by Douglas Rees
I'd never thought about writing before. How did people do it? Did they just sit down and start writing? How did they know when to stop? Where did they get their ideas?
That was what I needed, an idea. I thought about all the books I'd read. But they'd already been written. I thought about the things I'd heard about, seen on TV, or imagined. None of it gave me any ideas.
Finally, at 11:05,1 decided to write an epic. Shadwell liked epics. Besides, an epic was poetry, and that meant the lines were shorter than in a regular story. That was a good reason to write one.
I got a clean sheet of paper and wrote.
The.
That was as far as I could get. The Epic of The. I just stared at that piece of paper until Dad got up and told me to go to bed.
Well, it wasn't due for another seventeen weeks. By that time, I'd have the rest of it filled in.
My teachers looked a little shocked when I turned in my homework the next day. As for the kids, they all looked at me like I was some kind of large bug they'd never seen before. They kept eyeing my cheek, which was funny because Ileana's mark was gone, as far as I could tell. Maybe vampires could still see it. A couple of times I caught people whispering the words Ileana Antonescu and stoker.
As far as Ileana went, she seemed not to see me at all, not even at lunch—I mean dinner. And as soon as she was done, she got up from her place at the table and disappeared.
I did get a smile and a "Hi" from Justin. I had the feeling he was waiting to see if I wanted to be friends. I wasn't sure about that, so I just said "Hey" back to him.
I didn't see Gregor or any of his gang except once on the stairs. They were coming down from the top floor, which meant they were at least juniors. If they saw me, they didn't give any sign of it.
When I got to water polo, the guys on the team
started chanting "sto-ker, sto-ker, sto-ker, sto-ker," and Brian shouted, "Hey, here comes a private supply."
It wasn't hard to get what he meant by private supply, but I couldn't figure out stoker. I wasn't going to ask these guys, though. I wasn't that dumb.
Underskinker came out from his office with a can of Old Aroostook in his hand and stared at us like he was surprised we were there.
Finally, he said, "Okay. We gadda team again. You punks get inna wadduh."
Groaning, the other guys jumped into the pool.
"Hey, Coach," said the semiweasel with red hair, "where's the ball?"
"Shudup, Lapierre," Underskinker said. "Just swim around till I tell yuh to stop." And he turned to go.
"Coach, I have some questions," I said.
Underskinker stopped, turned around, and pondered my statement. Finally he said, "Whud?"
"Like, what's our schedule of games?" I said.
"It's posted inna office," he said. "Look id up an' don' bodduh me." He rotated himself back toward the locker room and his beer supply.
"Well, when's our next game, then?" I called after him.
"Look id up," Underskinker said. "I ain't got time to tell yuh stupid punks everyting."
"I know when it is, I know when it is," Lapierre said, jumping up and down and waving his hand like a little kid. "It's next Tuesday after school, isn't it, Coach? Isn't it? Huh? Huh? Isn't it?"
"Whudevuh," Underskinker replied.
But I had another question.
"Coach, does this team have a name?"
He turned around so fast he almost fell over.
"Who dudn't know duh name of dis team?" he bellowed.
"Please, sir, nobody's told me," I said.
"Ellison, you stupid punk, we got duh same name as every udduh team at dis school," Underskinker said. "Tell 'im whud it is, punks."
Lapierre scratched his head and turned to Brian Blatt. "Do you remember?" he asked.
"Hey, man, you're the one who's supposed to remember the team name," Brian said. "I can't do it all."
A kid who looked like a box turtle spoke up. "It's Guns N' Roses, ain't it?"
"That's a rock group, Tracy, we're a team," Lapierre said.
"Oh, yeah," Tracy said, as if he was making a huge discovery. "Now I remember."
"I still think it's a cool name," said the fifth kid, who was as thin and mean-looking as a barracuda. "Let's be Guns N'Roses."
"You dumb, stupid, dumb, stupid, stupid dumb punks," Underskinker roared. "We're duh Impalers. You got dat?"
"Thanks, Coach," I said. "By the way, I think my name is Elliot. I'll ask when I get home."
