“I can’t see him anymore,” said Alan. “You’re losing him.”
“I’m not losing him.”
“Maybe we could just offer him a ride. Lure him with candy. That’s how you get kids into vans, isn’t it?”
Mike glanced at the camera. “I think we’re going to have to edit that last part out.”
“Oh, what are they going to do—cancel us?”
Mike closed the gap just in time to see the bicycle turn off the main road and onto smaller, quieter streets. There were no traffic lights here and few cars, but every corner was pinned with a stop sign.
“Won’t lose him now,” said Alan.
“But this is worse. I have to roll through every stop just to keep up. He’s going pretty fast. And it’s only a matter of time before he—”
The boy looked over his shoulder, looked right at the van.
“Shit!” said Mike.
“Turn off the lights.”
“Then we’ll lose him. Look, he’s turning east again. Why is he—?”
“Don’t do it.”
“I have to do it.”
Mike turned right and followed, and the rider was already far down the block, just a shining mote in their headlights. He’d picked up speed.
“He’s turning again,” said Alan.
“He’s taking us around the block. Making us prove we’re following him. Dammit! Look how fast he’s going!”
Now they were hurtling through intersections, bucking over cracked pavement and divots in the road. Alan held the camera in his left hand, braced himself against the dashboard with his right.
“You should really put on your seat belt,” said Mike.
“Uh-huh,” said Alan, gazing cross-eyed at the camera’s bright LCD.
“This is…really fast. I couldn’t ride a bike this fast.”
“Uh-huh. Uh-huh.”
“Should we stop?” said Mike with a glance toward Alan. “This is really dangerous. And it’s not like he’s gonna lead us home at this point.”
“It’s fantastic footage. Like nothing we’ve ever had. Something like this could save the show.”
“Yeah. Yeah, get a shot of the speedometer.” Alan leaned over and focused on the backlit dial. Forty-five…forty-seven miles per hour through residential streets. “Good,” Mike added, and laughed. “They can use this as evidence at our trial.”
The rider swerved past another stop sign and narrowly missed an SUV. Mike slammed on the brakes and the horn at the same time. The SUV honked back, the driver shouting through his tinted glass as he crept through the intersection.
“Aah! Shit! Move!” said Mike.
The SUV finally cleared a path, and Mike urged the grumbling van forward into…fog.
“What the hell?” he said. The headlights barely cut into the thick white cloud ahead of them. He switched on the high beams, but that was worse.
“My god,” said Alan. “My god. Go, go! We’re going to lose him!”
Mike accelerated cautiously. They passed another stop sign. It emerged from the bright mist suddenly, like a magic trick.
“There’s no fog down the side streets,” Mike muttered. “Did you see? It’s only ahead of us.”
“That’s how we know we’re still on his trail. Go faster.”
Mike went faster. “Alan?” he said. “Alan, what are we gonna do if we catch him?”
Then a white face came out of the smoke, a bright, hideous face. Mike looked into the eyes. He saw the teeth. The bike and its rider came at them and swerved to their left; and Mike swerved to the right and saw briefly the shapes of houses and an electrical pole and then red.
His head hung forward, tingling, and then it was all dark, like he’d been pulled by his hair into sleep. In a moment the sleep faded and he thought of Alan.
“You okay?” he groaned, and turned his head slowly.
The vampire’s face was in the window. Between Mike and the vampire was Alan, slumped like a dead man against the dash. All around was the fog, which was fading and mingling with a turbid black smoke that rose out of the van. The passenger door opened. The night air came in, smelling of tires, and the dome light flickered on, flickered off. In the flickering light he could see the vampire, see (thank god) Alan’s chest rise and fall. He could see, through a space between the dashboard and the rise and fall of Alan’s chest, the vampire reach in and take the camera.
“This is your fault,” it said, and was gone.
