Fat Vampire Value Meal (Books 1-4 in the series) (20 page)

“Claire,” said Rebecca from the vault table, patting its top. “Your turn.”
 

Claire sprinted toward the vault table, struck the spring board at its foot, planted her hands, and flipped once to land in the foam pit more or less on her feet.

Victoria had sat down in a folding metal chair and was watching. She clapped.
 

“Reginald, you just kind of swing your weight around the side. Don’t try to do what she did. Just kind of sidle around it.”
 

Reginald looked at Victoria, then back at Rebecca.

“You’re kidding.”
 

“It’s simple. Just like hopping a fence.”

He looked at Victoria. He wished she weren’t watching this.

“I’ve never hopped a fence. I don’t know what that looks like.”
 

Rebecca nodded to Claire. “Claire, show Mr. Baskin how you’d hop a fence.”
 

Claire showed him. Reginald’s eyes darted quickly to Claire’s mother, wondering if all of this looked as odd to her as Reginald thought it must. He felt a strong desire to remind Victoria that it hadn’t been his idea to be part of a kids’ gymnastics class.
 

“Now you do it.”
 

Reginald ran at the vault table. At the end, he took a little hop as Claire had and came down on the springboard, which uttered a loud bark and collapsed. Reginald’s momentum threw him into the table.

Rebecca walked up and looked at the springboard. It wasn’t broken, but the springs inside had all turned sideways. Her face was perplexed, trying to assimilate the possibility that her two students might weigh different amounts.
 

“Hang on,” said Rebecca. She righted the springs inside of the collapsed board, declared it to be “Claire’s board,” and then took a second springboard and shoved six heavy-duty springs between its leaves. This would be Reginald’s board.
 

“Go ahead,” said Rebecca.

“I don’t think I’m a vaulter. Gravity hates me.”
 

“Just give it a shot,” said Rebecca.
 

Reginald tried again. The board didn’t collapse this time, but it didn’t spring him upward either. When Reginald landed on it, it simply flattened as if he were standing on a doormat. Reginald’s body, committed to the fence-jumping vault, planted its hands and swung its legs out, but the whole of him was a foot too low and so he simply ended up wrapped the leg of the table, below the vaulting surface.
 

“I don’t think you’re a vaulter,” said Rebecca.
 

“Clearly.”
 

“If you come back again, I’ll bring the nuclear option. It’s a super springboard.”
 

“Ah.”
 

“You’re a bit larger than most gymnasts,” said Rebecca.
 

“Really?”
 

“It’s okay. Little gymnasts are a dime a dozen. When bigger ones can pull things off, it’s impressive.”
 

“That’s very optimistic.”
 

Rebecca, who didn’t see Reginald’s sarcasm, smiled brightly.
 

As the lesson progressed, Rebecca ran them through a handful of other skills. They tried cartwheels, handstands, various contortions, and even a dangerous flirtation with a set of high bars, which Reginald nearly snapped in two.
 

Eventually, after failing through most of the gym’s equipment, Rebecca moved them to a balance beam that had been mounted on the ground. Rebecca explained that the floor beam was there to allow students to practice balance beam skills without the risk of a large fall.
 

“Reginald,” said Rebecca. “Walk down this way.”

Reginald started to walk toward her.

“On the beam, obviously.”
 

“Oh.” Reginald walked back to the start of the beam and then walked toward Rebecca. Then he remembered that he was supposed to be on the beam and slapped his forehead.
 

“Hey, that was good,” she said.
 

“What was good?” said Reginald.
 

“You didn’t even slow down.”
 

“Well,” said Reginald with
faux
pride, “I
have
been walking for most of my life.”
 

Rebecca pointed down at the balance beam, which Reginald realized he was standing on.
 

“Try it again. Walk down to the end, then turn and come back.”
 

Now that Reginald was aware he was on the beam, it was harder. He took a step, faltered under his weight, and put his foot on the floor beside the beam.
 

“Hang on,” he said.
 

When Reginald had discovered each of his mental abilities, the process of letting his deeper, vampire mind take over had felt like entering a fugue. He didn’t understand the process. He simply had to surrender and trust whatever was within him to take the reins. It was that way when he recalled long-dormant facts. They simply arose, and he didn’t know the truth until he heard himself voice them. Maybe learning balance was like that.

So he closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and began walking as he just had, not looking down, not putting his arms out, trusting his feet to find the beam.
 

He opened his eyes and looked down. He was still on the beam, so when he reached the other end, he turned on one foot and walked back.
 

“I wouldn’t have thought you’d be able to do that as easily as you just did,” said Rebecca. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but the physics aren’t right.”
 

Reginald thought back to what Maurice had said, about all of those little muscles being there already, and about how he’d just need to get them working together.
It doesn’t take a lot of muscle to balance
, he’d said.
It just takes the neural ability to coordinate those muscles. And neural ability is one thing you definitely have
.
 

“Try it backward,” said Rebecca.
 

So Reginald walked the beam backward. The trick seemed to be to focus only on the largest level of the goal and not the specifics:
Get to the other end
, not
put one foot in front of the other and hold your balance.
Something deep took over and seemed to know what to do when he left the details out of the equation.
 

“Skip,” said Rebecca.
 

“I don’t know how to skip.”
 

“Like this,” said Claire, who then showed him on the gym mat.
 

So Reginald skipped down the beam, very conscious of Victoria watching him.

After that — and probably because she’d finally found something Reginald could do — Rebecca seemed determined to give Reginald more and more difficult balance tasks until he failed at one. She had him jump, spin, and traverse it in giant, gazelle-like leaps. Finally, becoming bored, Reginald hopped off the beam and walked to the opposite side of the gym.
 

“Let’s just go for the big finish,” he said, picking up a basketball that had been left in the corner.
 

