Thirsty (17 page)

I am not a morning person.

I am not an afternoon person either.

I guess that I am not a person at all.

I
t is the Sad Festival of Vampires.

At midnight, the runes and spells of warding will have been read, the White Hen shut, and the fate of the world decided.

And if Tch’muchgar is to come from his prison world and thunder through the forests he will have come; and there will be screaming in the lonely houses by the lake and burning in the towns.

And I do not know what to do.

Every city has its rituals to stave off evil and to satisfy the Forces of Light. At least in Clayton, we don’t sacrifice people anymore. In Boston it is bad because every year virgins must be offered to the spirits there.

There it is done democratically, through a lottery. The night before the lottery, the city holds a great celebration, like Mardi gras. Originally, it was a night when families could be together for maybe the last time before the name was drawn, the name of a virgin daughter or son. Now it is a difficult night for parents; they must decide whether to enjoy that last night together, sitting sadly in party frocks around their dining room table while outside the horns razz and glass breaks, or whether to push their sons and daughters out of the house, out into the parties and sweat, and tell them to go and lose their virginity in the crowds.

Needless to say, the night before the lottery is held each year, many seniors from our school take the Worcester-Boston bus, whooping and pounding on the windows. The next morning they come back out in the dismal light with stories of what they did behind dumpsters or in hotels.

Nobody knows what happens to the sacrifices after they’re left in a vault beneath the city. Usually they’re just gone in the morning and are never heard from again. Once, a mangled and tattered body was seen cawing and flapping its way crowlike out to sea.

In any case, in Clayton our rituals are not so dramatic.

It has begun.

This is the night of tears; the time of fear; sorrow abiding at the eventide.

Paul and his friend Mark and I are driving to McDonald’s. They have a special there in which you can buy two Big Macs for two dollars.

My mother sent me out with Paul. He’s going to the big party Tony and Kathy Rigozzi have every year. Tony is Paul’s age. I think Kathy is in college by now. They live right next to Barley’s Field, where the carnival is, and my mother wants me to go to the carnival. She says my friends will be there. She says that I don’t see my friends much anymore. She’s worried about me. I don’t have the heart to tell her I don’t have friends anymore.

“I’ve heard this party is great,” says Mark, sliding his hand up and down the shoulder strap. “I mean, I’ve heard that sometimes girls dance with no top on . . .”

“No way,” says Paul.

“Yeah way.”

“No goddamn way.”

“
Yeah
way.”

“No way, you meat-brained monkey-licker.”

“What?!?” asks Mark, laughing. “What’s that, like, supposed to
mean?
”

Paul squeals, “How should I know, ear-sucking skunk-tart?”

“Welcome to McDonald’s. May I take your order?”

Across the parking lot, there are three girls silhouetted against the streetlights. And I see one has the aura around her, the double shadow. She is slim and beautiful with taut, tan legs. But she is not human. She has the darkness of vampirism all about her.

And I realize:
To her, I will have an aura, too.

They are looking this way. I have to hide.

Paul calls into the night, “One double Big Mac Super-Huge Value Pack . . .”

“One for me, too,” Mark whispers.

“Make that two. Two double Big Mac Super-Huge Value Packs.” Paul turns to me. “Buttplug?”

But — like a rabbit in headlights — “I don’t . . .”

“What?” Paul waits. “What do you want?”

I’ve panicked. That’s it — I jump to the floor. Curl up. Below the level of the windows.

“Chris?” says Paul.

I’m looking down. I’m looking at the upholstery of the car and the rugs. The rugs are littered with crumbs. The back of the driver’s seat has split slightly, and white foam is pressing outward at the dirty seam, like spittle round a madman’s smile.

“I don’t know,” I repeat, babbling. “I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know.”

Mark looks at me. “Something wrong?”

Paul is saying, “This isn’t a difficult one, Chris.”

“No,” says Mark to Paul, seriously. “Turn around. Look at him.”

Paul shifts around in his seat. He asks me more carefully, “Hey, what’s wrong, man?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know. Don’t look at me. Turn around. McNuggets. Fries. A . . . I don’t know.”

Mark and Paul look at each other. Paul shrugs.

Mark asks, “Do you think he wants an apple pie?”

Paul searches my eyes, confused, and turns back to the speaker. “I guess a nine-piece Nuggets, large fries . . . You want a drink?”

He waits, facing forward, his eyes creeping around to look at me.

“Medium Coke,” he says finally.

“That comes to $12.26. Please proceed to the second window.”

“Do you want to go home?” asks Paul. We prowl forward around the topiary Grimace.

“Is that Jenny Morturo?” asks Mark urgently, ducking and pointing behind us. “Wonder if she’s going.”

“Whoo! Woah, boy!” says Paul, and they give each other five.

Mark is waving like a man on an ice floe meeting an ocean liner.

Jenny Morturo has tumbled dark hair and deep, deep red lipstick. She leans against her car. She waves once, then saunters over. Mark rolls down the window — he gets it wrong at first and starts rolling it up.

The other two — another girl and the vampiress — follow Jenny toward us.

“Hi, Jenny,” Mark says.

“Hey. How you doing?” drawls Jenny.

“I’m doing well.”

“We’re ‘well,’ too,” says Jenny Morturo, smiling. “That’s Mark and Paul,” Jenny tells her friends. “They’re ‘well.’ This is Ashley.”

“Nice to meet you. I’m Mark.”

“Hi, Mark. I’m Ashley. Spelled A-S-H-E-L-E-I-G-H-E.”

“Hi. I’m Paul. Spelled. You know.”

“And this is Lolli.”

“Nice to meet you, Lolli.”

“And you, Mark.” (Lolli nods.) “Paul; Christopher.” No one has told her my name.

