Extraordinary<li> (21 page)

I spit them all out the way Mrs. Smollet would have said the names of deviant sex acts. I played up the first syllable in “Balzac” like crazy, then paused for a moment before finishing the word.

And when I looked out into the auditorium, I saw that people were laughing.

For a split second I thought they were laughing
at
me, but then I realized they were laughing because I was doing a good job of being funny. Even Cathy cracked a smile.

“Now sing!” Gregory shouted.

And I started to sing my part of “Pick-a-Little, Talk-a-Little,” and, mysteriously, I nailed it. I was probably pitchy as
hell, but I sang it like I meant it, and it worked. I ran around the stage doing the hand motions and all the exaggerated poses the mayor’s wife is always doing.

And I actually had
fun
.

But it isn’t over for Jenny once she gets that date with Fred in
Born to Be Extraordinary
. She still has to deal with Mutual and his parents trying every dirty trick in the book to keep her from making it to the dance in the first place. And saving Fred from that rebel group that tries to kidnap him.

And the story wasn’t over for me, either. Not by a long shot.

After the rehearsal, I glided out of the auditorium. Eileen followed me, notebook in hand.

“That was wonderful!” she said. “You were born to play that part!”

I smiled. “I like this acting stuff more than I thought.”

Then, all of a sudden, the tornado siren went off.

In case you’re in California or something and they don’t have these things where you are, here in Iowa we have alarms that go off in the school when there’s a tornado warning, just like the alarms that go off when there’s a fire. And a couple of times a year, we have tornado drills.

When there’s a tornado and you’re at home, you go to the basement. But if one hits and you’re at school, the thing to do is duck and cover: get down on your knees, bend over, and cover your head with your hands. Honestly, I don’t think hiding from a tornado like that is any better than hiding from a nuclear attack in the same position, but, well, school boards have to tell students to do
something
or people will say they don’t care about the students’ safety.

All over the halls, people started to get down against the wall, but no one panicked or anything. People who were combing their hair or whatever finished what they were doing first. No one thought it was an actual tornado—everyone knew that we rarely get those in November. But if you don’t participate in a tornado drill, you can get detention.

I was just ducking down myself when I saw Murray appear at the end of the hall.

“What the hell’s happening?” I shouted at him.

“Get down!” he shouted back.

I got down.

For the next couple of minutes, while the siren next to the school blared, I could hear people running around and shouting.

I couldn’t see what was going on, but if Murray was here, obviously the vampire honor guard had been called in. This was no tornado drill.

Then I heard Mrs. Smollet saying, “False alarm.”

“We’re taking every threat seriously,” said Murray.

“Well, this was a false alarm.”

The sirens stopped blaring, and Smollet yelled out, “Back to class, everyone. Nothing happened. Nothing to worry about.”

I got up and walked over to Murray.

“What just happened?” I asked.

“Someone called in a Wilhelm sighting,” he told me. “I figured it was fake, but it was a good drill for us. We were pretty tight, huh?”

“I wouldn’t want to be a vampire attacking this place,” I said.

He smiled proudly and patted one of the other vampires, a guy with a mustache and a flannel shirt, on the back. “Nice work, Vlad,” he said. “You ever meet Jennifer Van Den Berg? She’s in the alliance.”

“Nice to meet you,” Vlad said.

“Hi,” I said.

“How’s that friend of yours?” Murray asked.

“He’s gone into hiding, like you suggested.”

“She’s got this friend whose parents are vampires,” Murray explained to Vlad. “They want to do a diciotto, and I figure his best shot is just staying someplace they’d have to break into until we get those outlawed.”

“Five, ten years, tops,” said Vlad. “I know that seems like a while to you, but it doesn’t seem like too much when you’re immortal.”

“And hey,” said Murray, “nowadays you can go to college online, get your laundry sent out, whatever. No reason to get off your couch, anyway, am I right?”

“Sure,” I said. “He’ll be fine.”