Two guys laughed. One had blue eyes and acne scars like the craters on the dark side of the moon. The other was small and soft-looking.
"You. Elliot, Pyrek, Falbo. Gimme laps," Underskinker said, and headed for his office.
"Hey, Falbo," said the blue-eyed kid with acne scars, "give me some laps."
Falbo, the soft-looking little guy, said something about where Pyrek could get his laps, and everyone laughed again.
We all hung on the side of the pool for a few minutes and enjoyed the feeling of having yanked Underskinker's chain. I wondered if this meant I was going to start being one of the group.
Then the barracuda said, "You know, stoker, this was a real good team before you showed up."
"I can see that," I said, like what he'd said hadn't hurt.
He slid up out of the pool like a snake, tiptoed over to the locker room, and looked in.
Then he turned back and gave a thumbs-up.
"All right, Barzini," Lapierre said.
"Shut up," Barzini told him. "You wanna wake him?"
Everyone else got out of the pool, and after a minute I did, too. I wanted to swim by myself for a while, but even more I wanted to find Justin and ask him what a stoker was.
A lot of kids hung around the student union after classes. It wasn't hard to find someone who could tell me where he was.
"He works in the library on Friday afternoons, if I am not mistaken," a jenti kid named Anatol who was in my English class told me. "Do you know where that is, stoker?"
"I can find it," I said.
Actually, you couldn't miss the library. It was at the opposite end of the campus from the student union, and
it was huge. It had two big wings extending out from an entrance that looked like a Roman temple. Over the door
it Said THE CHIEF GLORY OF EVERY PEOPLE RESIDES IN ITS AUTHORS.
The place was empty. I guessed even vampire kids didn't hang around a library on Friday afternoon. But I heard some soft noises from the left wing, so I went that way.
There was Justin with a wooden cart loaded with books, sticking them carefully onto the shelves.
He looked surprised to see me and maybe even embarrassed.
"Oh, hi, Cody," he said kind of loudly for a library. "Just a minute. Ms. Shadwell, someone's here."
Suddenly, around the corner of the shelves came a rat. And right behind it, running flat out, came a huge red wolf, snarling.
I screamed and jumped, but the wolf dashed past me and out of sight, after the rat.
Justin blushed. "That's Ms. Shadwell," he said. "I guess she'll be out in a minute, soon as she gets her clothes on."
There was a shriek from the rat, a snap of jaws, and a growl that rattled the bookshelves. Or maybe it just rattled me.
A raspy growl said, "Xhi—exxkooz—me. I—ee— rixt—xere."
I heard some thumps and rustles. In a few minutes I saw a big red-haired woman walking toward me with a huge white grin and her paw—I mean hand—stretched out.
"Hello," she said in a much nicer but really powerful voice. "You must be the new gadje in my husband's English class. Welcome, Master Cody."
"How do you do, ma'am," I said, being as polite as I could.
"Sorry about the wolf just now," she went on. "I've been trying to catch that rat for a week, and that's a lot easier to do if you're a wolf."
"Sounded like you got him, Ms. Shadwell," said Justin.
Ms. Shadwell licked her lips.
"That's the last book he'l
l ever gnaw," she said.
My stomach did a push-up.
"Now, how can I help you, Master Cody?" Ms. Shadwell said.
"Oh, I just came to ask Justin something," I said, trying not to think about the fact that I was face to face with a werewolf.
"Fine," she said, smiling more widely. "I'll be over at the desk if you want anything. Just ask. I love to help people find things."
"Thank you, ma'am."
As soon as she was out of earshot, I said, "My God, Justin, why didn't you tell me there were werewolves here?"
"Werewolves? There's no such thing," Justin said. "Not as far as I know, anyway. Ms. Shadwell's just a good lycanthropist."
"Come on, you know I don't know what that means."
"Just means she can turn herself into a wolf when she wants to," Justin said. "A lot of us can."
"I thought vampires—I mean jenti—turned into bats," I said. "Hey, can you turn yourself into anything?"
