Team Human

by Justine Larbalestier

  “Well, she did. She was pounding on our front door for hours. At least it felt like hours. Mom called the cops immediately. The vampire vanished when they showed up, which I’m sure didn’t take that long, but for those moments or minutes or hours when we were waiting? It was hell. Dad was away at a conference, so it was Mom and me, holding each other in the closet, knowing that if she broke down the door, or threw herself in through one of our windows, there was nothing we could do.

  “I have never been so scared in my life. She didn’t just bang on the door. She howled. That noise was the worst I’ve ever heard. It took us a while to recognize what she was saying. But once I did?”

  Anna was shaking.

  “She was saying Dad’s name. Over and over.”

  I shook my head. Anna’s eyes were wet, but she kept talking, as if all these words had been building up in my quiet friend for too long and now they simply had to come out.

  “The next morning there were all these gouges on our door. I think she used her nails. We had to get it replaced.

  “I never saw her. But I imagined what she looked like: more zombie than vampire, huge empty eyes, hair everywhere, covered in blood. A monster. Why would my dad run away with someone, some thing, like that? But he did. He loved a screaming monster more than he loved us.”

  The tears started to roll down her cheeks.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered.

  “Mom’s a wreck. How could he do that to her? How could he do that to me?”

  I put my arms around her. “I don’t know.”

  “I don’t even see how he could love her,” Anna said. “He talked to me about her afterward. He couldn’t say much, because she was his patient, but he did say that you could only be sorry for her. That’s not love. I keep thinking about that night, Mel. My dad felt sorry for her, but I don’t think he could have loved someone like that. And if he didn’t love her, why would he go with her?”

  I swallowed. My mouth felt dry. “Do you think he didn’t want to go with her? Do—do you think she made him?”

  “I don’t know,” said Anna. “My mom told me he loved that monster. She told me he looked her in the eye and said he was leaving, because he wanted to be with her and not us. My mom has no reason to lie. I can’t believe she would. But I can’t believe Dad could love something like that vampire, so I don’t know what to believe. I don’t know anything except how much I hate her!”

  Anna leaned her face against my shoulder and sobbed. I patted her on the back and hated the vampire woman as well: I couldn’t help but hate her, even if she was crazy. Anna was in so much pain.

  This was what vampires did. They ruined lives.

  I would not allow any vampire to ruin Cathy’s.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  A Modest Proposal from Francis

  What with one of my best friends breaking down in the cafeteria and all, it was a pretty crappy day. I was not exactly in the mood to see Cathy float down the school steps at the end of it, looking as if her day had been nothing but rose petals, soft music, and light gleaming debonairly off Francis’s fangs.

  “Hi, Mel,” she said, beaming as if I was the best-friend cherry on her sundae of love. She about swooped me off my feet in a hug. “How was your day?”

  “Not so good,” I replied in a voice muffled against Cathy’s sweater. “Anna’s pretty down.”

  “Oh no!” said Cathy. “What’s wrong?”

  “She was talking about her dad at lunch today,” I told her. I didn’t know how much of what Anna had told me was in confidence, so I left it at that. “I was thinking that after fencing practice I could drag her to Kafeen Krank tonight. Dose her with hot chocolate. Wanna come?”

  Cathy bit her lip. “Oh, Mel, I wish I could, but I have plans with Francis.”

  She’d stepped back from me by then, so she saw the look on my face.

  “I swear I’m not going to be one of those awful people who get into a couple and start ignoring their friends! Things aren’t going to be about Francis, Francis, Francis”—her voice lingered over his name—“all the time. Tomorrow I’ll go over to Anna’s with you. I’ll make cupcakes. We can plan a whole girls’ day on the weekend.”

  Normally I’m easily bribed by cupcakes. But not this time. I kept my arms folded and my lips pressed together.

  “Francis asked me to meet him in a fancy restaurant tonight,” Cathy said. She could barely contain her excitement.

  I frowned. “Francis doesn’t eat. Won’t it be awkward?”

  “No,” said Cathy.