A couple of hours later, I met up with Jason and Amber in the parking lot and told them I’d gotten the date, and that Cathy had actually helped.

“Marconi?” said Amber. “And you don’t think she’s just setting you up to embarrass you?”

“She might be,” I said. “But she got me the date, so I don’t care what she’s planning to do.”

“So what
did
she do?” Amber asked. “Not that I’m surprised you could do it or anything, but I want to know!”

I blushed a bit more, then told them the story.

The three of us looked at one another, then Jason and
Amber started laughing. I actually felt a bit bad for Cathy—she was going to all this trouble, and saving my butt, and I was sure that Fred was never going to convert her.

When we got to Jason’s house, we found Mutual pacing back and forth, looking scatterbrained and manic, like this was prison and he’d been in the hole for twelve hours—not just hanging around while we were all in school.

“I have an idea,” he said.

“What?” I asked.

“Gorilla suit,” he said.

“Gorilla suit?”

“I’ll get a gorilla suit. And I’ll just wear that every time I go out, so they won’t know it’s me.”

Amber shook her head. “Sweetie,” she said, “I think they’ll guess that something weird is going on if they see a guy in a gorilla suit coming out of the house.”

Mutual made a sort of half-scream, half-grunt noise. The kind of noise you make after you stand in line for three hours and find out they don’t have the form you need to sign, then you stub your toe as you’re walking out the door.

“It hasn’t even been twenty-four hours, and I’m going crazy!” he said. “It’s like they’re still keeping me locked down. Only now I’m letting them!”

“Maybe we can get you moved someplace else,” I said. “I saw the vampire honor guard in action today—I’m sure they could move you to a place of your own.”

I had been fantasizing about this all day, actually.

Once I had some money, the four of us could rent a little cottage together in the South of Grand area, or maybe one of those Craftsman-style houses in the neighborhood near
the Playhouse, and paint the walls all sorts of funky colors. There would be a view of the city skyline from the roof, where we would have picnics. Life would be great, even if he could never leave.

But he wasn’t thinking that far ahead. He kicked the ground a couple more times.

“And I don’t even want to think about what might happen if you don’t get that date with Fred,” he went on. “I should be out there, helping you!”

“Oh, I got that, actually,” I said.

He stopped kicking and looked up.

“You did?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Cathy thought that if she set him up with me, he’d decide to convert her. It’ll never work, but I got a date out of it.”

“But I thought he hated dances.”

I smiled. “Well, I think she promised him I’d do a lot more than just kissing.”

“Okay,” said Mutual. “But … you won’t, right?”

“She couldn’t if she wanted to,” said Amber. “You probably never saw all the commercials, since you didn’t have a TV up there, but this one girl let a vampire squeeze her butt, and it bruised so badly they had to amputate!”

“Is
that
how it happened?” asked Jason. “I always imagined him just squeezing it right off.”

“Ew!” said Amber, though she was laughing.

“I wouldn’t let him do anything even if I could,” I said. “As soon as I get that kiss, I’ll thank him for a wonderful evening and be on my way.”

And I gave Mutual a kiss, but his face didn’t light up this time.

“It’s actually kind of mean,” said Jason. “Getting his hopes up like that. Poor guy’s been a high school horn-dog who can’t get any action without killing the girl for decades now.”

“He’ll understand when I explain it was life or death,” I said. “I just hope I don’t screw it up. Should I get something … enticing to wear?”

“Try not to see him at all between now and then,” said Amber. “Not that you couldn’t entice him, but now that you’ve got the date, don’t give him a chance to change his mind.”

I nodded. “Good point.”

We talked over my options, and in the end I decided to skip school altogether—the less I saw of Fred, Cathy, Smollet, and Gregory Grue, the better. I sent Fred a text saying I wasn’t feeling very well, so I’d be staying home the next day to make sure I was feeling strong enough to make it to the dance on Saturday.

I didn’t realize it, but I had just confirmed the stories he’d heard about my health.

He immediately sent one back telling me to “be strong and do what you need to do!”

