Vampire High

by Douglas Rees

  All the guys from Saint Biddulph's ignored them, and

  all the guys on our team except me laughed at them as they made their way to the bench.

  I got out of the pool and went over to Justin. I stopped a couple of feet away to be careful not to drip on him.

  "I didn't know you were on the team?" I said.

  "We're not. Mr. Horvath told us all to come down here and do this."

  "But you guys never get in the water, right?" I said.

  "Of course not. We can't," Justin said.

  I wondered if Horvath knew about the fight last week and was putting Justin near Gregor as some kind of weird joke.

  "Man, I would like to cream Horvath," I said. "That guy's a total phony."

  "Who wouldn't? But that's the way it is." Justin shrugged.

  "Well, maybe we can hang out after the game," I said.

  "Maybe," Justin said.

  The other jenti weren't even looking at me. They had their eyes straight ahead. They didn't even talk to each other. They were stiff, even for jenti, and I realized they were scared.

  The judges were in position now with their little flags, so I got back in the water.

  Brian Blatt and Jason Barzini were hitting each other, Louis Lapierre was floating on his face pretending to be dead, and Kelly Tracy was cannonballing by the diving board, trying to make a big enough splash to get the jenti guys wet. Milton Falbo was up on the diving board clapping his hands like a seal, and Pete Pyrek was hanging on the side of the pool, shouting to the jenti guys that the water was fine.

  I didn't have the feeling that we were going to do real well against St. Biddulph's.

  One of the refs blew his whistle and tossed the ball into the center of the pool. Instantly the St. Biddulph's guys went swimming toward it. One of them sent it sailing toward us. It came down right next to Lapierre.

  Lapierre stared at it like it had just arrived from outer space.

  "What is that thing?" he asked.

  The others all gathered around it, shaking their heads.

  "Don't know, never saw anything like that before," Kelly Tracy said.

  "Blatt, pick up duh ball and throw it back," Under-skinker shouted.

  "What, this thing?" Brian shouted back. Then he turned to us and shrugged. "He says it's a ball."

  "He ought to know, he's a coach," Milton Falbo said.

  "He wants you to give it back to those guys over there," Pete Pyrek said.

  "It must be theirs," Brian said. He took the ball, got out of the pool, and went over to the other side.

  "Anybody lose this?" he asked the St. Biddulph's

  guys.

  "Come on, Blatt, get back in duh wadduh," Under-skinker bellowed. He looked like he wanted to hit Brian.

  "Oh, okay," Brian said. He splashed into the water on the St. Biddulph's side.

  "Not dat wadduh," Underskinker roared. "Dat wadduh ovuh dere. Dat's yer wadduh."

  "Looks just like the other water over there, Coach," Brian said. But he got out and got back in on our side.

  Back came the ball and splashed right beside Milton Falbo.

  "Hey, this game's dangerous," he said.

  "Yeah, he could have been killed," Kelly Tracy shouted.

  "I'm gettin' out of here," Pete Pyrek said. He dived under the water and came up on the St. Biddulph's side.

  "Can I be on your team?" he asked.

  "Pyrek, get back in dat wadduh. Dat's your wadduh," Underskinker shouted.

  "But, Coach, they're throwing things at us," Kelly Tracy said.

  "Please let me be on your team," Pete Pyrek said. "Look. I got a hat," and he turned his bathing cap white side out.

  "Hey, look, you guys. Mine's white on the inside, too," Brian Blatt said.

  "So's mine," said Milton Falbo.

  "Mine, too," said Kelly Tracy.

  "Wow, so's mine," said Louis Lapierre.

  Jason Barzini didn't say anything. He just turned his cap inside out. Then, on a signal from Brian, they all dived down and swam over to the St. Biddulph's guys.

  The referees blew their whistles and the game stopped. The refs and coaches huddled. They knew they had to do something, but what? They were whispering, but I could hear Underskinker's voice saying "no way" and "penalties" and "personal foul" over and over. And, of course, "punks."

  Finally, after a couple of minutes, the referees declared personal fouls on all the Impalers but me. The rest

  of the team got out of the water and headed for the chairs where the jenti guys were sitting.

