Extraordinary<li> (17 page)

Then there was a voice that was probably real.

“Go, Jennifer!” someone shouted. Eileen, I’m pretty sure. The one person in the room who thought I was getting a wish granted right then.

“Sing, kiddo!” said Gregory. “Start with the monologue about dirty books, then sing.”

I froze, then said, “Dirty books … Chaucer … Rabelais … Balzac …”

This was the mayor’s wife’s big speech—she was accusing Marian the Librarian of lending out dirty books. She’d never read them herself, but the names of the authors
sounded
dirty to her.

She and Mutual’s parents would have gotten along great.

“Emphasize the first syllable of Balzac,” said Gregory. “Drag it out and let the L sound roll around in your mouth like a couple of cherries that you want to make glisten before you put ’em out on a tray to sell ’em at a market. And say it like you’re highly offended by the word itself. Come on. It’s an easy laugh.”

If I was supposed to be demonstrating that being afraid made you better at acting, I was failing pretty epically.

I started to blush. I was just about to open my mouth when the door opened and Kyle, the office messenger, walked in.

“Jennifer?” he called up at the stage.

Hearing him felt like snapping out of a trance.

“Yes!” I said. “I’m here. Right here. Do they need me in the office?”

“Yeah,” said Kyle.

I was already off the stage and halfway down the aisle.

I saw Eileen grinning at me as I ran past her seat in the back row. She was still probably thinking how wonderful it was that Gregory was working so hard to get me out of my shell and making my dream of being an actress—and sounding like I was saying the word “balls” onstage—come true.

Anyone with the intelligence level of a moose would have been able to tell by how I had acted onstage that I did
not
dream of being an actress. But, well … you know.

Kyle led me through the hallways right to Mrs. Smollet’s
office. She was sitting at her desk, wearing a black dress and looking particularly grim, even for her.

“Good afternoon, Jennifer,” she said. “Sit.”

I took a seat, and she looked up at Kyle and said, “Leave us.”

It was so over the top that I almost laughed.

I decided to try to take control of the situation again.

“I’m glad you called me here,” I said. “I really need to talk to you about Mr. Grue.”

“Yes, I know. He gave you Cathy’s part, and neither of you is happy,” she said.

I glared at her and she glared back at me. I considered accusing her of being in league with Gregory again, but if she was, it wasn’t like she was going to admit it. She’d just make it worse for me or something. And if she wasn’t, but confronted him,
he’d
make it worse.

“I need to speak with you about your boyfriend,” Smollet said.

“I don’t have a boyfriend,” I said.

“Doug’s grave is monitored by security cameras,” she said. “Especially at times like these, when rumors go around about Wilhelm and his clan. We know what you and Mr. Scrivener have been up to.”

I blushed a little.

“And I also know that you were the main reason he came back to town,” said Smollet. “But his parents went to Europe to get authorization for a diciotto.”

“It’ll never work,” I said, though I was starting to tremble.

“They always work,” she said. “But his parents aren’t
entirely confident, either. And according to them, when they’ve spoken to him about converting in the past, your name came up as a major reason he didn’t want to. They think a letter from you telling him to convert could make a lot of difference.”

I laughed. “You want
me
to tell him to become a vampire?”

“Yes.”

“Never,” I said. “Never going to happen, and if you threaten me, I’ll have the honor guard on your butt faster than you can ban a book.”

She sat back in her chair. “I could make it worth your while,” she said. “I wouldn’t ask you to do it simply as a favor. You want the valedictorian slot? I can make that happen.”

“My dad would be thrilled, but I don’t care about that.”

“I know you like Shakespeare,” she said. “Did you ever get to meet Marlowe?”

“Christopher Marlowe?”

She nodded.

Christopher Marlowe was a friend of Shakespeare’s, back in the day. And he’d become a vampire in 1593. When it first came out that he was still around, people in the Shakespeare Club that I went to got all excited because we thought he’d clear up all the mysteries about Shakespeare. But he didn’t, really. Whenever he talked about Shakespeare (who Marlowe called Wild Bill), he just started bragging that he’d written half of the plays himself, as well as most of the famous plays, movies, and rock songs that have been written since. No one really took him seriously.

