Team Human (3 page)

There was a big black new SUV in Anna's driveway. I didn't recognize the car and wondered who was there.

When I rang the doorbell, it turned out the answer was Principal Saunders.

I blinked up at her, startled to find her home this early on the first day of school, and she blinked at me as if she'd been sleeping and I'd woken her.

She was usually really well put together, but now she looked thin and pale, her hair straggling. I guessed that was normal, given her husband had left her for an undead floozy. I couldn't let what Anna had said influence me too much.

“Mel,” said Principal Saunders slowly. She still sounded half asleep, but her eyes were too sharp for someone who'd been dozing.

“Uh,” I said. “Hi! I was wondering if Anna could come out?”

I mercifully stopped myself from adding the words
to play
at the end of that sentence. Apparently all I have to do is feel a little uneasy, and I revert to kindergarten.

“She's doing her homework,” Principal Saunders said. “She can't be disturbed.”

“Oh,” I said. “Oh, okay. I'll call her later.”

Principal Saunders didn't respond. I gave an uncomfortable laugh. She didn't even smile.

Principal Saunders had always been distant and principal-like, but that was the thing: She was principal-like. She always smiled faintly at jokes and gave the appropriate responses.

She'd always been a pretty normal parent. She never acted strange. Not until now. (Not like Cathy's mom, who so disliked conflict, she'd decided it didn't exist and would answer all questions with yes even when she meant no.)

“Lots of excitement at school today,” I remarked brilliantly. “What with the new student and everything. Francis the fabulous.”

She looked pained. I was about to apologize for bringing up vampires when she spoke.

“Don't speak to him,” she said. “Don't let Anna speak to him either.”

“Why not?”

“Because vampires destroy people,” she said so fiercely I took a step back.

Then she gave me a brief nod and closed the door.

Anna was right: Her mom was acting weird.

CHAPTER FOUR

Of Vampires and Humans

A
week later and not only had I discovered nothing new on the Anna front, but the Cathy situation was even worse. I called my sister, Kristin. Then I called her again. A billion messages later, she still hadn't called me back.

“Kristin,” I said to her voice mail yet again. “The boy advice, man advice, whatever, it's not for me. It's much more serious than that. Cathy's gone all moony-eyed over a boy. Not just any boy. This one is an undead pain in the butt, and he won't go away. Help!”

The bell for the end of lunch hour sounded, and I closed my phone.

Kristin studied fashion at Parsons in New York City. Sometimes she did not surface for weeks at a time. I was sure she slept in nests of fabric samples, but she had to call me back eventually. She always did.

I was getting desperate. I knew what the lunch bell meant: study hour in the library.

Traditionally, the four of us have used this time to gossip and hang out. All you have to do is keep your voice down and sit in the group discussion area. It also helped to have some kind of map or other projectlike object in the center of the table to lean over. “What are we doing, lovely librarian? Plotting world domination! Kidding. We're working on our group project on this map thing. Clearly. And plotting world domination.”

But this was not our regular foursome. Somehow Anna had been replaced by Francis, who had attached himself to our group.

I assumed this was because he thought Cathy was a properly behaved young lady. He seemed to give her fewer chilly looks than he gave the rest of us.

He certainly didn't think I was a properly behaved young lady.

Anna was sitting by herself on the other side behind a wall of leave-me-alone-I-am-actually-studying books.

I knew better than to ignore the pointed fortress of books and trespass on her space, but I missed her. Francis was a terrible substitute. Study/gossip hour had become Humans 101 hour. Actually, it seemed like every free minute we had turned into Humans 101. Francis was forever pulling out his battered notebook, asking us questions, and jotting down our responses. He didn't get many answers from me. Unless he made me angry.

It was for his journal, he told us.

“He's been keeping it since 1869,” Cathy said breathlessly. “Can you imagine?”

Francis looked at us proudly, as if it were some kind of an achievement to have been scribbling things down for so long. He was a vampire. What else was he going to do? Other than drink our blood, I mean. Doing anything for a long time was easy for a vampire.

“I heard you referring to yourself as a ‘total ABC,'” Francis remarked. I could hear the quotation marks around the words, as if he was picking up the phrase with tongs. “Can you tell me what that refers to in your culture?”

“My culture is American,” I snapped. “And that's what it means. American-Born Chinese.”

