Vampire Crush (5 page)

Thank you, segue gods. “I wanted to talk to you about him, actual y,” I say as I take a seat on the edge of her daybed. “I overheard something that made me uncomfortable.”

“Like what? Sometimes he can get a little nosy with the questions,” she says, alternating between a series of little flouncing hops and rocking onto the bal s of her feet like she’s wearing invisible heels. “I just ignore him.”

“I heard him talking to Marisabel in the hal way, talking about you. I think he’s hiding something, and I think he’s dangerous.” Out loud it sounds melodramatic, like I’m starring in a Lifetime movie. I would cal this one
He’s Crazy
and Has a Fake Sister
.

She waves a hand in my general direction. “Don’t be ridiculous. Do my calves look fat to you?”

I should have spent more time breathing outside the door.

“Caroline, I’m serious. There’s something weird about this whole situation.”

Caroline stops twisting in front of the mirror to catch my gaze in the reflection. “You know, I’m surprised,” she says. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you jealous before.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“You never go for the guys at school, but Vlad’s sophisticated enough that I should have known you’d be interested. I’m sorry he ignores you, but it’s not my fault that he likes me. I told you that this was the year to embrace lip gloss.” She whips around to face me, and I can practical y see the lightbulb dinging over her head. “Amanda’s brother, Jason, needs a date to homecoming. I could set you up. He likes writing and stuff.”

“You mean the Jason who tel s everyone that he’s an elf from Middle Earth? I’l pass.” I need to stop her before she tries more matchmaking. “And that’s not even the point. The point is that you should ditch Vlad.”

“Let’s see,” Caroline says, holding up her fingers and starting to count. “He’s smart, sexy, a good dresser, doesn’t spend half of his time on the computer playing Warcraft like Tommy, and is genuinely interested in my life. So … no. Find your own boyfriend.” She swipes a tube of lipstick off her vanity and turns back to the mirror. “I’l talk to Jason about you.”

“Caroline—”

“We’re done here. Go away.”

When I don’t make any move to leave, she picks a stuffed bear off an armchair and throws it at me.

“You know what? Fine. Date him. Have rude little babies,”

I say and walk out the door, slamming it for good measure and stomping up to my room. When I reach the top of the stairs I’m stil holding the bear, whose embroidered smirk mocks me. I send it on a header down the stairs. That wil show her. Or something.

That did not go well,
I think as I col apse on my bed. Why couldn’t I have started with an easier intervention, like credit cards or caffeine pil s? Obviously, I need to be armed with proof in order to shake Caroline away from Vlad. I grab my MacBook off the floor and haul it onto my lap. On a whim I type “Eight-pointed black star tattoo arm thing” into Google Image and get an assortment of people showing off their new tattoos as wel as a handful of academic explanations about how eight-pointed stars normal y represent chaos. Appropriate, but certainly not helpful. There’s nothing with a

“D” in the center and nothing that looks remotely like what Nevil e has on his arm.

Wel , crap. I’m wondering why fiction gives you unrealistic expectations about the powers of the internet when something pops at my window. It’s fol owed by three lesser pops and a loud crack. Rocks.

The window sticks, showering paint chips when I final y manage to wrestle it up. When the coast proves clear of further pebbly messages, I lift the screen and stick my head out to find James staring up at me with an expression that asks what took me so long.

“I don’t think rock throwing is considered acceptable until after midnight,” I say. “Next time try the doorbel .”

“Yeah. I’m not positive, but that might be a good clue that I’m here.”

“And why is that a problem exactly?”

He ignores my question. “You know, I’m surprised that you haven’t come to see me yet. You used to always show up at my door to bug me. Remember when I wouldn’t try out your

‘Death Drop’ magic trick?”

I do remember. Honestly, I can’t fault him for not wanting to jump off the roof into a kiddie pool, and now that I think about it, that trick wasn’t even very magical. But al of this is beside the point.

“I think your memories are skewed,” I tel him. “You were the pesterer.”

“It’s sad that you live such a delusional life,” he says and then nods toward the fence before I can deliver what I am sure would be a devastating retort. “Come outside. We can discuss how wrong you are.”

“Tempting.”

“Very tempting,” James says with a smile so angelic that it’s not anymore. He’s wearing a long-sleeved gray T-shirt and jeans that could use a tango with a washing machine, but the rumpled look is definitely working in his favor. Stil , I’m a little wary of how I’l react with my guard torn down by exhaustion, frustration, and the fact that my sister now hates me. Not to mention that I think I’ve had my fil of veils and secrecy for the day, and James’s strange new hermit act wil only add more questions.

