Josie Griffin Is Not a Vampire (3 page)

I hopped up from my chair, mumbled thanks again, and I hightailed it out of her office.

w
hen I got outside, dark clouds had gathered in the sky and the air was thick and warm like a whopping thunderstorm was about to break. Did I have an umbrella? No, of course not. That was one of the downsides of New Josie, she was almost always unprepared. Old Josie was so over-prepared that she practically carried a tent and cookstove with her everywhere.

But here’s what I learned from being the one who always had my crap together: Everyone expects you to always have your crap together. Madison and Chloe always relied on me to make the plans—Josie will know the way. Josie will drive. Josie will make sure everyone gets where they need to go when they need to be there. Josie will have an umbrella. At some point, I got sick of always having the umbrella. Except for right then because big fat raindrops were falling on my head. I ran to
Gladys and jumped inside before the torrential downpour began.

With the wipers squeeching and the defroster on, I drove around downtown Indy looking for the address scribbled on Atonia’s paper. Every time I turned a corner, it seemed like I came face-to-face with another one of those stupid Zombie Apparel billboards. The models, like broomsticks with wigs, stared blankly in their urban-apocalypse-meets-soft-core-porn clothes with the words
Zombie Love Attack!
screaming at me. “Jeez, they’re freakin’ everywhere,” I said.

The inside of my car was muggy, like the inside of somebody’s mouth, and it smelled like bad breath. I guess chucking empty chicken quesadilla wrappers in the backseat wasn’t the best idea if I wanted my car to smell like spring flowers. I pressed Ms. Babineaux’s paper against the dashboard and squinted at the info again. It appeared to say 858 Illin or maybe that was 85 Chillin or maybe it was 2551 Linus or maybe it was in Swahili. I had only fifteen minutes until the meeting started, and despite New Josie’s vow to never be early (that was an Old Josie habit) I didn’t want to walk in on the middle of the session because then everyone would stare at me and…oh crap. That’s when I remembered. Khaki pants! I was wearing flipping ugly khaki pants and a powder blue blouse like the cheerleader I used to be. Ugh. First impressions.

There was no way I was going into a room with a
bunch of juvenile delinquents looking like a total goob. I’d be eaten alive in no time. I pulled over to a parking meter on Illinois Street, killed the engine, and dove in the backseat. Surely I’d stashed some clothes back there at some point in the last few months. Lord knew there was enough junk to start my own personal landfill. I tossed aside take-out sacks, rummaged through piles of papers and books, pushed away empty cans and bottles until I uncovered a gym bag. Eureka! Inside were a pair of dark jeans, a black and white striped boater shirt, and some beat-up red Chuck Taylor shoes. Not exactly the look I was hoping for when meeting a bunch of tough kids, but it would have to do. I glanced around outside the car. The rain had emptied the sidewalks and fogged up my windows, so I hunkered down on the backseat to change clothes.

The next time I peeked out the window, I saw a guy under a black umbrella cocking his head to see inside my car. I zipped up my jeans and scowled at him. He was pale with shaggy brown hair and gray circles under his dark eyes. “What?” I yelled, which startled him. He grinned then hurried away. I watched him disappear inside a building half a block away. As I climbed into the front seat, I saw more people hurrying out of the rain, into the same building. A tall blond guy moved so smoothly it was like he was floating. Another guy with short dreadlocks standing on end kicked up his skateboard and held open the door for a petite girl who flipped a mass of bright red curls over her shoulder and smiled
at him. They all looked about my age. I grabbed Atonia’s paper from my dashboard and compared it to the address above the door. 2851 Illinois? Looked like I might be in the right place. I dashed out of my car, through the rain, and into the building.

The hallway was somber, like a morgue, the only noise the clicking of shoes somewhere ahead of me and the soft murmur of a few voices. I followed the sounds around a corner and saw the same group of kids filing into a room. My heart pounded and my stomach churned. I did not want to be there. I shouldn’t have been there. I didn’t have an anger problem. I could control my anger when I wanted to; I just didn’t want to that one time and look where it landed me. It was so unfair.

