Team Human

by Justine Larbalestier

  The new building, a Rubik’s cube of steel framework and smoked glass, had risen on the south bank of the Bathory River.

  Cathy would have preferred to become a vampire in the arms of Francis’s shade, in their beautiful old house. (She wouldn’t have wanted to transition in Kit’s room, which had a drum kit and posters taped to every available surface, including the mirror, and was the opposite of beautiful.) She would have worn an elegant white dress and the lights would have been down low, if she’d had it her way.

  But Cathy had already been given enough exceptions by being allowed to transition young. The media would have a field day with a seventeen-year-old girl who was transitioned in any way that wasn’t completely by the book, especially a seventeen-year-old girl who had been involved in the Saunders zombie case.

  Especially if the transition was unsuccessful.

  I didn’t want to think about that.

  The transition room was a bit like a hospital room and a bit like a prison: The walls were so thick, it was like we were all in a huge white concrete bathtub. One of the walls was reinforced sliding glass opening onto a balcony almost as big as the room itself.

  The transitioning expert assigned to us was a red-haired vampire. Vampire pallor on top of normal redhead pallor meant her skin almost glowed, and her hair looked scarlet in contrast.

  I’d been thinking about the thing I didn’t want to think about and so totally missed her name. I was mentally calling her Dr. Vampire.

  “You may experience a feeling of claustrophobia,” said Dr. Vampire to Cathy in that good, professional voice: infinitely kind and totally distant. “You may become distressed because you perceive temperatures differently. We find that in some cases the transitionee will want to go outside immediately. With the balcony we can relocate you to the cool open air instantly if you so desire.”

  Cathy nodded, her eyes huge and nervous.

  It made me think of the way she’d looked on our very first day of kindergarten, small and serious and anxious to get this right.

  Except that it didn’t remind me of that, not really: I only imagined it did. I didn’t really remember our first day of school.

  All I knew was that I’d been there on her first day of school. It had been my first day of school too. I was not going with her on this journey.

  I was terrified I didn’t have enough memories of Cathy. There had been years’ and years’ worth, but I couldn’t remember what color her dress had been on that first day or where our families had taken us on our first vacation together. What had been the name of that band we were going to form? I’d forgotten too much.

  Today could be the last day. These might be all the memories of Cathy I would ever have. They weren’t enough.

  Valerie Beauvier was sitting in a chair, staring at Cathy with tears in her eyes. It made me furious to see Cathy’s mom giving herself tragic airs, when she’d signed off on the papers. When all of this was her fault.

  I curled my hands into fists, my nails biting into my palms, and told myself to stop blaming other people.

  This was Cathy’s decision. She wasn’t being forced like Dr. Saunders. She wanted this, and I had to find a way to respect that.

  Somehow.

  Kit and Camille were here, both standing by the wall. Kit looked awkward. I wondered if it was because he didn’t know Cathy very well or if he was thinking about how this could have been his transition. Cathy said she was glad to have members of what would (if all went well) be her shade with her.

  I suspected she wanted Kit there for me, for moral support. In case …

  I wasn’t going to think about it.

  Francis was sitting by Cathy’s bedside, her hands in both of his. He was wearing a black silk shirt that made his hair look silver and her hospital gown look paler.

  He’d dressed for the transitioning.

  I could almost hate him for that, but Cathy had wanted a tableau as well. Scene setting must be a couple’s hobby for them, like some people play tennis doubles.

  “My darling,” said Francis, “if you need more time, I will understand. We don’t have to do this today.”

  His voice was the usual Francis voice, cool and composed, but Cathy smiled as if she heard something else in it. She reached out and rested her palm against his cheek.

  “This is no time for nerves, beloved.”

  Francis bowed his head and stood up, walking over to the glass doors and through to the balcony.

  “So, Cathy,” Kit said, “when you have your first drink of blood, do you want to have it in a champagne glass to celebrate?”

  Dr. Vampire gave Kit a tolerant look. “She will be given it in the regulation packet.”