"Well, it's complicated," Justin said. "See, when you turn yourself into anything else, your weight and mass stay just the same. So no one could actually turn into a bat. I mean, what would be the point? A hundred-and-fifty-pound bat couldn't even fly. Now, some of us can turn ourselves into something kind of like a bat."
"But bigger, right?" I asked.
"A lot bigger." Justin was concentrating real hard on his books, avoiding my eyes. "Anyway, that's why a lot of us prefer wolves. It's more comfortable."
"Yeah, I guess I can see that," I said. I had an image of Justin flapping over New Sodom by the light of a full moon. "So—which do you prefer?"
"Well, it takes a lot of practice," Justin said. "And talent. Not all of us can do it."
"That's too bad."
Justin shrugged. "Doesn't matter a lot. In the old days, turning into a wolf or a giant bat thing was a good way to get away from your enemies. Nowadays we don't need it so much. My father was real good at it, though. Sometimes he had a wingspan of forty-five feet."
"Wow!"
"So what did you want to ask me?" Justin said.
"I want to know what a stoker is."
Justin nodded. "Somebody calling you that?"
"Just about everyone, I think."
"It's an insult," Justin said, sighing. "Try not to think
about it. It's not true, anyway. It's just 'cause you helped me Wednesday."
"But what is it?"
"Ever hear of a book called Draculal" Justin asked.
"Sure. Everyone has," I said.
"Well, Dracula was written by a man called Bram Stoker," Justin said. "He met some jenti when he was traveling in Europe. And in America. He came here six times. One of my grandfathers talked to him. He seemed real friendly, real nice. Some of us told him some things about what it's like to be jenti. He took what we told him and wrote that damn book. Twisted everything we said. Ever since then, whenever a gadje makes friends with a jenti, somebody's going to say that the gadje's a stoker. There's only one worse thing we can call you."
"What's that?"
"A bram. Means you've gone and hurt the jenti in some way. And that's very bad if it happens. Word gets around you're a bram, somebody's going to get you for it."
"And when you say 'get'—" I began.
"I mean what you think I mean," Justin said. "Anyway, practically everything in Dracula is at least half a lie. And there was a lot of stuff he could have put in that he left out—the good stuff about us."
"Who got Stoker himself?" I asked.
"Nobody," Justin said. "Plenty of us wanted to, but he had Dracula's mark on him, and Dracula said no. Said it was his fault for trusting Stoker in the first place, and the best thing to do was let the whole thing die down naturally. You can see how well that's worked out."
"Wait a minute," I said. "Do you mean Dracula was real?"
Justin gave me a funny look. "Sure."
"So do you think I'm a stoker?" I asked.
"Nope. I think you're folks," Justin said.
"Which means?"
"Folks are gadje you can trust," Justin said.
All of a sudden I decided I liked Justin a lot.
"When do you get off?" I asked.
Justin looked at his watch. "Fifteen minutes."
"Want to hang out?"
"Sure," Justin said, giving me one of his weak little smiles.
"I'm going to take a look around," I said. "See you in a few."
"Right," Justin said.
The library was like everything else at Vlad Dracul— rich. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, computers everywhere, armchairs, big tables, individual desks. The lights were warm and the carpets were thick. I couldn't hear the sound of my own footsteps.
There were big gold-lettered signs above the alcoves that ran along the walls: history, geology. American literature. Then I came to the last one: dracula.
Every book inside was a copy of Dracula. Shelves and shelves of it in English, but there was a section that had it in other languages, too. Every other language, it seemed like.
"Are you finding everything you need?" asked Ms. Shadwell, coming up behind me.
"Oh, just browsing," I said. "Why do you have so many copies of one book?"
"It's required reading for every student at Vlad Dracul," Ms. Shadwell said. "You get it in fifth grade, eighth grade, and high school, just like American history."
"Maybe I should read it now, then," I said. I was trying to score a couple of points with her.
Ms. Shadwell acted like I'd just given her a Cadillac. "Wonderful!" she said. "Here, try this edition. No, this one. It's got very good notes. Or maybe this one; it's got a really great typeface."
