Josie Griffin Is Not a Vampire

by Heather Swain

  Avis squirmed in his seat, poking his head forward again and again like a bird. “Yeah, so I was skating with some of my homies around the Circle and the cops started giving us a hard time, for no good reason. We weren’t doing anything wrong. No jumping or trying to ramp the steps or ride the rails. The cops were just bored, probably. Didn’t have any real criminals to go arrest, so they were harassing us. I could feel my anger coming, you know, like it was bubbling up under the surface. Like my skin was going to split open and unleash the beast. And it was crazy intense because the moon was shining down on me like a spotlight, man, and part of me wanted to attack one of those doughnut-munching pigs.”

  Dang, unleash the beast within? I got mad and all, but I never felt like I was going to pop out of my skin and rip a cop’s face off.

  “How did you deal with that? Did you use any of the strategies we’ve discussed?” Charles asked.

  Avis sat back in his chair, eyes darting side to side. “I took some deep breaths and I walked myself through our questions. I asked myself why I felt angry. I asked myself why I wanted to lash out at the cops. And I reminded myself that letting things get ugly is not in my best interest.”

  “Did that stop you from acting out?” Charles asked.

  “Yeah, but I was still pissed,” Avis said. “So I took off on my board. I just went all out and pumped as hard as I could down Meridian, racing cars and blowing through stop lights.”

  Charles frowned. “Was that a good choice?”

  Avis’s laugh was strained, like one of those rubber chickens you squeeze. “Well, it was better than the alternative.”

  “Yes,” Charles said. “You’ve got a point.”

  “See, this is what I don’t get,” the redheaded girl said. She sat next to Avis with her knees drawn up toward her chest. She was a tiny thing with skinny little arms and legs but she seemed to buzz with energy, like she could levitate off the chair any minute. Maybe it was all the crazy waves of bright red hair that cascaded down her back or how her green eyes flashed while she tried to get the words out, which seemed stuck behind her lips for a moment. “We’re not the emeny!” she said passionately.

  Emeny? I looked around but no one else seemed bothered by this.

  “That stuff is deep inside our, our, our, you know.” She paused and thumped her chest with her fist. “Seep in our douls, I mean, deep in our souls! So why is it a crime?”

  Charles sighed, as if they’d been over this a million times before. “It’s not a crime to feel anger, Tarren. It’s only a crime if you act on it in a way that hurts others.”

  Tarren flapped her arms around her head and talked fast, like she was about to fly away. “Yeah, but we’re made to feel guilty because of who we are and how we experience the world. As if there is only one way to be.”

  She had a point, I thought. It was like my how my parents thought I couldn’t simultaneously streak my hair purple and pierce my nose and still be a decent human being. Those things could coexist.

  “Would anyone else like to address Tarren’s comment?” Charles asked.

  The blond guy signaled with a slight nod of his head. I turned my attention to him and nearly fell off my chair. I don’t think I’d ever seen a more beautiful boy. It was as if the sun shone from behind his skin. His hair was a mix of every blond you could imagine from the dusty yellow of corn husks to the white of fresh snow and his eyes were gold. He also had the most perfect nose I’d ever seen. It was strong and straight with the nostrils slightly flared as if he was drinking in all the scents the world had to offer. Somehow his face almost looked familiar—those deep set eyes and chiseled cheeks, as if I’d seen him a hundred times before, but I couldn’t quite place him.

  “This is the world we were born into,” he said. “It’s not something we can change, so we have to accept it and deal with it the best we can.”

  “Easy for you to say, Helios,” Tarren muttered.

  He turned to her and flared his nostrils more. He looked like a statue of an ancient warrior about to go into battle. “What makes you think it’s easier for me?”

  Tarren shrugged. “Not all of us were born with that golden cherry-thingie. Whaddya call it? That thing he drives?”

  “Chariot,” Avis told her.

  “That was one of my great-great-grandfathers,” Helios said drily. “I drive an Infiniti.”

