by Flynn Meaney
“It’s because you can’t grow a mustache!” the first guy said.
“No,” the other argued. “It’s because you brought your little brother.”
“Hey, guys! Wait up!” a smaller voice called. When the two guys parted, I could see a ten-year-old trailing along behind them.
I grinned as we walked past the underage kids and came upon a tall street performer guy singing early Mariah Carey hits in a surprisingly convincing voice. Wow, he was really hitting those high notes! Wow, he… might be a she. Or was it a he? Or was it…
I was about to ask for Jenny’s input when I realized what was making it seem quiet. Jenny was quiet. And that was such a rare occurrence that it threw me off completely. Refraining from asking for her input on the diva’s gender ambiguity, I put my hands in my pockets, and Jenny trudged along next to me. Usually she’d be tugging at my sleeves, asking me a million questions, talking about the reading. But she wasn’t saying anything.
When I looked to the side and opened my mouth to make conversation, I saw the reflection of a streetlight streaming down Jenny’s face. She was crying! What the hell? Why was Jenny crying? More important, what was I supposed to do about it? I turned my head away quickly. Maybe she didn’t want to be seen crying. I wouldn’t want anyone to see me crying. I would want everyone around me to ignore the situation completely.
Jenny didn’t want that. When I turned my head away from her, she sniffed pointedly.
Maybe I just had to change the subject, and she would forget whatever had made her cry. It couldn’t have been that big a deal anyway if I hadn’t noticed Jenny get upset (and I had noticed that transvestite singing Mariah Carey songs).
“That Gareth guy was pretty funny,” I said. “You know, when he was reading…”
A high-pitched wail escaped from Jenny’s chest.
Shit. Were people hearing this? Were people watching this, thinking I made her cry? Had I made her cry? Shit. I should never speak. Or act. Ever. I screw everything up.
“You okay, Jen?” I asked. I subtly scooted a few inches away from her, with the caution of a man diffusing a bomb. What were you supposed to do with a crying girl? Would she want me to hug her? Give her a tissue? I didn’t have a tissue! I suddenly wished I was in Indiana, during the days when I didn’t even talk to girls.
Then I felt Jenny pull at my arm. She was dragging me over toward her. Surprised by her force, I stumbled across the sidewalk and suddenly found myself in a dark space between two buildings, all shadowed pavement and fire escapes. We were alone in an alley.
I turned my head rapidly from one side to another, from the piles of trash bags on one side to the squared-off view of the street on the other. I didn’t want to look Jenny in the face.
“Turn me,” she whispered.
Then I had to look, and frankly, she looked bat-shit crazy. Her tears were like magnifying glasses that made her crazy eyes seem bigger and scarier. My own eyes widened in response.
“What?”
I barely got the word out before she had me pinned against the alley wall. Her little palms were pressing into my jacket like she was making me into a kindergarten handprint project.
“Turn me,” she repeated ominously, her little chin thrust toward me, her eyes looking like they could shoot lasers out of them.
For a wild second I thought, is Jenny going to take advantage of me? I was kind of okay with that. I was pretty sick of hauling my virginity around, and obviously Kate wasn’t interested in taking it from me.
“Jenny, I…” I reached a nervous hand out for her arm, but her tendons tensed like rope. Was everyone in the world stronger than I was?
“Turn me into a vampire,” she said.
A brief light from a window above blinded me in my shock.
“What?”
Her arms went slack and I could finally take a full breath.
“I want to be like you,” she said, her voice shaking, her little hands trembling, her lips quivering.
“I want to be cool like you. I want everyone to talk about me. I want to be cool and not care what I say or what I do. Or who I hurt.”
What? Who had I hurt?
“I’ll be better than Kate,” Jenny said earnestly, bringing her arms down to her sides, her face, hopeful, turned up at me. “I’ll be a vampire, like you. I’ll stay with you. She won’t.”
