Fangtastic! (2 page)

Olivia’s
mom smiled and shook her head. “Well, okay,” she said with a sigh.

“It’s
not you,” Olivia assured her. “It’s all mothers. It’s like a rule. I’ll call
you.” And, with that, Olivia pecked her mom on the cheek, climbed out of the
car, and squeezed between two news vans.

She
started up the steps, trying not to trip on any of the TV crews’ electrical
cords as she weaved through the people. Scanning the reporter-studded crowd,
she spotted a flash of soft blond curls up ahead. “Camilla!” she called.

Camilla
Edmunson turned and waved. When Olivia joined her, Camilla said, “Can you
believe this?”

“What’s
going on?” asked Olivia.

“Everyone’s
trying to get on TV,” Camilla answered. Nearby, Olivia saw Kyle Glass, one of
the group of boys everyone called the Beasts, holding up two fingers to look
like bunny ears behind an unsuspecting reporter’s head. The cameraman was
waving frantically in an attempt to shoo him away.

Olivia
frowned. “Uh, did I miss a memo?”

“You
mean you haven’t heard?” Camilla asked incredulously. “Garrick Stephens popped
out of a coffin in the middle of someone’s funeral yesterday. It was like when
the villain Zolten escaped by hiding in a cryopod.”

Olivia
assumed her friend was referring to one of the sci-fi books she loved. Olivia
herself had always been more into vampire fiction. In fact, when she’d moved to
Franklin Grove, she’d thought that vampires were
only
fiction.

Boy,
had she been wrong. She still got dizzy when she stopped to think about the
fact that Franklin Grove was teeming with living, breathing, blood-sipping
vampires. Most of them, Garrick and his friends excluded, were really nice.

None
of the other humans in Franklin Grove had any inkling that their town was like
Vamp Central, because that was the Number One Biggest Rule of Vampiredom:
no
telling
. So popping out of a coffin during a funeral was probably
off-limits.

The
only reason Olivia knew about the vampires was because of Ivy Vega, who she’d
met on her first day at Franklin Grove Middle School. Olivia was pure
cheerleader and Ivy was überGoth, so at first they had seemed as different as
black licorice and cotton candy. But it hadn’t taken long for Olivia and Ivy to
realize that they looked
exactly
alike.

In
fact—
and this is where,
Olivia thought,
it gets really mind-blowing
—they
were identical twins. Identical that is, except for one thing: Ivy was a
vampire!

“Anyway,”
Camilla was saying, “the whole of America is now fascinated by Franklin Grove,
and the media—especially Serena Star—is trying to turn Garrick into this huge
story about the decline of America’s youth.”

“No
way.” Olivia’s jaw dropped. “Serena Star from WowTV? She’s totally famous!”

Camilla
nodded, but she clearly wasn’t as impressed. “She thinks we’re all hiding some
terrible secret.”

Olivia’s
heart skipped a beat. “Like what?”

“Who
knows?” said Camilla. “It’s not like she’s going to find anything. Franklin
Grove is probably the most normal town in America.”

Olivia
smiled uncomfortably. Camilla didn’t have a clue.

I’d
better find Ivy,
Olivia thought,
and see what she has to say about all this!
“Wanna go
in?” she asked.

She
and Camilla skirted the crowd on their way to the front doors of the school.
Suddenly, Olivia heard a familiar high-pitched voice call out her name. She
tried to ignore it and keep walking, but the voice shrieked even louder: “OLIVIA!”

Olivia
winced and told Camilla to go on without her. Then she reluctantly turned to
see Charlotte Brown, her cheerleading captain, gesturing for Olivia to join her
in a circle of cameras.

Ever
since Olivia had made the squad a few weeks ago, it was as if Charlotte had
forgotten that she’d tried to sabotage Olivia at tryouts. In fact, Charlotte
and her friends Katie and Allison all treated Olivia like she was their BFF.
At least it keeps the squad cheering as a team
, Olivia thought as she made
her way over.