  "Hey, 'scuse us, it's our turn to sit down," Brian Blatt said to Justin.

  "Yeah, replacements into duh wadduh," Pete Pyrek said.

  Everyone on the bench but Justin looked at Gregor. Gregor sat looking straight

  ahead. Pyrek and Blatt kept shouting, "Replacements in duh wadduh, replacements in duh wadduh," until Gregor finally turned to Hie and said, "Did you hear something?"

  "Why, yes," said Hie. "I believe I heard the sound of two meadowlarks. Spring must be coming."

  "Meadowlarks," Gregor said, and closed his eyes. "Pretty little sound," he said, smiling.

  All the jenti closed their eyes and smiled with him except Justin. Justin just kept looking at the pool, and at me.

  That was a long thirty-five seconds. The Saints batted the ball back and forth among themselves a couple of times, then sent it over my head. I threw it back. They hit it off to one side and I swam over to get it. And threw it back. And back it came. And back I sent it. And so it went, with me getting angrier and more embarrassed as the thirty-five seconds went by.

  When the penalty was over, the whistles blew and the Impalers got back in the water. The ball came high and slow right toward me. I made a fist and spiked it back over the line.

  Immediately every whistle in the place went off.

  "Penalty. Thirty-five seconds."

  "Me? What'd I do?" I shouted at the judges.

  "You spiked the ball, stoker," Jason Barzini said.

  "Well, damn it, nobody told me," I exploded.

  More whistles.

  "Penalty. Thirty-five seconds."

  Brian shook his head. "Profanity, man. I'm shocked."

  I got out of the pool and went over and sat down near Justin.

  "Is everybody here nuts?" I asked him.

  "More or less, I guess," he answered.

  Meanwhile, all the other Impalers were shouting, "Profanity, profanity. We don't want to be on a team with a guy who uses profanity." They splashed and held their ears. "Man, that offended us."

  Then somebody must have given the signal, because they all dived at once and came up on the St. Biddulph's side again.

  "Hey, we still want to be on your team," Pete Pyrek said.

  "Yeah. You wouldn't use profanity, would you?" said Kelly Tracy.

  "Don't be stupid, Tracy," Brian Blatt said. "These guys go to a school for saints."

  "Oh, yeah," Tracy said. "I forgot."

  If the Saints were grateful for their new teammates, they didn't show it. They kept shooting nervous looks at the jenti on the bench. They didn't even seem to notice the Impalers around them.

  Meanwhile, Underskinker was walking back and forth along the side of the pool, shrieking, "Dat's not you punks's wadduh. Dat's you punks's wadduh ovuh dere."

  "We don't like dat wadduh," Louis Lapierre shouted back. "It's got profanity in it."

  Then my seventy seconds were up and I got back into the profanity—I mean the water.

  Back came the ball, heading straight for me, once again. I slapped it back. Back it came, the same way. After a few more passes like that, I saw what the St. Biddulph's guys were doing. They were aiming the ball at me, trying to make it look like a real game.

  As for the Impalers, they were cheering every time the ball came their way but staying clear of it. The St. Biddulph's guys played around them like they weren't there.

  Meanwhile, I was getting really thrashed,,trying to swim and hit the ball back e
very time. I was almost grateful when Jason Barzini suddenly came to life, slapped the ball before a St. Biddulph's player could get it, and sent it skimming into the net behind me.

  Instantly flags went up and the judges declared the game over, 1-0 St. Biddulph's.

  Everyone got out of the water but me. I swam over to the edge of the pool and hung there, breathing hard and feeling angry and confused. What the hell, weren't these so-called grown-ups supposed to enforce the rules they made up? Even I knew this game wasn't half over.

  But here was everybody walking around, heading back to the showers, Underskinker and the St. Biddulph's coach shaking hands, and the judges and refs packing up their flags and stuff as if they hadn't just been part of a scam.

  Then I looked up into the bleachers and saw Horvath

  and Charon sitting there, Horvath with this cynical grin on his face and Charon looking disgusted, if a timber wolf can look disgusted.

