Josie Griffin Is Not a Vampire (2 page)

“God, I hate those ads,” I said.

Mom opened her sensible brown umbrella to cover both of us. “Poor girls look emaciated,” she said, studying the sickeningly skinny stick figures in the billboard, all hip bones and dark eyes under masses of long, tangled hair. The center girl in the ad wore the same dress Madison had on. Across the bottom of the billboard, scrawled like blood-red graffiti, were the words
Zombie Love Attack!

A sharp barking noise, almost a laugh, leapt from my mouth. “It’s the perfect caption, though, isn’t it?” I had half an urge to snap a picture of my brain-dead ex-friends beneath that stupid catchphrase and post it on
my blog, but they crossed the street and climbed into Kevin’s latest meathead muscle car plucked right off his daddy’s lot.

“Nice car,” my dad said and whistled through his teeth.

“God, Dad!”

He looked at me apologetically. “Sorry, Josie, but what do you expect? The kid is driving a mint late-60s Chevy Impala. You don’t see many of those these days.”

“I hope he wrecks it,” I muttered, but as I watched them go, my chest hurt. I wouldn’t cry, though. I pushed down that sadness and let it turn bitter in my gut. “You know what?” I said to my parents as the rain began to fall in quick sharp pellets. They both looked at me and waited. “I don’t regret what I did for minute.” My mom’s mouth dropped open and my dad looked like I’d sucker punched him.

“Good god, Josephine!” Dad ran his hands through what remained of his hair. “Maybe you do need anger management therapy.”

“Maybe so,” I said as Kevin, Madison, and Chloe turned the corner out of my sight. I closed my eyes and remembered the aluminum bat in my hands. The way it thunked down on the trunk of his car as he scrambled out the passenger side door, yanking up his pants. I saw Madison’s face, staring at me in horror from the backseat. For just a moment I smiled as I remembered slamming the bat over and over onto the windshield. But my
glee was short-lived because that feeling of the glass cracking into a thousand pieces under the weight of my fury was the same as the shattering of my heart that night.

m
y first act as a juvenile offender was to meet with my social worker one week after my court appearance. Since I was officially grounded until I hit thirty and school didn’t start for another few weeks, I was almost looking forward to it. At least I’d have something new to say on JosieHatestheWorld.

“You are not wearing that,” my mom groaned when I trudged through the dining room in my favorite short denim skirt with skull and crossbones patches on the butt, an old Siouxsie and the Banshees tee that my aunt gave me, and my best clunky black boots.

“What’s wrong with it?” I said, looking down at myself. “I wasn’t tried for fashion offenses.”

Mom hopped up from the table where she was paying bills and waved her pen at me. “But, honey, you have to present yourself to your social worker as a person who’s trying to change!”

“Why?” I asked, then I realized that she was probably talking about the purple streaks in my hair and the diamond stud in my nose. I had no intention of taking those out, so I smiled at my mom and said, “You’re the one always telling me to be myself.”

“That’s true, but please just put on something presentable to meet with the social worker. Then wear whatever you want for the rest of the day.” I could see the worry lines around her eyes. Lines my dad swore I’d personally etched onto her face in the past few months. “You can never take back a first impression, Josephine.”

“Hmmm, where have I heard that one before?” I muttered, because that had become my mother’s favorite refrain lately.

Mom tossed up her hands in exasperation, a gesture I’d also become very familiar with recently. “Just do it for me, would you?”

I felt bad, sort of. It wasn’t like I was trying to antagonize my mom by looking like this. She just chose to be antagonized by how I looked. “Fine,” I said in an effort to be a better daughter after what I’d put my mother through in court last week. “But I don’t have time to wash the streaks out of my hair.”

“Wear a headband,” she called after me as I marched up the stairs.

In my room, I snapped a quick picture of myself, then I whipped off my boots, skirt, and T-shirt and rummaged around in my closet for a pair of khaki pants, a pale blue blouse, and brown flats—the uniform of Josie Past. I took
another picture. I logged onto JosieHatestheWorld and uploaded both pix with a description of how Mom made me change from A to B for this meeting. Under picture B of me in my stupid khakis, I wrote, “I will not, under any circumstances, wear a headband!” I posted everything and logged off.

