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When I left, I gave the guy my dirtiest look for his Grimace remark, but he didn’t acknowledge me. He just kept singing to the window.

As I walked back to my car, I imagined three creative ways to murder him for calling me fat: dropping heavy rocks on his head; carving him into a funny shape with a chain saw; and tying a rope around his feet, swinging him around above my head, and throwing him clear to Omaha.

Then I poured my coffee into the gutter, put the empty cup on the ground, and stomped on it.

I liked to break things in those days.

Now, don’t get me wrong—I wasn’t some violent maniac or anything. All things considered, I was fairly well adjusted. I didn’t even kill bugs if I could help it.

But up through the end of my junior year, my workload was about eighty hours per week, between school and various extracurriculars my parents made me do to pad my college applications. The only way I stayed sane was by reading a whole lot of Shakespeare (which I swear makes you breathe better) and squeezing in an hour or two a week to hang out with Jason and Amber, my best friends.

Still, friends and Shakespeare couldn’t keep me from getting stressed out now and then, and nothing relieved stress like breaking stuff.

Little porcelain angels from the dollar store were the best. Man, do those things shatter.

But at the end of junior year, I got early acceptance through a special program at Drake, which is sort of the Harvard of Des Moines. The extracurriculars and volunteer work and advanced classes were no longer necessary, so I gave myself a
much
lighter schedule for my senior year. Breaking stuff was hardly a part of my life anymore.

I was expecting this to be a really good day. My math class would be stuff I’d learned years ago. I could snooze through English while people read out loud from
The Canterbury Tales
at a rate of three words per minute. Debate would just be listening to the underclassmen argue about whether the new T-shirts should say “We Kick Rebuttal” or “We’re
Master
Debaters.”

And in drama, I’d just be relaxing while the cast rehearsed
The Music Man
. I was working props, a job that so far required me to do nothing more than sit on my butt and watch the rehearsals.

But the day started to fall apart the minute the Jenmobile stalled, and it only got worse from there.

In addition to being told that I look like a giant eggplant by a pint-sized, burger-wrapper-eating freak, I realized later that morning that I’d left my lunch sitting on the kitchen table.

Then I slammed my fingers in my locker.

And when I got to the
Music Man
rehearsal in fourth period, Cathy Marconi, one of the handful of people I
didn’t
get along with, kept staring at me, smirking. I was just starting to wonder if
she’d
noticed that I looked like Grimace, too, when the doors swung open and a familiar gruff voice shouted out, “Hoo hoo!”

Oh. God.

I looked behind me to see the weirdo from McDonald’s standing in the doorway between the hall and the auditorium.

“Ah!” he shouted. “This joint ain’t the Palace, but it’ll do!”

Everyone turned and watched as he strutted down the aisle like he owned the place. He hoisted himself onto the stage, and I slumped down in my seat, praying he wouldn’t see me and make another Grimace remark.

“Who are you?” someone asked.

He stood up as straight as he could and took a bow.

“My name is Gregory Grue,” he said. “I’m your new director!”

I slumped a bit farther down.

“What about Mrs. Alison?” asked Cathy, who was playing Eulalie Shinn, the mayor’s wife.

Gregory smiled. “I’m afraid she’ll be taking a leave of absence,” he said.

“Did they finally find out that her water bottle was full of vodka?” someone asked.

“I don’t wish to comment on the particulars, or lend credence to malicious gossip that happens to be true,” said Gregory. “The important thing is that she’s gone and I’m here, with a nail in my shoe and a song in my heart.”

“Do you know anything about theater?” asked Cathy.

Gregory laughed. His laugh sounded like a lawn mower trying to start.

“I studied at the RSC for three years,” he said. “Any of you little punks know what that stands for?”

My jaw dropped as someone a row ahead of me called out “Royal Shakespeare Company.” Gregory Grue grinned and nodded.

