Team Human

by Justine Larbalestier

  “And Principal Saunders. Imagine keeping that secret for so long. Imagine watching someone you love change like that.”

  We both shuddered.

  “Do you think Anna will ever forgive me?” I asked, though I was also thinking about what Cathy must think of me now.

  “Forgive you? For what?”

  Cathy sounded honestly baffled.

  “Showing her what happened to her dad. Meddling—”

  “Principal Saunders’s keeping her husband alive was hardly your fault, Mel.”

  “I know, but if I hadn’t interfered—”

  “Anna asked you to interfere. Besides, if you hadn’t, he might not have been found in time. Principal Saunders might have wound up as another zombie.” Cathy’s voice sank even lower. “There could have been a zombie outbreak.”

  “But—”

  “You did right, Mel,” Cathy said firmly, sitting up and looking directly at me. “You were brave and smart, and you helped Anna when she needed you most. You’re a good friend. Anna was able to say good-bye. You gave that to her.”

  “It was so awful,” I said, “seeing Dr. Saunders like that. His skin … seeing the bones underneath … and the smell.”

  “I keep thinking about him recognizing his daughter even after so much deterioration of his brain,” Cathy said softly.

  “I wish we could stop thinking about it,” I said. Cathy was not going to think I was brave and smart if I vomited on my pillow.

  “I’ve been thinking about it,” Cathy said. “A lot. About zombies, about what can happen if a transition goes wrong. It’s different when it’s someone you know.”

  I was silent. Was Cathy about to say what I thought she was? What I hoped she would? Had she changed her mind?

  “It’s so real. I knew Anna’s dad. We all did. Remember how clever and funny he was? Then last night he could barely say his daughter’s name.”

  “I can’t imagine anyone I loved being like that,” I said, looking away from Cathy. “It’s too horrible.”

  “You mean me?”

  “No. I mean, yes. You’re my best friend. I love you. I couldn’t stand to see you like that. But I won’t, will I? I mean, not after what you just saw.”

  There was a long pause. I stared at the morning light on my bedroom ceiling.

  “You think I’ve changed my mind?” Cathy asked at last.

  “Well, yes,” I said, sitting up. “You have, haven’t you?”

  “You know I’ve been doing a lot of research, right?”

  I nodded.

  “One of the things I’ve discovered is that it’s true: There is a correlation between how someone is turned and how successful their transition is. Dr. Saunders was changed against his will. He would have fought his assailant—his murderer. You saw the result.

  “The odds of my success are high. Not only am I willing, but we’re doing the transition in a secure facility, with trained experts. We’re not leaving anything to chance.”

  Cathy’s face, lying on her pillow, was sad but serene. I couldn’t imagine being that calm, talking about the odds. The odds of her not becoming what we’d seen last night.

  “There’s still a risk.”

  “Yes, but I’m willing to take it. I want this. And if—if it does go wrong, the ZDU will be right there. I won’t end like Dr. Saunders.”

  I did not want to imagine Cathy as a zombie, not for a fraction of a second.

  “You’re still going to do it?” I said. I couldn’t keep the misery out of my voice.

  Cathy sat up now, hugging her knees and speaking in a level voice.

  “Yes, Mel, I am. I love you. You’re my best friend and I’m really sorry you don’t want me to do this. But I am going to do it. I’m glad you’re worried about me. I’m glad you care so much. But you have to trust me to make my own decisions.”

  She wasn’t angry this time. She truly wanted me to understand.

  “Even after what you saw? Dr. Saunders?”

  She nodded. “Like I said, I’ve always known there were risks. But I’m going into this with my eyes open, knowing everything there is to know. We’ve minimized the risks as much as they can be. This is what I want. I know you don’t want it for me. I respect that. But it’s my life, Mel. I’m the one who decides.

  “I don’t want to lose you. I don’t want our friendship to end. Will you—can you be my friend after my transition?”