My blog had been my solace ever since Kevin and I broke up. It was the one place I could go to vent. And I went there a lot. I had another blog before the breakup called JosieRahRah. Old Josie liked to write about cheerleading camp and all my volunteer tasks and post pix of me and my “friends” (pardon me while I barf). I used to think I had so many things to post about. I was an A student, a great friend, a peppy cheerleader, editor of the school paper, and a stellar member of my community. I kept waiting for exciting things to happen for me.

But what did I expect? Awards? Accolades? Presidential Seals of Approval? Ha! Having my boyfriend and my best friend cheat on me while my other best friend knew it was going on wasn’t what I had in mind. When it happened, I ditched JosieRahRah and started JosieHatestheWorld. The irony being, I had so much more to say these days.

The good thing about starting JosieHatestheWorld was that I figured out what I want to do with my life. I always knew I wanted to be a reporter, but I used to think I’d be a TV news anchor or cover an art beat or something fluffy like that. But now I know that I want to be an investigative reporter. Like Graham Goren, a
local journalist who’s always uncovering political scandals and blowing the whistle on greedy corporations. If I had asked more questions, dug deeper, and followed my instincts that something was fishy between Kevin and Madison, I would have found out about them long before Chloe spilled her guts and I would have saved myself a lot of heartache. I vowed after that experience to never have my head in the sand again and to use my writing abilities to expose the injustices of the world someday.

On my way back downstairs, I sang, “I love you, Mom,” and even though I might have sounded like a smart aleck, I meant it. I did love my mom. Even if she was annoying the crap out of me these days.

She looked up and nodded. “Much better,” she said. “Call if you’ll be late for dinner.”

Gladys took a few minutes to warm up. You would, too, if you were a 1984 poop brown Honda Civic hatchback. She wheezed and coughed like an emphysema patient then creaked and shuddered as I eased her out onto the streets of Broad Ripple, where even the squirrels were polite. “Come on, old girl,” I told Gladys, patting the dashboard. “You can do it, honey.”

My car was so old it still had a tape deck. Which, by the way, I loved. How totally retro and weird was that? Kev kept trying to get me to buy a fancy new stereo, like what he had in his vintage car, or at least buy one of those thingies that can convert the tape deck to play MP3s, but I was a purist. If Gladys had a tape deck, I
would listen to tapes. Luckily my aunt JoJo (yep, I’m her namesake) was a packrat and she bequeathed all her mixes from college to me so Gladys could sing. I popped in a mixed tape called
The Wall Came Tumbling Down
from 1989 when JoJo spent her junior year of college in London and the Berlin Wall fell. I sang along to New Order and The Smiths as I cruised toward downtown Indianapolis to meet Atonia Babineaux, my newly assigned social worker.

Driving through the perfectly parallel streets of Indy-no-place always reminded me that there was not a single interesting thing happening here. Never a diagonal for this grid-town. It was like someone drew a giant X over the state and put the capitol building where the lines intersected. Drew a circle around that building and called it “The Circle.” Then radiated lines in ninety degree angles to one another from there. The streets were named after dead presidents (Washington, Jefferson, Madison) and states (Illinois, Michigan, Ohio). With the exception of Meridian Street, which bisects the city in half. Those street-namers were some creative geniuses.

Indianapolis is a poor excuse for a city, if you ask me, not that anybody did. Whenever I complained about Indiana, my dad liked to point out all the famous people who grew up here like James Whitcomb Riley, Tavis Smiley, and Garfield the Cat. Kurt Vonnegut being his favorite to harp on. But as I always pointed out to my dad, they all, even Garfield, left in the end. Which was
exactly what I was planning to do as soon as I graduated. I’d blow this Popsicle stand and hightail it to the Windy City with Aunt JoJo where I’d go to University of Chicago (knock on wood that I got accepted) and study journalism. I couldn’t wait to move to Chi-town. It was a real city with interesting people. I was just biding my time until I got there because, let me assure you, Indy had not one single interesting person. Not one.

Okay, so maybe there might have been one interesting person in Indianapolis. Or at least one very strange person and she was sitting right across from me. Atonia Babineaux was small, skinny, and extremely pale with short, spiky black hair and eyes so dark I swore I could see the moon in their centers. She was also a huge space cadet.

“It must be here,” she mumbled, riffling through stacks and stacks of manila folders on her desk. “Somewhere. What did you say your name is again?”