I had been a Shakespeare fanatic since I was nine, so I knew that the Royal Shakespeare Company was just about the most famous Shakespeare troupe in the world. And as much as I hated to think anything good about this guy after what he’d said to me that morning, I could totally picture him playing Iago or Richard the Third.

In fact, just as I was thinking that, he waved his hand with a theatrical flourish and went into Richard’s opening monologue.

He said that in a much clearer voice than his normal one; for a second, it was like he really did become Richard. It was enough to see that this guy was a damned good actor.

“Just like how the winter of
your
discontent is about to be made glorious summer by Gregory Grue!” he said. “I’ve never directed a high school show before, but if I can get through three years with the RSC, I think I can handle a musical about a traveling salesman who cons a bunch of Iowans. Everyone get in your places, and we’ll run through the ‘Wells Fargo Wagon’ number so I can see where your strengths and weaknesses are. Then I’ll yell at you until you don’t have any weaknesses left.”

And while I sat and watched, he started to direct people. He seemed to know what he was doing, but I couldn’t stop thinking that he seemed … creepy. Every now and then he would look over at me and grin, leaving me scared to death that he was going to make some other comment about my weight right in front of everyone.

I wasn’t used to comments about my weight back then, and hadn’t made peace with the fact that I had inherited my mother’s slightly round body type. I’ve sort of had to get used to it now that I’m kind of famous and people think they can say whatever horrible thing they want about me on Internet forums, but it was still pretty new to me at the time.

So when Kyle, the office messenger, walked into the room and told me that the principal, Mr. Jablonski, and the guidance counselor, Mrs. Smollet, wanted to see me, I didn’t argue. I would have taken any excuse to get away from Gregory, even though I didn’t much care for having to talk to Mrs. Smollet. The woman was pretty scary herself. She was a vampire, after all. And not one of the nicer ones, either.

Actually, by the time I was a senior, vampires had been “out of the coffin” for six years, and the whole “going goth so the vampires will like me” thing was pretty much over.

We’d all gotten used to having them around, for the most part. Most of them seemed like nice, regular people who just happened to be really strong, able to run a thousand miles per hour, and immune to aging. They hadn’t had to drink blood since the Civil War, when someone developed a vegetable compound that was even more satisfying, so they were no real threat.

But they weren’t
all
nice.

Victorian vampires—the ones who converted in the eighteen hundreds—are usually the worst. People in the seventeen hundreds were fairly wild and crazy, but in the eighteen hundreds the world went through a sort of prudish phase. Vampires from back then never quite got used to living
in a world where women dressed in outfits that showed their ankles.

Mrs. Smollet, the guidance counselor, was one of those. She was cold and creepy, the kind of vampire who just reinforced all the worst stereotypes.

Kyle the messenger led me down the hall.

“Do you know what they want?” I asked.

Kyle shrugged. “Probably just for you to fill out a form.”

“How’ve you been, anyway?” I asked. “I haven’t seen you since I quit working in the office.”

“Same as ever,” he said. “You still in the running for valedictorian?”

“Not that I know of,” I said. “I’m already accepted at Drake, as long as I don’t flunk out or anything, so I’m not really worrying about that stuff anymore.”

“Nice.”

God, it
was
nice not to have to worry about my class rank. Some might call it senioritis, but I called it a necessary step toward preserving my mental health.

Kyle had me sit down on one of the chairs in front of the secretary’s desk, then disappeared on some other errand.

The door to the principal’s office opened and Mr. Jablonski poked his head out.

“Miss Van Den Berg?” he asked.

“Here I am.”

He motioned me into his office. Mrs. Smollet was standing there behind his desk with her arms crossed, like I was trespassing in her lair or something.

My ice skates were sitting on Mr. Jablonski’s desk.

“Hey!” I said. “Did you guys break into my locker?”

“So they’re yours?” Jablonski asked. “No one planted them there to set you up?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I’m hoping the storm will put enough ice on the sidewalk that I can skate home.”