“Tel you what,” I propose, leaning as far over the sil as possible without taking a header into the bushes. “Come to school tomorrow and we’l talk.”

Whatever James was expecting, it wasn’t a refusal. “But

—”

“Night,” I singsong, shutting the window before any more rumble-voiced persuasion can float through. Without the night air, my room suddenly feels stuffy and claustrophobic. Worse, my heart’s fluttering around in a disconcerting manner. I decide to chalk it up to the thril of leaning out the window. Besides, I think, as I slip under the covers and flip off my lamp, his new antischool bit should keep me safe from ever having to cash in that promise.

The next morning I wait for Violet at her locker. When she bustles around the corner, I attack her with another round of questions, including one asking whether or not she has any body art. If they are al in a group of some sort, it stands to reason that they would al have the same tattoo, or at least a variation. I think I am very clever.

“Body art?” she says, pul ing a thread off the hem of her dress, a floral cotton baby dol accessorized by blue tights and her multibuttoned boots. Her outfits are getting more and more avant-garde.

“A tattoo,” I say. “Or a piercing. Or a tattoo.”

She continues to look confused, and I feel my cleverness deflating. Nevertheless, I point at the wobbly-looking butterfly on the exposed ankle of someone who is digging a book out of her locker. “Like that.”

“Oh no,” she says. “I would never paint insects on myself.”

“It doesn’t have to be insects, it can be anything. Like a star, for example.”

She brightens. “Nevil e has something like that!”

My heart starts beating faster. “Anyone else you know?”

“Yes!” she says, and then turns to furiously open her locker and pul out a magazine. She flips to a picture of Rihanna.

“Right there,” she says, pointing to a spot below her ear. “I think it is very tasteful.”

“I was talking about anyone else you know personal y. Marisabel, maybe?”

She shakes her head. “No, no one. But that was a very informative article; I feel as though I know Rihanna,” she insists before wandering off in the direction of her next class. She’s left her locker door wide open. Thinking that there may be a clue, I peek inside, only to find that it’s ful of magazines and nothing else.
At least I have quadruple
confirmation that they’re not here for academic reasons,
I think as I shut it in frustration. So they aren’t al in a Tattooof-the-Month club, but Nevil e definitely acted weird when I asked him about it. What’s the connection?

I spend the next two periods trying to come up with at least one theory that’s not stupid, but come lunchtime I have other things to focus on. It’s Friday, which means that Mr. Amado wants the rough drafts of our articles, and I stil don’t have anything to show for Marisabel or Vlad. I decide to go over my questions for the umpteenth time in an effort to build up enough courage to approach him again. Once I’ve found a clean seat in a back corner of the cafeteria, I pul out my notebook and flip it open to the questions I’ve compiled, like “What book would you take to a desert island?” and “What are the top five songs in your playlist?” I debate adding the ones that are real y running through my mind, like “Are you or are you not the leader of a cult?” and

“If you were to rate your level of psychosis on a scale from one to ten, what would you be? Ten?”

Chewing on my pen cap, I stare at the lined paper, trying to think of euphemisms for “psychosis.” A person-shaped shadow eclipses the table. My usual plan of action in these situations is to feign ignorance until the intruder goes away, but this proves impossible when they sit down and start drumming their fingers on the fake wood.

“Do you mind?” I ask without looking up.

“Considering you said I had to come here to talk to you, yeah, I do,” the voice says, and then punctuates his sentence with one last tap. “Why are you sitting back here, anyway? It smel s like Windex and ketchup.”

My head snaps up. James sits across from me wearing a dark green T-shirt and a smirk. His dark bangs swoop rakishly over one eyebrow.

“The pen-in-mouth thing is very attractive, by the way,” he says.

I pul it from between my teeth hard enough that they rattle.

“What are you doing here?”

“Gives orders and then forgets them. Classy.”

“I didn’t think you’d take me seriously.”

“It turns out that sitting in a house al day is kind of boring.”

He leans across the table to spy on my notebook. “What are you writing?”

“Journalism project. An important one,” I say, hoping that wil be the end of it. I’m stil trying to get over the nostalgia that comes from sitting at a lunch table with James Hal owel again.

“Cool,” he says, and then makes a point of peering at the empty seats around us. “I see you’re stil a loner.”

“I was never a loner.”