She went on throwing Draculas at me until my arms were full.
"Thanks," I said. "I guess I'll take this one." I set them down on a shelf and pulled one out of the stack like I'd been thinking it over.
"Can I help you find anything else?" she asked.
"No, thanks," I said. "I'm leaving with Justin."
"That's great," she practically shouted. "You come on back anytime, Master Cody."
Justin and I walked to his house. No limousine.
"I live close by," Justin said.
After a couple of blocks, we turned onto a long, narrow street where the trees arched over and their branches tangled together.
At the far end was a lopsided, teetery house that looked like it had been built onto about a hundred times in almost a hundred different ways. It went up and up, and on and on, and it looked like it had to be haunted on every floor. It was dark inside except for one light coming through a window by the front door.
"This is it," Justin said, letting me in.
I wondered, for just a second, if I'd ever see the outside world again.
As Justin pushed the door open, I saw a warm, low-ceilinged room. There was a place for us to take off our coats and boots before we went into it. As we did, a big clock on the wall quietly chimed four times.
From somewhere in the back, I heard beautiful piano playing. I recognized the tune. It was from Eine Kleine Nachtmusik.
"My mom teaches piano," Justin said. "Let's go upstairs. I'll introduce you later."
We went up a staircase so old it had waves in it like the ocean. It hardly creaked at all, though. I guess whoever had built it had known what they were doing.
"This is my place," Justin said. He opened a door on the second floor.
It was a little two-room apartment. One room was a regular bedroom, the other was full of fish tanks. That room had other stuff, too, like a telescope and a couple of good chairs and a table, but the rest was fish tanks. And the tanks only had one kind of fish.
"I raise angelfish," Justin said.
Everything looked old, comfortable, and used, even the fish.
"This is really cool," I said.
"You like fish?" Justin asked.
"I guess," I said. "I don't know much about them."
"I have all the kinds of angelfish there are," Justin said. "Blacks, marbles, g
olds. The regular silver and striped ones, of course. I sell the extras to pet stores. I've got customers as far away as Oregon."
I looked into the green-tinged water at all the fish, all almost exactly alike, swimming slowly up and down in their little worlds, silent and beautiful. For some reason, I thought of the kids at Vlad Dracul.
"Want to help me feed them?" Justin asked.
"Sure," I said.
There was a tiny refrigerator in one corner of the room. Inside it were lots of bags filled with limp brown worms as thin as hairs.
"Tubifex worms," Justin said. "They're like a dietary supplement."
He took one of the bags out and began to dump little clumps of the worms into the tanks. They floated at the top, a few in each bunch trying to wriggle out of the mass.
Every time Justin did that, the angelfish changed. Suddenly they were like hawks swooping on prey. They dashed to the worms so fast I couldn't even follow them. Then they began to yank the clumps apart. They inhaled the worms and went back for more.
"Here you go," Justin said, handing me my own bag. "That's all there is to it."
Feeling weird, I pulled out my first batch of tubifex worms. They were cold, slimy, and limp. They didn't move until I put them into the water. Then the angelfish were on them.
By the time we were finished, the angelfish in the first tanks were finished, too. They were cruising back and forth, searching for more worms. Looking into those tanks was like looking at some kind of living scientific chart: Here are the fish going into feeding frenzy. Here are
the fish in feeding frenzy. Here are the fish after feeding frenzy.
One by one, in almost perfect order, the angelfish finished eating and settled down. Soon they were drifting up and down their tanks, like the kids in the halls at Vlad Dracul.
Vampires? What was I doing hanging out with vampires? Even if every word Justin said was true, no matter how nice they were if they liked you, didn't the time come when they had to drink blood? What happened then? What did Justin do? Or Ileana?
I must have looked pretty shocked because Justin asked, "Are you all right? You look kind of pale."
"Yeah, I'm fine," I said. "I just never fed fish before."
Justin said, "It's okay, Cody. It's not like that. Not anymore."
It was like he could read my mind. Was this another vampire power?