The winter before the sundown party—before Tana went missing and maybe was infected, before Pearl got scared and mad as the days went on without Tana calling to tell them anything—there had been an assembly at the high school to discuss vampirism. Even though the seventh and eighth graders were in a different building, they were all, including Pearl, marched over and herded to the very front of the auditorium.
As Pearl went down the steps, she craned her head, looking for her sister. The upperclassmen seemed so much older than she was, loud and intimidating. Some of the senior boys had stubble and the girls dressed as if they were in college. In her denim skirt with leggings under it, with brand-new pink sparkly Converse sneakers and a side ponytail, Pearl had felt she looked cute when she got dressed in the morning. Now she felt like a little kid.
“Pearl!” a voice called over the roar of students finding seats and shouting to their friends. Turning, she spotted Tana and Pauline waving to her from about halfway down the auditorium.
Tana cupped her hands around her mouth to make her voice louder. “Come sit with us!”
Pearl looked after the rest of her class, obediently trooping to the front. Then she looked at her sister waving. Finally, she decided and picked her way past the older kids to the seat Tana had saved for her.
“I’m supposed to be over there,” Pearl said, pointing to her teacher.
“But we’re going to have more fun over here,” Pauline promised her, smiling a big let’s-all-get-in-trouble-together smile. She was wearing a black-and-white-striped dress, bright orange boots, and a vintage pink hat with a veil. Seeing her and Tana together at school was weird—like seeing a part of her sister that was usually hidden.
At home, Tana was the one who made dinner when Dad forgot (which was a lot); who knew only three recipes (spaghetti, salad with a chicken cutlet on top, and burritos); who was good at braiding hair and not pulling too hard (except for when she did French braids); and who could fix almost anything (sinks, toilets, favorite mugs). At school she was obviously somebody else. Somebody who swaggered around in her big boots and black leather jacket, taking auto shop with the boys and glowering at everyone who wasn’t Pearl or Pauline as if she wanted to knock them out.
She and Pauline leaned back in their chairs, grinning at each other over Pearl’s head. It was weird.
“We have a special speaker today,” Principal Wong told them in her no-nonsense, embarrass-the-school-and-I’ll-make-you-sorry voice, short hair combed tightly to one side and gelled to stay there. “We’re going to hear from someone who was trapped inside Springfield when the walls went up. Thank you for agreeing to come and tell your story, Yashira Baez. Let’s give her a big Astell Regional welcome!”
Everyone applauded noisily, with a few sarcastic whoops from boys in the back. Pearl leaned down to take a strawberry-scented pen and notebook out of her bag, in case she was supposed to write stuff down.
A small Latina woman stepped onto the stage, wearing jeans and a muted yellow cardigan, looking old enough to be someone’s grandmother. “I’m going to tell you this story just like it happened. I was headed into Springfield to get my great-aunt out when the military blockaded the area. She was in an assisted-living apartment complex and she was too old to drive. So when I heard the rumor that the city was going to be closed off, I thought I could get her out in time. Unfortunately, I got trapped in there with her. I lived in the first Coldtown for two long years until I could figure out a way to get enough cash together to buy myself a marker from a bounty hunter. I could never have done it without donations from my church, so now I go around to schools to try to give back to the community.
“People ask all the time whether vampires are like us. I always say that in my two years trapped inside, I played checkers with vampires. I sat on stoops with vampires. And they were a lot like the people they’d been before. But they weren’t the same. Vampires are predators and we’re prey. You’ve got to never forget that.”
She looked out at the audience very seriously. “Circuses tame tigers. Get them to jump through flaming hoops. Those tigers are real nice to their trainers, I bet. Bump them with their big heads. Roll on their backs like house cats. But if they’re hungry enough, those tigers are going to eat those same trainers they were so nice to.”
A couple of people in the audience laughed nervously. Tana didn’t laugh. Pauline looked over at her a little worriedly.
“Now, I never assume that everyone knows the basics, so we’re going to go over them again. Infected people—people who have vampire blood in their veins, people who’ve gone Cold—they can’t spread the infection. They’re infected, but not infectious. Got it?”
“Obviously,” Pauline said under her breath. “Otherwise, the whole world would be buried in vampires.”
Ms. Baez went on, going over stuff she considered basic. Pearl knew most of it—or at least she felt like she’d heard it before.