  “I’d worry he’d judge the way I chewed or my table manners.”

  “Mel, it’s going to be romantic! It’s a big deal. Our first official date. And he said he had something important to ask me.”

  I immediately stopped thinking about how awkward romantic dinners with vampires must be. In fact, I stopped thinking at all. My brain was paralyzed with horror.

  “What?” I managed at last.

  Cathy wrung her hands, apparently out of joy since she was smiling. “I don’t know. He hasn’t asked me yet!”

  What if he was going to ask if he could move to England with her, so he could stalk her vampirically around Oxford, casting a big undead shadow over her whole college life? She would be all alone. Except for him. She’d become totally dependent on him. It would be a nightmare!

  “You should cancel,” I squeaked, panic turning the air into helium. “You should come with me and Anna!”

  “Mel,” Cathy said, in a voice I could tell she was only keeping level with an effort. “I’ve already made plans. You would understand that if it was any other guy. I know you don’t like Francis, even if I don’t understand why.”

  I opened my mouth to tell her. In some detail.

  “I didn’t like Ryan, either,” she said, silencing me. “But it was your decision to go out with him, and I respected that.”

  You may recall that I mentioned having another boyfriend, after Ty and I had our deeply amicable breakup? One who put me off dating for a while?

  The thing was, Ty decided we didn’t have much chemistry, which was true, but he was the one to say it, which hurt, and then I met Ryan at a fencing tournament and we had so much chemistry, I was blinded to certain things.

  Such as the fact he was a jerk.

  He hit on Cathy at a party. It was a mess.

  “Ryan was a big mistake.”

  “He was your mistake to make.”

  “And Francis is a bigger one!”

  Cathy drew close to me, so close I had to tip my head back to meet her eyes. Stupid tall people.

  “Mel,” she said, “you know I love you. I know you love me. I know that you only want the best for me. But Francis is wonderful to me. Francis is wonderful for me. Be happy for me.”

  “But, Cathy, he—”

  “I am happy. Maybe it won’t work out,” she said, as if that was the world’s most ridiculous idea. “You can say whatever it is then. Right now I need you to drop this.”

  “Cathy,” I began.

  She looked into my eyes. Her voice was cold, as cold as Francis’s or Camille’s.

  “Mel,” she said. “Drop it. Now.”

  It was already dark when Ty met us after fencing, bouncing up and down on his toes. He hovered around Anna, aware she was upset, trying to make her feel better in his clumsy boy way, which involved almost tripping her up and repeatedly proffering gum. It was kind of sweet.

  “Sorry about losing my license,” he said. “Not that Mom would necessarily have lent me her car.”

  “After you crashed it?” I inquired.

  “I didn’t crash it,” Ty protested. “It was just that if you wanted to read the license plate, you had to climb under the car. It was more of a crumpling than a crashing.”

  Anna gave him a half smile, which was kind, because we’d heard the story before. Ty had managed to crash the car and lose his license in the first week of summer. It had been a major drag. It was still a drag. Cathy’s mom didn�
�t own a car, so despite Cathy passing driver’s ed with flying colors, she hadn’t been able to get a license yet because she hadn’t been able to get enough driving hours. Ditto for me: My parents shared the one car, in which I’d had precisely two lessons with Dad. Besides which, as I may have already mentioned, it would take me years to save up for a car.

  Ty continued the puppy-dog-like goofiness during the entire walk to our regular coffee place, Kafeen Krank. There were many things to love about the place. They put giant marshmallows in the hot chocolate; the staff are either amusingly cranky (sorry, Kranky) or full of amazing gossip they’ll share with anyone. The chairs are comfy, though dilapidated, and unlike the ones in stupid Francis’s café of choice, they don’t match. There’s graffiti in lurid colors on every flat surface: walls, tables, floor. They even leave markers around so you can add more of your own. Much more my style. Not just the comfortable grunginess but almost everyone there was young and broke like us, including the staff.

