Vampire High Sophomore Year

3



The next morning, late, I got up to a wet, cloudy day. The air was full of a sense that some nameless awfulness was going to happen. I wondered if my cousin brought her own weather with her.

Mom made me breakfast, which was nice of her. Then she said, “I was hoping you could introduce Turk to some of your friends today,” which was not so nice. But it had to happen sooner or later. Justin and Ileana and all the other jenti who’d become my friends were over quite a bit. Eventually, they were going to notice that our house was being haunted.

I figured I’d start with Ileana, because she was my girlfriend. And because she was a jenti princess. Which meant she knew how to be polite to anybody.

When I called Ileana, she said she’d be happy to come over. And she’d bring Justin. Which was maybe for the best. Maybe meeting Turk with Ileana here would kind of lessen the shock for him.

“Whatever,” Turk said when I told her. “Are they some of your vampire friends?”

“None of my friends are vampires,” I told her. “They’re jenti. Vampire is kind of an insult.”

“Whatever,” Turk said.

“No, really, Turk. If you’re going to live in New Sodom, you have to know what it’s like here,” I said. “There are the jenti and the gadje. That’s everybody who’s not jenti. And the V-word is not used unless you want to get someone mad.”

“I don’t care whether I get anybody mad or not,” Turk said.

“Well, I do,” I said.

“I know you’re some kind of big hero to them,” Turk said. “Congratulations. But you’ll have to forgive me if I don’t join in the worship.”

“Who told you I’m a hero?” I asked.

“My mom. She heard it from your mom. Isn’t it true?”

“Here’s what’s true,” I said. “I started at Vlad last winter after I basically got thrown out of Cotton Mather High across town. That was the gadje school. Dad put me into Vlad because it had such a great academic reputation, and it was supposed to be tough.

“Well, I thought they wouldn’t take me because of my lousy record at Cotton Mather. But they only asked one question: Was I willing to play water polo? I said sure, figuring I’d try out for the team and get rejected. I’d still be at Vlad, Dad would be off my back, it would all be cool.

“Only it turned out that the water polo team was kind of a scam. They only had one because the state required it for accreditation. Since jenti can’t swim, they recruited a few gadje and let them fool around in the water. They lost every game, and nobody cared.”

“And you were the big jock hero who said, ‘Come on, boys, let’s win one for the Flipper’?” Turk said.

“No,” I said. “When I found out what was going on—pretend to play water polo for a few years and get As without working and get accepted to some college where the jenti run things—I thought I was in heaven for about a day. Then I thought about how much contempt they must have for us to treat us like that, and I got mad. So I started trying to do the work. The teachers, and the principal, Horvath, didn’t like that. They wanted their gadje lazy and stupid. But I made a couple of friends who helped me. Justin Warrener and Ileana Antonescu. Justin explained all kinds of stuff about how things work in the jenti world, and in New Sodom. Ileana—”

I took a breath.

“She marked me. She did it to save me from getting beaten up by some guys who were going to throw Justin in a creek. As a marked gadje, I was her private blood supply, and none of them could touch me.”

“And she did this because …,” Turk said.

“I tried to stop the guys who were going to dunk Justin. Water can do very bad things to jenti. Only there were four of them and one of me. Plus, they were jenti. Stronger than we are.” I twitched, still remembering how they’d bounced me around like a soccer ball until Ileana showed up.

“Sweet,” Turk said.

“And Justin explained what was going on. I didn’t know that I was in a high school full of jenti. I didn’t know real jenti existed. Anyway, we got to be friends. And they both helped me with my work until I got good enough to make Cs. Without them, I’d never have survived last semester,” I said.

“I’m still waiting to hear the part where you’re a hero,” Turk said.

“It’s not that big a deal,” I said. “Well, it was to them. But all I did was give Justin a blood transfusion. Ileana was having her fifteenth birthday party, which is a major event to the jenti, and I was at the party feeling really out of it without him. I was probably the first gadje ever to get invited to something like that, and a lot of the jenti didn’t want me there. So I called to find out when he was coming. Justin couldn’t be there because, well, because he needed more blood than the average jenti and they were out at his house. The Warreners don’t have a lot of money. So I asked Ileana for permission to go over and give him a drink. Well, this turned out to be a huge thing to the jenti. It’s like, they have all this folklore about the kind gadje who just gives blood without asking for anything in return, and by the time Justin and I got to the party, everyone knew what I’d done.”

“So where does the water polo come in?”

“That was Justin more than me,” I said. “In fact, it was all Justin, really. He was hanging out at the pool with me, just the two of us, and all of a sudden he jumped into the water. Well, I almost freaked. I mean, here’s my best friend, and he’s just dived into something that can kill him. Only he doesn’t die. He changes. Into something like a seal. They call it a selkie. Turns out that little jenti like him, the ones with the brown hair and blue eyes, can’t fly or turn into wolves, but they can survive in water. No, not survive. They love it. So we just recruited a new water polo team from the selkie jenti and the state had to let us stay open.”

“Why did the state want to close you down?” Turk asked.

“We hadn’t met our minimum number of games for the year when Justin beat up the old team,” I said. “And some of them quit.”

“Justin. The little guy. All by himself. Beat up the team,” Turk said.

“I said he was little, I didn’t say he was weak,” I said. “There’s no such thing as a weak jenti.”

“But why did he do it?”

“They were beating me up,” I said.

Turk pretended to brush away a tear. “I’m all choked up,” she said.

“Do you want to hear this stuff or not?” I said.

“Oh, yes, please,” Turk said. “Only get to the good part.”

“There isn’t much more,” I said. “We trained the selkie team in secret, then we all showed up for the last game, and we got into the water. By the end of the game, the gym was full. Everyone in the school was watching. Even Dracula. Of course, I didn’t know it was Dracula then. Nobody but Horvath did. We thought he was just this big wolf the school kept around as a mascot.”

For the first time, Turk looked impressed.

“You know Dracula?”

“I just met him once for a minute,” I said. “Of course, he showed me around the school the first day. But that was when I thought he was just a wolf.”

“When do I meet him?” Turk asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “He decided to stop being a wolf at the end of the year and took off for Europe. He’ll probably be back, though. Ileana is one of his descendants, and she’s important to him.”

Turk closed her eyes.

“Oh, Cody,” she said. “So noble. So brave.”

“I had a busy semester,” I agreed. And I resisted adding, “And I was looking forward to the next one. Until you showed up.”