Extraordinary<li> (16 page)

“I knew they’d find me,” he said. “I knew it.”

“This was probably the first place they looked,” I said. “You didn’t exactly try to hide.”

He sniffled a bit. “Do you really think you can help me with a diciotto?”

“I can try,” I said. “I can definitely try.”

He was shaking as he stood up from the car. “Almost nobody doesn’t agree to be converted in a diciotto,” he said. “Nobody.”

“Don’t worry, man,” said Jason. “Maybe we can even get Fred to help out. He never seems to think anyone should convert, and we need an excuse to talk to him anyway.”

“He never does convert any of his girlfriends, does he?” I asked.

“I’m sure he’ll at least be willing to meet with you to give you moral support,” said Amber. “And that’ll give us a chance to hook him up with Jennifer in time for the dance.”

“Totally,” I said. “See, it’s all going to work out perfectly!”

Mutual nodded a bit but didn’t seem any less scared.

“You know something else?” I said. “We all still smell terrible.”

Jason and Amber started to laugh, and even Mutual cracked a tiny smile before going back to looking like he’d just been run over by a truck.

“I thought I read someplace that unicorns stink,” said Amber.

I turned to her. “You knew they were real?”

“They are and they aren’t. They’ve bred a few by crossbreeding horses with vampire blood or something, but they don’t do it very often. For obvious reasons.”

We all nodded.

“I think I’d better go home and get my shower on,” I said. “We all should.”

We said our good-byes and I gave Amber a ride home.

“This was one hell of a first date, huh?” she said. “First you kiss in a graveyard, then you find out you have to get some other guy to kiss you or you’ll die, then we have to run away from a unicorn, and then you have a stare-down with vampires who want your boyfriend to convert!”

“I don’t know why I’m not more scared,” I said. “I should be rocking back and forth, tearing at my hair and screaming right about now. I’m going to die if I can’t get a vampire to kiss me in a few days, and Mutual’s facing a diciotto. But … it’s kind of a rush, really.”

“Well, you know we’ll get through it,” said Amber. “It’s not like talking a guy into kissing you is
that
hard, if you’re willing to fight a little dirty. And you don’t mind his feelings getting hurt.”

“It’s just Fred,” I said. “I’m not that concerned about his well-being.”

Yeah. I said that.

I feel bad about it now, but right then, I really didn’t care much about him. He was just another emo vampire to me.

Someone who was 100 percent alive would surely have known better. But I wasn’t there yet. That’s about all I can say in my defense.

“You think Mutual’s dad might be the vampire who pays Gregory for converts?” I asked.

“I doubt it,” said Amber. “I’m a bit more concerned that it might be someone from Wilhelm’s clan. But if you don’t consent, there’s nothing to worry about. Those guys
can’t possibly get past the border, let alone the city limits, without getting jumped.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Gregory said he’d put me to sleep and drive me out someplace to have the operation done.”

“Or it could be some random sicko who has a pretty good con going,” said Amber. “If Wilhelm’s clan was really up to that kind of crap, they’d have a much easier time doing it on people in some other state.”

The rest of the drive back, we made our plans for the next day. First on our list was to get Fred to meet with us, during which time we’d get advice on a diciotto, then try to get him to take me to the dance. It seemed easy enough. Making a complicated plan, like the Jenny in Eileen’s book did, wouldn’t have been smart—the more complex a plan gets, the more chances there are for something to go wrong.

If Fred didn’t seem receptive at first, we’d just do something the Jenny in Eileen’s book doesn’t seem to have thought of: bribe him.

Mutual and I were both broke, but Amber’s parents were pretty well off, and Jason could always pick up more hours at Fat Johnnie’s, the pizza place where he worked. I was really touched that they’d do things like that for me.

Of course, what were they supposed to do? Let me die?

When I got back to my house, I took a really, really long shower. I did everything except scour myself with steel wool. And after I was done, I had gotten the smell off just about every part of me except for my hand, which I’d actually used to touch Princess’s mane.