Something twisted in my chest. Jenny liked me. It hurt to have her stand there and tell me, to reveal something to me that would most likely lead to hurt feelings and embarrassment. I saw a lot of my pathetic self in her at that moment. No wonder Jenny had shut up as soon as I mentioned Kate. She was jealous. I was always patting myself on the back for being so perceptive, believing girls would like me because I was sensitive, aware of their feelings, but in the three months of having her constantly around, complaining to me, gossiping, copying my homework, I hadn’t noticed that Jenny liked me. Even when Jenny went on and on about Kate’s jeans, and Kate’s sweating in gym class, and how Kate wouldn’t understand me, I never even suspected the truth. Jenny liked me. Jenny liked me. All my life, I’d waited for a girl to like me, or a middle-aged woman to like me, or a nun, or anyone. I’d thought a girl liking me would make me, to borrow a phrase from everyone who talks about my brother, “the man.” Now Jenny liked me; apparently she’d liked me for a long time—and I’d never felt so terrible in my life. Even when Kate lied to me. Even when Celine rejected me.
“Finbar, please,” Jenny begged.
Oh, shit, right. Back to this. Not only had I hurt Jenny, I’d also told her a massive lie. And this was karma coming back to kick my ass in a back alley. Sure, I’d noticed increasing numbers of girls discussing my vampire potential and debating my strength. And sure, Kayla Bateman had freaked out about me potentially drinking her blood. I knew they all believed, but… Jenny really believed. I didn’t know it would go this far.
My palms got sweaty. I mean, I did owe Jenny. I’d been inconsiderate of her feelings. I’d treated her as badly as Celine had treated me. I owed her at least a metamorphosis. Problem was…
“Jenny, I don’t know how,” I told her.
Raising my hand to my indented chest, I surveyed the damage her fierce little palms had done when she pushed me. No broken ribs. Phew.
“You do know how.”
“I don’t.” Against the alley wall, my shoulders rose in a hopeless shrug.
“You became one,” she accused me, bitterly, from the throat.
Well, I was going to have to turn Jenny into a vampire. Of all the shitty situations I’d dug myself into lately, this one was pretty deep. How could I “turn” Jenny? My Catholic side told me there should be some kind of ceremony. Like the way I got ashes on Ash Wednesday, and how the priest put oil on my head at my confirmation. I looked around for what I could use. With the contents of this herpes-rimmed Pepsi can, I anoint thee, Jenny, a vampire. Or, With the blood of this one-eyed pigeon, I anoint thee… My options were pretty sketchy.
Luckily, Jenny was more specific.
“Bite me,” she pleaded.
She made her neck extra naked for me, pulling down her collar, revealing a few freckles I’d never seen before.
Oh, Jesus. Lord’s name in vain again, yes. But I really needed help here.
Against my will, without a plan, I felt my head tilt down toward her neck. There was quite a distance to bridge between my beanpole body and her elfin self, and the whole distance I was thinking, What the hell am I gonna do?
But then a thought occurred to me. It was like I suddenly had the wisdom of a thousand-year-old man. Or at least someone old enough to drink.
I made like I was going for her neck, the curve where it met her collarbone, and I did linger close for a few seconds, feeling the desperate heat emanating from those freckles. But then I took a detour. I went up to Jenny’s ear instead, and I told her this:
“Turn yourself.”
She pulled back like I had bad breath.
“What?”
&nb
sp; “Turn yourself,” I commanded her. “Just decide that you are someone else. Decide that you are a vampire. If you believe you’re a vampire, everyone will believe you’re a vampire.”
“No.” Jenny trembled. “No, they won’t.”
I leaned closer to her again.
“You believed me,” I said.
I made a sudden move, snapping my teeth together, and Jenny trembled at the elbows.
“See,” I said smoothly.
“What?” Jenny asked. “You’re not really a vampire?”
“No!” I jumped in quickly. “I mean, yes. Well, kinda. I’m mostly a vampire. I have all the… aura, you know? The vampire aura. I have vampire attitude, too. I have the aura, and the attitude. I just don’t, um, drink blood.”
Jenny’s small face was very serious. “So you’re not technically a vampire?”