Meanwhile, Mutual stared up at the ceiling. After a couple of minutes he stepped away from the conversation and flopped down on the couch. The rest of the evening, when he talked at all it was just low muttering again, like his first night in town, only even weaker. He was back to being broken.

Of course, now that I look back, I shouldn’t have been so smug and happy, either. I was so blinded by my delusion that I’d pulled off an impossible scheme that I wasn’t thinking about the things I should have been thinking about.

Like the fact that I still had a unicorn stinking up my toolshed that I was too afraid to check on.

And I probably should have been more worried about this “vampire friend” of Gregory’s, and whether it was a clue that Wilhelm or his clan was really up to no good.

I should have been wary of what Cathy’s real motives were. The fact that she
wanted
me to go to the dance with Fred was super-suspicious.

And I should have known that with forty-eight hours to go until the dance, there was no
way
that Gregory wouldn’t be looking for a way to screw things up.

I don’t usually like to disagree with Shakespeare, but I’m not really disagreeing with
him
if I say no one is born great. I’m just disagreeing with Malvolio, the character in
Twelfth Night
who said that. And Malvolio is sort of a dork.

I don’t believe anyone is born great, or born extraordinary. Well, Shakespeare was, maybe, and I guess I can think of a couple of other artists and stuff who just seemed to be channeling something divine instead of living their own life sometimes, but that’s about it. The rest of us have to work for it.

And sometimes even working for it isn’t enough. You really do have to have it thrust upon you to get you started.

That’s pretty much what happened to me. If your life gets extraordinary enough, you might end up with no choice but to start being an extraordinary person.

*   *   *

Friday morning, I told Mom I had a headache and didn’t want to go to school. I had never faked sick before, so she didn’t doubt me.

Just to make sure my date for the next night was still on, I sent Fred a text saying I couldn’t wait for the dance.

He sent back a smiley face, so I figured I was okay for the day. I spent the morning on the Internet, trying to see if anyone else had ever survived the threat of death by way of a fairy godparent.

By noon, I think I had read every decent webpage about fairies and known species of post-humans, both living and extinct, in the world, and hadn’t found anything that would explain Gregory Grue. He must have been part of one of the “uncontacted tribes” that were known to exist here and there.

If they only came out one year out of every twenty, it made sense that we wouldn’t know much about them. They hadn’t been in the world at all since the other post-humans went public.

I still had Melinda’s piano lesson to teach that day and couldn’t really afford to cancel it, so in the early afternoon I forced myself away from the computer and sat down at the piano to refresh my memory on the piece she was working on. I was just about done when I heard a knock.

I looked up to see Mrs. Smollet’s face.

“What do you want?” I asked, through the window. “You’re not invited here.”

“I hate to interrupt your attempt to play hooky,” she said.

“I’m playing piano, not hooky,” I said in my best smart-aleck voice.

“I needed to confirm that you’re still alive,” she said.

“Well, obviously I am.”

“I can see that,” she said. “But there’s a rumor going around school that you were killed by Wilhelm’s clan this morning.”

Now I stood up.

“What?” I asked.

“I know it’s nonsense,” she said. “But I was sent to check on you.”

“Well, here I am,” I said. “You can leave now.”

I went back to playing piano, but she didn’t leave.

“Can I come in?” she called through the window.

“You can see I’m alive,” I said. “What else do you need?”

“Please?”

I sighed and opened the window so that she could hear better. I wouldn’t have let her into my house for anything.

“I spoke to Christopher Marlowe,” she told me. “Or to his assistant, at least. I think I could arrange for you to meet him. You could hear some first-hand stories about Mr. Shakespeare.”

“And all I have to do is convince a friend to become a teenage member of the walking undead,” I said. “Some bargain.”

She looked a bit uncomfortable.

“Jennifer,” she said, “I don’t much care for diciottos, myself. But I know that his parents are determined to hold one, and I believe the best thing I can do is find a way to make it a quick and relatively painless one for him. You’re the key to that.”