These kids were probably real delinquents, although they looked harmless enough. But you could never tell. Sometimes the most ordinary looking people end up being the sickest. Look at Kevin. Everyone thought he was such an all-around good guy, Mr. Basketball, Tennis Captain, Class VP, leader of the young men’s prayer circle by day. But by night, he was a total jerk. I knew for a fact that he and his friends would buy beer, shoplift snacks from a 7-Eleven, score some weed, and break in to empty houses to party, then they’d drive around harassing people or he’d end up at Madison’s house while I was home studying or making pep rally signs like a blinded fool. So maybe the so-called “bad kids” were just the ones who got caught.

My plan was to slip into the room, take a seat in the
back, and listen like a journalist. Maybe I would even take notes and write about my experience on my blog. No matter what, I was going to keep my head down and do my best to make sure no one would notice me. Except that when I got inside I saw that a) the chairs were arranged in a circle and b) the only one not occupied was at the opposite end of the room and c) that chair was beside the creepy peeper guy who looked inside my car. Great. Of course, since I was the new girl, everybody stopped what they were doing and stared at me. I felt like a bunny hopping through a fox’s den. I walked quickly with my head down, hoping they’d lose interest in me if I appeared uninteresting.

When I got to the open seat, the creepy peeper looked up at me, raised an eyebrow, and flashed me a cheesy grin. I rolled my eyes at him and plopped down in the seat.

The last person through the door was clearly the therapist. He was probably my dad’s age with a full beard and short sandy gray hair. He wore pressed plaid pants and Hush Puppies shoes that were almost silent on the linoleum. He glanced around the circle, nodding to each person until he got to me and looked startled. “Ah, a new addition to our happy little group?”

Nothing like stating the obvious. I stood up and handed him the note from Atonia. “Ms. Babineaux said I could join you starting today.”

“Who?” he asked.

“My social worker. She’ll send over the rest of the paperwork later.”

He studied Atonia’s scrawl for a moment with a frown then he shrugged. “Okay, well then, I’m Charles, the facilitator of this group. Welcome, Josephine.”

“Josie,” I corrected him.

When I sat down the creepy peeper guy leaned way too close. He stared at me intensely as if he thought he could hypnotize me. “That’s a very sexy name, Yosie,” he said. There was something so dorky about that guy. Maybe it was the haircut, a little too long in back and frizzy in the front. Or his clothes, a short satiny jacket with big shoulders over a paisley shirt, as if he’d stepped out of one of those bad 1980s movies Aunt JoJo loved so much. Or maybe it was his voice, annoying and nasally with a weird accent I couldn’t place. Russian or Slavic or something.

“A) it’s Josie,” I said, leveling my gaze at him. “With a
J
.”

“That’s what I said,” he told me with his eyebrow cocked again. “Yosie.” He locked eyes with me and seemed to anticipate something, like he was waiting for me to swoon.

But I was far from swooning. “And b),” I said, “ew.”

He turned away sheepishly and I heard someone snicker from across the room.

“Okay,” the therapist said. “Let’s jump right in. How’s the week been? Who wants to start?”

The dreadlock guy lifted his hand. “I’ll go,” he said. As I watched him talk, I realized he was seriously cute with piercing gray-blue eyes and dark skin under the layers of short red-tinted braids snaking from his head like tendrils from a plant. He was lean but I could tell he was muscular under his baggy jeans and tee. “It was a full moon, so you know, that made my week tougher,” he said, and I thought,
Oh brother
. The moon made his week hard? Sounded like Aunt JoJo when she went through her New Age Wicca stage ten years ago. She was always talking about how the mother moon’s ebb and flow dominated her cycle. Happily she no longer bought into that malarkey. I would have never pegged this guy for a New Age moon worshiper, though. Looked more like a skate rat to me.

“Can you share what happened, Avis?” Charles asked.

Avis squirmed in his seat, poking his head forward again and again like a bird. “Yeah, so I was skating with some of my homies around the Circle and the cops started giving us a hard time, for no good reason. We weren’t doing anything wrong. No jumping or trying to ramp the steps or ride the rails. The cops were just bored, probably. Didn’t have any real criminals to go arrest, so they were harassing us. I could feel my anger coming, you know, like it was bubbling up under the surface. Like my skin was going to split open and unleash the beast. And it was crazy intense because the moon was shining down on me like a spotlight, man, and part of
me wanted to attack one of those doughnut-munching pigs.”

Dang, unleash the beast within? I got mad and all, but I never felt like I was going to pop out of my skin and rip a cop’s face off.

