Vampire High Sophomore Year

20



The next day, Turk and I visited the school library. Ms. Shadwell showed us a plastic-covered notebook that had the names and addresses of all the community organizations in it. There were the Society for the Preservation of Oak Trees, the Friends of the Gomorrah River, the Association of King Charles Spaniel Fanciers, the John Keats Chapter of the Federation of Romantic Poets, Post 147 of the Massachusetts Colonial Historical Association—it went on for two hundred pages. But only a few were arts groups.

Turk and I made a list of all the ones that sounded even remotely right, and started calling their presidents. Every one of them, from the New Sodom Light Opera Guild to the Daughters of Terpsichore Classical Dance Circle, turned us down.

“How very kind of you to think of us in this way,” the president of the Thalian Confederation for Oral Recitation told me. “We do wish you the best of luck with your project. But it isn’t quite right for us.”

“What a lovely idea,” said the president of the Aeolian Society for the Propagation of Sixteenth-Century Wind Music. “But I doubt that the acoustics of an old mill would favor our efforts.”

And the president of the Friends of Folkloric Musical Performance told Turk, “We couldn’t possibly appear in a venue that was originally a site of labor exploitation.”

The first week of October ticked by. The second. Nobody wanted to be part of the opening.

Turk got busy with her show. She spent all her afternoons out at the mill hanging her work.

“Hell, who cares if they don’t show?” she said. “I’m going to have my art up. That’s what matters.”

I was pretty sure Turk was self-involved enough not to care if anybody else used the center or not. She was probably enjoying the picture of herself as someone too special for New Sodom. I could imagine her standing alone in the gallery on the main floor, just her and her art and her inflatable Scream.

But I did care. In between missing Justin and wishing I were with Ileana, I worried about an opening night where nobody came. I wanted a night where people were falling out the windows because it was so crowded inside, with everybody saying, “How come no one ever did this before?” At the very least, I wanted it to be important enough that Justin and Ileana would know that I had been right.

If I was right.

I kept thinking about an old joke Dad told me he used to see on signs plastered around his college campus: TOMORROW HAS BEEN CANCELED DUE TO LACK OF INTEREST. It looked like we might be on our way to being that joke.

Then I got a clue as to just how very interested some people were.

It was Columbus Day. In Massachusetts, that’s a day off from school. Turk and I were celebrating by trying to catch up on our homework. I read English while she worked through her math, science, and history.

Meanwhile, it was a beautiful day outside. All the leaves were beginning to turn, and some of the trees were like crowns of red and gold already. The air was warm, and bright with that special light that says, “Enjoy this. It won’t last long” and makes everything stand out sharp and clear.

By four o’clock, the shadows were getting thick under the trees in the backyard, and the last hour of daylight was starting to slide toward evening. I had spent hours slogging through a sludge of nineteenth-century poetry, most of it written to girls with names like Annabelle and Maude, poems that seemed as thick on the page as the shadows outside, and not anywhere near as beautiful. And they made me think about Ileana more, which was not the best thing to have happen.

So when Turk stuck her head in my bedroom door and said, “Let’s blow up this place and get out of here,” I was ready, even though I had about a hundred more pages of Annabelles to go.

We got into her car and drove down to the Screaming Bean.

The Screaming Bean was a downtown coffee joint. There was a life-sized version of The Scream, just like Turk’s, on the front door, and across the bottom, in words cut from old magazines, it said, “WHAT DO YOU MEAN THERE’S NO COFFEE?!?!?!?!”

“Hey, look. Your friend’s here,” I said.

“The Scream is everywhere,” Turk sighed. “It’s become a cliché. You don’t see inflatable Rothkos, do you?”

Whatever that meant.

Anyway, I pushed open the door and in we went.

Inside, it was a Turk kind of place. Dark walls with things on them that I guess were art, because they had price tags. There were tables and chairs that looked like they’d been salvaged from the Titanic. The backs of the chairs and the tops of the tables had been covered with photographs and paintings under heavy coats of thick, clear lacquer. All of these things had been clipped from magazines, and all of them showed terrible things happening to the people in them. On every chair and table were the same words: WHAT DO YOU MEAN THERE’S NO COFFEE?!?!?!?!

The customers were mostly kids and mostly gadje, though there were a few jenti kids in one corner. Whichever they were, they all looked like Turk. I wondered if she’d found her own kind here.

It was pretty cool, actually. There was a little stage in one corner with a sign behind it that said POETRY SLAM 7 PM FRIDAY. Next to it was a handmade poster for the Sixty-Minute Shakespeare Theater Company.

Some kind of techno-pop music was playing over the sound system.

I got us a couple of cups of coffee and a sweet roll.

“I kind of like this place,” Turk said. “Not great, but it tries. And the coffee would strip paint.”

“When do you even find time to come here?” I asked.

“Whenever I want to,” Turk said.

“Is any of this stuff yours?” I asked.

Turk pointed one black fingernail straight up.

Over our heads was a paper snake like the one in Turk’s attic, but gigantic. It looped and coiled all over the ceiling. Huge paper wings stuck out from its sides and drooped down. Its jaw hung open to show a double row of fangs.

It was impressive, but there was something weird about it. It didn’t really look like a snake. The head was wrong. On the other hand, why not? Flying snakes are rare, and their heads might look a little odd. But what was it about the face that bothered me?