  The jenti guys just went on sitting on the bench. They were waiting for the gadje to leave before they went into the locker room. Well, I wasn't ready to leave yet. I wanted to do something to get rid of the bad feelings. So, even though I was tired, I began to swim slowly, stopping to float, letting the water carry me. I closed my eyes.

  I opened them again when my head brushed the side of the pool. It made me remember I was wearing that stupid cap. I took it off.

  By now the Saints were hurrying out to their bus and the Impalers were drifting out of the locker room, slapping each others' butts and throwing high fives.

  At a signal from Gregor, all the jenti got up and headed for the locker room. All but Justin, who came over to me.

  "Well, that was your first game," he said.

  "What is it about you guys and water?" I said. "I mean, you take baths, don't you?"

  "Let's go someplace drier and I'll tell you," he said.

  He backed up while I got out of the pool. When I had dripped off enough, we walked into the locker room together.

  The jenti were getting dressed and getting out as fast as they could.

  Gregor looked over at me.

  "The water is the only place you are safe," he said.

  "He's marked," Justin reminded him.

  "I was talking to you," Gregor said.

  He finished buttoning up his shirt and brushed past us, pushing with his door-width shoulders. I ran my fingers through my hair to collect some water and flicked it on his cheek.

  "Good game, Gregor," I said as he brushed it away like it was poison. "Looking forward to the next one."

  Then I stripped off my wet trunks. "Well, time to wring my suit out."

  Gregor backed away and left.

  "Who needs garlic and crosses?" I said without thinking. Then I looked at Justin. "Oh, man. I hope that wasn't anything insulting."

  "Don't worry about it," Justin said. "Anyway, just so you know, my mother wears a cross and cooks with garlic. But watch where you wave that suit."

  "Okay, so now tell me about you guys and water," I said, drying myself with my towel.

  Justin sighed. "Nobody really knows how it works. And our doctors and biochemists have been trying to understand it for a long time. But it's got something to do with our ability to change shape. Water, too much of it, can dissolve us. We're raised with stories about not going near the water, and we're taught to take sponge baths. Anything we can do to limit our contact with it. We all grow up scared of it."

  "But you can't change shape," I said. "Maybe it'd be safe for you."

  "Wouldn't be a good idea to try to find out," Justin replied. "I admit, though, it looks like fun getting into that pool."

  I thought about all the angelfish swimming in the

  room in Justin's house. "'But don't you ever have to dip an arm into one of your aquariums? Clean out the tanks?"

  "Sure," Justin said. "And I wear rubber gloves when I do it. Anyway, we don't fall apart right away when we hit it. We're not made of sugar, you know. But if we fall in a pond or something and we don't get out pretty fast, we start to sort of ... dissolve, like I said. It happens faster in flowing water. That's why there are all those stories that we can't cross rivers, or we can only cross oceans in coffins filled with dirt."

  When we left the natatorium, the Impalers were waiting for us.

  Brian Blatt pushed in between me and Justin. "Excuse us," he said. "We want to talk to this guy for a minute."

  He stood in front of Justin while Jason Barzini grabbed my coat and shoved his face into mine. The rest of the team made a circle around us.

  "You looked real cute today," he said. "Real cute playing all by yourself. Well, the next time you try it, you're gonna get hurt."

  "What are you punks trying to prove?" I said, sounding like Underskinker all of a sudden. "That you can lose games? Anybody can do that. Why don't you at least try?"

  "Look, these vamps got what they want from us," Barzini said. "We keep their school open for 'em. They got vamps comin' in from all over the world to go to school here. And we pay the taxes for it, us real people. And the only reason they even let us in is so they can stay open. It's a scam, us being here. Act like it, like we do."

  "Hey, Barzini, the jenti pay taxes, too. Ever think of that?" I said. "They pay the taxes that keep you here."

  "Shut up, " Barzini said, and shoved me.

  The ice was slippery and I went down. The rest of the Impalers snickered.

  I hooked one of my boots under Barzini's leg and flipped him down on his back.