“Tell
them, Olivia!” Charlotte said, grabbing her arm and pulling her in front of the
cameras. “You know—what it’s like as a new student here. How frightening it is
with all the bad influences.”

Olivia
scrunched her nose. A camera flashed. “I, uh, don’t really—”

A
reporter in a rumpled suit stuck a microphone in front of Olivia’s face. “Have
you ever slept in a coffin?”

“No,”
Olivia said incredulously.

A
woman holding a tape recorder asked, “Are you familiar with a street gang known
as the Beasts?”

Olivia
shook her head. “I wouldn’t exactly call them—”

A
short, determined-looking woman in a tight, bright-orange suit muscled in
between the others, her blond hair shining in the sun. Olivia gasped; it was
Serena Star herself! She looked much shorter than she did on TV.

“Have
you ever,” Serena Star said, thrusting her microphone under Olivia’s chin, “felt
threatened by everyone around you wearing black?”

What
a silly question!
thought Olivia. “Since when is there anything wrong with wearing black?” she
asked.

Charlotte
leaped in front of her. “Yes, Ms. Star, I totally have!” she cried, clearly
overexcited to be talking to a celebrity reporter like Serena. “Once,” she
said, flipping her hair dramatically, “I was in the girls’ bathroom,
re-applying gloss, when two Goth girls came in. They were dressed from head to
toe in black rags, and their nails were covered in black nail polish. And guess
what they did. They
growled
at me!”

“Growled
at you?” Serena Star repeated.

“Uh-huh.”
Charlotte nodded seriously. “I was so scared I ran out without even doing my
mascara!”

“So
you think it’s a problem,” Serena Star pressed, “that so many Franklin Grove
students are obsessed with darkness?”

“Totally!”
Charlotte agreed. “Black is so last season.” She gestured toward Serena Star’s
turquoise stiletto heels. “I absolutely
love
your shoes, by the way. Are
they from Hollywood?”

Olivia
seized the opportunity to slip away, racing up the steps and through the school’s
front doors. She had to talk to her twin about what was going on outside.

From
down the hall, she spotted Ivy standing by her locker with her new boyfriend,
Brendan Daniels. Even Brendan had yet to notice that she and Ivy looked alike. “See
you later, okay?” Olivia heard Brendan say.

Ivy
twirled the emerald ring on the chain around her neck. “Okay,” she cooed. Her
sister was
so
smitten. Olivia thought it was super cute.

As she
waited for Ivy and Brendan to finish their good-byes, Olivia played with the
ring on her finger. It was actually their matching emerald rings that had
helped Ivy and Olivia recognize each other. The rings were all either of them
had from their birth parents.

Brendan
walked by with a friendly “Hey, Olivia!” and Olivia scooted up to her sister.

“Let
me guess,” Olivia began. “You still haven’t told him about us.”

“I
swear I’ve tried,” Ivy answered, pulling off a sheer black sweater to reveal a
gray baby T-shirt with an illustration of Edgar Allan Poe’s face on it. “But it
never seems like the right moment to say, ‘Hey, by the way, I have a twin
sister I never knew about’.”

“Eventually,”
said Olivia, “we’re going to have to tell everyone, including our parents.”

Suddenly
there was a commotion down the hall, and Olivia looked up to see Garrick
Stephens strolling along in sunglasses and a black T-shirt that said INTERNA 3—REST
IN PEACE! The other Beasts were trailing behind him. People were parting to let
them through, like Garrick was a star quarterback who had just won a big game—or
else a quarterback who had just lost the big game by running into the wrong end
zone. “Autographs?” Garrick called nonchalantly. “Autographs?”

Ivy
shook her head angrily. “I’m going to strangle him,” she said. “Can you believe
I had to come in the side door this morning? Brendan did, too. Otherwise we
never would have made it up the front steps alive.”

“That’s
what I wanted to talk to you about,” Olivia replied. “I saw Charlotte being
interviewed by Serena Star. She said two Goths once growled at her in the bathroom.”

“That
wasn’t a growl,” Ivy protested, “that was a bark. For night’s sake, she got a
perm last year that made her look like a poodle.”

