Fat Vampire (6 page)

“I
DON'T WANT TO
eat lunch by the tree,” said Jay to Doug as they walked from math class to Spanish. “All the drama kids eat there. The popular ones.”

“Well, so what?” said Doug. “You were in the musical, right? You played that waiter character—What was his name?”

“Waiter.”

“See?”

Specifically, the kids who ate by the tree were the ones who got good parts in the plays. Lead actors, plus maybe an assistant director or two. Less popular were the kids who got small parts and nonspeaking roles, but at least they were still members of the cast. Doug was crew. Crew were like the friends
you called only when you needed help moving furniture.

Doug always tried out for a part in each production, and so far he'd always failed to get one. He often thought about how his life would change if he landed a lead role, but on some level he understood what everyone in Masque & Dagger understood: you weren't popular because you'd played a lead role, you got lead roles because you were popular. Or, rather, your popularity and your distinguished high school drama career both stemmed from some effortless charisma that shone from your face and spilled from your lips—a shower of quarters when you opened your mouth, a trail of flowers and corpses in your wake.

Doug was just as nervous about lunch as Jay. More so, perhaps, as he assumed he was more highly regarded and therefore had more to lose. At least the rest of his classes were indoors, so he expected his skin to clear up by lunch.

“I should have brought a baseball cap from home,” he said. “I was in such a rush.”

“You were hard to wake up,” said Jay.

“I only got like an hour of sleep! My body won't let me sleep at night anymore. I maybe nodded off around six thirty.”

Jay had woken him at 7:30, and then again at 8:00. At some point, while he dozed, Doug had changed back to normal. Then he had had only thirty minutes to bike home, watch Mom and Dad pull out of the driveway, sneak into the empty house, shower, and change. In the foggy bathroom mirror he glanced quickly at himself to be sure. Pale. Hairless chest. The impression of being clammy even when he wasn't clammy. Normal, or what passed for normal now.

The kids in Spanish class were broken up into groups of two and three, and Doug and Jay took up their usual spot near a poster from the Spanish board of tourism. Mr. Gonzales wandered around the room.

“She seems really nice,” said Doug.
And short enough. And kind of pretty
. “I just need a chance to talk to her more. Maybe she could be, you know, the one.”

“Would you turn her into a vampire?” asked Jay.

“I don't know. If she wanted. I don't even really know how to do that.”

“The vampiress drained all your blood, right?”

Doug nodded slowly at the tourism poster, an unfinished cathedral in Barcelona with facades like two rows of sharp teeth.

“I think so,” he said.

 

July in the Poconos, near Hickory Run. Alternating sun and clouds, rain every few days. Biting insects, mosquitoes that swarm your ankles and arms like you're passing out little supermarket samples of blood. New Product! A hundred discrete marks on your skin.

You were out late again, alone, watching the spiders tick-tack across that field of boulders between the trees. You had to feel your way back to the family cabin through the fireflies and the moonless night.

The vampire came at you then, milk white. Naked. Howling through the trees. Wounded, open chested, it oozed its red center. The spill collected in tangled crotch hair and traced ligatures down pale legs.

The vampire pressed down on you. There was no beguilement, no charm or enchantment. You were held fast by the hair as the vampire tore you open and siphoned off your life. Your blood mingled. It wasn't romantic.

The vampire made a wrenching noise and folded in on itself. Now small, it flapped thin wings and disappeared into the trees.

You were left too weak to stand. Your lungs fluttered in your chest and you were desperately thirsty. Your death was like a slow fall into a deep well.

When you stirred again, it startled two coyotes that were sniffing at your carcass. The vampire's blood laced your empty veins; tensed their red, spindly fingers; and closed you up like a fist over the closest animal. It thrashed, but you drank it dry and rose unsteadily, needing more. Still night. A hundred yards distant you could tell (without any trouble at all) that the second coyote had paused to look back. You chased it for an hour and fell upon it in a copse of trees.

When your mind found its place again, you collapsed and dry heaved into a creek and washed the stains from your skin. There were no wounds on your body, save a long, dry welt on your neck. But your clothes were covered in blood. You buried them.

 

“
Bienvenido al supermercado
,” Jay was saying. Doug just stared at him for a dim moment, dumbfounded by this talking animal and his Spanish classroom exercise.

Oh, it was Jay.

“This would…this would all be a lot easier if I was just
an asshole,” Doug said. “I could just find someone and hold them still and feed. I wouldn't even have to kill them. I could just take a pint or two, like I do with the cows. I wish I could be sure that wouldn't turn them into vampires, too.”

Jay pushed aside his textbook. “There's gotta be a way,” he said. “Look.”

He produced his calculator from his backpack.

“Say you drink from someone once a week. Is that about right?”

“Yeah,” said Doug.

“So if your first victim becomes a vampire, then in a week there are two vampires who need to feed. You and him.”

“Me and
her
,” Doug stressed.

“And then in two weeks there's four vampires, and in three weeks eight, and on and on. So guess how many weeks it takes before everyone on Earth is a vampire.”

“I dunno.” Doug sighed. “Ten.”

Jay frowned. “You don't think that. You just guessed low so my answer won't sound amazing.”

“So what is it already?”

“It's, like, thirty-four. Thirty-three and a half.”

“That's really amazing.”

“Anyway,” said Jay, sounding deflated, “it means there must be a way to just feed, like we thought. Maybe even a way to feed so the victim forgets, like some kind of vampire hypnosis, or else there'd be news reports of vampire attacks all the time.”

“I don't like that idea,” said Doug. “Hypnosis. It'd be like slipping something in her drink.”

“Well, what if the person…gave you permission?”

Doug covered his face. “We've been through this. I appreciate the offer, but it just seems…
gay.
I'd rather drink a little cow here and there and try to meet some girl who's into it. Like this new girl. She's pretty goth for an Indian.”

“I'm not saying I want you to do it,” said Jay. “It's just…hard to see you hurting so much. You could just drink a little of my blood, just to see—”

“Uh-uh,” said Mr. Gonzales as he loomed suddenly over their desks. “
No inglés. En español, por favor.
”

Jay glanced in the teacher's direction, then stared at his hands. “Um…
Podría usted…beber un poco de mi…sangre? Es correcto? Sangre?”

“
Sangre es
‘blood,'”

“
Sí
,” said Jay. Doug pretended to read his book. Mr. Gonzales coughed.

“You're supposed to be pretending to buy pineapples,” he said.

S
EJAL CARRIED
her lunch through the center aisle of the crowded cafeteria like a bride, aware of the careless stares of other students, the brush of their eyes on her skin—the designs that they left there, some pretty, some not. For the second time that day a boy asked in a loud stage whisper as she passed if Sejal had ever read the
Kama Sutra
. Maybe the same boy.

“Dude, I think she heard you!” said another. Laughter all around.

That's what I get
, she thought. It hadn't been necessary to walk among them all like that. She could have skirted around the side, but she'd made the effort to be visible, to be an actual actor in the actual world. As if, as the new girl, she really
needed to give them an excuse to stare.

She dipped her head, let her hair fall in front of her face.

She had to remind herself of one of the points her psychoanalyst was always trying to drive home: that the internet was
less
inviting, that it was even
more
critical. Her conspicuous stroll through the cafeteria of the internet would have started a flame war. Each nasty comment would burn like a match against her skin. How could she miss the warmth of all those matches?

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?”

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.
”