“Does it mean you can't speak Chinese?”

“I can't speak Mandarin or Cantonese or Hakka or any other Chinese language. Neither can my parents, who are also ABC,” I said, and made a face at Francis.

Francis did not respond to my face making as well as he did to Cathy's damsel-in-distress glances.

“I thank you for doing me the courtesy of informing me on the subject,” he said calmly. “I am most interested in the magic of other cultures.”

“I'd thank you to do me the courtesy of informing yourself,” I replied, doing my best Francis imitation. “Get interested in the magic of search engines.”

I wished the windows were not smoked to eliminate all UV rays. Stupid city ordinances.

I was also sick of all the vampire groupies—who seemed to be about half the school population—hovering at the next table, pretending to study but mostly ogling Francis. I'd even heard some of them had tried to follow Francis home. Luckily vampires are good at disappearing into shadows and can move faster than most humans.

“Could you repeat that?” Francis was asking Ty. “A ‘kegger,' did you say? Is that two
g
's?”

He talked the same way about keggers as he did about my being ABC, as if they were both cute human hobbies of ours.

I'd had enough. For Cathy's sake, I'd been polite all week—well, mostly polite—okay, polite by my standards—but, honestly, why should we help the vampire anthropologist?

“Yes,” I answered. “Ty said, a ‘kegger.' It's three
g
's actually and
c
, not
k
. A kegger is a place where humans gather to worship kegs, which are the totems of the original Kegger people, who landed in Iceland.”

Ty snorted. He wasn't being much help in my campaign against Francis, but at least he laughed at my jokes.

“It was Iceland, wasn't it? I didn't get that wrong, did I? I was so sure that was where the spaceship landed.”

“Spaceships in Iceland. That is how it went,” Ty confirmed, still laughing.

Francis was not noting any of my words of wisdom. He put down his fancy fountain pen. Cathy looked anxious.

“She doesn't mean it, Francis. Mel likes to joke around.”

“She is very droll,” Francis said.

I didn't roll my eyes; Francis wasn't worthy of my eye roll.

Cathy looked at Francis with such adoration I could have cried. How could she not see through him? He was studying us, and goodness only knew why. He didn't care about us as people, but as specimens of humanity. It beat me why he couldn't just watch TV and get all his questions answered that way.

I had tried to tell her he was not hanging out with us because he liked us and that he was not shy, but she was too nice to think badly of him. Mind you, it would be hard for Cathy to believe in the badness of someone pointing a gun at her and demanding money. She put Francis's note-taking down to his desire to learn how to fit it in at Craunston High.

“We all live in the same city, but how often do we interact?” Cathy had asked me earnestly. “How many conversations have you had with vampires in your life?”

Before Francis it had been none, which was exactly how I liked it. Vampires are trouble. Think about it: These days, all vampire transitions are voluntary. What kind of person would take the risk of becoming a vampire? There'd have to be something wrong with you. Because the process can either kill you outright or turn you into a drooling, mindless monster (which would lead to you being put down almost instantly), or, if you're superlucky, you become a vampire.

Let's examine what a prize that is one more time: no more direct sunlight ever again, no more laughter. You get eternity, but you don't have the sense of humor to enjoy it! Also, vampires don't eat food. You never get to eat chocolate again. Ever.

I'd rather die.

All the vampire wannabes and vamposeurs mystify me. Who would choose the possibility of immortality over chocolate?

My eyes moved involuntarily to a poster hanging on the wall, a picture of an unsuccessful vampire transition. There were cage bars across a zombie girl's snarling face and empty eyes, and the caption read
HE WON'T LOVE YOU FOR YOUR MIND THEN. VAMPIRISM. THINK TWICE.

Most PSAs drive me nuts and are kind of stupid. But the “Say ‘Not Tonight' to a Bite” campaign? I was with them a hundred percent.

I heard the bell for our next class, which, sadly and once again, we all had together. Well, not Anna, apparently. She remained behind her pile of books. I wished I could join her.

Francis and Cathy walked side by side. Almost every head turned to gaze in longing at Francis and in envy at Cathy. The fact that he was asking her at what age she'd started walking and if she could remember the process would probably have undercut their envy.

