Team Human (23 page)

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

Prelude to a Win

O
f course, Cathy wanted to finish school. Ty joked that even if she'd become a zombie, she probably would have wanted to finish school.

Ty's zombie jokes never went over well, and we had all warned him that if he made them in front of Anna, he would regret it.

Naturally, Francis the chivalrous had to accompany her. Besides which, he was still writing his magnum opus. I had seen his and Cathy's office/library, the walls lined with shelves full of gold-spined volumes, both their desks piled high with paper. Francis seemed to be adjusting to Cathy's addition of a computer. Kit swore he'd even seen him watching online videos of hilarious monkeys.

Cathy seemed to be enjoying her role as cowriter and researcher.

I was happy for them. Just as long as nobody expected me to read any of it.

On this particular fine winter day—with actual sun!—we'd decided to play Ty's new invention of snow baseball at lunch. (Remarkably like regular baseball except played in the snow with an orange ball.) We were all going a little stir crazy. February is always the worst. Short days, long cold nights. It did mean hanging with Cathy outdoors was easier. I asked her to join us for baseball, but she didn't seem eager to leave the library and don her hazmat suit.

It was still weird for me, having to leave Cathy inside.

“I don't mind,” Cathy told me in her new voice, cooler and somehow hushed, as if being undead meant you were always at the library. (Cathy did love libraries.) “Really, it will give us a chance to put our notes in order.”

“Oh, is that what they're calling it these days,” I said, waggling my eyebrows.

From across the room, I could see Francis was scandalized. These special moments with him always made my day.

Cathy's mouth, lips a paler rose than they had been, turned up at the corners about half as much as they would have before.

There was a pang in my chest, knowing that once she might even have laughed. But it was worth a lot, to have her here and smiling at me.

“All right, you two crazy kids,” I said. “Can't hang around. My team's going to get creamed without me. See you in Local History?”

“After that, back to the library for study period,” Cathy said sternly. “There's much more research to do.”

Ever since I'd first expressed a desire to look into the police force as a future career, Cathy had been making me research every detail of it, finding out which were the best courses, Police Science or Law Enforcement or Criminal Justice, and which were the best colleges. Or should I go straight to the police academy? Was that even possible?

It was nice to discuss it with Cathy. The police mission statement felt right as nothing else had felt right.

If you want happiness for a lifetime, help somebody. Protect and serve.

“Sure, sure,” I said, pausing at the door to give Cathy a little wave.

She and Francis bent over their books, dark and fair heads close together, serious and absorbed, protected from the sun by smoked glass.

Even undead, Cathy was still dragging me to the library. Stuff like that allowed me to pretend things hadn't changed that much.

She seemed happy, I thought, as I ran through the shadowed corridors, then into the gym and across it, heading for the door. I hoped she would never regret it, not if she lived to be a thousand years old.

If she did live to be a thousand years old, though, I hoped she'd at least take a break from Francis and date an alien. I imagined Francis's reaction to being dumped for an alien, and I came out into the bright but still chilly sunlight laughing.

Kit looked up at my laugh from where he stood at second base.

“Get your butt over here!” he yelled.

I sauntered over. “I'm sorry, what was that?”

“Darling, we implore you to rescue us from ignominious defeat with your superior athletic skills,” drawled Kit, doing his best Francis impression. “So get your butt over here.”

“Oh, well, when you put it like that,” I said, and jumped at him.

He caught me neatly, my legs around his waist, and spun me around for a brief kiss. It was kind of a handy way to work through the height difference.

I grinned up at him, the kiss still sending sparks through my blood, and he grinned back, his curls lit up against the sky.

“You guys want to play ball or you want to fool around?” Anna called, tossing her blazing hair.

We hadn't been sure Anna would come back to school, not with her mother getting fired and given community service.

They said it was the lightest possible sentence, considering she had kept a zombie so close to schoolkids. We had all been a few basement walls away from disaster.

Principal Saunders had been a hairbreadth away from disaster herself. She'd fed Dr. Saunders with her own blood, but she'd cut herself and let it drip into a cup she gave him. She could have been bitten countless times. Anna had almost been orphaned. I shivered thinking about it.

But the court had determined that Principal Saunders had been of unsound mind, given the traumatic experience of walking in on her husband's forced and unsuccessful transitioning. She was getting counseling now, at the center where Dr. Saunders used to work, and she'd been chosen as a group leader for some of the sessions. Anna said helping other people was helping her mom more than anything: Principal Saunders was looking into a new career as a counselor.

They were both doing much better than we had expected. It made me hope Cathy was right, that I hadn't been such a bad friend to Anna after all.

“Fooling around later,” I said, waggling my fingers at Kit as I backed off. “Victory now!”

This evening, we were going on our first official double date. Kit refused to go on double dates with Francis: He maintained it was creepy and would call him Uncle Francis all day whenever it was suggested.

We were going on our double date with Ty and Jon the soccer player.

Turned out Ty had not so much been trying to fix Anna up on a date with Jon as trying to date Jon himself. Whoops.

We'd all been staggering around after the discovery of Anna's dad and Cathy's transitioning, so Ty's revelation that he might want to date guys as well as girls had been received by us all in a way he found disappointingly low-key.

However, I very much enjoyed discussing how Francis's beauty had awakened Ty to this realization. Such improper conversation made Francis so, so hilariously scandalized.

“Victory?” yelled Anna, who can be very competitive. (It's one of the things we have in common. Friends should have stuff in common.) “Check your team's score, Mel.”