  “Whatever it is,” Tarren said. “I’m stuck on the Southside with a drunk for a father and a mother who flits in and out while I’m forced to go to some crappy school, but Helios here glides around Carmel to his fancy private school. I think I have more of a right to be pissed off than he does.”

  I sat back. I knew I should keep my mouth shut. Tarren might have been little and she might have talked weird, but she could kick somebody’s butt and I didn’t want it to be mine. But, I couldn’t do it. “Money doesn’t necessarily make life easier,” I said.

  Tarren glared at me. “Spoken like a true princess.”

  I snorted. “Hardly.”

  Charles chimed in. “I think the point is we’re all entitled to feel anger or frustration, no matter how much money we have or don’t have. Rich, poor, or in between we all have problems that are worthy of consideration.”

  I glanced over at the blond guy, expecting a nod of appreciation or something, but he ignored me.

  “Let’s move on,” Charles said. “How about you, Johann?” He turned to creepy peeper guy. I felt a little bad for making fun of how he said my name, since his was pronounced Yohann. He was probably some poor foreign kid whose family left a war-torn country and I was giving him a hard time. Maybe my dad was right. Maybe I did need therapy.

  “What can I say?” Johann sighed like a weary old man. “I’m bored. I’d like some excitement in my life.” He shook his head and I felt his pain. Who wouldn’t like a little more to do in this town?

  I must have been nodding in agreement because Charles looked at me and said, “Do you feel that way as well, Josie?”

  “I, uh, um, yeah, I guess so,” I sputtered.

  “Tell us a little bit about yourself,” Charles said. “What brings you here today?”

  Uh-oh, I thought. I can happily listen to other people talk about their lives for hours. I can write about anything under the sun. I can even defend a position if I think it needs defending. But talking about myself? Out loud? No thank you, I’d rather pass.

  chapter 4

  charles wouldn’t let me off the hook, so I took a deep breath. Over and over I had had to relive how I’d completely lost it on Kevin’s car. By now my explanation had become rote and mechanical and included just the barest of details. “I got angry and bashed in someone’s windshield.”

  Everyone stared at me, waiting.

  “It was my boyfriend.”

  They continued staring. I squirmed under the heat of Helios’s eyes.

  “He was cheating on me,” I added but that didn’t break the silent let’s-all-look-at-Josie game.

  “With my best friend, okay? I caught them and it pissed me off.”

  Everyone’s eyes shifted around. They glanced at one another and no one seemed to breathe.

  Charles cleared his throat. “Josie,” he said, leaning forward. “You do understand that this is a safe place, right?”

  I had no idea what he was talking about but I sort of nodded anyway.

  “You will not be persecuted here,” he said.

  “Don’t hold back,” Tarren told me. “This is the one place that nobody will come at you with a stake for being who you are. Even if that’s a rich princess.”

  That made Johann laugh but I was annoyed. “First of all, I’m not rich,” I told her. “And why would anyone come at me with a T-bone?”

  “What they’re trying to say,” Avis told me, “is that it’s okay to admit the whole story.”

  I thought about this for a moment. But that was the whole story. Sure, I could have gone on and on about how I really thought I had been in love with Kevin. How his good
boy/bad boy dual personality thing seemed interesting rather than schizo and I was sure if I just tried hard enough to be the perfect girlfriend, the good boy in him would love me back. How I knew now that I was an idiot but I should have seen it coming that he was screwing around with Madison. Only I didn’t, so when Madison told Chloe everything and Chloe finally let the truth slip, it tore a hole in my heart the size of a meteor crater and all those years of being good, sweet, quiet Josie who let the world walk all over her exploded out of me with a rage I didn’t know I was capable of. But I didn’t see how that was anybody’s business, so I kept my mouth shut.

  “In due time,” Charles said. “It takes a while to build up the trust. Josie will confide in us when she’s ready.”

  Fat chance, I thought.

  “Let’s go back to Avis,” Charles suggested. “Did you morph on the night you were angry with the police?”

  Avis did that birdlike head jutting thing again. “But I was careful this time, chief. Just like you taught me. I rode up to Hollis Park. I stayed in control until I hit the woods. I made sure no one was around. I picked a specific place to shed my clothes, like you suggested, and then I let the change happen. And I ran. I just ran, you know? I had to get it out of my system.”