Olivia
laughed, but her sister turned serious.

“This
is really grave, Olivia,” Ivy said anxiously. “I thought maybe the story would
just go away quietly, but that’s not going to happen with all these reporters
hanging around and people like Charlotte and Garrick jockeying for the
spotlight.”

Sophia
Hewitt, Ivy’s oldest friend, appeared, her big digital camera hanging around
her neck. “Code black,” she whispered cryptically. “I repeat, code black.” And
with that, she disappeared down the hall.

Ivy
rushed to pull her black leather bag onto her shoulder and slammed her locker
shut.

“What’s
code black?” Olivia asked in a low voice.

“Science
hall bathroom,” Ivy said, taking off down the hall. Olivia hurried to keep up.

The
two of them pushed through the bathroom door to find Sophia checking the stalls
to make sure the bathroom was deserted.

Then
she spun around to face Ivy and Olivia with her hands on her hips. “Garrick
Stephens wasn’t on a dare. He was window-shopping!”

“Are
you serious?” Ivy asked.

“Dead
serious,” replied Sophia.

Olivia
said, “I don’t get it.”

“Vamps
upgrade their coffins like most people upgrade cell phones,” Ivy explained.

“And
the Interna 3 is the latest, greatest dream box of all,” Sophia added. “It’s
not like Garrick could afford it. He just thought it would be fun to try it.”

Ivy
frowned. “Funeral homes are often run by vampires. Their showrooms are
multipurpose. But this time they must have gotten the showroom coffin mixed up
with the dead guy’s.”

Sophia
bit one black fingernail. “I’m really worried, Ivy. Serena Star seems desperate
for a big story. Even if she can’t find one, she’ll probably make one up!”

Just
how much was at stake started to dawn on Olivia. This wasn’t just some TV
tabloid news story. This could mean the greatest witch hunt since, well, witch
hunts. What would people do if they found out that vampires were living among
them?

“We
really need to get Serena Star off our trail,” Sophia said.

Ivy
and Olivia both nodded.

“What
do you have in mind?” Ivy asked.

“I don’t
know!” Sophia said exasperatedly. “That’s why I dragged you two in here.”

Ivy
sighed, and all three girls fell silent for a moment.

“We
need a distraction,” Olivia mused eventually.

“Exactly,”
Ivy agreed. “My father thinks that Serena Star will forget about Franklin Grove
the moment there’s some fresh Hollywood gossip.”

“Great!”
Sophia responded sarcastically. “All one of us needs to do is start dating
Celebrity
magazine’s Hottest Man of the Year.”

“Can I
volunteer?” Olivia put in, trying to break the tension.

“I’m
just saying,” Ivy snapped at Sophia, “that we need to find a story that’s more
interesting to Serena than vampires.”

“Okay,”
Olivia said, “everyone calm down. Maybe we can try to convince Serena that
there are werewolves in Franklin Grove instead—or something stupid like that.”

Ivy
and Sophia exchanged nervous glances.

Olivia
blinked. “Don’t tell me there
are
werewolves in Franklin Grove?”

Ivy
raised her eyebrows just as the bell for first period rang.

“Saved
by the bell!” Sophia blurted. She and Ivy flew out of the bathroom, leaving
Olivia with her mouth hanging open.

After
third period, Ivy was still trying to figure out what to do about Serena Star.
She pulled open her locker and distractedly wedged her notebook into a crevice
between a stray boot and a stack of books. The entire contents of her locker
started trembling, and Ivy lunged forward just as an avalanche of stuff tumbled
out. She was left clutching a lone rubber vampire bat from the All Hallow’s
Ball, with a pile of things she didn’t even know she owned at her feet.

This
is not a good sign,
Ivy thought
.

It
took her forever to pick everything up and cram it back inside. Finally, the
only things left were two black boots on the floor just below her open locker
door. Ivy went to pick one of them up, but it wouldn’t budge. She pushed it
with a frustrated grunt.

“Hey!”
a voice cried as the boot moved away.