I jogged over to the plate and took the bat when Ty tossed it to me. Ty gave me a look of mute supplication, and I winked at him. When I turned, I saw more looks: Anna's of challenge, and Kit's of cheerful expectation, bouncing on his heels, ready to run.

Across the grounds at a window, I saw a shadow moving, and I grinned. I wasn't going to lose with my best friend watching.

The sun was warm on my hair, my blood already racing. I swung the bat experimentally and couldn't stop the smile splitting my face.

“I don't need to know the score,” I said. “I like my team's chances.”

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

 

T
eam Human
sprang out of our shared love of vampire stories and long discussions about what kinds of vampires we'd write about if we were ever to do so. We had many vampire questions we wanted to answer. Were vampires actually icy cold or were they room temperature and just felt cold to us non–room temperature types? Somehow it became a dare, and before we knew it we were writing a vampire book together. Best. Fun. Ever.

As we started writing, we gave each other reading lists to round out our vampire education. Both had read
Carmilla
,
Varney the Vampire
, and, of course,
Dracula
, not to mention Anne Rice. But Sarah had not read Suzy McKee Charnas's
The Vampire Tapestry
or Tanith Lee's
Sabella
, and Justine had never read L. J. Smith's
The Vampire Diaries
. That had to be corrected! The ensuing discussions shaped
Team Human
in a plethora of ways. Without those books and our youthful vampire obsession this book would not exist.

We'd like to thank our agents, Jill Grinberg and Kristin Nelson, and everyone at their agencies who found this book such a good home.

Our editors—Anne Hoppe at HarperCollins and Jodie Webster at Allen & Unwin—have been marvelous, and have improved the book in a thousand different ways. The gorgeousness that graces the front cover of our book is thanks to our art director, Amy Ryan, and to Joel Tippie, among many wonderful people—we love our cover and appreciate your work so much! And the final touches were added to our book by our lovely copyeditor, Renée Cafiero.

Our first reader, Scott Westerfeld, who knows a thing or two about vampires, had lots of wonderfully useful suggestions to make. He also gave us the fabulous title.

Ordinarily, we would thank all our writer friends. But we kept this book a secret, which made it even more fun. But thank you, wonderful YA writer friends. You know who you are.

Justine would like to thank Jan Larbalestier and John and Niki Bern for all their support. And, of course, Sarah Rees Brennan, without whom this would never have happened. It's been a blast, SRB. Thank you. Let's write another one!

Sarah would like to thank Pat Rees, for giving her
Interview with the Vampire
when she was nine (thanks, Mum!), and Genevieve Rees Brennan, for reminding her to go see
New Moon
by asking for a Team Jacob T-shirt. She'd also like to thank Natasha Walsh, for putting up with her making loud phone calls to Australia at one a.m., and most of all, Justine Larbalestier—for taking said loud phone calls, plotting out novels even though it's traumatic, and single-handedly changing my mind about cowriting being a bad idea to cowriting being the most fantastic idea ever. And like all good ideas, it bears repeating. …

About the Author

Justine Larbalestier
lives in Sydney and New York City, and
Sarah Rees Brennan
in Dublin, Ireland. Thus the writing of
TEAM HUMAN
involved a lot of chatting online while watching vampire movies, emailing each other, and making frantic phone calls at one a.m./ten a.m. (different time zones, remember). A mutual love of laughter, vampires, romance, and being very, very honest with each other (Sarah: “What have you done with our book, you harlot!” was in retrospect harsh …) (Justine: “Five similes on one page is FIVE TOO MANY!”) carried them through the big challenge: not cowriting, or creating funny vampires, both of which came naturally, but being an Australian and an Irishwoman writing a novel set in the USA!

Justine is also the author of the awardwinning LIAR and several other books. Sarah is the author of
THE DEMON'S LEXICON
, an ALA Top Ten Best Book for Young Adults, and its sequels. Visit them at www.sarahreesbrennan.com and www.justinelarbalestier.com, where their discussions include writing the sequel to
TEAM HUMAN.

Visit
www.AuthorTracker.com
for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.

Praise

“No matter what team you're on, there are characters here you'll cheer for. Suspense, humor, and romance:
TEAM HUMAN
has it all!”

—Claudia Gray,
New York Times
bestselling author of
EVERNIGHT

“Incredibly fresh and original—and absolutely charming.”

—Cory Doctorow,
New York Times
bestselling author of
LITTLE BROTHER

“I could not be more a fan of this book than if I had a
TEAM HUMAN
cheerleader outfit—brilliant, funny, sharply emotional!”

—Rachel Caine,
New York Times
bestselling author of the Morganville Vampires books

“Funny, scary, touching, and thoughtful in ways you'd never expect: if you love vampire books, this is the book for you—if you hate vampire books, this is also the book for you.”

—Maureen Johnson,
New York Times
bestselling author of
THE NAME OF THE STAR

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Larbalestier, Justine.

   Team Human / Justine Larbalestier and Sarah Rees Brennan. — 1st ed.

       p.      cm.

   Summary: Residing in New Whitby, Maine, a town founded by vampires trying to escape persecution, Mel finds her negative attitudes challenged when her best friend falls in love with a vampire, another friend's father runs off with one, and she herself is attracted to someone who tries to pass himself off as one.

   ISBN 978-0-06-208964-9 (trade bdg.)
   Epub Edition © April 2012 ISBN: 9780062089663

   [1. Vampires—Fiction. 2. High schools—Fiction. 3. Schools—Fiction. 4. Maine—Fiction.] I. Brennan, Sarah Rees. II. Title.

PZ7.L32073Te 2012

2011026149

[Fic]—dc23

CIP

AC