She exited the cafeteria and walked toward a large tree in the center of the quad, drawn to a shining, friendly face like a smiley. A face that seemed just now to be lit with the divine light of the universe.
“There she is!” said Cat. Cat stood and invited Sejal to sit in the grass with a tight cluster of other kids.
“Hi,” said a girl with long, slender arms. “I’m Ophelia. Cat’s probably told you about me.”
Cat had, in fact. She’d given Sejal a rundown of a dozen different names, most of which were promptly forgotten. Sejal shook Ophelia’s hand, let her eyes linger over the soft brown feathers and long pink bangs of her hair. Sejal wanted this haircut.
“This is Troy and Abby and Sophie and Adam and Phil,” Ophelia said, christening each with a flick of her wrist. They became more animated, as if made real by the gesture of Ophelia’s invisible wand.
“Where are you from again?” asked Sophie.
“Kolkata. In India.”
“Ohh,” said the girl with a sad tilt of her head.
It was a response Sejal would hear a lot in the following weeks and which she would eventually come to understand meant, “Ohh, India, that must be so hard for you, and I know because I read this book over the summer called The Fig Tree (which is actually set in Pakistan but I don’t realize there’s a difference) about a girl whose parents sell her to a sandal maker because everyone’s poor and they don’t care about girls there, and I bet that’s why you’re in our country even, and now everyone’s probably being mean to you just because of 9/11, but not me although I’ll still be watching you a little too closely on the bus later because what if you’re just here to kill Americans?” There was a lot of information encoded in that one vowel sound, so Sejal missed most of it at first.
“Christ, Sophie, my gyno is Indian,” said Ophelia. “Just because she’s from the Third World doesn’t mean she eats bugs. No offense if you do, Sejal.”
“’Felia, you can’t call them Third World anymore,” said Troy. “It’s hurtful.”
“Says who?”
“Mr. Franovich.”
Ophelia farted through her teeth. “Franovich.”
“What are we called, then?” asked Sejal.
“A Developing Nation.”
“Ha!” said Ophelia. “Developing! Like they’re getting their boobies.”
“Isn’t that one of your old dresses, Cat?” asked Abby, who was similarly attired.
“The airport lost my bag,” said Sejal, “but Cat and I wear the same size.”
“Really?”
“That’s sad,” said Sophie. “About your bag. You probably had all kinds of beautiful kimonos or robes or whatever.”
“Just one sari,” said Sejal, “and a salwar kameez my mom made me pack. Mostly it was jeans and shirts.”
“And your elephant god,” Cat reminded her.
And that, Sejal thought with a guilty pang. The faces of the other kids had soured suddenly, as if they could taste her shame. But then someone new spoke up behind her.
“Wow, you smuggled Ganesha in your suitcase? Isn’t he pretty big?”
Sejal turned to see Doug and another boy from math class. She smiled.
“Not always. Sometimes he rides a mouse.”
Doug sat, followed by the other boy, who pulled a book from his backpack and began to read.
“Hey, Meatball,” said Cat. Doug returned the greeting and extended it to everyone else. The other kids responded with nods or leaden “heys” of their own.
“Meatball?” asked Sejal. It sounded like an insult, but nobody laughed, and Doug had taken it in stride.
“God, it’s like you know everything,” Sophie half sneered at Doug. “Why do you know G’daysha?”
“Ganesha. I don’t know, from books. He’s…heh…he’s in this comic book called ‘The God Squad.’ You ever read that one, Adam?”
Adam started. His face contorted with hammy confusion as he muttered that he had no idea what Doug was talking about.
“You sure? They have a huge God Squad poster on the wall at Planet Comix.”
Adam shrugged. “Whatever, Meatball. I don’t remember. I haven’t been there since junior high.”
“Meatball?” Sejal said again.
“Yeah,” Doug explained now. “People just—I’ve always been called Meatball. Since, like, the fourth grade. I can’t even remember how it started, anymore.”
No one offered to remind him.