  Ty and I were talking a lot, in a manic attempt to take the wretched look off Anna’s face. Ty recounted his soccer team’s latest adventures. (They’d won four games in the last two seasons.) I talked about a fencing competition we had coming up. (I don’t like to boast, but our team is approaching top ten in the state. Don’t ask how many girls’ saber teams there are in our state.) I also shared a few saber-related mishaps that may or may not have been true. (I was trying to make Anna laugh. Is that so wrong?)

  That led to discussions about the haplessness of New Whitby’s hockey team—the Penguins—of whom Anna used to be a big fan. Despite my and Ty’s most valiant efforts, Anna did not smile.

  In desperation, we talked about homework. Unsurprisingly, given all her time in the library, Anna tersely indicated she was up-to-date on everything. Had written her New Whitby sewage system essay. I too admitted that I was on top of everything, including aforementioned sewer essay. (What can I say? In everything other than love, Cathy’s a great example. One I’ve been following since kindergarten. I shudder to think what I would have achieved left to my own devices.) Ty was doing as well as Ty ever does. He had at least found sewer maps online, though he hadn’t figured out what to say about them.

  In even more desperation, I talked about Cathy.

  “I suck, don’t I? If even Cathy’s lost patience with me, I suck. I should butt out. Just briefly, until the bloom’s off the rose or whatever. Then when Cathy’s less starry-eyed about her walking corpse, I pounce!”

  Ty looked alarmed. “You pounce?”

  “With cunning arguments,” I said.

  “I think you’re doing the right thing,” Anna said quietly.

  We looked at her. It was the most she’d said in an hour. She offered us both a wry smile.

  “I’m just saying,” she said. “Nobody knows this better than me, right? Vampires have a lot of glamour—because they’re older and more experienced and strong and pretty—oh, just because they’re vampires. I don’t think it’s a bad idea to keep reminding Cathy to be sensible. I think you’re being a good friend.”

  Anna reached out and squeezed my hand, which was lying beside my giant brownie.

  “Aw,” I said. “Anna. Thank you for that touching tribute. You still can’t have any of my brownie, though.”

  Anna shrugged. “Worth a shot.”

  I broke a bit of it off and handed it to her because it was nice to see her smile. Ty made a low moaning sound that was meant to indicate his imminent death by starvation.

  “Forget it, get your own.”

  “I left all my money in—” Ty thought this over. “Well, in the vending machines at school.”

  I took a big bite of the brownie, making exaggerated mmmm sounds for Ty’s benefit.

  “Cathy,” Ty said.

  “We can stop talking about her if you—”

  “Hi, Cathy,” Ty said a little louder.

  I looked up. Cathy was standing in front of us. She was crying.

  I shot to my feet and grabbed her hands. “I’ll kill him.”

  Cathy’s shoulders shook. “I—I—”

  “I’m taking the un out of undead. I swear,” I said, pulling up a chair for her. “Cathy, what did he do? What’s the matter?”

  “N-n-nothing!” Cathy said sinking into the chair. Despite the gush of tears down her face, Cathy’s eyes were shining.

  “I’m so happy,” Cathy wept. “I had to come tell you guys right away!”

  “Tell us what happened?”

  Cathy glowed through her tears. It was like seeing the sun rise behind a waterfall.

  “Francis asked me to be with him forever,” she said. “He asked if I would—if I would consider becoming a vampire.”

  My hands went numb. Cathy’s hands would have slipped out of them, except she gripped mine tight, as if she could pass her sheer delight to me through her finger-tips.

  This was it, then. This was the real reason I’d hated the thought of Cathy with Francis so much. I’d been afraid, without ever being able to even think that it might come to this.

  Cathy smiled. “I said yes.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Francis Says …

  I’m not stupid. I knew telling Cathy she was about to make the biggest mistake of her life, reciting all the statistics about her odds of becoming a zombie instead of a vampire, or of flat-out dying, were not going to be heard with receptive ears. I knew that at this heady moment, with Cathy floating in bubbles of joy, my puncturing them with capital-R Reality would not go well.

  And yet what were the first words out of my mouth?

  “Are you INSANE?” I screamed. “HAVE YOU COMPLETELY LOST YOUR MIND?”

