Vampire Crush(13)
Author: A.M. Robinson

Chapter Five

The next morning I wait for Violet at her locker. When she bustles around the corner, I attack her with another round of questions, including one asking whether or not she has any body art. If they are all in a group of some sort, it stands to reason that they would all have the same tattoo, or at least a variation. I think I am very clever.

"Body art?" she says, pulling a thread off the hem of her dress, a floral cotton baby doll accessorized by blue tights and her multibuttoned boots. Her outfits are getting more and more avant-garde.

"A tattoo," I say. "Or a piercing. Or a tattoo."

She continues to look confused, and I feel my cleverness deflating. Nevertheless, I point at the wobbly-looking butterfly on the exposed ankle of someone who is digging a book out of her locker. "Like that."

"Oh no," she says. "I would never paint insects on myself."

"It doesn’t have to be insects, it can be anything. Like a star, for example."

She brightens. "Neville has something like that!"

My heart starts beating faster. "Anyone else you know?"

"Yes!" she says, and then turns to furiously open her locker and pull out a magazine. She flips to a picture of Rihanna. "Right there," she says, pointing to a spot below her ear. "I think it is very tasteful."

"I was talking about anyone else you know personally. Marisabel, maybe?"

She shakes her head. "No, no one. But that was a very informative article; I feel as though I know Rihanna," she insists before wandering off in the direction of her next class. She’s left her locker door wide open. Thinking that there may be a clue, I peek inside, only to find that it’s full of magazines and nothing else. At least I have quadruple confirmation that they’re not here for academic reasons, I think as I shut it in frustration. So they aren’t all in a Tattoo-of-the-Month club, but Neville definitely acted weird when I asked him about it. What’s the connection?

I spend the next two periods trying to come up with at least one theory that’s not stupid, but come lunchtime I have other things to focus on. It’s Friday, which means that Mr. Amado wants the rough drafts of our articles, and I still don’t have anything to show for Marisabel or Vlad. I decide to go over my questions for the umpteenth time in an effort to build up enough courage to approach him again. Once I’ve found a clean seat in a back corner of the cafeteria, I pull out my notebook and flip it open to the questions I’ve compiled, like "What book would you take to a desert island?" and "What are the top five songs in your playlist?" I debate adding the ones that are really running through my mind, like "Are you or are you not the leader of a cult?" and "If you were to rate your level of psychosis on a scale from one to ten, what would you be? Ten?"

Chewing on my pen cap, I stare at the lined paper, trying to think of euphemisms for "psychosis." A person-shaped shadow eclipses the table. My usual plan of action in these situations is to feign ignorance until the intruder goes away, but this proves impossible when they sit down and start drumming their fingers on the fake wood.

"Do you mind?" I ask without looking up.

"Considering you said I had to come here to talk to you, yeah, I do," the voice says, and then punctuates his sentence with one last tap. "Why are you sitting back here, anyway? It smells like Windex and ketchup."

My head snaps up. James sits across from me wearing a dark green T-shirt and a smirk. His dark bangs swoop rakishly over one eyebrow.

"The pen-in-mouth thing is very attractive, by the way," he says.

I pull it from between my teeth hard enough that they rattle. "What are you doing here?"

"Gives orders and then forgets them. Classy."

"I didn’t think you’d take me seriously."

"It turns out that sitting in a house all day is kind of boring." He leans across the table to spy on my notebook. "What are you writing?"

"Journalism project. An important one," I say, hoping that will be the end of it. I’m still trying to get over the nostalgia that comes from sitting at a lunch table with James Hallowell again.

"Cool," he says, and then makes a point of peering at the empty seats around us. "I see you’re still a loner."

"I was never a loner."

"Sure," James says, "you had plenty of friends. They just happened to be invisible – invisible friends that you ordered to sit on the other side of the sandbox."

I have a vague memory of ordering Pete the Pickle to give me more space, but I shove it to the side. "Maybe I did. Whatever," I say. "Can I please go back to what I’m working on?"

"Right. The journalism project." He twists his head to read the fourth question out loud. "’If you were an animal, what type of animal would you be?’ Wow. Someone should tell Katie Couric to watch her back."

I knew I was scraping the bottom of the barrel with that one. I scratch the animal question out and tell James to shut up. "I have to interview the new students, and these guys are the only ones left." I point my pen at him. "There’s someone looking to interview you, too, you know."

He pulls a crumpled wad of Post-it Notes from his pocket. "So that’s what these are. They were shoved in my locker."

He drops them on the table. I immediately recognize Lindsay’s loopy handwriting. The blue one on my notebook is a very polite "James, please let me know a good time for us to meet. I have some questions to ask you." The hot pink one on my folders screams "PLEASE TALK TO ME" in black marker. Looks like Lindsay’s sliding down the same slippery academic slope as me. At least she’s also struggling to find her last interview subject, I think, and then freeze.

James is here, at school. Which means the end of interviews for Lindsay, and the end of interviews for Lindsay means a lead in Mr. Amado’s polls. I’ve orchestrated my own downfall. Scanning the lunchroom for bright red hair, I spot her at one of the round central tables, leaning over a stack of poster board with a fat red marker. If we can just get through this lunch period without her looking my way, I’ll be golden.

"Dude!" someone yells. "You’re back!"

When I turn my head, James and Danny Baumann are in the middle of a complicated series of fist bumps. After one final flourish, Danny plops down on the bench across from me. It’s been a while since I’ve sat this close to him; the caramel color of his neck still has the power to mesmerize.

"What are you doing here?" Danny asks James. "You moved away in, like, fourth grade or something."