Vampire High Sophomore Year

18



Tuesday, when I saw Ileana at Vlad, I handed back the books she’d loaned me.

“Thanks,” I said. “I really liked them.”

“You are welcome. I am glad,” she said, and took them and went on down the hall.

I could hear the Rustle starting around me.

Cody Elliot and our princess are fighting.

What is it about? The cousin?

No. This is something else. But the cousin is part of it.

And Justin Warrener?

He is part of it.

Okay, I was imagining the words. But it was real.

Rustle, Rustle, Rustle.

I didn’t see Justin. He was absent, which was strange because he was never absent. But it was just as well. Parting from Ileana was hard enough.

I hurt like I had never hurt before. And the day sped by like a rock rolling uphill.

One good thing did happen. After school, we met the guy from code enforcement out at the mill.

Turk and I were waiting when he drove up.

He took a look around and said, “Man, how did you kids do all this?”

“Never mind,” Turk said. “We did it. So certify us, or whatever you do.”

“Well,” the guy said, “I’m not sure I can. The Dumpsters are still here.”

I raised my hand over my head.

From up on the roof of the mill where they had been lying, Gregor, Constantin, Ilie, and Vladimir came spiraling down. Ms. Vukovitch, who had been watching from inside the mill, came out with six big seniors.

Vladimir and Ilie leaned on the guy’s car. Gregor came over to us.

“Everything is fine now, yes?” he asked me.

“He thinks the Dumpsters might be a problem,” I said. “But he’s not sure.”

“Oh, I can let it go for now,” he said. “Let the guys downtown sort it out.”

“It is sorted out,” Gregor said. “It is sorted into the Dumpsters, yes? What more is there to sort?”

“Yeah, maybe you’re right,” the guy said. “I’ll just sign off on it. I mean, you’re not going to keep the Dumpsters, are you?”

“Not even one,” I said.

The guy scribbled his name on a certificate of compliance that looked like it had been printed in 1890, and got out of there.

We all waved.

“Score one for the homesteaders,” Ms. Vukovitch said. “Back to work, guys.”

The Dumpsters disappeared that night.

So the settlers had stood off two attacks now, and I should have at least been happy about that, right? Right. But then, the next day, I saw Justin and got my guts kicked in again.

He was walking down the hall talking to Ileana. His right hand was bandaged.

As they passed me, I heard him say, “Yeah. Burned it over the weekend, camping. With the Mercians. Stupid of me.”

I was pretty sure those words were for me. And I was even more sure that they were a lie. Justin camping was about as likely as me singing grand opera. And I had a sickening feeling that I knew exactly where, and how, he’d really burned his hand.

“You’re right,” I said to his back. “You don’t know how stupid.”

Justin didn’t seem to have heard.

At least the work on the mill was going ahead. Ms. Vukovitch and her seniors treated the old turbines and generator like they were a work of art they were restoring. And when they had them running again, they replaced every rat-eaten, rubber-covered, hundred-year-old conduit in the place with new wiring, and ran extra lines for all the new features.

“What’s down in that generator room was built to run big, inefficient machines,” Ms. Vukovitch told me and Turk when we went by to help. “We’re going to have extra power to burn.”

They modernized the heating system, too. The old place would never be a very green building, but from somewhere came triple-paned windows and insulation for the attics.

Meanwhile, Turk, Gregor, Ilie, Constantin, Vladimir, and yours truly did all kinds of stuff. My hands stung from feathery little fiberglass cuts. My eyes were red from sawdust and cleaning chemicals. I was wiped when I fell into bed each night, and I barely thought about my schoolwork. But the building was coming to life under our hands. I clung to that.

But homework was homework, whether I did it or not.

Friday night, when I would normally have been doing something with Ileana, I was up in my room staring at the science assignment that was due last Wednesday. It was a Vlad classic.

Compare and contrast the anatomy of the modern cod with that of the bony fishes of the late Devonian period. In part one of your answer, confine yourself to a detailed analysis of jaws and skulls. In the second part, speculate intelligently on what might be deduced about the soft anatomy of the Devonian species from the modern examples. 2,500 words.

I knew what the words meant. But as far as doing anything about them went, they might as well have been in Babylonian.

I couldn’t stop thinking about Justin and Ileana. Literally could not stop. Even when I was working at the mill, my mind kept running over what they had said, remembering Justin’s burned hand. The world was a gray, hollow place without them, and there was nothing that would help that. Plus, they’d always been there to help me with the impossible assignments that made Vlad the toughest school in the known universe. And now there was no one.