“How did you deal with that? Did you use any of the strategies we’ve discussed?” Charles asked.

Avis sat back in his chair, eyes darting side to side. “I took some deep breaths and I walked myself through our questions. I asked myself why I felt angry. I asked myself why I wanted to lash out at the cops. And I reminded myself that letting things get ugly is not in my best interest.”

“Did that stop you from acting out?” Charles asked.

“Yeah, but I was still pissed,” Avis said. “So I took off on my board. I just went all out and pumped as hard as I could down Meridian, racing cars and blowing through stop lights.”

Charles frowned. “Was that a good choice?”

Avis’s laugh was strained, like one of those rubber chickens you squeeze. “Well, it was better than the alternative.”

“Yes,” Charles said. “You’ve got a point.”

“See, this is what I don’t get,” the redheaded girl said. She sat next to Avis with her knees drawn up toward her chest. She was a tiny thing with skinny little arms and legs but she seemed to buzz with energy, like she could levitate off the chair any minute. Maybe it was all the crazy waves of bright red hair that cascaded
down her back or how her green eyes flashed while she tried to get the words out, which seemed stuck behind her lips for a moment. “We’re not the emeny!” she said passionately.

Emeny?
I looked around but no one else seemed bothered by this.

“That stuff is deep inside our, our, our, you know.” She paused and thumped her chest with her fist. “Seep in our douls, I mean, deep in our souls! So why is it a crime?”

Charles sighed, as if they’d been over this a million times before. “It’s not a crime to feel anger, Tarren. It’s only a crime if you act on it in a way that hurts others.”

Tarren flapped her arms around her head and talked fast, like she was about to fly away. “Yeah, but we’re made to feel guilty because of who we are and how we experience the world. As if there is only one way to be.”

She had a point, I thought. It was like my how my parents thought I couldn’t simultaneously streak my hair purple and pierce my nose and still be a decent human being. Those things
could
coexist.

“Would anyone else like to address Tarren’s comment?” Charles asked.

The blond guy signaled with a slight nod of his head. I turned my attention to him and nearly fell off my chair. I don’t think I’d ever seen a more beautiful boy. It was as if the sun shone from behind his skin. His hair was a mix of every blond you could imagine from the dusty yellow of corn husks to the white of fresh snow and his
eyes were gold. He also had the most perfect nose I’d ever seen. It was strong and straight with the nostrils slightly flared as if he was drinking in all the scents the world had to offer. Somehow his face almost looked familiar—those deep set eyes and chiseled cheeks, as if I’d seen him a hundred times before, but I couldn’t quite place him.

“This is the world we were born into,” he said. “It’s not something we can change, so we have to accept it and deal with it the best we can.”

“Easy for you to say, Helios,” Tarren muttered.

He turned to her and flared his nostrils more. He looked like a statue of an ancient warrior about to go into battle. “What makes you think it’s easier for me?”

Tarren shrugged. “Not all of us were born with that golden cherry-thingie. Whaddya call it? That thing he drives?”

“Chariot,” Avis told her.

“That was one of my great-great-grandfathers,” Helios said drily. “I drive an Infiniti.”

“Whatever it is,” Tarren said. “I’m stuck on the Southside with a drunk for a father and a mother who flits in and out while I’m forced to go to some crappy school, but Helios here glides around Carmel to his fancy private school. I think I have more of a right to be pissed off than he does.”

I sat back. I knew I should keep my mouth shut. Tarren might have been little and she might have talked weird, but she could kick somebody’s butt and I didn’t
want it to be mine. But, I couldn’t do it. “Money doesn’t necessarily make life easier,” I said.

Tarren glared at me. “Spoken like a true princess.”

I snorted. “Hardly.”

Charles chimed in. “I think the point is we’re all entitled to feel anger or frustration, no matter how much money we have or don’t have. Rich, poor, or in between we all have problems that are worthy of consideration.”

I glanced over at the blond guy, expecting a nod of appreciation or something, but he ignored me.

“Let’s move on,” Charles said. “How about you, Johann?” He turned to creepy peeper guy. I felt a little bad for making fun of how he said my name, since his was pronounced Yohann. He was probably some poor foreign kid whose family left a war-torn country and I was giving him a hard time. Maybe my dad was right. Maybe I did need therapy.