Well, technically… I called on Chauncey Castle’s ability to answer a question with a question and coupled it with my extensive knowledge of Jenny.
“Would you want to technically be a vampire, Jenny?” I asked. “No more chai tea. No more onion bagels from Dunkin’ Donuts. Plus… you know, you’d be dead. So you’d never get your driver’s license.”
We were already in a dark alley, but the idea of never getting her license was really scary to Jenny. Her arms dropped, freeing my chest and letting me inhale again. Her shoulders dropped, too.
“I guess I wouldn’t want to technically be a vampire,” she said. “I mean, I’d probably rather be Tresora Chest from The Seductress and the Swashbuckler. Or Raven Mane from Dragons and Drama Queens. She’s the one I dyed my hair to look like,” Jenny added, looking up at me.
“Ohhh.” I tried to nod admiringly at her hair, which had grown out so far that it was two-thirds orange and only a third black.
“But no one even noticed when I dyed my hair.” Jenny said, shaking her head. “None of the kids I’ve gone to school with for twelve years.”
Oh, Jesus, I thought. I really needed to invest in some pocket tissues if I was gonna hang out with so many girls.
But Jenny wasn’t crying when she looked up at me. And then she said something really thoughtful.
“I guess I didn’t want to be a vampire,” Jenny said. “I just wanted to be someone else.”
Right after that, Jenny led the way out of the alley and down the street toward Grand Central and our train home. As I followed her little trudging footsteps, I should have felt bad for the girl. With her badly dyed hair and her too-big black jacket, she looked like she’d been kicked out of the Addams family. And suddenly I thought of all these things to comfort her, like some vague compliment Jason Burke had said that week, or the fact that the Irish author Gareth actually seemed semi-intrigued by Jenny, and he’d glanced at her a few times during his reading.
But what she’d said, she’d said so matter-of-factly, like it was normal. “I just wanted to be someone else.” And, I guess, it was normal. Why else would I have given a sex speech in my English class and beat up a bully? Those weren’t Finbar-esque actions. Why else would I have become a vampire?
It seemed so simple now. Somehow quirky little Jenny had simplified it. She wanted to be someone else. I wanted to be someone else. And we couldn’t be the only ones, either. I bet even Luke wanted to be someone else, sometimes—someone who could pass math or sit still through a test. And even Kate, Kate had wanted…
No. I was still angry about Kate. I couldn’t think about her yet.
“Come on,” Jenny called from ahead of me on the sidewalk. “We’re just in time for the express train if you hurry up.”
chapter 17
It took me a full week to notice that Luke was actually pretty depressed. Ever since the house party in New Rochelle, he had been so down that he didn’t even throw things at the ceiling at night. He would just sigh, roll over, and go to sleep. While Luke habitually treated our stairwells and house siding like a playground, he only climbed through the second-story window once that week. And we legitimately needed his help to unlock the door.
“So how’s, uh, Math B going?” I asked him one day when he was studying at my desk (his was, as usual, covered in sweaty clothes). Usually Luke wasn’t really attentive when he was studying. I was impressed with his concentration today. He wasn’t studying, but he had been doing a rubber-pencil trick for, like, fifteen minutes straight.
“Fine,” he said, and shrugged.
I probed, pushed, and prodded sensitive points to find out why he was upset. This technique I’ve learned from my mother.
“Are you gonna fail?” I asked.
“Doubt it,” Luke said. “I got a B on the last test.”
“Luke! That’s crazy good!”
“Yeah.” And then he sighed again. What was this sigh? I’d never heard Luke sigh. Then a thought occurred to me. Luke was acting calmer.
“Did you go back on meds?” I asked him suddenly.
He turned around in my wooden desk chair and raised an eyebrow. Then he shook his head. “No.”
Twin brothers are kind of like seesaws. When one of us goes down, the other automatically goes up. I don’t mean that I was happy to see Luke upset. Rather, when I observed that he was upset, I became more upbeat in order to cheer him up. Or became more annoying in order to distract him.