  She was asking me what Kit had asked. I thought of everything I’d told Kit about why I couldn’t be with him if he changed. I’d told him Cathy wasn’t going to change. But she was.

  Cathy was going to change. There was nothing I could do to stop her.

  She was going to become a vampire.

  Cathy was watching me with her big eyes. She’d always looked a little wistful, even when she was a kid. As if there would always be something important to her that she could never have.

  “I want you to stay in my life,” Cathy whispered.

  “I want you to stay in mine,” I whispered back.

  I was thinking about Camille. She wasn’t so bad. She loved her son. She had a wry sense of humor even if she didn’t laugh. And Anna and Ty were right: Cathy had never been much of a laugher. Even as a kid you could tickle her as much as you liked and barely get a smile out of her. Sure, she wasn’t ticklish, but it was more than that. She was so serious. Cathy had been born serious. She would make a serious vampire. A little like Francis. A Francis who wasn’t obnoxious and who could handle being teased.

  “When I transition,” Cathy said, then paused, waiting for me.

  So I said, “Yes.”

  I admitted reality, at last. I admitted I could not stop it. Cathy was going to become a vampire.

  “I want you to be there. I want my best friend to be there to see me leave my old life and welcome me to my new one.”

  “If that’s what you want,” I said, concentrating hard on not letting the tight awful feeling in my chest transition into tears.

  Cathy held out a hand. I took it between mine. It was warm, human. I held on as hard as I could. “You’ll be cold,” I whispered. “Room temperature.”

  “You get used to it,” she promised.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  Team Human

  School on Monday was weird. Anna wasn’t there, obviously. But news of what had happened had somehow spread. It hadn’t come from me or Cathy. Yet everyone seemed to know. I didn’t answer any of their questions. I really didn’t want to talk about it.

  Kaplan was acting principal in Principal Saunders’s absence. Who knew when or if she’d be coming back? He called Cathy and me into his office first thing to see if we were okay and to assure us that we could take a few days off if we needed to. We both said we were all right.

  I wasn’t sure if that was true. We were both quieter than usual. I couldn’t stop thinking about Anna and her zombie dad, and Cathy determined to become a vampire, and what a horrible mess everything was. I was relieved Francis wasn’t at school. I didn’t think I could stand to see him on the day after I had finally accepted I was losing my best friend.

  I was already calculating how long Cathy had left before she stopped being Cathy and became … whatever it was she wound up being. At best it would be Vampire Cathy. I could not imagine being BFFs with Vampire Cathy. Though I would try, because I had promised. Because she was Cathy, and I couldn’t stand the thought of losing her.

  All day I was on the verge of tears. I am not much of a crier, but there they were, like pins behind my eyes.

  I found myself thinking several times during the day that maybe I should have stayed home. My concentration was not fabulous. But none of my teachers said anything about it. I guess Kaplan had spoken to them.

  Even Ty could see that Cathy and I were not our usual selves. He gave us very fast hugs, mumbled that he was sorry and did we think Anna would like him to visit? Sure, we said. Though neither of us had any idea what Anna wanted right then. Other than to have her father back and to
never have anything to do with vampires again.

  During study period, unable to concentrate on a single chapter of anything, I checked my phone. There was a text from Kit.

  Can you come over this evening? Having meeting with my shade. Need you.

  I texted back Yes even though I’d been thinking about whether I should stop seeing Kit. The thought of his transition was too painful. I was really going to miss him.

  But I owed him an explanation. Might as well get that over and done with. Besides which, maybe he would make me laugh?

  He was really good at that. And I could really use a laugh.

  I let Coach know I would skip fencing practice. She was very understanding. Everyone was. I’d actually been looking forward to practice: I was very much in the mood to stab people. Sadly, when I was in that mood, I fenced horribly, all technique out the window. Wild stabbing is typically not good saber technique.

  Camille opened the door before I’d even knocked. I’d have to get used to superexcellent vampire hearing.