Then I realized what it was.

“It’s Gregor,” I said.

Turk grinned.

“Not bad, Cuz,” she said. “Hanging out with me has definitely made you smarter.”

“Does he know?” I asked.

“Like I’m going to tell him,” Turk said. “It’s a private joke.”

“Why did you do it?” I asked.

Turk shrugged. “You’ve got a point,” she said. “It should have been a pig. Or a jackass.”

“He’s been a lot of help,” I pointed out. “Him and his guys. Without them, we’d be nowhere near ready to open.”

“Give me a break, Cuz. You don’t like him any better than I do,” Turk said.

She reached up under her shades and wiped away an invisible tear.

“Oh, Cody,” she said. “How noble you are. How fair-minded. You shame me.”

“As if anybody could shame you,” I said.

We drank our coffee and took turns eating the sweet roll.

Outside, the golden light was gone. The shadows spread across the window.

I looked at the kids sitting around us. A couple of them were typing away on laptops. A few others were reading or sketching.

“Hey,” I said. “Maybe we ought to try asking these guys.”

“Asking them what?” Turk said.

“If they’d like to be part of the opening,” I said.

“Nooo,” Turk said slowly.

“Why not? Especially since we haven’t got anybody else,” I said.

“Because they’re nobodies,” Turk said. “And nobodies can’t help us.”

“You know what, Turk?” I said. “You don’t want any help anyway. Gregor helps, Ms. Vukovitch helps. Somebody with a mess of Dumpsters helps. You sneer at them, or you get all paranoid. Maybe what you really want is a bunch of people who can’t help.”

Turk snorted. “Don’t try to figure me out, Cuz. You’re not smart enough.”

I didn’t want to get into a fight with her, so I looked up at the ceiling. At that big Gregor dragon-snake thing.

And then I proved Turk was wrong. Because I had figured out something about her that she would have killed me for knowing. She had picked where we sat. Our table was right under the snake, where the wings joined the body.

Rest beneath the shadow of my wings.

Gregor and Turk? The idea hit me like a splash of icy water.

Gregor and Turk. And Turk would rather die of lockjaw than ever admit it to anybody.

“What?” Turk said. “Your face is all stupid-looking.”

“Nothing,” I said. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

My phone buzzed.

“Mr. Cody Elliot?”

A man’s voice. Kind of old-sounding.

“Yes,” I said.

“I represent the New Sodom Federation for the Arts. We are interested in exhibiting at your venue. I would like to discuss matters of fees, available space, that sort of thing. Might we meet in perhaps an hour?”

“The New Sodom Federation for the Arts?” I said. “Who are you, exactly?” I was sure they hadn’t been in Ms. Shadwell’s binder.

“We include about forty arts and performance groups in the area,” the voice said. “Not all of them are in New Sodom, in spite of the name. I hope that’s not a problem.”

“Uh—no,” I said. “Certainly not. Where would you like to meet?”

The voice gave me an address in Squibnocket.

“I’ll be there,” I said, and snapped the phone shut.

“I’ve got to get to Squibnocket,” I said. “Can you take me?”

“You want another driving lesson?” Turk said.

I told her what the voice had said.

“Whoa,” she said. “Who are these guys? And how do they just show up out of the blue? I don’t like it, Cuz. I do not like it.”

“Well then, you’d better come along to the meeting,” I said. “Make sure I’m all right.”

“I’ll make sure you don’t give away the farm,” Turk said. “If these guys are talking about paying for space, there’d better be somebody there who knows what space is worth. And that’s me. No offense, Cuz, but you’re too much of a kid for a guy like this to take seriously.”

“You’re a kid,” I said.

“I’m a pro,” Turk said. “And this is the kind of work I do. Come on.”

After we reached Squibnocket, we ended up at the edge of the business district. The address was in a neighborhood that was mostly warehouses and small industrial businesses in long one-story buildings that faced away from the street. It was quiet now, because everything was closed for the night.

“This can’t be right,” I said.

“Sure it can,” Turk said. “This is just the kind of place to get a cheap rent.” And she drove down the alley that ran between two of the long lines of low buildings.

We stopped in front of the last door.

It was an ordinary glass door next to an ordinary shop window. There was a sign over the door that said COMPREHENSIVE INSURANCE. But the space inside the shop was empty.

“What is this?” I said. “I must have got the address wrong.”

Then the door swung open and a dapper little gray-haired man beckoned to me. I was pretty sure he was jenti.

“Mr. Elliot? Please come in,” he said.

It was the voice I’d heard on the phone.

Turk and I got out of the car.

“Oh, I’d assumed you’d come by yourself,” he said.

“We’re partners,” Turk said. “Co-owners. I’m Turk Stone, the artist.”

“Oh. Well, please come in,” the little man said. He didn’t sound happy.

He held the door open and we passed by him and into the shop. Then the door slammed behind us, and a gloved fist smashed the side of my head.

“Wait, no! He’s marked,” the little man said. “And leave the girl—”

“Arthur, shut up,” another voice said.

I saw figures wearing black hoods blocking the door, grabbing Turk, grabbing me.

And then the blows came, and kept coming until I couldn’t feel them anymore.