But it would still be cool to meet him.

“I know people who know him,” said Smollet. “I can arrange a meeting between the two of you.”

I shook my head.

“Then how about a date with Fred?”

I felt all the blood in my body rush to my face so quickly that my lower extremities started to go numb.

“What?” I said.

“I realize that you’re attached to Mr. Scrivener,” said Smollet. “But I also know what your generation is like. And Cathy told me this morning that you always liked him and wanted to go to the dance with him.”

“She’s just being paranoid,” I said.

I thought about yelling “Nice try, Marconi!” loud enough that she could hear it over in the in-school suspension room, but decided against it.

“He owes me a favor for keeping the council from shredding him along with Wilhelm after the attack three years ago. I can arrange a date. I can probably even keep Mutual from finding out, if you were planning on cheating behind his back like a shameful little girl.”

I thought for a second. If she could get me into the dance with Fred, it would be a major step toward staying alive. I
did
need that date.

Maybe I could write a letter to Mutual, then tell him it was all crap ahead of time before it could do any damage.

Smollet must have guessed I was thinking that, because she said, “Of course, we’d have to keep you isolated after writing the letter, so you couldn’t try to undermine its effect. But if you were to write a letter right now, we could arrange to set you up at the nicest hotel in town until after the
diciotto. We’d let you out to attend the dance with Fred—under guard, of course.”

“I don’t know,” I said as I ran through a list of options in my head.

Could I get around the isolation somehow?

Would Mutual believe the letter in the first place? Under normal circumstances, I was sure he’d see it for a ruse right away, but a diciotto isn’t a normal circumstance. No human knows exactly what goes on in one, but it’s something like brainwashing. No one can be trusted to think straight during a diciotto.

“Let me think it over,” I said.

“No dice,” she said. “You could give him a warning. If you leave now, the only way we could use you is if you actually attend the diciotto yourself and tell him to convert.”

“Not going to happen,” I said.

“Jennifer, the diciotto is happening,” she said. “The council
will
grant permission. And it
will
work. His parents have some doubts, but the truth is that without you, it will only take longer and be harder for him. Think of what you’re subjecting him to. I saw how he reacted to just seeing his parents last night.”

I heard her voice in my head telling me, “
Don’t do this to him.
” It was an old vampire trick—if they’re nearby, they can send their voices into people’s heads, where they echo around like, well, like voices in your head. I didn’t think it had ever been done to me, but I sure didn’t like it.

“Get out of my brain,” I said.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “I can only send my thoughts in, not get yours out.”

“Well, knock it off, anyway!” I said. “That’s really rude, if you ask me. Can I go now?”

“Just think about how difficult an experience you want to subject Mr. Scrivener to,” she said. “And come see me when you change your mind.”

Mrs. Smollet’s real name wasn’t Mrs. Smollet, by the way.

It was Mrs. Fartknocker.

I walked out of the office and went into the bathroom for the rest of the period. I wasn’t going back to that auditorium for anything.

I wondered, for a minute, if Mrs. Smollet actually had a point—that the diciotto would probably convince Mutual to convert. Just seeing his parents had left him crying the night before. If he converted quickly because I told him to, that was probably better, in the long run, than if he converted because they’d made him feel like he was worthless if he didn’t.

I knew a little bit about what it was like to have someone tell you you were awful. And what Gregory Grue was doing to me was probably nothing compared to what would happen in a diciotto. Sparing Mutual that experience would be a humane thing to do.

But I could never betray him like that.

For one thing, I had entirely selfish reasons. If he was going to be my soul mate or whatever, I wanted him to grow old with me, not stay eighteen forever.

And there was hope—his parents, who knew more about diciottos than I did, weren’t sure it would be successful without me. Hopefully Fred could teach him a few more tricks that would give him an edge, and I wouldn’t need to make such an awful decision.