“Hey,” I called to him from my bed. “You got a little beard growing there?”
Was my brother really too depressed to shave? What was this?
I stood up and walked over to Luke. Indeed, he had kind of a beard. He had a quarter-inch of stubble.
“Ooh, sexy beard,” I told him. “It’s kind of… red.”
“I know,” he said. “I don’t know why.”
Luke’s hair was a lighter brown than mine. But his beard was kind of reddish-brown.
“You’ve got your Irish side showing,” I told him. “Very nice. Can I touch it?”
“Nah,” Luke said. “Don’t touch it.”
I reached out for his cheek. He slapped my hand away with those cheetah reflexes that have made so many high school football rivals cry. I reached again, quicker, and he missed.
“Ooh, sexy,” I said, rubbing my brother’s face.
See? I get pretty silly when Luke’s not Luke. One of us has to be crazy at all times to justify my mother’s paranoia.
“Sexy like a cactus.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Luke said. “Let me do this math stuff.”
“C’mon, Luke,” I said. “What’s up with you?”
He turned this mournful, hound-dog-like face to me.
“All right, here it is,” he said, lifting my desk chair. He turned the chair around and sat back down for the big reveal.
“I’m in love,” Luke said.
I burst out laughing. “No, you’re not. You’re drugged up!”
“I’m in love,” Luke repeated mournfully.
“You’re pissed off because you’re in love?” I asked him. “What are you, that little kid from Love Actually?”
Luke looked like himself for a minute.
“You really watch too many movies with Mom,” he told me.
“Who’s this girl?” I asked him. “Was she at the football party?”
Luke nodded.
“Was she the girl who was grinding so hard on you she got rug burn?” I asked.
“No,” Luke said.
“Was she the one who took a tequila shot off your stomach?”
“No.”
“Was she the one who took eight pictures with you and then cried because she dropped her digital camera?”
“No, not that one,” Luke said. “I didn’t actually talk to her at the party.”
“Wait,” I interrupted. “She wasn’t busy arguing about Chris Brown songs, was she?”
“No,” said Luke.
“Phew.”
“She didn’t stay long,” Luke said. “She doesn’t really like parties. And she doesn’t like football, so I can’t get to her that way.”
“Well, what do
es she like?” I asked.
“Books,” Luke said glumly. “Wait!”
Jumping up from the desk, Luke knocked my chair over. He had his energy back. I felt the need to issue a tornado warning for the tristate area.
“You can help me!” Luke said. He literally jumped up and down. Our floorboards creaked in protest.
“Finn, you can help me! This girl likes books! You must know her!”
“How would I know her?” I asked.
“Oh, come on,” Luke said. “All you people who read know each other.”
“People who read books?” I said. “No, we don’t all know each other. But maybe I’ll start a Facebook group.”
“Finn, this is brilliant!” Luke was still pumped. “You can definitely help me out! She’s your kind of girl. She’s smart, she’s quiet, she’s terrible at kegstands….”
“One time,” I groaned.
“But you can help me!”
I shook my head. “I have my own girl problems, Luke.”
“You owe me,” Luke told me. “Come on, help me out! I’ve helped you with girls before.”
I scoffed. “You invited me to one party with Kate,” I said. “I got punched, and she left.”
“I’ve been helping you get girls all your life!” Luke wheedled.
“All my life?” I questioned. “Kate was my first girl!”
“Hey, what about…” Luke racked his brain. “Hey, what about, remember that librarian you liked when we were little?”
I feigned ignorance. “Librarian? I don’t remember.”
Luke rounded his hands out from his chest. The universal sign for “big boobs.”
“All right,” I admitted. “Yeah, what about her?”
“Remember that time you had a broken ankle and the fire alarm went off in the library and that librarian carried you out, all, like, wrapped in her arms?” Luke asked, with a surprisingly accurate memory. “She carried you out, man.”
“Yeah,” I admitted. I did remember. The librarian had picked me up and held me to her chest as we evacuated beneath the flashing fire alarm. I’d felt so safe and nonflammable between her breasts.