  Um, did I just imagine it, or did that guy admit to streaking naked through Hollis Park at night?

  “What happened when you came back?” Charles asked.

  “I had stayed inside the park this time. And I didn’t hurt anything. Just chased a few squirrels, maybe a rabbit or something,” Avis said.

  Okay, the dude chased squirrels while he was naked? All I did was hit a car with a bat.

  “So, when I came back, I was tired and a little disoriented, but I had enough energy left to find my clothes and my skateboard and get myself home safely.”

  Charles smiled big. “That’s wonderful progress, Avis. I believe the last time you morphed, you were admitted to the psych ward.”

  My mouth dropped but Avis just snickered. “Yeah, something about a naked black kid wandering around a Target parking lot at two a.m. doesn’t sit well with the community. They locked me up so fast I didn’t have time to spit.” He crowed that weird loud laugh again, which almost made me giggle.

  Everyone else laughed, except for Tarren. She reached over and laid her hand on Avis’s arm. “That’s what inferiorates me,” she said. “We’re not mentally ill.”

  Okay, Tarren, whatever you say, but people who chased squirrels in the nude qualified as a little bit kooky in my opinion.

  “Do you sometimes feel like people think you’re crazy?” Charles asked.

  “Only when I act like myself,” Tarren said and once again, despite how strange she was, I found myself agreeing with her.

  “Can you give me an example?” Charles asked.

  Tarren rearranged herself in the chair so she was sitting cross-legged like a yogi. She leaned forward and spoke intensely, using her hands to illustrate every word. Even though she kind of scared me, I was fascinated by her. She looked like a pretty little doll I would have wanted to play with when I was six, but she was fierce.

  “Okay, so last week at school this guy was giving me a hard time. He’s one of those jumb docks; I mean, dumb jocks who thinks every girl wants him in her pants and for some reason he’s zeroed in on me, only I’m not going to take it. I’m not some little bambo who’s going to laugh at his stupid, retrograde jokes.”

  I blinked and stared hard at her, trying to puzzle through what she was trying to say.

  She lowered her voice and added a thick southern accent, “‘Hey, baby, if I told you you had a great bod, would you hold it against me? Huh-huh-huh.’” Then she said in her regular voice, “As if that’s some giant turn on.”

  I blushed as Tarren spoke so matter-of-factly about sex. Maybe she had some kind of addiction or something because I could never have said those things to a group of near strangers.

  She continued without the slightest embarrassment. “So he follows me one day after school, right? Gets on the same, you know, thingie.” She motioned doors opening and closing.

  “Bus?” Avis guessed.

  “Yeah, he gets on the same bus as me, gets off at my stop, even though I know he doesn’t live near me. Walks behind me as if he just hangs around long enough I’ll be like, ‘Hey, horn dog, let’s get it on!’” She shook her head. “Look, I told him to back off. I gave him fair warning.”

  Very calmly Charles said, “And then what happened?”

  “Well, he pushed the issue,” she said. We all looked at her.

  Only Avis spoke. “Exactly how did he push it, Tare?” His words were low in his throat and his hands gripped the edge of the desk while he puffed up his chest. Tarren reached over and stroked his arm. I wondered if they were a couple.

  “I mean it literally. He pushed me down an alley and against a wall. Telling me that I’ve been asking for it and that I’m going to like it.”

  “This is not a new experience for you,” Charles said.

  “Same old, same old in my neighborhood,” Tarren said, and I shrank in my chair, afraid to listen to the rest because she was so tiny and I couldn’t imagine how she could have gotten out of the situation. But a small grin spread over Tarren’s lips. It was a smile I recognized. She felt the same way I felt when I smacked the crap out of Kevin’s car. So wrong, but oh so right.

  “And?” Charles prodded her.

  I leaned forward, curious to hear what Tarren did.

  She shrugged and laughed. “I turned him into a dog.”