  I couldn’t help thinking that once Cathy transitioned, I’d never be able to surprise her again.

  “Come in, my dear,” Camille said in her austere way, shutting the door behind me.

  The endearment surprised me. I wondered if she felt sorry for me after what had happened.

  I walked into a room full of vampires. It would be a lie if I didn’t mention that my first instinct was to run a million miles away.

  Turns out their teeth really do gleam, and when you see that many of them together, that gleam is very bright indeed. And terrifying.

  Marie-Therese waved in an airy I-am-queen kind of way. I tried not to think about what Kit had said about her voting to eat him and waved back. Minty was contemplating her remarkably long nails and remarking that she was missing out on her bridge party for this.

  Francis nodded at me gravely, an action I mirrored back at him, though possibly my nod was even graver than his. Albert was looking at Kit, who was sitting by himself, facing the rest of his shade. I smiled at him, and Kit returned the smile, even if his smile was shaky.

  And who could blame him, when his family meetings looked like this? I’d be intimidated too.

  The treacherous pinpricks returned behind my eyes. I was going to miss him.

  I shuffled into the chair Camille indicated next to her.

  I wondered what Kit could possibly have to tell them, and why he had wanted me here.

  “Right,” Kit said, clearing his throat. “You’re all here. So, um, I have something I want to say to all of you.”

  “We rather gathered that,” Francis said dryly.

  I was sorry I was sitting out of kicking range of Francis, but Kit lifted his chin at the words.

  “Right then, thank you, Francis.” He swallowed. “I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, and obviously, you’re the ones it most concerns. You’re my shade. So I—I have to let you know. I had to tell you, as soon as I was sure.”

  They were all watching him, with those clear, unblinking eyes, a ring of natural predators.

  Kit looked scared out of his mind.

  “I’m not going to transition,” he said.

  There was an immediate stir, a hissing and several voices raised in exclamation. Kit was breathing hard, his eyes wide and showing a lot of white, but he managed to get enough breath to speak over the noise.

  “Not immediately,” he said. “I’m not saying I won’t ever transition, but I am saying—that I want to wait and see. I’m not saying that I definitely will transition, either. I’ve been realizing lately,” he said, glancing at me and then away, “that there’s a lot I don’t know about being human. As in pretty much everything. There are so many human things I’ve never done. Never thought about, even. I don’t think I can become a vampire unless I’ve lived as a human first. I need to know what I’m giving up before I take the risk of dying or worse. Before I do something I can’t take back.”

  He didn’t look at me again, but I knew we were both thinking of Dr. Saunders.

  “Old age,” Minty said in a crisp, cold voice. “Becoming a vampire means giving up old age. I for one was not sad to miss that little part of human experience. Skin losing its elasticity, sagging toward the ground, teeth falling out—”

  “Pain,” Albert agreed in a sonorous voice. “Searing, agonizing pain. When you get hit by a bus, young man, you will not be able to merely push the bus aside and continue on your way, you will suffer.”

  I barely heard the litany of objections. I was staring at Kit. He was shaking as he listened to them.

  Albert stood up. “Of course, vampires can suffer too,” he said, eyeing Kit coldly. “We can suffer disappointment.”

  Kit flinched back as if Albert had hit him.

  Albert left the room, Minty beside him, murmuring something about ingratitude.

  I sneaked a look at Camille. She was sitting very stiffly in her chair. Her profile looked like something carved out of ice.

  I wondered if she was disappointed in Kit too.

  I’d been wrong again. Kit hadn’t been looking at them as a ring of predators, but still and always as his family, having something huge and life-altering to tell them, hoping it wouldn’t change how they felt about him.

  “You seemed perfectly happy to become a vampire before,” Marie-Therese murmured. “As we always planned.”

  “I know,” Kit said. “I wanted you all to be glad you took me in. I wanted to be like you. I did. I still do. But I don’t know how to be sure about it anymore. I couldn’t do it now. I’d always wonder.”