  Then I got up, while he called me names.

  "You guys don't like it here, why don't you try real school?" I said. "I'll bet there's some openings in kindergarten."

  They didn't try to stop me as I went back to Justin.

  "Bye-bye," I said to Brian.

  "You're gonna die," Jason Barzini called to my back.

  THE ILLYRIAD

  January Went by. We played two more games, and they were a lot like the first one. The only guy who even tried to do it right was me, and we only played until the other team scored. There were always different jenti sitting on the bench behind us. No matter how many of the Im-palers got penalty time-outs, they never replaced us, and no one seemed to notice.

  I was still a little worried about what the Impalers might try to do to me, but all they actually did after that day in the snow was to stop talking to me. Since they had never really started, this was no big deal. Barzini, I decided, was all mouth.

  I was a little more worried about Gregor and his bunch. There were days when it seemed like every time I

  turned around they'd be looking at me from across the dining hall or from the top of a staircase. Maybe they were checking to make sure I was still marked. But nothing happened with them, either.

  I got more impossible homework assignments. The fake As kept coming, but I ignored them. I got in the habit of going over to Justin's after school to work on stuff. I wouldn't say I did great, but I did better with his help. Sometimes I even almost understood what I was supposed to be doing. I really enjoyed sitting in the little room on the second floor where Justin fixed up a sort of office for us, with books and shelves and a terminal and all the stuff he needed to work at home. It even had a huge old desk, called a partners' desk, where we sat across from each other and did our work while the piano music came up the stairs.

  It was crowded in that little room, but we managed to find space for Ileana when she came by, which she started to do once or twice a week.

  The best days were Fridays, when we'd all end up down in Illyria. Palmyra was growing, and the road to New Florence was finished. Justin was putting in more suburbs around Three Hills. Ileana said the latest argument between Anaxander and Vasco was whether a play should have three acts or five.

  "But when am I going to see the epic you are writing about Illyria?" she asked me every time we played.

  "When it's finished," I'd say. "But I'm stuck for ideas."

  Then she'd say something like "How can anyone be stuck for
ideas? Illyria is where ideas begin," and she'd

  tell us another story about one of her characters while Justin and I asked questions or made suggestions for it. I don't know if this was how Chaucer did it, but it worked for me.

  I was glad I had that epic. It was one thing I could do where I didn't need Justin to hold my hand. I wasn't even really stuck for ideas; I just liked Ileana's better than mine. But I used both. Evenings or Sundays I'd just sit down in my room and start writing, and the pages piled up. It looked like there was even a good chance I might have more than three hundred. I thought about how it would be, the day I handed it in to Shadwell. Would mine be the thickest one in the class? What would he say if it was? What would I say to him?

  Hope you like it, Mr. Shadwell. It's somewhat Chaucerian. Or, I'm afraid I went a bit over three hundred pages on this one.

  But better than that was imagining what Ileana might say. That was what I was really hoping, that she'd read it and see how much she meant to me.

  I wouldn't say I was totally in love with Ileana. Not exactly. I just wanted to spend every minute I could with her. And I was beginning to think she felt the same way. Not that she said anything to make me think so. It was just a few little things, like not moving around Illyria so that we were always on opposite sides of it, or letting me push my cup of cocoa so that it touched hers by accident. When the epic was finished, I thought, things would be different.

  Then came February the fourteenth.

  February the fourteenth should be written down in

  history with the other great disasters, like the San Francisco Earthquake (April eighteenth), the crash of the Hin-denburg (May sixth), and the Great Chicago Fire (October eighth). February the fourteenth is Valentine's Day. It was the day I read part of my epic to Ileana.

  It wasn't my idea. I wanted to wait until it was finished. But one Friday afternoon in Illyria the three of us got to talking about Shadwell's class, and one thing led to another. Justin talked about the book he was writing on angelfish. Ileana was writing a novel and told us about that.

  Then she said, "And how is your epic coming?"

  "About two hundred pages," I said. Some of them were even written on both sides. "I've got eleven stories done, and I'm starting on the twelfth."

  "I would love to hear some of it," she said.