27
ROLES
IN THE COMING WEEKS the school buzzed with speculation about the superhero of Philadelphia. He had stopped a robbery at a MoPo. A few days later, he saved a woman from rape, or worse, at the hands of a group of young men in West Philly. A week after that, another group of men were found badly beaten in Upper Darby. No one knew what they’d done, but they said they’d been assaulted by a short man in a white mask and cape and so were assumed to be up to no good.
Several names were put forth for the character, by the newsreaders and by the populace he presumably served, but the Ghost was the name that stuck. There were no more stories of the hero vanishing, leaving his wardrobe behind like the mark of a clothing-optional Zorro. Stranger stories spread to fill the vacuum, however: the Ghost could fly. The Ghost had a snow-white wolf companion. The Ghost rode an invisible motorcycle.
Then a new piece of information, separate at first, was braided tentatively into the thread: Alan Friendly, host of the Crypt’s Vampire Hunters, had been in a car accident in West Philadelphia, only blocks from that legendary MoPo, on the night after the robbery. He’d almost died. No one was sure if he’d even walk again. And his organization wouldn’t confirm that he’d been in the area hunting vampires, but why else would he be there?
Opinion on the Ghost grew mixed and vague. The woman he’d saved in West Philly changed her story: she’d been in no danger—the boys had been loud and crude and were bothering her, but they’d done nothing to deserve…what he did. Now that she thought about it, there had been something weird about the Ghost. His mouth had looked like an animal’s.
Fanboys and goths and readers of black-clad paperbacks found their stars suddenly rising. They were the keepers of all the abruptly popular atavistic knowledge that You Needed to Know: the myths and folktales, the talismans and apotropaic spice racks that could keep you safe. If he was a vampire. If he wasn’t a hero. Adam, who was suddenly an admitted scholar of speculative fiction, thought he might even be both, like Blade from the comic books. Jay said he didn’t believe in vampires. Doug said little that was not mocking, when he said anything at all.
Sejal actually did try out for the school play. Cat was going to anyway—if she didn’t land a part she planned to volunteer for crew—and so Sejal imagined quiet, airless evenings alone with Uncle and Auntie Brown while Cat remained at school for rehearsals. Acting would be therapeutic, she thought. Besides, she had seen West Side Story before. She already knew the music.
And because she had a nice singing voice, and because the Ardwynne High School drama teacher, on a subconscious level, felt that a girl from India was somehow specially qualified to play a Puerto Rican, Sejal won the role of Maria. The lead role.
“Rock out!” Ophelia said to Sejal as they crowded around the freshly posted cast list. “Look at you!”
“And you got the part of Anita,” Sejal replied.
“That means we’ll have a lot of scenes together.”
“Sorry, Cat,” Sophie said. Sophie and Abby had won parts, Cat had not.
“Whatever,” Cat answered. “I never get anything. But I talked to Ms. Todd and she wants me to be assistant director.”
“That’s cool.”
“It beats carrying furniture.”
“I bet you’re happy for Jay,” said Sejal. Jay would be playing the shopkeeper.
“Are you guys dating or what?” asked Sophie.
“Yeah,” said Ophelia. “You two eating a big bowl of Humpees cereal?”
“God! Shut up!”
> “Are you drinking the milk?”
“Fuck you! Shut up! We’re in a band together! You can’t date your bandmates! Have you learned nothing from VH1?”
Sophie looked worried. “I haven’t.”
The real surprise was Doug. He had never won a part before, either, but now he’d be playing one of the Jets. “Look at that,” said Ophelia, pointing to his name.
“Doesn’t surprise me,” said Cat. “He’s been so much more confident lately.”
“Not as funny as he used to be,” said Ophelia. “But he’s been looking a lot better.”
“He always looked good,” said Abby quietly. It was the first thing she’d said in an hour.
No one spoke. Doug had asked Abby out two days after Labor Day, and they’d been dating for a few weeks. And during those weeks he’d only seemed to grow more charismatic, stronger. Almost good-looking in a weird sort of way. But Abby looked terrible. She’d lost weight; her hair was like burned straw. She always looked like she was getting over the flu. She’d won only a nonspeaking role in West Side Story, despite her record with the department.