  The busy coffee shop was suddenly a lot less busy. Everyone turned to stare. Literally everyone. Even the fat baby in the stroller stopped sucking on its own fists and stared.

  I hadn’t meant to scream.

  Cathy was also staring. Her big eyes had gotten even bigger. She looked stunned, as if she couldn’t believe I wasn’t overcome with delirious happiness for her. But when had I ever given Cathy any indication that I thought her ending her life at the age of seventeen was a super-fantastic idea?

  “You could die,” I said as calmly as I could manage. Which was not very. Everyone was still staring. “If you don’t die, you’ll wind up a drooling zombie. If you don’t become a drooling zombie—”

  “It’s illegal,” Anna said, cutting through me. “You’re underage.”

  Cathy looked as if she was relieved to have someone making a reasonable point. I didn’t feel like it was very reasonable to be reasonable right now.

  “I’ll get my mother’s permission,” Cathy answered quietly. “We’re going to do the whole thing legally. Of course.”

  “I think it’s romantic,” Ty said.

  I punched him hard in the shoulder. So hard I saw him draw back automatically to return the blow.

  The look on my face must have stopped him. He rubbed his shoulder instead.

  “What?”

  I glared at him. Looking at Cathy hurt too much.

  “It’s not romantic. It’s the end of her life! She’s giving up everything and she’ll probably die. This is the worst mistake of your entire life, Cathy. This is the end of everything. You can’t do this! You can’t!”

  Another voice broke in at the end of my tirade. A stranger’s voice.

  “Excuse me,” a good-looking guy in black with too much eyeliner on said, coming up to Cathy. “You have a sponsor? You’re going to cross over? I wanted to wish you good luck. I know not everyone understands.”

  He shot me a look. I opened my mouth to set the rude vamposeur straight, tell him that I understood perfectly well what Cathy was doing.

  Anna grabbed my arm. I hadn’t even realized I’d clenched my fists again. Or maybe I hadn’t unclenched them. Anna was right; there was no point arguing with a vamposeur.

  “Wow. You’re so lucky. So blessed. I can’t tell you how jealous I am. Can I hug you? Maybe the luck wil
l rub off on me.”

  He hugged her. Cathy let him, still looking stunned.

  “That’s insane,” said an older man at the next table over, lowering his newspaper. He was at least forty. Probably the oldest guy in the room. “Vampires are death. You should listen to your friend. A friend of mine did what you want to do. My best friend. Know where Leif is now? Dead. Leif didn’t make it, did he? Dead at nineteen. Very glamorous. Do you think his vampire lover gave it a second’s thought? Nope. But here’s me twenty years later still thinking about my best friend, who died way too young, because he fell for a lie!”

  “It’s not a lie,” the vamposeur said, releasing Cathy and wheeling on the man. “It’s a risk. And the reward is worth it. It’s an unbelievable opportunity, the kind most people can only dream of, to live forever, to see everything the world is going to become.”

  “To become a monster?” the man asked quietly.

  “Hey!” snapped Ty. “My aunt’s a vampire.”

  “Yeah, cut it out, you bigot,” called a woman from another table, looking up from her laptop.

  “How old are you?” asked the mother with the baby in her stroller. She stared at Cathy, then at her baby, and back again.

  Before too long the entire coffee shop was giving us their nickel’s worth of advice.

  Anna, who hated scenes even more than Cathy did, started packing up. She nodded at me and Ty to do likewise and then grabbed Cathy, who was crying again, and hauled her out of there.

  “We’ll walk you home,” Anna said as she steered Cathy past various people who wanted to touch her for luck or warn her that her very soul was in peril.

  Outside Ty rubbed his shoulder again, looking at me pointedly. I was shaking, I was so angry and upset. How could she even be contemplating turning into a vampire? Let alone already have said yes.

  “Thank you, Ty,” Cathy said, as her tears continued to flow. “It means a lot to have your support.”

  “No problem,” Ty said.

  I was about to point out that it was, in fact, a huge problem, when Anna grabbed my hand and squeezed warningly.