“And you don’t…mind it?” asked Sejal.
“It’s just a nickname,” Ophelia reassured her, “it doesn’t mean anything. Like Dutch or Lefty or whatever. It’s not mean.” Her smile was peaceful and blameless. Most of the group nodded faintly, as if they’d needed reassuring, too. Even Doug.
“Ah! He’s blushing!” said Troy, pointing at Doug. “You’re so pink right now.”
“Oh, he’s not blushing,” Sejal said, and turned to Doug. “Right? You told me this morning.”
“Yeah. Yeah, over the summer I developed this sun allergy. It comes and goes.”
“I have that!” shouted Abby. “I totally know what you’re talking about. It’s, like, sometimes, when I’m out in the sun awhile my skin gets this very fine layer of ash.”
“Really?” said Sejal.
“Really?” said Doug. Behind him, the other boy glanced up from his book.
“And now you have an aversion to crosses, too, right?” Ophelia asked Abby. “And it all started—lemme guess—it all started when that emo boy gave you a hickey at Stacy’s pool party?”
Now Abby blushed. “Maybe.”
Ophelia pulled a compact mirror out of her purse. “Ooh, let’s see if you have a reflection. Whoop, you’re still in there. Not a vampire.”
“Did this emo boy break the skin?” asked Troy. “Maybe she’s just turning into a vampire really slowly.”
“That reflection thing doesn’t work anyway,” Doug’s friend said suddenly. All eyes turned to him, and time stopped. There was a great black hole where his head should have been, sucking all light and heat and conversation. He hid behind his book again.
Doug rose, then, and strode off without warning, as if he’d seen someone or something he wanted. The other boy glanced over the edge of his paperback in surprise. Then his eyes returned to the group, his possum face flashing “flee or play dead?”
“Your name’s…Jay,” said Cat. “Right?”
“What?” said Jay.
Doug crossed the quad to the boys’ locker room and pulled his poncho back over his angry skin. The day was actually looking up. This new Indian girl continued to be nice to him. And he thought he might start working on Abby now, too. She was obviously dying to be made a vampire. So to speak. He wouldn’t have wished to leave the drama tree just then but for two things: one, the almost subconscious knowledge that the longer he stayed, the more likely he was to screw everything up. And two: he’d just spied Victor Bradley, walking alone. Not surrounded by sycophants or anxious girls, but alone.
And now Doug was, of his own free will, walking into the locker room. He hadn’t been required to take phys. ed. after freshman year, and since then this entire section of campus had been an ecological dead zone as far as he was concerned. This felt reckless and stupid. Not-ready-to-face-Lord-Vader stupid.
He was a vampire, sure, but the jocks were werewolves. They always had been, he understood that now. They had been bitten by something as kids and had changed in ways he hadn’t, and you needed a farmer’s almanac and a tent full of gypsies to foresee their sudden, savage benders.
He knew what happened when a vampire bit a person, and turned him. How much worse when a vampire turned a werewolf?
“Victor?” Doug said. His voice echoed through the stink. Was the locker room always this bad? No, of course not—it was his new heightened sense of smell. It always buzzed at human odors. Others, not so much. But this was even worse than he would have expected—it was sewage, rotten eggs, sulfur.
“Victor?”
br /> Victor appeared then, from behind a locker bay. Half undressed. The star of the football team. The Boy Most Likely. He wrinkled his nose.
“Is that you?” Victor said.
“Yeah, if you mean…What do you mean?”
“Is it you that smells like that. It smells…”
“Dead,” said Doug. “It’s us, isn’t it? We smell each other.”
The locker room was cool and windowless, like a crypt. They stood silently, neither really looking at the other.
“I was out of my mind that night,” said Victor.
“I know. I mean, I figured.”
“I didn’t even know it was you. Not at first. I could barely remember what happened, so if you want to blame someone—”
They heard the locker room door open again. More boys approached, three more werewolves. Their barking voices went silent when they saw Doug.