I wrapped that up in some gauze, doused it with some of Val’s perfume, then headed downstairs.

I wanted to tell my mom I was being stalked by a weirdo
who was apparently magic, but something told me that she would only make things harder for me. She probably wouldn’t believe me, and if she did, I didn’t see what she could do about it.

After all, in a few days, it would all be over.

In hindsight, I guess I really should have told her. I should have told everyone who would listen. For a straight-A student with a scholarship, I was certainly acting like an idiot.

But realistically, after a day like the one I’d been having, it was hard to think rationally.

When I thought about Mutual’s parents, it got me angry again. I even started looking around my room for something breakable, but then I calmed myself down.

No more breaking stuff. That wasn’t helping me.

It was just putting me on a path to end up like Dad. Who, when he thought someone else was trying to sabotage me at spelling, blasted rock music into their house and danced around chanting that I was the queen of spelling.

He’s doing a lot better now, really. He’s worked hard at it.

But I didn’t want to end up in that place myself. I needed to find better ways to stay positive.

If Mutual was going to go through all this stuff for me, I was going to be someone better. Someone worth it. For both of us.

And I wasn’t going to give Gregory Grue any more reasons to tell me I was an awful, hateful, spiteful person. Not anymore.

I don’t get why “Jenny” was still surprised to see her godmother popping up all over the place by then. I mean, I was a bit shocked to see Gregory Grue on the toilet in a ladies’ room, where you don’t expect to see guys, period, but other than that, if I had flown to Disney World that week, I would have fully expected to see Gregory Grue playing Snow White.

I even half expected him to show up at my door the next morning in a milkman outfit (even though I think those guys were extinct by the time my parents were kids). And when I stopped into Wackford’s for a cup of coffee on the way to school, I wouldn’t have been surprised to see him wearing one of those aprons behind the counter.

I met up with Jason and Amber by the flagpole before school started on Wednesday morning.

“You ready to do this?” asked Amber.

“Totally,” I said. “Let’s go pick up a vampire.”

Inside, Fred was next to his locker, deflecting the small handful of girls who wanted to take Cathy’s place as his significant other. He brushed them all off, cursing a lot as he did.

“There he is,” said Amber. “You want us to come with you?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Let’s say we need him for diciotto help. That’ll be the icebreaker.”

Amber and Jason nodded, and the three of us bumped fists.

Showtime!

Fred was digging through his backpack, which I noticed didn’t actually have any books in it. He came to high school and all, but it wasn’t like he did any homework.

“Good morning,” I said.

“Hey,” he said. “I’m not looking for a girlfriend, so buzz the buzz off.”

I’ve cleaned up everyone’s language for this book (except for Mrs. Smollet and Mutual’s parents), but Fred’s most of all. He was one of those guys who just couldn’t form a sentence that didn’t use the F-bomb a few times. He practically used it as punctuation.

“We sort of need your help,” I said.

He looked up at me. “I’m not converting
anyone
,” he said. “I
said
to buzz off.”

“It’s not that,” I said. “It’s just the opposite.”

“We’ve got this friend whose parents are vampires,” Jason said. “And he just turned eighteen.”

Fred swore and shook his head. “Is he converting?”

“We were sort of hoping you could talk to him,” said
Amber. “None of us want him to, and we think he’ll need help.”

Fred sighed, shrugged, and swore a bit more.

“That’s pretty much why I’m here,” he said. “I mean, I don’t do homework, or pay attention, or even show up half the time, but every now and then I can at least talk people out of converting. If you guys want to meet me after school, I’ll definitely talk to him.”

“Thanks,” I said. “He really needs it.”

“You know, Fred,” said Amber, “we knew you were a good guy.”

Fred shrugged. “I try, I guess,” he said. “Sometimes.”

I hadn’t really known that about him, personally. I’d never stopped to think about why he kept coming to high school—I guess I always thought it was just to pick up chicks.

If he really kept coming in order to talk people out of converting, I had been totally wrong about him. I suddenly felt deeply ashamed of myself.

