Vampire Crush(55)
Author: A.M. Robinson

He follows me everywhere. I come out of math, he is standing by the water fountain; I leave chemistry, and he is waiting at the corner with a cool offer to carry my books. I was crazy to think that I could avoid him for an entire day – I can hardly escape him for a minute. After a clever shortcut through the band hallway, I manage to make it to the cafeteria without a tail. Lindsay waves at me from her seat at the round table near the back. She scoots over when I approach, clearing away the papers and pens that are scattered all over the table.

"You made it!" she says. "We’re using lunchtime to work on the upcoming push to get recycled napkins in the cafeteria." She points to the rest of the Green Team. Most of them are either college-prep junkies or band guys who have crushes on Lindsay. And then there’s Mark Echolls, who frowns at me from beneath his shaggy brown bangs. I can’t tell if the pizza sauce clinging to the corners of his lips makes him look more or less threatening.

"Thanks for covering for me on Monday," I say, but he just slides to the side. I take a seat, doing my best to arrange myself so that the cement column acts as a shield between me and the rest of the cafeteria.

Lindsay reaches over to push a few glitter pens toward me. "Do you want to outline ‘Napkin’ in blue? Elise is doing ‘Change’ in green."

I am grateful for the distraction, even if it involves glitter pens. I have just made it to the fifth letter when the sound of a familiar voice causes me to over-squeeze the tube in my hand and dot my "L."

"Sophie McGee," Vlad says. "Have you seen her? No doubt she will be sitting in a corner somewhere."

I spot the back of his pale head several tables away. If I can see him, that means he can see me. I slide closer to Mark to conceal myself, but he pushes me away. When Lindsay notices our tussle, she follows my gaze to Vlad and then gives me a worried look.

"Don’t let him see me," I say just he starts to turn around. Panicked, I duck beneath the table, holding my breath as his boots approach. When he asks if anyone at the table has seen me, Lindsay starts to tell him that I went home sick, but Mark interrupts.

"She’s under the table," he says with obvious glee, but it’s followed by a smacking sound that I’m pretty sure is courtesy of Lindsay. "Ow!" Mark says. "What? She is."

And that’s how nemeses are made.

When I creep out, Vlad is watching me with barely controlled rage. "Sophochka does like her games."

Before I can figure out how to handle this situation, I hear the clatter of a tray being dropped. Caroline is standing behind us, trembling like someone just punched her in the stomach.

"Liar," she says. "You are such a liar."

"Caroline – ," I start, but she is already running toward the door.

I don’t catch up with her until she’s outside the auditorium, and I have to step in front of her to stop her from moving. The tear tracks running down her cheeks stop me cold.

"Caroline, none of what people are saying is true."

"Then why did everyone see you having a lovers’ tuft in the hallway this morning?"

"A lovers’ tuft?"

"Yeah."

Correcting her right now would be mean . . . and would probably result in my immediate incineration from the sister death ray. "That was not a lover’s tuft. That was a ‘stop stalking me’ tuft."

"Vlad? Stalking you?" she scoffs, and runs her eyes over my outfit, which I admit happens to be a little mismatched due to my impending forced vampire marriage. "Please," she says coldly.

Her dismissal stings. We have always had differing opinions on the amount of time and effort that should be put into designing an outfit, but she has never been outright rude. She knows it, too – for a second her disdain wavers, but then anger swamps it once again.

"You lied to me," she says. "I asked you what happened at the party, and you lied. I asked you if Vlad was at our house, and you lied. It was his Hummer. You’ve been dating him the whole time."

I grab her arms to try to get her to focus on me. "Caroline, he’s a crazy person. Nothing he could do would ever make me date him. Ever. I am doing everything I can to get him to stay away from me for good," I say, but she slaps me off and starts to run down the hallway. I whirl around to call after her, and then freeze.

Vlad is standing at the end of the hallway, and from the way he is looking at me, I would say that he overheard everything. As Caroline runs by him, he makes a show of watching her disappear around the corner. When he turns back to me, he gives me a mean smile that I understand all too well.

Caroline makes it to her last two classes. I know because I check, earning a nice start to my tardy-slip collection. My plan is to find her at the end of the day, explain things as best I can, and whisk her away to the safety of home, where I will convince my father to start building a bomb shelter made entirely of garlic and sunlight. When the final bell rings, I try to rush out of study hall and intercept her at her locker, but Mr. Hanfield stops me.

"You can’t leave the book rack like that," he says, pushing up his glasses and crossing his arms. "It’s a mess."

The book rack is always a mess. Most of them don’t have covers, and all of them have at least one drawing of a penis in the margins. But I can’t get into an argument, not now. "I will do it next time, I promise."

"No, I’m tired of you students treating things like they are yours to destroy." He points to the books that hang over the edges of the rack, their pages mangled. "Do it now."

I stack them up and jab them into the open spots. "There. Done."

"That’s not finished," he says.

"I don’t care!"

He screws up his face in disbelief. "Would you like detention, young lady?" he asks, grabbing his pad of conduct slips and starting to scribble something down.

I look to the hallway, now full of catcalls and laughs and meeting times. If I’m going to get detention anyway, might as well make it something worthwhile. While Mr. Hanfield’s head is still bowed, I slip out into the mass of exiting students and head straight for Caroline’s locker, which happens to be on the other side of the school.

She’s not there. I tell myself to be calm. Caroline is a popular girl of habit. After school, she and her friends can normally be found in the front hallway, perched on the empty ledge that used to contain photos of National Merit finalists until the year we didn’t have any. Now they are too embarrassed to fill it with anything else, and Caroline and company have moved in.

Today, however, Caroline is missing. After muttering a curse under my breath, I fight against the flow of exiting students and make my way to the side wall. When I get there, Caroline’s friends are busy arguing over whether or not belly rings are trashy. Amanda looks up as I approach.