Pre-Calculus was held in one of the temporary buildings ringing the parking lot, and Doug felt the sun crackling on his skin as he escorted Sejal. It could have felt worse, though — he had recently fed — and there was no way he was going to duck and cover around the one girl in school who hadn’t already decided he was a loser.
"I hate that word," said Doug. "‘Tardy.’ Don’t you?"
"I had never heard it before a minute ago," said Sejal.
"Oh. Well, school’s the only place you’ll ever hear it. It just means ‘late.’ And they invented it because they really needed a special word for kids that means ‘late’ but also sounds like ‘retard.’"
Sejal laughed. The sound of it rang Doug like a bell.
"So…" he said, "when did you get here? To America?"
"A week ago."
"You like it?"
"I like it. Everyone has been…very nice."
"Yeah, well…high school’s just starting. Give it a few days."
A brittle silence passed.
"So," said Sejal. "You are interested in fashion?"
"What?"
"You knew from where my dress had come. The boys back home would never—"
"Well…you know, I think guys can be interested in that kind of thing without being…you know," Doug said in what he hoped would be taken for a confidently masculine voice. He only recognized the dress because he’d spent several summer afternoons at Dark Matter attempting to meet a nice girl with a vampire fetish.
They stopped outside the classroom door. The walk had been too short. And now Sejal was already frowning at him.
"What’s wrong?"
"I’m sorry," said Sejal. "Your face…you look like you’ve had a lot of sun, no?"
"Oh. Yeah. I spent a lot of the summer at the beach. You know."
"I didn’t notice it in the office."
"Also…" said Doug, "also I caught some sort of sun allergy. My skin’s really sensitive."
Sensitive, thought Doug. May as well ask her to braid my hair.
"Oh. I was going to ask you where you eat lunch," said Sejal, "but you wouldn’t want to eat outside, then, by the tree."
She was inside the classroom door before he could answer.
11
First issue
"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."