  Everyone cracked up but me and Charles. I was still trying to figure out what she meant. Was that code for kicked him in the balls? Charles rubbed his face like he was exhausted and didn’t know what he was going to do with Tarren. I couldn’t blame him.

  “Don’t worry, Chucky,” Tarren said with a perky grin on her face. “It was temporary and nobody saw me. We were in an alley. He scampered off. I’m sure he came to while digging through a pile of trash or treeing on a pea.”

  Treeing on a pea? I tried to translate this in my head. Peeing on a tree, maybe?

  “Tarren,” Charles said firmly. “This is exactly what we’ve been trying to work on in here. Finding other solutions so you don’t end up with more problems.”

  “What was I supposed to do?” Tarren erupted, arms and legs flying until she was nearly hovering over the little desk attached to the front of her chair. “He had me cornered. I didn’t do anything to provoke him other than be myself. I even warned him. Was I supposed to let him molest me? Is that fair? How many times do I have to be punished by society for being born this way? I had to defend myself!”

  I didn’t know what to think. On the one hand, I agreed with her. On the other hand, she was clearly bonkers if she thought she turned some jerk into an actual dog. Maybe she was repressing her memory of the attack. Or maybe she was just out of her mind.

  Charles shook his head. “What happened the next time you saw him?” He sounded exasperated. “Did he seem to remember?”

  Tarren rolled her eyes at him. “I’m not an amateur, Chucky,” she said. “I cast a memory hex in the spell. All he knows is that he shouldn’t mess with me again.”

  “You know I have to report it to the Council,” Charles said and everyone groaned.

  “It’s not fair,” Avis said.

  “Whatever happened to whaddya call it—infidelity between doctors and patients?” Tarren muttered.

  Charles stopped writing. “I believe you mean confidentiality.”

  “Yeah. What about that?” she asked.

  “You know the rules,” he said, jotting notes again. “No details, but the Council has to know of any incident.”

  “Then why aren’t you reporting Avis?” Helios asked.

  Charles rubbed his eyes and looked weary. I almost felt sorry for the guy. “I don’t want to bust your chops,” he said. “I’m trying to help you guys move on with your lives. But Tarren hexed that young man in broad daylight on a
city street. There could have been witnesses. The incident could have been reported by the public so I have to report it. But no one was around when Avis morphed, so that information won’t leave this room.”

  “Unless Helios runs and tells his mommy on me,” Avis said with a snort.

  Helios blinked. “As Charles said, nothing leaves this room.”

  “Except for that,” Tarren pointed to Charles’s paper.

  Charles seemed helpless for a moment. “I don’t make the Council rules, Tarren. But I do have to follow them. I’m sorry. The bottom line, my friends, is that these are the years in which you make the transition from child to adult. Your bodies are changing, your powers are growing. Eventually you will be independent. Your parents, and the Council, want to make sure you are prepared to live in society as productive, useful citizens. That’s why we take great lengths to prepare you. Sometimes it may feel like we’re hovering, but we’re only concerned with your well-being.”

  Then he stopped and looked around at us slumped in our seats. He shook his head. “It’s hard for you guys to understand, but fifty years ago, our kind didn’t get to live in society like this. We were underground and hunted. There were no safe havens. We had no rights. I don’t know how to convince you, but the arrangement the Council has made with the state, and even Saskatchewan, is beneficial for all of us. It’s up to you to keep it in good standing.”

  Whoa! The Council? What council? The one on Insane Juvenile Delinquents and their Nutball Therapists? This whole group was whack. Charles glanced at his watch. I wondered if it was almost time for the paddy wagon to come pick up the lunatics. What really concerned me was whether Charles thought I was one of these delusional freak shows. Clearly I didn’t belong with these people.

  “Whatevs,” Tarren said with a shrug.

  Avis, who was relaxed back into his chair again, smiled at Tarren and patted her shoulder. “Don’t worry about it, baby. You did the right thing.”

  “No,” Charles said. “She did not do the right thing. Let’s be clear about that. Casting spells to get yourself out of trouble is the wrong thing. And had you been caught, the consequences would be severe. You jeopardize every one of us when you take such risks.”