When I saw that we were getting the first freezing rain of the year, I’d packed my ice skates. Odds that I’d actually be able to skate home were slim to none, but I thought I’d give it a shot. Jason and Amber had already agreed to follow me and give me a ride if I couldn’t make it.

Smollet eyed me skeptically.

“You were going to skate clear from Cornersville back to Preston?”

My town had grown up a lot since I was a kid, but the high school wasn’t finished being built yet, so I had to commute. It probably
was
a lot farther than I could possibly have skated, but I wasn’t about to admit that to Smollet.

“I was going to have help from my friends,” I said.

Mr. Jablonski looked over at Mrs. Smollet like he was going to say something, but she just glared at him. I swear he shuddered.

“Jennifer,” said Mr. Jablonski, “the blades on these skates are very sharp.”

“Sure,” I said.

“Having objects like these in your locker is a violation of the school board’s zero-tolerance policy on deadly weapons,” said Mrs. Smollet.

“You have to be kidding me,” I said.

Mr. Jablonski shook his head. “I’m afraid not. And we have to take that zero-tolerance policy very seriously.”

I knew he meant it. I’d seen kids get in trouble over
having plastic wrap rubber-banded over stuff in their lunch, because rubber bands can be used as projectiles.

But I also knew that the board tended to be very random in terms of how they actually
enforced
that rule. I could get out of this. Jablonski looked nervous already.

I summoned all my old debate team skills and got ready for a fight. I was good at debate. I could have become a lawyer, if I wanted to give up my soul.

“Taking those skates from my locker without a warrant constitutes illegal search and seizure,” I said.

“Locker searches are perfectly legal,” Jablonski said with a sigh. “There’s a thing about it in the handbook.”

“I think the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution trumps the Cornersville Trace High School handbook.”

“Sorry, Jennifer,” said Jablonski. “Lockers are school property, not student property. We can search them all we want. Trust me, we’ve been through this mill with the stoners a few times.”

There went my first defense.

“We have to take all threats seriously, Miss Van Den Berg,” Smollet said. “And Cathy Marconi told us she was afraid you were planning to attack her again.”

I felt the blood rush to my face.

I should have known it was her. That explained the smirk.

“Then I object to the language of her accusation,” I said. “She’s implying that I’ve attacked her
before
, and I haven’t.”

“You broke her nose two years ago,” said Mrs. Smollet.

“That was a volleyball accident, not an attack,” I said.

Cathy used to work at the dollar store where Jason and Amber and I would go to buy stuff for me to destroy when I
got stressed, so she had never quite believed it was an accident when I spiked a volleyball into her face. She’d seen what I did to those little porcelain trinkets out in the parking lot.

“Okay,” Jablonski said. “I’ll sustain your objection. But the fact stands. She thought her safety was at risk, and we found contraband materials in your locker. It’s an automatic in-school suspension.”

I had never been suspended before, and I didn’t want to start now.

I was going to have to play hardball.

“Come on,” I said. “You let people who have been seventeen for decades go to school here. I’m sure I don’t have to remind you of the events of three years ago.”

“That was an isolated incident,” Smollet said. “And you know what the Council of Elders did to Wilhelm.”

“His clan vowed revenge,” I said.

“They’ve also been banished to the Yukon Territory.”

You’ve probably already heard about the events I was talking about—when Wilhelm, a vampire from my school, attacked a girl named Alley and her zombie boyfriend, Doug, at the prom. They were only saved when feral zombies attacked.

It was a pretty messed-up prom.

“Fine,” I said. “But vampires are still more dangerous than ice skates, if you break it down to empirical evidence. Vampires have attacked a student at this school, and they could get here on foot from the Yukon in an hour and a half. I don’t think there’s ever been an ice skate attack.”

I wanted to add “You just got lawyered, bee-yotch,” but I wasn’t stupid.