.
“Huh,” said Jay. “Like a dark Bar Mitzvah. Like a…well, I was going to say Bat Mitzvah, but that’s for girls, right?”
“Okay, see? This is what I can’t have anymore. I’m different, now. I’m getting a do over on my life. I can’t get my do over if you’re always around being all…”
Jay frowned. “What?”
The bell rang, signaling the end of round one and of lunch in general.
“We’ll talk after school,” Jay insisted. “Well…not right after school, ’cause I’m going over to Cat’s and I guess you wouldn’t want to…but later, maybe? After dark?”
“I have something I have to do after dark,” said Doug.
26
FADE TO BLACK
“THERE,” Mike said, tilting his head toward the passenger seat where Alan Friendly sat but never taking his eyes off the MoPo across the street. “What about that guy?”
“Maybe,” said Alan. He’d seemed distracted all day. Mike wasn’t used to being the enthusiastic one.
They were sitting in the front of a windowless white crew van. They’d had to cover the large, red Vampire Hunters logo on its side with butcher paper and duct tape. It had been Mike’s idea to monitor all the local news stations after they’d relocated to the Philadelphia area, and they’d seen the story about the thwarted holdup. And it had been Mike’s idea again to stake out the convenience store.
“Stake out,” Alan had repeated, and laughed. “Get it? Stake out?”
Mike ignored this. “Look. So we’re pretty sure our guy is a kid, right? He’s short, he looks young as far as we’ve been able to tell, he went to a party full of teenagers.”
“He may only look like a kid,” said Alan. “He may be thousands of years old.”
Mike sighed. He didn’t know what to think anymore. There was something off about this kid, but it would take more than that to get Mike to say the V word. According to the MoPo clerk, the hooded vigilante from the previous night had shown some remarkable strength. According to her he had vanished into thin air. “Turned into mist,” Alan had suggested. “Or a bat or rat.” If only they could have seen the MoPo’s security tapes, but the police had taken them as evidence and they weren’t sharing.
“Whatever,” said Mike. “Somehow he vanished from the scene, and when he vanishes he leaves his clothes behind. So he must have gotten to the MoPo the old-fashioned way: in a car or on a bike or on foot. Otherwise he would have arrived naked, too.”
Alan nodded. “So…”
“So if we’re lucky he left a bike or a car behind. Probably a bike, if he’s as young as we think. Maybe it’s still there and he’ll come back for it.”
It made sense. Enough sense that the two of them parked themselves in sight of the store on the morning after the robbery. But by now one or both of them had been sitting there for twelve hours and Mike was beginning to feel a little foolish.
Still, there was a bike there, locked out front. Customers had come and gone, the MoPo employees had even changed shifts, and the bike remained.
The short man they were watching now had arrived on foot, but he left that way, too. “Okay, that wasn’t our guy,” said Mike. “But the sun’s going down. We wouldn’t really expect our guy to come for his bike during the day if—if, you know.”
“Right,” said Alan.
“Man, what’s with you?” said Mike. “I’ve seen you more excited about traffic school. I’ve seen you more excited about that Best Lighting award you got for CatCops. We’re actually close to…something here. We’re not just harassing Eurotrash like we usually do.”
Alan was quiet for a moment. “You can’t tell the rest of the crew,” he said. “Not yet.”
Mike listened to the silence a moment, then exhaled and stared back out at the road. “Shit,” he said. “We’re canceled.”
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Alan nodded. “Almost certainly. I have a conference call tomorrow, but…yes, we’re canceled.”
The sky had darkened to the color of a bruise. Across the street, the MoPo’s exterior lights flickered on.
“We’re under contract for two more shows,” Alan added. “So. I’ll be pitching something new tomorrow, I’m calling it America’s Top Psychics. If they go for it, I might be able to bring the whole crew over without much downtime.”
A trolley pulled up to the corner just past the MoPo, as trolleys had done every ten to twenty minutes throughout the day. Someone got off, as someone often had.
“There,” Alan whispered. “There.”
Mike followed Alan’s eyes and was surprised to find the bass suddenly turned up in his chest, his heart pumping out a beat he could feel in his ears. Something had stepped off the trolley, something he’d only seen in grainy black-and-white video.
“There’s our Bigfoot,” he said.
The boy walked directly to the bike and unlocked it.
“This is bloody amazing,” said Alan, switching a handheld camera on and training it on the boy. “What is he, five four? Five five? The Littlest Vampire.”
“The littlest…person of interest,” Mike answered, and started the engine.
“Easy.”
The boy wheeled his bike around and started off quickly, glancing back only for a moment at the bright lights of the MoPo. Then he turned onto the road, settled into the bike lane, and pedaled west. Mike pulled out behind him.
“Not too close,” said Alan. “Give him room—”
“I’ve seen the same cop shows you have, Alan. I know what to do.”
In fact, following a bicycle in a van turned out to be far more difficult than Mike expected. Their quarry was by no means riding slowly, but he wasn’t traveling at thirty-five miles per hour, either. They would pass him, then have to casually crawl below the speed limit to give him a chance to catch up. But then their van would get caught behind traffic or stuck at a light, and the boy would weave through the red and have a two-block head start again.