"Yuck," said Ophelia, pointing her tongue.
Sejal laughed. "Yuck."
"Boys."
"Boys."
They dropped into silence. Sejal replayed the previous exchange in her head and cringed.
"I’m going to imagine Adam’s someone else," said Ophelia.
"Do you think that will help?"
"I think it’ll help a lot. A lot. Are you going to imagine Tony’s someone else?"
Sejal hummed. "I will…think of a boy I liked back home."
"Yeah," said Ophelia, her voice now squeezed into a different shape. An indifferent shape. "That works."
At the Browns’ house Cat and Sejal disembarked and said good-bye. They started up the thick grass to the front door.
"Are you mad about the shotgun?" Sejal asked.
"What? ’Course not. Shotgun is sacred. You don’t hold that against a person."
"You didn’t speak in the car. You only listened to your music."
Cat shrugged. "Just giving you two some privacy."
"I could have done with a little less privacy," said Sejal.
"Sorry. I couldn’t tell. If you want her to back off, you might have to ask her to marry you. Drama isn’t just an extracurricular activity for Ophelia, you know? And nothing makes her lose interest faster than when a person likes her more than she likes him. Or her. Whatever."
"Can homosexuals do that here? Marry?"
Cat fiddled with her keys. "Not in this state." They went inside. "You’ve been a popular girl."
"Yes. I have my theories about that."
She’d been thinking about it more and more. She was possibly being too friendly, for a start. Overdoing it. And she was alone and far from home and from a country that, to Americans, was mostly known for its spicy food and its quiet, not-so-spicy people. And wasn’t there a weakness in her? A space that needed filling? So to some people here she was a crippled bird. There are people who pointedly ignore a crippled bird and there are people who want to put it in a shoe box and keep it under a strong lamp in their room, and she was attracting a lot of the latter.
Cat said, "Such as?"
"Oh, nothing. Is Jay coming over tonight to practice the band?"
"Yeah. We might even get some real practicing done now on Mondays, with Vampire Hunters off the air."
An idea occurred to Sejal then, a strange idea about vampires and Monday nights with Jay. And Doug, and Doug with Abby. A ridiculous idea.
A completely strange and ridiculous idea.
28
Ladies and gentlemen
DOUG PULLED UP to the gates of Signora Polidori’s estate in his father’s Prius. It was his birthday, or the anniversary of his birthday. That afternoon he’d taken and passed his driver’s test. Victor had driven him.
"This is nice of you and all," Doug told him as they drove to the DMV, "but my dad would have taken me this weekend. You’re just going to have to sit in a boring waiting room while I take the test in your car."
"It’s nothing," said Victor, his eyes on the snaking road. "I wanted a chance to talk away from school."
"Official club business?"
"Heh." Victor laughed, but it sounded to Doug like no more than a polite social noise. Victor was in a serious mood. "So how are things going with you? I’ve seen you around with Abby Dawes."
"We’re dating."
"Dating…" Victor intoned, as if it wasn’t the word he’d have used.
"What?"
"Nothing. And she’s doing good? What does she think about it? I mean, how much do you think she understands—"
"She thinks we’ve been messing around. That’s all. Boy, you think I’ve been blabbing to everyone, don’t you?"
"No—"
"Abby knows nothing, Jay knows nothing. Everyone’s safe."
"I know. Forget it," Victor said, waving his hand in the air. "That wasn’t what I was getting at. I just wanted to know how things were going."
"They’re going good."
Victor nodded, and then they were silent until the next red light. "You haven’t been having any problems dealing with people?"
"You mean recently?" Problems Dealing with People had actually been sort of a major theme of Doug’s life from the fourth through the tenth grades, but lately there had been nothing but improvement. Except with Sejal, he supposed. And Jay. "No. Have you?"
Victor frowned. "Everyone’s saying I’m acting different. I think they’re acting different. They’re all being stupid. Fucker!" he shouted at a sedan that had merged a little too close. He tapped the brakes and the three lemon-yellow pine trees hanging from the rearview mirror tangled their lines. "God, I hate being in cars now. Maybe while you’re getting your license I can turn mine in."
They parked in the DMV lot and walked up to that squat, joyless building.
"It’s like…you know how people look at you when they know they’ve got more money than you?" asked Victor. Doug didn’t, really, but he kept that to himself. "I catch myself looking at normal people like that, now. Like I know they’re gonna be forgotten, and I’m not. We’re gonna live forever — do you realize that?"
"Are you just figuring this out?" said Doug. "We’re always going to be as we are, right now."
Victor stared at his feet. "I guess I’ve always felt that way. But now it’s true."
Doug left him reading magazines in a room where all the stiff plastic chairs had been bolted in rows into the floor. He took his driving test, screwed up the parallel parking section a little, but the administrator let him retry it. He took his paperwork to the license photographer and felt a moment of panic. What if the license came back and he wasn’t there? But a half hour later he left the DMV with a little rectangle of plastic with his picture on it, and it felt like he’d gotten away with something. He wasn’t really a year older.
Nor a year wiser, maybe. Now, outside the gates of the Polidori estate, he thought about what Victor had been trying to tell him. Doug recently had two different people suggest he wasn’t as nice a guy as he could be. You had to consider each source, of course. Jay was like a little kid — he didn’t understand how the world worked. It didn’t do him any good to be so thin-skinned. And Sejal…Sejal hadn’t been in America long. She’d learn.
He was just being funny. On television people insulted each other all the time. For laughs. Humor made the world a better place. Clever insults were the basis of all humor.
No, he realized with sudden clarity. Not insults. Control. Control was the basis of all humor. Even at its most innocent, what was a joke or a clever comment if not a way to take control? To become King of the Moment.
People like him — the unbeautiful, the less popular — were almost inhuman in some people’s eyes. They were a kind of pitiful monster, an aberration, a hunchback. You made eye contact only by accident and then you turned quickly away. The word "geek" had once only referred to a circus freak, hadn’t it? A carny who performed revolting acts for a paying audience. Was it so different now? See! him bite the head off a live chicken. Behold! as he plays Dungeons & Dragons at a sleepover.
Wasn’t this how they always tried to compensate? To overcome a girl’s disgust or another boy’s contempt and make them laugh despite themselves was to take some small measure of control. No wonder the popular, good-looking kids were so seldom funny. They didn’t have to be. Why else would people find it so hilarious to see some short kid’s textbook stolen, held high above his head, out of reach? It wasn’t funny — it was pure control. Insult comedy minus the comedy.