  “I’ll sneak you a straw,” Kit said. “And maybe a pink umbrella.”

  Cathy smiled, and I was glad that somebody could be there to make her smile a little, help her relax, but I couldn’t do it. I bolted out onto the balcony.

  Oh, excellent. Special alone time with Francis.

  The balcony had a high, reinforced glass wall, taller than my head. New Whitby at night was spread out before me, a glittering carpet with a pattern I knew by heart. There was the Shade, and there was my neighborhood, and there was our school.

  Down below our feet, the Bathory River ran, moonlight and movement changing it every moment. First silver, then darkness.

  “When I asked her if she might consider becoming a vampire,” Francis said, “I did not give her a date. I would have been happy to wait until she completed university, until she had—” He swallowed. “She is so young. We have been together for such a very short time.” He straightened a little, which was when I noticed he had been the Francis version of slumped before. “But it’s her decision.”

  I’d been all ready to yell at him for putting that option in front of her, my romantic Cathy, but him saying that made me close my mouth.

  It was her decision. Francis hadn’t wanted to push her into it.

  I couldn’t act like he was my friend. I couldn’t act like I had any sort of positive feelings toward him at all. I couldn’t even say that I wouldn’t blame him if something went wrong.

  But he stood here staring out into the night, and I thought there was a chance he was feeling a little of the same desperate fear as me.

  “We both love her,” I said, and put my hand on his arm.

  Francis didn’t draw away, not until Cathy murmured our names. Then we both left the balcony and went back to her bed. I took her mom’s place by Cathy’s side, and Valerie Beauvier went over to her chair to weep again. Kit put an awkward, comforting hand on her shoulder. Camille looked disturbed by the excessive human display of emotion, but Kit stood by Ms. Beauvier and Camille stood by him.

  I made an effort and met Cathy’s eyes. She was crying too, silent tears that slipped down her cheeks and sparkled on her lashes.

  “I love you, Mel,” she said. “You’re my best friend. It won’t matter if I live to be a thousand years old, or—” Cathy stopped. “It won’t matter,” she went on, softer now. “You’ll always be the best.”

  “You’re pretty okay too,” I whispered back. “I mean, not perfect, but I’d give you a solid B.”

  Cathy smiled through her tears. “You know I always make A’s.”

  I stooped down and kissed her on one wet cheek. “I love you,” I murmured, in her ear so nobody else could hear, and then because it was her decision, I stepped back from the bed.

  Francis took out a linen handkerchief from his breast pocket—of course he did, classic Francis—and began to tenderly dry her tears, but Cathy checked him and took it gently from his hand.

  She dried her own tears, carefully, taking her time.

  No matter what happened next, how well things went, this was the last time Cathy would ever cry.

  “Are you ready to begin the procedure, Ms. Beauvier?” asked Dr. Vampire. For a second I thought she was speaking to Cathy’s mom, but then Cathy nodded. “And you, Mr. Duvarney?”

  Francis
nodded.

  Dr. Vampire cast a discreet glance at the Zombie Disposal Unit, lined at the back of the room with their nets and weapons.

  She said, “You may begin.”

  I backed up, into the open door. I felt the night air run down the back of my shirt and shuddered.

  Francis took Cathy’s face between his palms and looked at her for a long moment. Then he let her go.

  Cathy tilted her head back, baring her throat, and Francis brushed a long strand of dark hair from her neck.

  He sat there on the bed, looking at her neck, and I saw his fangs.

  His teeth glittered, sharp and thin as stiletto knives. Francis the soft-spoken, Francis the perfect gentleman, crouched over my best friend like a hungry animal.

  Cathy lay trusting and still in his arms.

  I backed up another step. I couldn’t run to her, I couldn’t tear her away. It was her decision.

  Francis bit in.

  I only saw it for an instant, those sharp teeth breaking her skin, the swift scarlet welling of blood, and the way Cathy’s body jerked in a spasm of pain.