“That’s a shame about Cathy going nuts yesterday,” Amber went on.

Fred shrugged again. “All the girls who say they want to convert do, sooner or later,” he said. “With people like her, the best I can do is drag my feet and string them along until they either get over it or go nuts. Going nuts is still better than going undead.”

“Well,” Amber said, “you’re going to need to find someone else to take to the dance.”

Now he chuckled. “No way,” he said. “I wouldn’t be caught at a dance anymore. If I dance out of step, that damned honor guard will pounce on my ass!”

“But don’t you think it would drive Cathy insane if you took Jennifer to the dance?” asked Amber.

Fred looked up at me, then sort of smirked.

“Nah,” he said, “I don’t want to hurt her or anything, she’s a good kid. But meet me back here after school, and I’ll talk to your friend, okay?”

He closed his locker and walked away.

“That went well, I thought,” said Amber.

“He smirked at me!” I said. “He’d better not have been thinking we were nuts to think he’d go with me!”

“Could’ve been worse,” said Amber. “He said he’d meet with us tonight. If it comes down to it, we can just tell him straight up that you’ll die if you don’t get kissed by him. I’m sure he wouldn’t let you die or anything. He seems nice.”

She seemed so confident that I didn’t get too worried.

Amber was actually much closer to being a screwball-comedy heroine than I felt like I was. Those women were always confident, and sometimes they turned out to be witches (like she was before it got too trendy). And she came up with ideas that seemed perfectly logical to her but never would have occurred to me.

Sometimes I think the ideas I had for the kind of person I wanted to be weren’t really based on eccentrics in screwball comedies at all—I was just trying to be more like Amber.

When I got to the auditorium for rehearsal fourth period, Gregory was sitting in one of the seats, continuing his interview with Eileen. She smiled and waved at me, and he flashed me what I can only describe as an evil grin. I gave him a dirty look and walked up to him.

“We need to talk,” I called out as I got closer to them.

He told Eileen to pardon the intrusion, then walked down the row of seats with me.

“Hoo hoo, kiddo.”

“I need some clarification about this whole thing,” I told him.

“Shut up,” he said. “We’re not discussing that here. You say another word about it, and I’ll call you Grimace in front of the whole class!”

I just glared at him. It was all I could think to do.

“Now take your seat,” he said, “and don’t say another word until I tell you. I can still make this harder on you, girly. Got it?”

I nodded.

“Good. Any progress on getting the Wells Fargo Wagon moved here?”

“No,” I said.

“Gosh,” he said with a grin. “If only there were some way you could become strong and fast enough to move it here all by yourself!”

I gave him the dirtiest look I possibly could and took a seat at the far back corner of the auditorium, away from everyone else.

When rehearsal got started, he called me up onto the stage.

“All right, ya groundlings,” he said as I climbed up. “Part of being an actor is doing things that scare you. Tapping into your darkest, deepest emotions, the parts of yourself that you keep stored away in a place where the lightbulb burned out and it’s too dark to see where the switch is anyway. If you’ve
never been so scared you were pretty sure you almost
died
, you’ll never be an actor. Jennifer will now demonstrate the power of deep fear. Sing, kiddo.”

I looked at him. “What the hell?” I asked.

He grinned again. “Let’s hear your song,” he said. “Let’s hear how being scared out of your wits can influence you as an actor. Right now. Sing.”

“I haven’t learned it all yet,” I told him.

“Just sing what you can,” he said. “But sing it out loud and sing it out strong. Let everybody hear you!”

I just stood frozen in place for a second.

“Come on,” he said. “Turn and face your audience.”

I turned my body toward the seats, where about two dozen other kids were gathered. They were all staring at me.

I wasn’t used to that back then. I guess one of the good things that came out of having a book and a movie made about me was that I got over being nervous about that sort of thing.

But I hadn’t been on a stage in years—not since Mutual and I lost the district spelling bee. My brain went a bit fuzzy, and everything went quiet—except for the sound of a bell, like the one they rang when you missed a word at a bee, which was probably all in my head.