Vampire Crush(28)
Author: A.M. Robinson

This time he doesn’t protest. He looks out the window, and at this moment, I would give anything to have his mind-reading powers. But since I don’t, I cross the room, open my bedroom door, and peer down the short hallway to the stairs.

"You’ll want to be extra quiet by my parents’ room – Marcie’s a light sleeper," I say. "But once you reach Caroline’s, you’re good. She could sleep through a monster truck rally," I whisper, but when I turn back to check that he’s heard, the room is empty and the window is open. James is gone.

Chapter Ten

Saturday morning breakfast is a dismal affair; Caroline is still sniffling over Vlad and complaining that her pancakes are bubbly, I hardly slept for thinking about my conversation with James, and my father is upset that he can’t find this morning’s paper.

"I don’t know who took it," Marcie said.

"Vampires," I mutter as I smoosh a piece of pancake deeper into the syrup. From here on out, that’s my go-to theory for everything. Marcie gives me a strange look before announcing that she has good news.

"You found it?" my father asks.

"No, Fred," she says patiently, "I did not find it while sitting stationary in my chair. I was talking about how we have new neighbors!"

I drop my fork. "What? No we don’t."

"Yes, we do," she insists.

"Who are they?" my father asks, having resigned himself to eating his breakfast sans paper.

"Well, I don’t know that part yet," Marcie admits. "No one answers when I knock. But I left a cake and a card on the porch last night, and this morning when I was jogging I noticed that it was gone."

I can’t believe James was duped by a cake, especially since he can’t even eat it. But I guess I shouldn’t be surprised – there are a lot of things I can’t believe about James as of late. Still, that doesn’t mean I should sic Marcie on him and let her get caught up in this too.

"That could mean anything. Maybe raccoons took it," I suggest and then want to do a forehead smack. Discovering vampires has really thrown a wrench in my concept of reality if my first theory is cake-stealing raccoons.

"The dish was gone."

"Or thieves?" I try again. "Dad’s paper is missing too," I say, grateful for my father’s commiserating nod. Marcie doesn’t say anything else, but she’s still emanating a faint glow that I recognize all too well as investigative pride. It’s only a matter of time before she lays another booby-casserole.

After breakfast I try to call Lindsay’s cell, but there’s no answer. I try again after lunch, and three more times after eating dinner. Finally, on Sunday morning I call her house. Her younger brother picks up. He sounds about nine.

"Can I speak with Lindsay?" I ask, and then listen to his thunderous footsteps as he runs to find her. He returns a few seconds later, breathless.

"She says to tell you that she doesn’t want to talk to you. Not now, not ever. That is a quote."

Even though it’s what I expected, I’m still disappointed. "But she’s okay?" I ask. "No one’s visited the house?"

"Robert came over."

"But no one else?" I prod.

"Um . . . no?" he says, starting to sound a little nervous. "I have to go now. I’m not really supposed to answer the phone."

"Wait! Can you tell her I’m – "

He hangs up. Defeated, I return to my desk, where I’ve been staring at a blank page for the last three hours. It’s difficult to write perky, upbeat articles about the new students when you keep wanting to end sentences about their hobbies with "P.S. He’s a vampire." Even though the profiles are light-years away from what they should be, I finally give up and print them out, thinking how funny it is that a week ago I would have been up until three A.M. debating whether to use "of" or "for." But now I need to make sure that what almost happened in the woods on Friday never has a chance to happen again.

Pulling out my yearbook, I set to circling possibilities. Considering how quickly Vlad targeted Caroline, I decide to start with girls who are similar to her – in other words, popular upperclassmen who have lived here their entire lives. When I’ve got a list of about twenty, I plot how best to find out if they have any starry birthmarks. Most of them seem to be involved in either cheerleading or athletics, which is promising, but lurking next to the locker rooms without a reason will not win me any awards for subtlety. I need a cover.

Idly, I flip through the team photos in the hopes that it might inspire me. A tiny "? Mark Echolls" can be found beneath the majority of them, and Mark himself even pops up in a few, his bespectacled face shining. I suspect this is less from endorphins and more because he’s surrounded by fourteen tall, vibrant-looking girls. A senior now, Mark has been covering girls’ sports since I started. Mr. Amado tried to take him off of it once, and he almost cried.

But this is a matter of life and death – if I can convince Mr. Amado to let us switch up the assignments, writing up the sports articles would be a perfect reason to be in the gym. Not to mention that it would show a lot of organizational initiative and "thinking big," something that puts Mr. Amado over the moon. He still raves about how last year’s editor in chief took it upon herself to restructure the way we route articles for copyediting. This could be my way of staying in the game. Two goals, one stone. Bingo.

I am on a roll. Now all I need to figure out is exactly what the Danae will want to do with this girl once they find her. Much as I hate to admit it, I think I’ve burned the few vampire bridges that I had. Violet’s unlikely to talk to me ever again, and James . . .

My eyes wander to his window, which is dark as usual. What does he do over there all day, anyway? Knit with the blind? I yank the shade down so hard that it bangs against the window. I need to focus. Why is it when you need a few prophetic dreams or a creepy librarian with a book called Vampyre, they’re nowhere to be found? Instead I’ve got a tattoo, a name, and sixteen years of conflicting pop culture, which is no help at all . . . or is it? James seems to be a walking grab bag of popular vampire mythology. Since I don’t have any better options, I brainstorm what else pop culture has taught me about vampires.

? Vampires could really use a sharp push out of the nineteenth century.? Half-breed vampires often find themselves compelled to fight crime.? Someone should study the correlation between broodiness and vampirism.? Vampires love cliques, they just call them covens.? No one ever expects a vampire baby.As I write the last one, something niggles at the back of my mind. My sophomore-year English class was taught by a woman with horrible time management skills, which meant we spent approximately twelve weeks of the first semester on Greek mythology and two weeks on the entire works of Shakespeare. I Google "Danae" and am rewarded with confirmation that in Greek mythology, Danae was the mother of Perseus, one bona fide miracle baby. It’s not a lot, but at least it’s one working theory. And hey – Vlad may have the strength, the knowledge, and the high levels of insanity, but I have Wikipedia.