Vampire Crush(5)

"So, what's your angle going to be?" she whispers. I can spot the competitive edge through the friendliness.

"Why the new students hate me."

"What?"

"Never mind." The least I can do is act like I might have something to write down. I flip open my notebook and try to make conversation. "Have you met all of yours yet?"

"Almost," she says and turns the page. "Everyone except for James. Hey, do you want to maybe see a movie on Friday? There's that indie cinema on Main Street that always plays cool stuff."

"I can't," I say, still annoyed that she is beating me.

"Oh, okay. Well, maybe-"

"Mr. Amado's on his way over."

Lindsay straightens in her seat while Mr. Amado strides toward us as purposefully as one can in loafers. Crouching down, he peeks at what we've written. I put up my hand as a shield.

"So," he starts, and then holds up a finger before Lindsay can speak. "I think I have a good idea about Lindsay's progress; I'm interested in what the other half thinks."

The other half has no idea what to say. Put on the spot, I ask some of my actual questions. "Don't you think it's strange that they all seem to know one another? And think Michigan is charming?"

Mr. Amado doesn't respond at first, just gives me a look akin to the one you'd give the homeless person who stands outside the grocery store shouting that there are aliens in the bread. If his mustache had fingers, it would be wagging one at me right now. "Sophie," he says. "I thought we talked about this."

Out of the corner of my eye, I see Lindsay shooting me covert sideways glances like she was once warned not to stare directly at a loser eclipse.

"I know," I say, "but-"

"We're not investigating," he says. "We're celebrating. Try it again tomorrow."

He raps the desk and walks away, leaving me to wonder why Neal's curiosity is encouraged while mine is smashed into tiny little bits. I sink into my chair and draw circles in my notebook for the rest of the period while Lindsay rattles off all the juicy tidbits she's collected about the two boys who were hanging around Vlad in the cafeteria. Their names are Devon and Ashley-a slap in the face to their obvious aspirations to be brick walls.

"They don't speak all that much, but we managed," she says. "Do you know that they were in the circus when they were little?"

"Wait. You're telling me that they're mute circus people?" I ask, wondering if this is some great cosmic experiment: See how long it takes Sophie's head to explode if we drop her in a vat of weirdness and continue to tell her that no, the soup she's in is perfectly normal.

"Well, okay," Lindsay admits, "it's sort of different. But it's going to make a great article. Unlike Andrew Archer, who doesn't want to talk about anything but dirt bikes." She closes her notebook. "What about Vlad? He's yours, right? He seems interesting at least. A little show-offy. I can't believe Morgan let him get away with that this morning."

Me either, Lindsay. Me either.

                       
       
           



       Chapter Three

At dinner that night I am treated to "The Vlad Show." Vlad is hot. Vlad is cool. Vlad has a silver Hummer with tinted windows and he offered to drive Caroline around in it. Vlad is rich. Vlad's parents are away on business in Europe, so he has the house to himself. And yes, he's delighted that they let his friends come stay with him this semester so he wouldn't be lonely. Caroline's so excited, she's shoveling vegetables into her mouth without inspecting them first.

"And get this," she bubbles, holding her fork aloft. "He wants to know everything, absolutely everything about me. When I was born, where I was born, what my plans are after high school, if I have any birthmarks . . . everything! How cool is that?"

If I were a less petty person, I'd thank Caroline for plopping all this information at my feet, albeit coated in the slime of infatuation. Instead, I try to steer the conversation to other subjects. But when Caroline starts to reenact their good-bye scene by her locker, I can't take it anymore.

"He's weird," I say. "What's with all the bowing?"

Caroline colors. "He's European," she says defensively.

"No, you said his parents were in Europe."

"Same thing."

"Okay, that makes absolutely no sense at all. None of this makes any sense at-"

"Did you meet any of the new students, Sophie?" Marcie interrupts, attuned to stopping sibling fires before they start.

"Violet. I think she's crazy," I say and then pause, remembering our earlier address swap. "She, uh, might be coming over."

A childhood of saying things meant to shock Marcie has made it tricky for her to tell when I'm serious. Her lips twitch before finally deciding on an indulgent grin.