I couldn't leave them alone. Kristin had not responded to my many messages, and I had to figure out how to get rid of him on my own before Anna left our group forever and Cathy got her heart broken. It felt like I didn't have much time.

Cathy and Francis's tragic farewell at the end of the day confirmed my worries.

We stood by the vampire's locker as he pulled out his astronaut suit. Just me, Cathy, Francis, and about three dozen vampire groupies.

Before he put on his helmet, he said, “I must return to my shade.
Au revoir
, my dear.”

As if we didn't know where he was going. I wondered if the rest of his shade were as snooty and annoying as him. My bet was they were. Vampires band together in little fake families. So presumably they picked Francis because they liked him.

The thought of more than one Francis was appalling. Also, “my dear”? That's what your grandma calls you.

“Your shade?” I repeated innocently. I'd been playing the vampire ignoramus all week. To annoy him, you know, without being obviously rude.

“Yes, shade,” Cathy said. “You know that. Like a clan, though not really,” she added when Francis looked disapproving and the vampire groupies started tittering. “Coven?” There was more laughter. When Cathy is nervous, she starts to lose all her nouns. Coven? Clan? She knows no one calls a group of vampires clans or covens. “Oh, no, n-n-n-not coven. I'm not saying that vampires are witches. They're just a different kind of people and instead of living in families, like we do, they, um, they live in shades.”

“I thought they were called nests,” I said, enjoying the sharp intake of breath from everyone around us. Except Francis, of course.

“Mel!” Cathy exclaimed.

Yeah, now I was being deliberately rude. I know, stay classy! But Francis was so annoying. Everyone knows that
nest
is the term people who hunt vampires use. Vampires prefer to call their groups “murmurs” or “gatherings.” I've even heard of some using
cemetery
, as in
a cemetery of vampires
, but here in New Whitby, where the first vampire settlers arrived on the good ship
Nightshade
, they call them “shades.”

Let me make something clear: I don't agree with the nutters who want to kill all vampires. My parents voted yes on Proposition Four, and if I had the vote I would have too: Unlawfully killing vampires should be punished as harshly as killing people. Murder is murder. I don't want vampires dead. I just wanted Francis to go to a different school.

And, yes, I know using the word
nests
wasn't okay. But he was so annoying and everyone was worshipping him for it. Ugh.

Francis put on his helmet, nodded briefly, and strode toward the front door without a backward glance. The vampire groupies shot me looks clearly intended to kill and scurried after him.

The walk home was conducted in silence. Well, not the whole way. After about five blocks' worth of Cathy's disappointed silence, I choked out an apology.

If “sorry” interrupted by a coughing fit qualifies as one.

“I know you don't like him, Mel. But I do. You
know
I do. I'm not asking that you like him, merely that you be polite. He's invariably polite to you.”

I decided that now was not the time to point out that she was starting to sound like Francis.

“Oh, is he?” I said. “What about all that ABC crap?” Cathy hesitated, and I pressed on. “Have you ever noticed that he looks at me and Ty differently than he looks at you or Anna? Come on, Cathy. Admit there's the tiniest possibility Francis might be a little bit racist.”

Ty's not ABC: He's black. You don't want to know what I heard Francis asking him.

“Oh, no,” Cathy exclaimed, shocked. “Not racist!”

I waited, because Cathy's not an idiot.

“Francis isn't racist,” Cathy had to repeat, as if saying it twice made it true. “But you know, he was born a long time ago, and they thought differently then. You can't blame Francis for that.”

I could, but it wouldn't do any good if Cathy wasn't going to blame him too.

“Do you really like him?” I asked instead.

“He's been very nice to us. It's interesting getting to know a vampire.”

“No, Cathy, I meant do you
like
like him?”

Cathy didn't say anything.

“He's almost two hundred years old!”

Cathy still didn't say anything.

We were only a block from home.

“You're my friend and I worry …” I trailed off. I'd already told her everything I didn't like about vampires in general, everything I didn't like about snotty, condescending Francis in particular. I'd told her that I thought Francis's presence was upsetting Anna, and Cathy had said that Anna shouldn't be prejudiced against all vampires because of the actions of one.

I didn't have anything new to add.

“He's just so interesting. Can you imagine being that old? Having seen so much change? And he's so polite. He opens doors for people and inclines his head in that old-fashioned way. It's like he stepped out of a Jane Austen novel.”