At the end of the school day, Jason, Amber, and I met up with Fred at his locker, and I heard Mrs. Smollet’s voice in my head saying, “
Think it over.
”

“Where’s the kid?” asked Fred.

“He’s not in school,” said Jason. “We have to go pick him up at my house.”

“Did you drive here?” asked Fred. “I just ran.”

“I can drive,” I said. “Let’s go.”

We walked through the parking lot up to my car and I let Fred into the front.

When he took his seat, he stared at the carved wooden dashboard.

“Oh my God,” he said. “I know this car.”

“You do?” I said.

“Where did you get it?”

“Two hundred and fifty bucks at an auction. But I lost on the deal.”

He nodded.

“Do you know whose estate it came from?” he asked.

I shook my head, and he turned to me and said, “This was Doug the Zombie’s car.”

“You’re kidding,” I said. “This was Doug’s?”

Fred nodded sadly.

“Wow,” I said.

“It stalled the other night right outside that cemetery where he’s buried,” said Jason.

“Makes sense,” Fred said with a nod. “It knows.”

“It stalls all the time, actually,” I said.

“You were there that night, weren’t you?” asked Amber. “When he and Alley got attacked?”

“It wasn’t what people think,” he said defensively. “
I
wasn’t attacking them. Not really. I honestly thought we were just pulling a prank on them. I even brought Doug some brains from the Science Center to eat so he wouldn’t hurt so much while he was crumbling.”

“It was mostly Will doing the attacking, right?” I asked.

Fred stared off into space for a while. “It was mostly Will,
yeah,” he said. “Will was … magnetic. He drew me to him, you know? I thought we were just going to, like … scare them. Even that would have been cruel, but he could talk me into anything. You ever wonder what you’re really capable of, deep down?”

I nodded.

Sincerely.

“I never really felt like I fit in with the other vampires,” he said. “But with Wilhelm … I felt different. He was smart as hell. Dude had social graces to the nth degree.”

“You know, there were some tapes in the glove compartment when I bought the car,” I said. “I’ve never played them. They must be Doug’s, though.”

Fred opened the compartment and pulled out a cassette, which he popped into the player.

It started playing an old show tune; then that faded out and there was a song with weird lyrics sung by a guy who sounded like he had a cold. Not as gruff as Gregory Grue or anything, but deep and smoky.

“Do you know Alley?” Fred asked me.

“Not that well,” I said.

“I talked to her a lot after the whole thing at prom,” he said. “This is Leonard Cohen. They were both into him. This is probably a mix tape he made for her.”

“Weird,” Amber said. “It’s like we’re listening to someone else’s love letter.”

“You want to turn it off?” asked Fred. “I kinda think this guy sucks, personally. We could put on some metal or something.”

“Nah,” I said. “I kinda like this. And the car seems like
it’s been running better since you turned it on. I’m hitting the brakes and it doesn’t feel like it’s about to stall out.”

Fred smiled a bit. “It knows.”

“Usually it stalls about once a block,” I said. “Every trip is an adventure in this machine.”

“Remember that time we broke down outside a cow pasture?” Amber said. “There were, like, fifty cows that came up to the gate and just stared at us.”

“They could’ve been a lot more helpful,” I said. “Cows don’t know
anything
about cars.”

Jason and Amber laughed, and Fred gave a tiny grin.

Mutual was on Jason’s porch, waiting. He still looked freaked out, and even after we introduced him to Fred and got him into the car, he kept looking over his shoulder, like he was afraid his parents might come climbing out of my trunk any second.

“So, where are we going?” I asked.

“There’s a place downtown that only post-humans know about,” Fred said. “A place where we can all be ourselves, more or less. And the cops can’t get in, so they don’t bother to card anyone. I can get you guys in.”

“Point the way,” I said.

And we rolled off toward downtown, just talking about music, school, and stuff that didn’t really have anything to do with post-humans or diciottos or anything. I guess he was building up trust.