"Okay," she says. "Just let me know. I'll put the knives away."

She's still smiling at me, proud of her joke, so I smile back. She'll understand when Violet shows up looking like she just rolled around in her great-grandmother's suitcase. Thankfully, my dad dominates the rest of dinner with talk of bankish things. After I help do the dishes, I beat a hasty retreat to my room before Caroline can corner me with more Vlad babble.

Our house is a renovated Victorian that still retains a few creaks. My room is on the very top floor in what used to be the attic, and I'm in love with it, even though the ceilings are low and slanted and eau de mothball lingers in the air. When I was twelve I painted the walls a deep, dark red. Marcie once said that makes it look like a bordello, but if so, it's an inactive one-the only boy who's ever been in my room is James. (When we were nine and played doctor, I tried to give him an appendectomy with a plastic fork. He chickened out mid-surgery.) My favorite part is the two small windows that jut out and create little pockets of space. I have a padded window seat in one, and I've squeezed my desk in the other. When I take a break from doing homework, I like the cramped, cozy feeling of tucking my feet up on the chair and staring across at the house next door.

Tonight, however, I don't have time to waste. The info Caroline dropped at dinner at least gives me something to work with before the next class. I jot down what I know so far.

VladLikes: Expensive cars, being thecenter of attention, my sisterDislikes: Common courtesy, meMarisabelLikes: N/ADislikes: Vlad talking to CarolineVioletLikes: Mystery boy, showering inperfume, teen magazinesDislikes: Listening, making senseNevilleLikes: N/ADislikes: Basic Skills, going to itAnd I'm tapped. I throw my pencil down in frustration and end up staring out the window anyway. At first all I see is the reflection of my room-the light behind me, my daybed, and a darker version of my frustrated face-but then, beyond all that in the window across the way, a little halo of light.

Déjà vu comes swift and cold. Since our parents were cheap and lame, James and I used to use flashlights in lieu of walkie-talkies. We even had our own Morse code, uncrackable by Caroline or Nazis. Two long flashes and one short meant "I'm so bored that I want you to come over"; one long and two short meant "Go to bed and stop bothering me"; and three short dashes meant "Please close your window, weirdo exhibitionist." Needless to say, that one got a lot of play during his sixth-grade, I'm-going-to-play-basketball-in-the-park-with-my-loser-friends-every-evening phase.

I press my face to the glass to get a clear view of the neighboring house. True, there are no cars, but Marcie did say that she thought someone had moved in, and she has a sixth sense about that sort of thing. When another dot of light flickers to life, I smoosh in closer, letting my cheek grow cool against the glass. Breath held, I wait to see if this is the beginning of an old pattern. But when it flickers out and doesn't repeat, I feel foolish for hoping . . . hoping what?

I'm not Veronica Mars or Nancy Drew. I'm too paranoid to sneak into someone's house to steal confidential files, and the old clocks and hidden staircases of the world can keep their secrets. But checking on that light isn't investigative rocket science. A quick peek should do it. I promise myself I'll come back up here afterward to stare at what remains of my high school journalism career.

That decided, I formulate my plan of attack. The easy thing to do would be to ring the doorbell, but what would I say if someone answered? "I was spying on you from my bedroom window and thought I should introduce myself at night and without cake." Not likely. I could peek in the front windows, but that might attract the attention of our neighborhood's resident cat lady, Mrs. Sims, who has a habit of calling the police if she sees anyone she doesn't recognize out and about after seven thirty. And since she's half blind, there are very few people she recognizes from more than five feet away. I'll have to cut through the back.

After tiptoeing downstairs, I ease past the living room where Caroline and the parents are watching some incarnation of CSI, head through the kitchen, and then slip out the back door into the summer heat. Our backyard is small and mostly taken up by Marcie's garden of pale tomato and cucumber plants. It is surrounded by a wooden fence that's older than me; whatever paint it once had has long since chipped away, and the wood is turning gray. But this is good-if someone had ever decided to paint it, they would have noticed the two missing planks that make a secret superhighway to the yard next door.