“Sure,” James says, “you had plenty of friends. They just happened to be invisible—invisible friends that you ordered to sit on the other side of the sandbox.”

I have a vague memory of ordering Pete the Pickle to give me more space, but I shove it to the side. “Maybe I did. Whatever,” I say. “Can I please go back to what I’m working on?”

“Right. The journalism project.” He twists his head to read the fourth question out loud. “‘If you were an animal, what type of animal would you be?’ Wow. Someone should tel Katie Couric to watch her back.”

I knew I was scraping the bottom of the barrel with that one. I scratch the animal question out and tel James to shut up. “I have to interview the new students, and these guys are the only ones left.” I point my pen at him. “There’s someone looking to interview you, too, you know.”

He pul s a crumpled wad of Post-it Notes from his pocket.

“So that’s what these are. They were shoved in my locker.”

He drops them on the table. I immediately recognize Lindsay’s loopy handwriting. The blue one on my notebook is a very polite “James, please let me know a good time for us to meet. I have some questions to ask you.” The hot pink one on my folders screams “PLEASE TALK TO ME” in black marker. Looks like Lindsay’s sliding down the same slippery academic slope as me. At least she’s also struggling to find her last interview subject, I think, and then freeze.

James is here, at school. Which means the end of interviews for Lindsay, and the end of interviews for Lindsay means a lead in Mr. Amado’s pol s. I’ve orchestrated my own downfal . Scanning the lunchroom for bright red hair, I spot her at one of the round central tables, leaning over a stack of poster board with a fat red marker. If we can just get through this lunch period without her looking my way, I’l be golden.

“Dude!” someone yel s. “You’re back!”

When I turn my head, James and Danny Baumann are in the middle of a complicated series of fist bumps. After one final flourish, Danny plops down on the bench across from me. It’s been a while since I’ve sat this close to him; the caramel color of his neck stil has the power to mesmerize.

“What are you doing here?” Danny asks James. “You moved away in, like, fourth grade or something.”

“Eighth,” James says. “But close. What’s up?”

Back in the day he and Danny were on al of the same teams, and at least three times a week I would come home to find them in the backyard throwing some sort of bal at each other—or trying to take a bal from each other. It was never entirely clear. What is clear, however, is that James doesn’t seem al that happy to see his long-lost friend.

“Not much,” Danny says. “I total y beat that campaign in Halo 2. On Legendary.”

“That’s awesome.”

Danny nods proudly. “Yeah, I know. Why are you sitting over here al by yourself? Everyone knows it smel s funky in this corner. Hey, Amanda! Guess who’s here?” he yel s across the cafeteria, and then turns back to James. “She’d total y go out with you again.”

“Cool,” James says. “I’m actual y talking with Sophie right now, but I might come by later.”

There’s an awkward silence as Danny notices me for the first time. He blinks. I smile dorkily and give a little salute that I wil regret for the rest of my life.

“Wel , okay man,” he says, standing up. “But we should hang out. Play some Halo for old times’ sake.”

“Sure.”

They do another hand dance. I wait until Danny’s safely ensconced back at his table to speak. “You could have gone to sit with them,” I say, even though a part of me is ridiculously pleased that he is staying put.

“I came here to talk to you, not Danny Baumann,” he says. Our eyes catch, and my chest suddenly feels too tight. I look away for a moment, only to spot something that makes it feel even tighter: Lindsay Al en, striding toward us, ecstatic. Snatching up my notebook, I frantical y brush al of the Post-it Notes she left in James’s locker beneath it. “Help me,” I plead.

“What—”

“Hey! Who’s this?” Lindsay asks eagerly. She holds out her hand, already a tiny ambassador. “I’m Lindsay. Let me know if you want a tour. Student Council is in charge of them.”

“Ted,” I blurt before James can answer. “His name is Ted. Comes from Tennessee. Hates tours.”

Two pairs of eyes study me, but James’s green ones hold mine the longest. Final y, he reaches to shake her hand.

“I’m Ted,” he says, affecting a slight twang. “And tours give me hives.”

Either Lindsay’s pissed that her offer to show him the Wal of Mathletes has been rebuffed, or she’s not buying it.

“Real y? I’ve been spending a lot of time in the attendance office lately, and I haven’t seen your name on any of the incoming new-student forms.”

“It was a very sudden move. One day my parents are happy nestled in the hil s of Appalachia, and the next day they want to go work for Google.” James gives an exaggerated shrug. “What can you do?”

“I see. What city did you say you were from?”