  I whirled around and looked out at the city. I couldn’t bear it.

  New Whitby glittered. The river rushed by. And my best friend was dying behind me.

  I took deep, shaky breaths, and I heard someone approaching. Kit’s arms went around my waist and he said, in my ear: “Hold on.”

  He was warm and solid at my back. I tried to fix my blurry eyesight on something, and looked at the Remembrance Bridge, a wide stone bridge with columns on either end, bearing the names of humans and vampires who had died in World War I.

  I fixed my eyes on the bridge, solid and real. The river had been running under it for a hundred years. I wasn’t going to cry.

  I took in one more deep breath and pulled gently away from Kit.

  I looked through the open door.

  Cathy lay so still on the bed. There was blood on her mouth, blood on her neck, blood on the sheets.

  She looked dead.

  The ZDU moved to surround Cathy’s bed, making sure no human was too close to her. Francis stood at the foot of the bed.

  I held on to the glass door and thought, with a conviction I hadn’t been able to muster before, Yes, her decision, yes, be a vampire. Don’t laugh, don’t cry, don’t ever see the sun again.

  It wouldn’t have been my choice, but it wasn’t my choice.

  Please let her get what she wants, I thought.

  It didn’t matter if I agreed or disagreed with my best friend. What mattered was keeping my best friend.

  I could see her, past the guards. Her chest did not rise and fall. It wouldn’t ever again.

  If she didn’t move, she was dead.

  If she did move—I thought of Dr. Saunders and knew there were worse things.

  She moved. I grabbed Kit’s hand and held it hard.

  I saw her eyes open.

  I saw her head move and lift. I couldn’t see well enough with all those bodies in the way; I couldn’t tell.

  Then I heard her. Clear as a bell in that clinical white room, with the doctor and the guards around her, Cathy said: “Francis.”

  I turned around again, this time because I was crying. The lights of New Whitby blurred, forming a new pattern, and I cried and cried because I was so happy.

  Then Cathy said, “Mel,” and I turned to look at her.

  She was watching me. She looked like Cathy and yet not like Cathy, eyes a little too brilliant in a face that was a little too pale. She looked like a new Cathy.

  She held out her hand to me, and I crossed the room to her bed.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  Prelude to a Win

  Of course, Cathy wanted to finish school. Ty joked that even if she’d become a zombie, she probably would have wanted to finish school.

  Ty’s zombie jokes never went over well, and we had all warned him that if he made them in front of Anna, he would regret it.

  Naturally, Francis the chivalrous had to accompany her. Besides which, he was still writing his magnum opus. I had seen his and Cathy’s office/library, the walls lined with shelves full of gold-spined volumes, both their desks piled high with paper. Francis seemed to be adjusting to Cathy’s addition of a computer. Kit swore he’d even seen him watching online videos of hilarious monkeys.

  Cathy seemed to be enjoying her role as cowriter and researcher.

  I was happy for them. Just as long as nobody expected me to read any of it.

  On this particular fine winter day—with actual sun!—we’d decided to play Ty’s new invention of snow baseball at lunch. (Remarkably like regular baseball except played in the snow with an orange ball.) We were all going a little stir crazy. February is always the worst. Short days, long cold nights. It did mean hanging with Cathy outdoors was easier. I asked her to join us for baseball, but she didn’t seem eager to leave the library and don her hazmat suit.

  It was still weird for me, having to leave Cathy inside.

  “I don’t mind,” Cathy told me in her new voice, cooler and somehow hushed, as if being undead meant you were always at the library. (Cathy did love libraries.) “Really, it will give us a chance to put our notes in order.”

  “Oh, is that what they’re calling it these days,” I said, waggling my eyebrows.

  From across the room, I could see Francis was scandalized. These special moments with him always made my day.

  Cathy’s mouth, lips a paler rose than they had been, turned up at the corners about half as much as they would have before.

  There was a pang in my chest, knowing that once she might even have laughed. But it was worth a lot, to have her here and smiling at me.