“Well,” said Ophelia with a dip at the knees. “Shall we?”
They gathered their bags and turned back through a cluster of other students who’d come to check the cast list with craned necks and achingly hopeful faces. Like pallbearers the girls carried a slow and heavy silence between them until Sophie turned at the lobby door and, having held it for Ophelia and Sejal, let it fall suddenly against Abby. Abby flinched and caught the push bar against her knuckles.
“Bwah-bwah,” Sophie sang with a smile.
Abby kept her head down. “Thanks a lot,” she said.
“Jeez. Where’s your sense of humor?”
At the parking lot Sophie and Abby walked together to Abby’s Volvo, and Ophelia, Cat, and Sejal approached Ophelia’s old Mustang convertible. It was just the car for her, flashy in its spotless orange and chrome; but like bangs or a Blondie T-shirt it gave a nod to the graduated classes of beautiful young things that had come before her.
Sejal was flattered by Ophelia’s attentions. It was hard not to be. Wasn’t the whole world in love with her? Who could help it? But Ophelia was also not her type—she suspected that no one was, right now—and Sejal was determined to be straight with her.
Be straight with her, she thought. I made a joke.
“Shotgun!” said Sejal.
“I never should have taught you that,” said Cat. She climbed into the back as Ophelia put the top down. “What? No! It’s gonna be cold.”
“It’s a convertible,” said Ophelia. “You gotta put the top down. Plus, how much longer are we going to be able to do this? Plus it looks better.”
“Convertible. The halter top of car parts. You’ll shiver all night, but woo! Halter top!”
The car crawled and stopped, a hiccupping ride down the busy avenue. Cat fiddled with her iPod while Sejal and Ophelia sang songs from the musical:
“Ev’rything free in America
For a small fee in America!”
They turned off the main drag and into neighborhood streets made precious with coppery leaves and late-day sun.
“You’re going to have to kiss a boy,” Ophelia taunted. “Tony Petucco’s playing Tony.” She frowned petulantly. “You gotta wonder if that’s how he got the part. I think Ms. Todd’s kind of suggestible.”
Sejal smiled. “You are going to have to kiss a boy. Adam. He’s playing Bernardo.”
“Yuck,” said Ophelia, pointing her tongue.
Sejal laughed. “Yuck.”
“Boys.”
“Boys.”
They dropped into silence. Sejal replayed the previous exchange in her head and cringed.
“I’m going to imagine Adam’s someone else,” said Ophelia.
“Do you think that will help?”
“I think it’ll help a lot. A lot. Are you going to imagine Tony’s someone else?”
Sejal hummed. “I will…think of a boy I liked back home.”
“Yeah,” said Ophelia, her voice now squeezed into a different shape. An indifferent shape. “That works.”
At the Browns’ house Cat and Sejal disembarked and said good-bye. They started up the thick grass to the front door.
“Are you mad about the shotgun?” Sejal asked.
“What? ’Course not. Shotgun is sacred. You don’t hold that against a person.”
“You didn’t speak in the car. You only listened to your music.”
Cat shrugged. “Just giving you two some privacy.”
“I could have done with a little less privacy,” said Sejal.
“Sorry. I couldn’t tell. If you want her to back off, you might have to ask her to marry you. Drama isn’t just an extracurricular activity for Ophelia, you know? And nothing makes her lose interest faster than when a person likes her more than she likes him. Or her. Whatever.”
“Can homosexuals do that here? Marry?”
Cat fiddled with her keys. “Not in this state.” They went inside. “You’ve been a popular girl.”
“Yes. I have my theories about that.”