I was giving serious thought to jumping out the window when there was a scratching at my door.

“Beat it, Turk,” I said.

But the scratching went on.

Finally, I got up from my desk, went over to my door, and jerked it open.

“Leave me alone,” I said.

Turk was standing there with two hot mochas in one hand and her laptop under her arm.

“Want to do homework?” she said.

“No,” I said.

“Good,” she said. “Me neither.” And she came in.

She looked at my science assignment.

“Devonian fishes and cod?” she said. “That’s totally lame. It should be a comparison of Devonian fishes and sharks. Then you might have something valid. Well, what have you got so far?”

“‘The,’” I said. “And thanks for the mocha, by the way.”

“Whatever,” Turk said. “Talk fish to me.”

And it was weird, but talking to Turk worked. She wasn’t even in the same class I was, but she knew what questions to ask. And by answering them, I got the framework of my answer. By the time we were done, I had five pages of notes. I could write that essay in a couple of hours now.

To celebrate, we went down to the espresso machine and made two more mochas.

“I got to tell you, Turk,” I said. “That was a huge help.”

“What else you got?” she said.

I had a rewrite of a history assignment, I had two lessons in high jenti, I had a math assignment that could have had Einstein reaching for his cheat sheet, and I had a few other things.

“Let’s take a look at ’em,” Turk said.

By midnight, we had the math knocked off, the history thing redone, and everything else except the high jenti, which Turk didn’t know any more about than I did. It was amazing to work with her. Her mind was like a machine, slicing the assignments into doable chunks, and showing me how to fit them back together. By the time we were done, I felt like there was nothing I had to learn that I couldn’t handle—as long as I had Turk to help me.

“Want to kick back?” I said when we were finished.

“What’ve you got in mind?” she said.

“Something wild and crazy,” I said. “Like watching an old movie, maybe.”

“Something with vampires,” Turk said.

Mom and Dad were already in bed, so we took over the watching room. This was the name Mom had given to the room downstairs where she and Dad curled up with their movies after Dad had brought in our gigantic new flat-screen.

Turk picked out something with a title like Dracula’s Third Cousin. It was a typical vampire flick. Castles, dark and stormy nights, and Count Casimir, a tall, dark guy with an English accent who went around sucking blood until somebody put a stake in his heart after about an hour and a half.

I’d seen this movie five or six times. It was a joke. But tonight, it wasn’t funny. Somehow, the stupid script and the hammy acting were real in a way they’d never been. Not scary real, sad real. And damn it, when the vampire nailed his third victim, I started to cry.

That was weird enough. But what happened next was even weirder. Turk put her arms around me.

“Hey,” she said. “Hey, go ahead, stupid. It’s about time.”

And I did.

When I was wiping my nose and the movie credits were rolling up the screen, I felt better, the way you do, and I hugged Turk back.

“Easy,” she said. “I can’t take too much touchy-feely family stuff.”

“Yeah,” I said, grinning, my voice shaky. “Why are you being so nice to me, anyway?”

“I feel sorry for you,” Turk said. “I figure you’re finding out what I’ve known since I was six. People always leave you.”

“No, they don’t,” I said. “A lot of people hang together forever.”

“How many friends from California are still in your life?” Turk said.

“I still get e-mail from some of them,” I said.

“When was the last time?” Turk asked.

I couldn’t remember.

“A few months,” I said. “I guess. But my parents. I mean, a lot of people. People in New Sodom. Jenti stick together like they’ve got Velcro on their wings.”

“Not so much,” Turk said. “A lot of the people you think are tight with each other aren’t. It just looks that way. From the outside.”

“You still haven’t said anything about my mom and dad,” I said.

“How long have they been together?” Turk said. “Eighteen, twenty years? It’s a long time, Cuz, but it ain’t forever. Forever hasn’t happened yet. And when it does, there’ll still be one of them left, alone.”

“You sure know how to cheer a guy up,” I said.

“It’s just the way it is.” Turk shrugged. “And the sooner you get it, the sooner you can stop worrying about it.”

“Like you don’t worry about it?” I said.

“I don’t,” Turk said. “I’ve figured out how to deal.”

“Yeah, how?” I said.

“Always leave first,” Turk said.

I didn’t think I believed her. Actually, I didn’t think she believed herself. If she did, why was she being so good to me when I needed it so badly? But if there was one thing I’d learned about Turk, it was that she wasn’t easy to figure out.