Reginald placed the ball on one end of the beam. Then he stood on the basketball and, like a stunt bear in a circus, rolled it under his feet across the beam to the other end.
 

Rebecca’s mouth was hanging open.
 

“Watch this,” said Reginald. He gripped the ball with his feet and hopped with it onto the floor. Then, the ball compressing underneath him, he rebounded back up onto the beam. He traversed half of the beam that way, bouncing on and off with the ball under his feet, until the ball exploded and Reginald fell across the beam, breaking his shin. He quickly turned away from the three humans, torqued it, and felt the bone knit back into place.
 

Rebecca said, “Try it on your hands.”
 

“I can’t support my weight on my hands,” said Reginald.
 

“Try.”

So he tried, attempting a handstand against the wall. And fell untidily into a heap.
 

“Next time,” said Rebecca, slapping him on the back. “Good job today.”

Reginald bade goodbye to Rebecca, Claire, and Victoria, and promised to at least consider returning for a second lesson the following week. Then he showered, changed, and headed to work. Maurice asked for a status update as soon as he saw him arrive.
 

“Balance beam good, everything else bad,” Reginald reported.
 

Maurice asked for details, and Reginald gave them. He told Maurice about the beam, the ball, and the showing off. Maurice seemed pleased.
 

“Did you try it on your hands?” he asked.
 

“I can’t do a handstand,” said Reginald.
 

“I’ll bet you can,” said Maurice. “I’ve seen you do pushups. I’ll bet you could do a handstand.”
 

“I tried. I can’t do it.”
 

“Try again,” said Maurice.

“Maybe I could stand on my hands if we switched torsos,” said Reginald, indicating Maurice’s small frame. “A pushup is a long way from a handstand. Takes a lot of strength to hold this bad boy up.” He patted his gut.
 

“I’m not telling you to do handstand pushups,” said Maurice. “I’m just saying to hold yourself up. Most humans can physically hold themselves upright for a few seconds if they’re braced right, and you’re a vampire. Muscles tend to grow enough to service the body. Like, your legs. You may not think they’re strong, but if it were possible for you to lose two hundred pounds, you’d find yourself in possession of some impressive pillars because they’ve been doing lunges all day long for years with three hundred and fifty pounds on them.”
 

“I don’t walk around on my arms,” said Reginald.
 

“Ten bucks says you’re wrong. Try it.”
 

But they couldn’t try it, because Reginald didn’t know how to get into a handstand and neither did Maurice. So they looked it up and found a few videos online showing people bending over and putting their hands on the floor in front of a wall and then kicking their legs up overhead. Reginald couldn’t touch his toes, and when he crouched to place his hands on the floor, he didn’t have the leg or back strength to kick his torso and back up against the wall. Finally Maurice simply stood on a reinforced wooden box, picked Reginald up by both legs, and held him upside down above the ground. Reginald extended his hands over his head and placed them on the carpet.
 

“Ready for me to let go?” said Maurice.
 

“No.”
 

“Ready now?”
 

“No.”
 

“Now?” said Maurice.

“I love that you think the answer is going to change,” said Reginald.
 

“Okay, letting go… now.”
 

Reginald collapsed onto his face. His body became a giant floppy rag and fell into an untidy pile.
 

“Well,” said Reginald. “That went well.”
 

“You’re too loose. Tighten up in your core.”
 

“Where’s my core?”
 

“In the middle of all of the fat.”
 

So they tried again, with the same result. This time, rather than collapsing into a blob, Reginald’s straight body fell like a tree, knocking down a cubicle divider.
 

Reginald, slightly out of breath, extended a hand toward Maurice. “Ten bucks.”
 

“No. We didn’t specify a timeframe.”
 

“You dick. You turn me into a fat vampire and then you welch on a bet?

“Keep practicing,” said Maurice. “All those little muscles just need to learn to talk to one another and obey that big brain of yours. Trust me.”
 

Maurice hadn’t been wrong yet and the ten dollars was going into escrow either way, so Reginald nodded reluctantly. He agreed to do both.
 

N
OSFERATU

AT MIDNIGHT ON JUNE 1
ST
, Maurice’s cell phone rang and a computerized voice told him that the pickup window for his transportation to the Vampire Council would occur between 2:15 and 2:45am under an overpass on the outside of Columbus, near Hilliard.
 

Maurice sighed and put his face in his palm. “I don’t want to go,” he said.
 

“You have to go,” Reginald told him. “You don’t have a proxy. If you don’t go, Gregor will be acting Deacon. Not only does Gregor usually think that there are small UFOs flying around his head, but when he’s coherent, he’s very liberal. And who knows what’s on the docket that will pass if you’re not there to veto it?”
 

“Ugh. And that long, long ride with blindfolds on…”
 

Reginald nodded, his lips pursed. This would be his third trip to the Vampire Council. The first time he’d gone, it had been for his own trial, and he’d been treated like a prisoner. The second time, he’d been free and he’d gone willingly, and he’d been treated like a prisoner. This time he and Maurice would be visiting as Deacon and Deputy of the Council, so
this
time, they’d be treated like prisoners. The procedure was the same for everyone, with no exceptions. They’d be bound with silver handcuffs and blindfolded twice, and then they’d be driven around for hours and handed off three or four times to different sets of escorts. The entire process was dictated by the master algorithm that choreographed all incomings and outgoings to and from the Council’s current secret location. The system was what it was, and until the day Reginald divulged the fact that he’d cracked the algorithm, it’s how the system would have to remain.

“Do you suppose we could just show up instead of meeting the escorts?” said Reginald. “Seems silly to spend all night traveling all over the place when I know the Council is currently in that half-finished theater we drive by all the time, like ten minutes away.”