“What’s this little faggot doing here?” said Reid, an enormous senior built like a stack of hamburgers. There wasn’t any laughter. The issue of the little faggot in the locker room was a very serious one that demanded answers.
“I think he came to get a look at Victor,” said another guy just like Reid but larger. “I think he’s got a big faggot crush. Right, Victor?”
Victor rushed Doug then, half naked, white skinned, like that night in the forest. He pressed Doug back over a bench and against the lockers.
“I don’t have a crush on you, Victor, I swear—”
“Shut the fuck up. Jesus.”
“I just need to talk to you about—”
Victor punched Doug right below the ribs. And so Doug would not be finishing that sentence or starting any new ones for two or three minutes.
Victor’s face was close.
“Four o’clock,” he hissed quietly through his teeth before throwing Doug out. “The drainpipe behind the soccer fields. Alone.”
13
NOCTURNAL ADMISSIONS
DOUG COULDN’T concentrate for the rest of the day and did little more than watch the clock until three thirty. He didn’t know if he was going to a secret meeting or a fight. Maybe more than a fight. Maybe Victor was going to kill him. Maybe he enjoyed it so much the first time he wanted to do it again.
“Why…exactly…are you meeting Victor Bradley by the drainpipe?” asked Jay after last bell.
“We just have some business to talk about. Or he wants to beat me up. I’ll find out when I get there.”
Jay was thinking hard. You could tell because he looked like he was cleaning his teeth with his tongue. “I’m going with you. Even though I’m still mad at you for ditching me. Although I think I really scored some points with the drama kids—”
“I’m supposed to go alone,” said Doug.
“Yeah, right—so then Victor can show up with the whole football team?”
“Are you really suggesting he’s gonna need help kicking my ass?”
Jay shrugged. “You have vampire strength now.”
“Not during the day I don’t. Look, thank you, but I’m going to go alone. If I don’t call you by five, then you can panic,” Doug said. He was annoyed with Jay, annoyed with himself for even telling Jay about it. Plus people were making fun of his poncho.
He walked out past the bus bays and the throngs of people, across the parking lot and the soccer field, through a hole in the chain-link fence, and down an embankment. Victor was already there, alone. Victor who, if possible, was even better looking now that he was a vampire. It made his eyes smolder or something. It made Doug look like a blind cave fish.
The day was humid and close. The area around the pipe was rocky and lush green. Flies punctuated the air over something furry and dead. It smelled worse than Victor. Victor he was starting to get used to.
“I checked up on you,” Victor said. “I did. After I figured out it was you that I attacked. I came by your family’s cabin and made sure you were okay.”
“Thanks,” Doug said, and wanted to slap himself. He was thanking him for this?
“And then when I saw you were okay,” said Victor, “I knew I must have made you. I guess because I took too much?”
“I wonder if it’s because you were bleeding, and I got some of your blood in me. You haven’t made any other vampires?”
“I don’t think so.”
“So you were made right before you made me. I was your first feed.”
“Yeah. I didn’t know what I was doing. You could have been anyone. Anything.”
Doug nodded. He was sweating under his poncho. “You looked pretty fucked up that night,” he said.
“She was really rough,” Victor admitted.
“She?”
“My vampire. She was a total piece of ass. French. Looked maybe nineteen, but who knows, right? She could have blown Napoleon for all I know.”
So there were hot vampire chicks, at least. That was comforting.
The fact that Victor wasn’t being a complete dick was coming as something of a surprise to Doug. That Victor was aware that Napoleon was both French and lived a long time ago wasn’t entirely expected, either. He supposed he was going to have to give Victor more credit. He hated giving people more credit.
They had known each other since they were little kids. Never were great friends, maybe, but they’d played together during the summers at their families’ cabins. They’d always gotten along when there were no other kids around to complicate things. Then the two boys got older, and Doug simply assumed in Victor a growing cruelty and stupidity to balance out his more appealing qualities. Sure, after high school he might become a better person, find God or something, but for now, didn’t he almost have to be evil? Wasn’t that part of the deal?