She’d been thinking about it more and more. She was possibly being too friendly, for a start. Overdoing it. And she was alone and far from home and from a country that, to Americans, was mostly known for its spicy food and its quiet, not-so-spicy people. And wasn’t there a weakness in her? A space that needed filling? So to some people here she was a crippled bird. There are people who pointedly ignore a crippled bird and there are people who want to put it in a shoe box and keep it under a strong lamp in their room, and she was attracting a lot of the latter.
Cat said, “Such as?”
“Oh, nothing. Is Jay coming over tonight to practice the band?”
“Yeah. We might even get some real practicing done now on Mondays, with Vampire Hunters off the air.”
An idea occurred to Sejal then, a strange idea about vampires and Monday nights with Jay. And Doug, and Doug with Abby. A ridiculous idea.
A completely strange and ridiculous idea.
28
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN
DOUG PULLED UP to the gates of Signora Polidori’s estate in his father’s Prius. It was his birthday, or the anniversary of his birthday. That afternoon he’d taken and passed his driver’s test. Victor had driven him.
“This is nice of you and all,” Doug told him as they drove to the DMV, “but my dad would have taken me this weekend. You’re just going to have to sit in a boring waiting room while I take the test in your car.”
“It’s nothing,” said Victor, his eyes on the snaking road. “I wanted a chance to talk away from school.”
“Official club business?”
“Heh.” Victor laughed, but it sounded to Doug like no more than a polite social noise. Victor was in a serious mood. “So how are things going with you? I’ve seen you around with Abby Dawes.”
“We’re dating.”
“Dating…” Victor intoned, as if it wasn’t the word he’d have used.
“What?”
“Nothing. And she’s doing good? What does she think about it? I mean, how much do you think she understands—”
“She thinks we’ve been messing around. That’s all. Boy, you think I’ve been blabbing to everyone, don’t you?”
“No—”
“Abby knows nothing, Jay knows nothing. Everyone’s safe.”
“I know. Forget it,” Victor said, waving his hand in the air. “That wasn’t what I was getting at. I just wanted to know how things were going.”
“They’re going good.”
Victor nodded, and then they were silent until the next red light. “You haven’t been having any problems dealing with people?”
“You mean recently?” Problems Dealing with People had actually been sort of a major theme of Doug’s life from the fourth through the tenth grades, but lately there had been nothing but improvement. Except with Sejal, he supposed. And Jay. “No. Have you?”
> Victor frowned. “Everyone’s saying I’m acting different. I think they’re acting different. They’re all being stupid. Fucker!” he shouted at a sedan that had merged a little too close. He tapped the brakes and the three lemon-yellow pine trees hanging from the rearview mirror tangled their lines. “God, I hate being in cars now. Maybe while you’re getting your license I can turn mine in.”
They parked in the DMV lot and walked up to that squat, joyless building.
“It’s like…you know how people look at you when they know they’ve got more money than you?” asked Victor. Doug didn’t, really, but he kept that to himself. “I catch myself looking at normal people like that, now. Like I know they’re gonna be forgotten, and I’m not. We’re gonna live forever—do you realize that?”
“Are you just figuring this out?” said Doug. “We’re always going to be as we are, right now.”
Victor stared at his feet. “I guess I’ve always felt that way. But now it’s true.”
Doug left him reading magazines in a room where all the stiff plastic chairs had been bolted in rows into the floor. He took his driving test, screwed up the parallel parking section a little, but the administrator let him retry it. He took his paperwork to the license photographer and felt a moment of panic. What if the license came back and he wasn’t there? But a half hour later he left the DMV with a little rectangle of plastic with his picture on it, and it felt like he’d gotten away with something. He wasn’t really a year older.
Nor a year wiser, maybe. Now, outside the gates of the Polidori estate, he thought about what Victor had been trying to tell him. Doug recently had two different people suggest he wasn’t as nice a guy as he could be. You had to consider each source, of course. Jay was like a little kid—he didn’t understand how the world worked. It didn’t do him any good to be so thin-skinned. And Sejal…Sejal hadn’t been in America long. She’d learn.