“Uh, Columbus.”

Lindsay squints, and I can tel that she’s trying to remember if there real y is a Columbus, Tennessee.
Nashville,
I want to yel .
Why didn’t you pick Nashville? Or
Memphis? Dammit, James, know your capitals!
Not that it would have made this plan any less transparent.

“Ted wouldn’t be short for ‘James,’ would it?” she asks.

“Nope.”

It’s obvious that Lindsay doesn’t know how to confront an unwil ing interview subject. She frowns at the tile and then looks at me, her eyes fil ed with confusion, betrayal, and a glimmer of anger.

“See you in Journalism, Sophie. Mr. Amado wil be surprised to hear that he missed a new student,” she says, her voice so cold that it kil s me, and then walks away. I am a bal of slime, the giant kind that families in minivans pul over to see on their summer vacation. Up until now I’ve been picking at my lunch, but now I shove it away, sending a few fries sailing off the edge.

“So what was that about?” James asks with a practiced casualness.

“Nothing,” I mutter.

“You just gave me an alternate identity. Not that I mind that much, but you gave me a bad one. Ted, Sophie. From Tennessee.”

Might as wel admit it. “She’s the girl who wants to interview you.”

“I got that much,” James says and then arches into a proud stretch. “It’s cute how protective you are of me.”

“You wish,” I say, but it’s halfhearted. “Here’s the deal. She’s my competition to be editor in chief, and you’re her last interviewee. If she has hers finished by today while I’m stil missing two, I might as wel give up now. It’s stupid and childish and petty. I know. But it wouldn’t be a problem if Vlad and Marisabel would just talk to me,” I finish, slamming my fists down on the table in frustration.

James says nothing. I try to gauge his expression, nervous that he’s going to think I’ve turned into a horrible person. This unnerves me almost as much as my recent Mean Girl impression. When he final y speaks, it’s not a question that I was expecting.

“Your last two interviewees are Vlad and Marisabel?”

My relief at not being judged brings out the whole enchilada. “Yes. But not only won’t they talk to me, they scare the crap out of me. They’re not normal students. I overheard a very strange conversation yesterday. And Vlad’s dating my sister. And possibly dating his sister, too.”

James looks at me, alarmed. “Sophie, stay away from them. Tel Caroline to steer clear, too.”

His vehemence startles me. “Why?”

“Never mind why,” he snaps. Before I can express my outrage at being bul ied, he drops the heavy-handed act and leans forward. “What if I get them to answer the questions? You already have them written down.”

“That’s nice of you to offer,” I say. “But why are they going to pay any more attention to you than they gave to me?”

There is another long pause. “Because I know them.”

“You mean you met them this morning?”

“No, I mean they went to my last school,” he says quickly—

too quickly—while looking everywhere other than straight at me.

For a second I can only blink at him stupidly. “Are you tel ing me that they’re your friends?” I ask.

“No!” he snaps. “I don’t want anything to do with them.”

“But I don’t understand,” I insist. “Six people from your old school fol ow another boy to your hometown, and it’s not connected? That’s ridiculous. It’s too much of a coincidence. And they’re up to something; I know it. The other day—”

James grabs my hand, surprising me enough that I stop talking. I can feel his fingers, firm but cool, against the underside of my palm.

“Sophie,” he says, his voice low and insistent. “I need you to trust me when I tel you to stop. I mean it. I don’t want you drawn into this. I want to let what’s going to happen happen, and then I just want to try to go back. Back to like it was before. Before I moved, before my parents …”

“James, what are you doing? Why are you touching her?”

Violet’s voice cuts through the din of cafeteria laughter. It’s always been prone to squeaking, but now there’s an edge to it, a tension and a disbelief that threatens to crack it right down the middle. She’s clutching at the fabric of her dress with both hands. I tear my own hand away from James’s and stuff it beneath the table in a rush of embarrassment.

“Violet,” I start, but she rambles over me, growing more and more distressed.

“They said that if I gave you space you would come to your senses,” she cries, her eyes skittering wildly back and forth.

“They said that if I found my own activities, you would be attracted to my new and confident self. They said it. They
said
it. And now you are making eyes at a girl who dresses like a peasant—a male peasant—and kisses on the first date. She is a hussy, James.”

The word “hussy” draws some attention, but I don’t care. So James is Violet’s mystery boy. Swinging my gaze to James, I join the forces waiting for an answer. He waits a beat before running his hands through his hair and letting out an exasperated sigh.