  “All right, you two crazy kids,” I said. “Can’t hang around. My team’s going to get creamed without me. See you in Local History?”

  “After that, back to the library for study period,” Cathy said sternly. “There’s much more research to do.”

  Ever since I’d first expressed a desire to look into the police force as a future career, Cathy had been making me research every detail of it, finding out which were the best courses, Police Science or Law Enforcement or Criminal Justice, and which were the best colleges. Or should I go straight to the police academy? Was that even possible?

  It was nice to discuss it with Cathy. The police mission statement felt right as nothing else had felt right.

  If you want happiness for a lifetime, help somebody. Protect and serve.

  “Sure, sure,” I said, pausing at the door to give Cathy a little wave.

  She and Francis bent over their books, dark and fair heads close together, serious and absorbed, protected from the sun by smoked glass.

  Even undead, Cathy was still dragging me to the library. Stuff like that allowed me to pretend things hadn’t changed that much.

  She seemed happy, I thought, as I ran through the shadowed corridors, then into the gym and across it, heading for the door. I hoped she would never regret it, not if she lived to be a thousand years old.

  If she did live to be a thousand years old, though, I hoped she’d at least take a break from Francis and date an alien. I imagined Francis’s reaction to being dumped for an alien, and I came out into the bright but still chilly sunlight laughing.

  Kit looked up at my laugh from where he stood at second base.

  “Get your butt over here!” he yelled.

  I sauntered over. “I’m sorry, what was that?”

  “Darling, we implore you to rescue us from ignominious defeat with your superior athletic skills,” drawled Kit, doing his best Francis impression. “So get your butt over here.”

  “Oh, well, when you put it like that,” I said, and jumped at him.

  He caught me neatly, my legs around his waist, and spun me around for a brief kiss. It was kind of a handy way to work through the height difference.

  I grinned up at him, the kiss still sending sparks through my blood, and he grinned back, his curls lit up against the sky.

&nbs
p; “You guys want to play ball or you want to fool around?” Anna called, tossing her blazing hair.

  We hadn’t been sure Anna would come back to school, not with her mother getting fired and given community service.

  They said it was the lightest possible sentence, considering she had kept a zombie so close to schoolkids. We had all been a few basement walls away from disaster.

  Principal Saunders had been a hairbreadth away from disaster herself. She’d fed Dr. Saunders with her own blood, but she’d cut herself and let it drip into a cup she gave him. She could have been bitten countless times. Anna had almost been orphaned. I shivered thinking about it.

  But the court had determined that Principal Saunders had been of unsound mind, given the traumatic experience of walking in on her husband’s forced and unsuccessful transitioning. She was getting counseling now, at the center where Dr. Saunders used to work, and she’d been chosen as a group leader for some of the sessions. Anna said helping other people was helping her mom more than anything: Principal Saunders was looking into a new career as a counselor.

  They were both doing much better than we had expected. It made me hope Cathy was right, that I hadn’t been such a bad friend to Anna after all.

  “Fooling around later,” I said, waggling my fingers at Kit as I backed off. “Victory now!”

  This evening, we were going on our first official double date. Kit refused to go on double dates with Francis: He maintained it was creepy and would call him Uncle Francis all day whenever it was suggested.

  We were going on our double date with Ty and Jon the soccer player.

  Turned out Ty had not so much been trying to fix Anna up on a date with Jon as trying to date Jon himself. Whoops.

  We’d all been staggering around after the discovery of Anna’s dad and Cathy’s transitioning, so Ty’s revelation that he might want to date guys as well as girls had been received by us all in a way he found disappointingly low-key.

  However, I very much enjoyed discussing how Francis’s beauty had awakened Ty to this realization. Such improper conversation made Francis so, so hilariously scandalized.

  “Victory?” yelled Anna, who can be very competitive. (It’s one of the things we have in common. Friends should have stuff in common.) “Check your team’s score, Mel.”