“You haven’t told anyone, have you?” asked Victor. “About any of it?”
“Oh…no. No. And if I was going to tell anyone, I wouldn’t tell them about you. I’d probably claim my vampire was a hot girl, too.”
Victor gave a satisfied nod. Maybe he’d just gotten what he was looking for. Doug still had some unanswered questions.
“What the hell am I doing wrong, Victor?” he said. “I mean, look at you—you don’t hide under a poncho all day. And that bat thing—”
“Yeah, well I figure I’m some kind of special vampire,” said Victor. “One that doesn’t burn up in the sun. You’re not ’cause you were an accident.”
“Oh,” said Doug. “I thought maybe being able to stand the sun was normal, like in Dracula.”
“Dracula burns up in the sun, dumbass.”
“Not in the book, remember?”
Victor frowned, and then looked down the drainpipe. “I haven’t read it.”
Doug’s eyes popped. “You haven’t read Dracula? Are you kidding? I read it, like, first thing. Well, reread it first thing.”
“Yeah, big fuckin’ surprise,” said Victor. “Meatball gives himself extra homework to do.”
“But it’s like…our instruction manual, right? And in Stoker’s book, Dracula can walk around in daylight all he wants. He’s just powerless then.”
Victor picked up a chunk of concrete and pitched it down the drainpipe. Both boys paused to admire the firecracker sounds it made as it fractured and ricocheted in the darkness.
“Well…” said Victor, “so much for your instruction manual. I haven’t read it and I’m doing a hell of a lot better’n you.”
Doug had to admit that was true.
“What’ve you been drinking?” asked Victor.
“Nothing,” said Doug reflexively. “I don’t drink.”
Victor gave him a look.
“Oh…” said Doug. “Right. Well, there are these cows at the university farms—”
“You’ve been drinking cow? Jesus! Aren’t there at least some, like, dork girls you could feed on?”
“I’m working on it. I don’t want to just attack anyone.”
“Hey, who’s attacking people? The girls I feed on want it. It’s better than sex,” said Victor, then he looked thoughtful. ?
??In fact, afterward, they seem to think all we did was have sex. They go into a kind of daze when I’m doing it, you know?”
No.
“I’m getting really good. I barely leave a mark, and I only take a little. Like as much as a Coke. But I do it enough so’s I’m always full as a tick.”
Doug had stopped listening. He was listening, rather, to a rustling echo of footsteps coming from down the pipe. He held up a hand. “Shh, hold on.”
The boys squinted down the dark tunnel of the drainpipe. A man was walking slowly down its center, slightly hunched, carrying a silver tray. He wore a knee-length jacket, a vest, a tiny tie. His long face and tired eyes were a perfect mask of boredom.
“The hell?” Victor whispered.
They had all the time in the world to study his approach, though to Doug he gave the impression of the kind of unhurried cartoon tormentor who would always be calmly on your heels, no matter how hard you tried to get away.
He slowed to a stop at the lip of the pipe and glanced with distaste at the decaying animal in the rocks.
“An auspicious place to find you, young masters,” he creaked. “My compliments.”
“Who the hell are you?” asked Victor. “Why are you here?”
“Remarkable. The incisive quality of your questions staggers me. Allow me a moment of quiet awe.”
The man took his moment. The boys looked at each other.
“Now then. I am but an unworthy messenger,” the man rasped. “Please accept these gracious invitations from my mistress.”
On the silver tray were two small scrolls, tied with red ribbon. Doug hesitated, but then Victor took one, so he did, too.
You Are Invited
to attend
a Light Supper
and
Willing Congregation of Like-minded Individuals
at the Home of
Signora Cassiopeia Polidori
Midnight
The Hawthorne
Chestnut Hill
Watch Your Fingers
No sooner had Doug read the last line than he noticed his invitation was on fire. So was Victor’s. The messenger flipped closed a Zippo lighter as the boys dropped their scrolls and stamped them out.