“Josephine Griffin,” I told her for the fourth time. “But I go by Josie.” If the next six weeks of my life weren’t in her hands, I might have found the whole scenario very amusing, but as it was, I was worried. “I had my court date last week. Maybe my file hasn’t made it here yet.”

She looked at me and blinked. I couldn’t tell if she was an old person who looked young or a young person who looked old. “You’re new,” she said, and I nodded. “Why didn’t you say so?”

“Um, I did. When I first got here,” I told her, trying to keep the sarcasm out of my voice. First impressions!

Atonia grabbed a stack of paper from her in-box and flipped through all the sheets, muttering. “Gretchen, Gretchen, Gretchen.”

“Excuse me,” I said, trying not to be obnoxious, but this lady was causing me some serious anxiety. “You do know that my name is Josephine, not Gretchen.”

She looked at me again as if I might be the one who was confused. “Really? Josephine?”

“Since I was born,” I said.

“Well now…” She went back to digging.

While she was shuffling papers I took a good look around. Not that I thought being a juvenile justice social worker would ever be glamorous, but I was expecting a little more. Maybe a few “Hang in There” posters with kittens clinging to branches or pictures of mountain climbers exhorting me to “Reach for the Sky.” This place was a dump. The green paint on the walls was peeling, the brown carpeting looked (and smelled) like vomit, and the one grimy window had a lovely view of a brick wall. Plus every surface overflowed with paper. I wondered what was in the filing cabinets—sandwiches?

Atonia slumped back in her chair. “I can’t find you.”

I raised an eyebrow at her. “I’m right here.”

“Don’t get cute, toots.”

“Sorry,” I mumbled. “I realize it’s not your fault. Obviously somebody didn’t send you the paperwork, it’s just that I’m eager to get started with this whole
community service and anger management thing so I can get it off my record. I’m about to start my senior year of high school and I don’t want it to interfere with getting into college.” See, Mom, I still had it. I could pander like a politician when I needed something. I leaned forward and gave her my best Josie-of-old smile. “Is there anything we can do to make this happen today?”

Maybe it was the khaki pants and the blouse or the way I was sweet-talking her, but whatever it was, Atonia shrugged. “Sure. Why not?” She grabbed a pad of paper and a pen off her desk and opened a big directory. “Anger management. Really?” She looked me up and down. “You don’t look like the angry sort.”

I just shrugged.

“What’d you do?” she asked while she flipped the pages.

“Bashed someone’s windshield in with a baseball bat,” I told her.

“Tsk, tsk,” she said. “Naughty, naughty.” She copied down some info onto a slip of paper. “Here’s a group that meets this afternoon. Can you make it?”

Wait, let me check my social calendar. Right, I have no friends anymore and nothing better to do, so yeah, I guess I could make it. “Sure,” I said, taking the paper from her. I squinted at the letters, barely decipherable, and asked, “What about my community service?”

“Hmm.” She searched her desk again. She stuck her head under her desk and dug through a cardboard box full of junk. “Where did I put that directory?” I wondered
if she’d ever heard of a fancy new contraption called a computer and that newfangled Internet they have now?

“Can’t I just pick my own place?” I asked, because I was ready to get the H out of her office.

She looked up at me from somewhere around her knees. “Like what?”

“I used to volunteer for Habitat for Humanity. I could call them and see if they need my help.”

“Nope, the place must be approved.” She sat upright again and leaned back in her chair so far I thought she’d topple over. “Look, tell you what. You seem like a nice girl. I know a place that needs some extra help.” She madly scribbled on another piece of paper. “It’s a center called Helping American Girls.”

“Seriously?” I asked, wondering if I’d heard her right. “You mean like the dolls?”

She looked up at me. “Are you making a joke?”

“Are you?” I asked.

“It’s a shelter,” she told me. “For runaway teen girls. I know the person who runs it and one of her workers just took a”—she paused and thought—“leave of absence. She needs some extra help for about a month.” She shoved the paper at me. “Just make sure she signs this time sheet every week.”

I nodded and said, “Thank you.”

“You’d better hurry if you want to make that group,” she said, pointing to the clock with her pencil. Then she laid her head down on her desk like she was going to go to sleep. “Give the therapist my note and I’ll send the
paperwork over later this week,” she muttered with her eyes half closed.