Paul laughs uneasily. He says, “My younger brother does not usually lie curled up in, you know, the fetal position on the floor of my car.”

Jenny is making a face. “Is he . . .” She taps her fragrant, unruly chestnut curls.

“No,” says Paul. “Just tonight.”

“Are you going to this party?” Lolli asks. “I’ve just been invited.”

“We sure are,” says Mark. “You?”

“We’ll follow you,” says Jenny.

Lolli taps on my window. I can see the glare of her claw-red nail polish in the streetlights. “Please don’t feed the animals,” she jokes.

“Is he, like, okay?” says Asheleighe. “He looks, like, très weirdamundo stressed.”

“He’ll uncurl as the night goes on,” Lolli prophesizes.

Jenny has backed up and slips her key ring over one pronged finger; as she draws it over her stiffened knuckle she says, “You lead. We’ll be right behind you.”

I watch Lolli Chasuble walk away. Everything about her seems alert and cunning. I can tell how those eyebrows, dark and sure, would arch and work as she sucked on someone’s neck. She has made up her face as carefully and with as much malice as a warrior arraying himself for battle.

I am frankly afraid of her.

Mark is rolling up his window. “This is great,” he announces. “This is so great.”

Paul is heaving in his seatbelt to try to fit his wallet back into his pocket. “Yessiree Bob,” he says. “But just keep hold, man.”

“Keep hold? This is going to be the greatest party ever!”

“Keep hold.”

“I can’t believe this!”

“Keep hold! Report to mission control, man!”

“Capsule to mission control.”

“Read you, capsule man.”

“Stardate 3867.5. Ready to blast off. Orders?”

“Lock phasers . . . to stun.”

“A-OK!”

“Warp five, Mr. Sulu.”

And we pull out of the drive-thru.

The three girls are in their car and they drive close behind Paul. At the stoplight, Jenny pulls her car up hard behind ours and nuzzles our bumper.

“She is wild,” says Paul to Mark.

“She is,” says Mark, nodding. “Wild.”

We drive out through the forests and fields. As Jenny’s car kisses ours, Paul says, “Tell her it’s getting a little rough.”

Mark nods and rolls down the window. Our heads jerk as Jenny bumps us again and flashes her high beams. “Thank you!” Mark calls back, his black hair flopping. “Thank you, that will be enough.”

I am curled up in the back seat. I don’t want to be caught in the harsh-seeing glare of those headlights.

I collapse onto the floor at another impact.

“Damn, man,” says Paul. “What’s the big idea? Can you tell them to —”

“Let me off at the fairground,” I say suddenly. I have to avoid her. “Before we get to the Rigozzis’. Let me off at the fairground.”

“Okay, fart-cheese. Whatever you say. You going to be all right?”

“Yes,” I say. “Tom and Jerk will be there. Everything will be hunky-dory.”

We are hurtling through the carnival night.

I picture talking to Rebecca Schwartz. It is a stupid fantasy. I picture saying, “I am a vampire now, but with you I can save the world.” We are at the fair, and the lights swing in ballet around us to the music of the merry-go-round.

Then someone will understand. Then someone will take me in her arms. She will kiss me, and we will run to the police. We will bang on desks. We will shout. We will stand by and watch as the helicopters, their tails like wasps’ low with poison, buzz over the knotted forests, spraying the dark and enchanted places with gallons and gallons of holy water.

That is my dream.

I do not know what to do.

I do not know at all.

“There’s Chris!” says Jerk, looking up from a big unwieldy scab of fried dough and a game called “Shoot Like the Pros.”

Tom is standing, his back against the booth, arms folded, looking around with quick catlike motions for some people who are his friends.

“Hey, Chris,” Jerk says, running forward. “This a great carnie, or what?”

I feel strangely sorry for him, but I still find myself saying flatly, “Oh boy, oh boy. What a great time.”

Tom has decided to walk toward me. He does it in a way that suggests that moving five steps in my direction is an early birthday present. “Hey,” he says. “How did you get here?”

“Paul drove me. He’s going to the Rigozzis’.”

“The Rigozzis’
party?
” exclaims Jerk.

“Like everyone else,” says Tom. “Everyone goes to that party.”

“It’s supposed to be really cool,” says Jerk.

Tom nods. “I heard that last time all these girls danced topless.”

“No,” says Jerk. “Like who?”

“Jane McKinley, Liz Dinn . . .”

“No. Like, no way.”

“Besta Worritz . . .”

There are three girls, all leaning into one another’s shoulders, tripping along and laughing, and one of them has dangling from her arm a big pink fuzzy gecko that she has won; I look carefully at her freckles, for they are soft, and brown, and dashed across her face like cinnamon across a fine dessert. Suddenly my throat constricts, and I feel the beginnings of the thirst coming on. I can tell it will come on strong as the night goes on.

Tom looks boldly into my eyes. “So can you get us in?”

“No,” I say. “Just, my brother is there.”

“Come on. It’ll be great. There is going to be, like, all this major action there.”

“No,” I say. “There’s someone I don’t want to see there. A girl.”

Tom looks at Jerk. “I’m going to go anyway. So many people there, they aren’t going to notice one more.”

“Yeah, great!” says Jerk, smiling. “Or two more!”

“Okay,” says Tom. “You can come. Just don’t act like a complete dorkus totalus and embarrass me — got it?” He starts walking toward the Rigozzis’ house. “You coming?” he asks me.

People are howling in the bouncy castle of fun.

“No,” I say quietly. “I’m not.”

Tom doesn’t even acknowledge I’ve spoken. He just turns his back and starts walking. Jerk stumbles to catch up to him, but keeps looking back over his shoulder, just to see if I’ve changed my mind.