  “What you missed?” Marie-Therese asked, with an arch look at me.

  I glared at her.

  “Laughter,” Francis said. I turned to look at him. “He would miss laughter. I think we all know that. You laugh all the time, Kit. You are very human,” Francis said with a minuscule smile. “It is nothing to be ashamed of.”

  I almost fell off my chair. Francis was encouraging Kit to stay human? I swear, if he had been sitting closer I would have hugged him.

  “Thank you,” Kit said after a moment. “Thank you all, actually. You did take me in. I’ll always be grateful. I’m sorry if you’re disappointed in me, but you’ll always be my shade, and I love you. And I have something more to say. Maybe one day I will change, but right now,” he said, glancing at me again, “I really want to give this being human thing a shot. I want the full human experience. So I’ve enrolled at Craunston High. I’ll be a junior.”

  Francis stiffened, clearly outraged by this slight against Kit’s obviously superior homeschooling. A few other vampires looked indignant as well, reminding me of parents looking at unfair report cards.

  Kit’s mouth twisted, wry and hopeful.

  “They said we were too far into the year for me to start as a senior. Even though they were impressed by my test results on account of my excellent tutoring. Apparently the extra year gives me a better shot at getting into a good college. I’ve missed a lot of extracurricular things, you see. Though I hear my waltzing will be great for college applications.” He smiled properly, and Francis managed to smile back.

  The mention of waltzing seemed to signal the end of the meeting. A couple of other vampires left, shutting doors emphatically, giving Kit looks that made his shoulders hunch. A couple more stepped up to him and whispered to him seriously, like he’d decided to pass up Yale and go backpacking around the Amazon, all “think about your future, young man,” and that wasn’t so bad. That was how family behaved.

  Camille kept her seat until she was the only vampire left in the room. Then and only then did she rise and glide over to Kit, graceful as a swan. She put her hands on both his shoulders.

  I crossed my fingers and wished as hard as I could for her to understand.

  “You have made me very happy today,” said Camille in her cool, emotionless voice. She stood looking up into her son’s face. “But there is nothing new in that, is there? No matter what you decide, no matter how long yo
u live or I do, you will remain the great joy of my life.”

  I realized she had known what Kit was going to say all along. Of course she had. She was his mom.

  And me? What was I?

  I was beaming. I could have danced the whole way home. Instead I walked hand in hand with Kit.

  “I’m so glad,” I told him again.

  “I didn’t do it for you,” he said. “I mean,” he added hastily, “you were a big part of my decision. You showed me what I’d been missing. That there was more to humanity than what I’d seen through the eyes of my shade. Camille and Francis kept telling me that, but it took meeting you, and hearing you laugh, to make me see. Thank you.”

  He squeezed my hand as he said it, and I stopped and turned to face him. It was not long after dusk, so the streets of the Shade were mostly empty.

  “I’m glad,” I said, looking up at his eyes and wishing once again that I was as tall as my sister or even my little brother. I went up onto my tiptoes, he leaned down, and we kissed.

  Kit’s breath on my face was warm, so were his lips, and his arms holding me tight. I could feel the heat of his body pressed to mine, smell the oh-so-human smell of him, feel both our hearts beating faster, the blood racing through our veins.

  I pulled away briefly. “Welcome to Team Human,” I said.

  Kit laughed. It was a glorious sound.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  Crossing the Bridge

  I had passed by the New Whitby Center for Transition a hundred times without ever thinking much about it. It was like any other government building, big and irrelevant and the subject of grown-up discussions.

  I vaguely remembered Mom and Dad talking about it when it was built, a few years back. Saying that it was an awful lot of money to spend when not so many people transition these days, and how the New Whitby council always listened too much to Geoffrey Travers, just because he’d been on the council for a hundred twenty-five years.

  Then Mom made a joke about how no other vampire would accept the position, and Dad said that he thought Travers had been wearing the same waistcoat for at least a hundred of those years. The conversation had moved on to other things.