“Sure. Sounds cool. Um, Serena’s free too …” That causes even more happy dancing behind Nathan’s back. She’s so totally not a Goth girl. A true Goth girl wouldn’t care about going out for pizza with the in crowd.
“Sure. We’re meeting at Chili Pepper’s at noon. See you then.” He turns to go and Serena just barely stops her jiggity-jig in time. “Oh, and see you there too, Serena.”
“Works for me,” she says, totally copying my cool-as-a-cucum-ber new attitude.
We make it all the way to her car before we totally lose it.
“Ohmigod,” Serena shrieks. “What am I going to wear?”
“You mean I might get you out of that Goth girl getup for once?” Bonus!
“Well, it just doesn’t seem like a Chili Pepper’s kind of thing,” she says sheepishly.
I have been working on her for over a year to give up on the all-black ultra-depressing wardrobe. Who knew it would just take a pizza place and Nathan Able to do it.
“Do you think Chris Rink will be there?”
Now the truth comes out. I had no idea she had a thing for Chris Rink. Admittedly, he’s pretty hot. Not quite up to Nathan standards, but quite yummy. But he’s an out-and-out jock who plays both basketball and baseball.
“I didn’t think you went for the jock type,” I tease her. Serena blushes bright red, truly a hard thing to do underneath all that Goth makeup.
“A girl can dream, can’t she?”
“No reason not to dream,” I say. I look her up and down. It’s been ages since I’ve seen it, but I know she’s got it going on under all those layers of black clothes. “Let’s go over to my place and get all that gunk off of you. Maybe Mom will take us shopping. I think this calls for new outfits all around. I’ve been saving up my allowance and I bet Mom’d front us some money.”
Like I said before, I’m not really a girly girl. But I’ll take a good excuse to go shopping anytime, especially if it involves getting Serena into something not black.
Mom is all over the shopping trip when she hears that Serena is coming out of her Goth shell. She hated the whole look even more than I did. She even buys us some new non-Goth makeup on top of a new outfit each, which is a total splurge that I’m sure Dad is going to have a fit over later. Sometimes she treats Serena more like my sister than my best friend, but she knows that Serena’s mom probably won’t even notice that she’s dropped the Goth look. Her dad is okay, but her mom is a total witch … and I’m just leaving off the b to be polite.
We drop Serena off at her house with a load of shopping bags and pick up Chinese for dinner on the way home.
“Two dates in one weekend,” Mom says as we’re getting out of the car. “My little girl is growing up.”
Oh wow, I’d almost forgotten about Aubrey. Yee-haw! Two hot guys in two days! I have so turned over a new leaf. I just smile smugly. I’ll even forgive her for the cheesy commentary.
“That reminds me,” says Mom. “We need to talk about a few things.”
Gah. There’s a total downer. “What kind of things?” I hope G.W. didn’t call again. I made sure to fill out those stupid forms as soon as I got home last night.
“Oh, it’ll wait until after dinner.”
So of course I spend all dinner obsessing over what she could possibly want to talk about. My grades—doing fine. Vampire lessons—going okay. Uncle Mortie—no word yet. My room—decently clean. Nothing I come up with prepares me for the actual conversation.
“Okay,” says Mom, after all the dishes are safely tucked away in the dishwasher. “Let’s talk about sex.”
Did I mention my mom doesn’t mess around with getting to the point? I’m just glad Dad wasn’t in the room. He’d have totally choked.
“Uh, Mom … ” I manage to stutter out. “I kind of know the whole birds and bees thing. Dad gave me that one years ago.” And it is still, to this day, one of my most horrifying memories. A true accountant, he had charts and everything. Frightening. It’s amazing I’m not a complete emotional basket case after that.
“No, no,” she says, “I’d be very surprised if you didn’t know something about the birds and the bees by now. After all, you’re almost seventeen. I mean sex as a vampire. If you decide to turn. I thought I’d take this topic on instead of Uncle Mortie.”
“Oh. Um, thanks.” Well, that’s a new one for me and definitely something that hadn’t crossed my mind. I mean, sure, sex crosses my mind (I am a teenager!), but I hadn’t given any thought about the specifics of, you know, vampire sex. And learning about it from Uncle Mortie? The very thought is disgusting.
“First of all, vampires can and do have sex. In fact, your dad and I found that sex got even better in some ways after we turned. You develop muscles in all kinds of unexpected places.”
“Mom!” Oh ugh, the pictures going through my head! I am so grossed out right now. If she just hadn’t added that bit about the muscles, I might have been able to contain my grossed-out-edness, but oh man.
“Oh come on,” Mom laughs, “you know we have sex. Your father and I love each other. Where do you think you came from?”
“Knowing something and actually thinking about something are two entirely different things. I prefer to think I came from the stork, if I have to think about it at all.”
She just laughs. But I bet she’d be grossed out if she thought about her mother having sex. Oh God, I shouldn’t have thought of that. Now I’ve got images of my grandparents running around naked in my head. I don’t know which is worse: images of Mom and Dad or Gran and Gramps. I try thinking about G.W. reciting all of the vampire laws, one by one. In detail. Annotated.
“I just want you to know that you wouldn’t be missing out on anything in the sex department.” She stops laughing finally and turns serious on me. “But, you would be missing out on the experience of childbirth and the joy of having children. I’m very thankful that I was able to experience both before turning.”
“I’ve never really thought about having kids,” I say. It’s true. I know some girls have their weddings all planned out and the names of their first kid all picked, but I’ve never been into that. My dreams have been more about traveling the world visiting exotic locales. Things like that. And childbirth, uh, don’t think I’ll mind missing out on that one. I saw that movie Knocked Up. Ee-e-ew. I had to close my eyes a couple of times.
“It’s a hard choice to have to make so young. I just don’t want you to regret whatever decision you make. I don’t regret my choice, but I know that you might not choose the same path. I just want to make sure you know what your options are.”
I give her a hug and allow myself to give in a little to the pity party we’ve got going on. “I just wish I didn’t have to choose now,” I whine. “Why are they making me decide now?”
Mom looks at me a minute like she’s deciding whether or not she should say anything. She opens and closes her mouth a few times and then sighs. “For one thing, we can’t go on being your parents for very much longer.”
“Excuse me?” What, they want to disown me now?
“Sorry, honey, that didn’t come out right. You see, it’s a matter of age. I mean, you may not have noticed, but we really haven’t aged since we were turned. It’s getting pretty hard to pass as your parents any more.”
I take a really good look at Mom. She’s right. I never really thought about it, but she could practically pass for my older sister. She was pretty young when she had me and she turned right after that. The last time we went to a movie, I swear the popcorn guy was flirting with her and not me. That, let me tell you, is not good for the ego.
“I’ve been adding some gray to my hair the last couple of years, but it’s hard to add convincing wrinkles.”
“So what are you saying?”
“Just that, one way or another, things will have to change. There’s no way around it. It’s about time to move before the neighbors get suspicious. The Council advises moving at least every ten years and we’re way behind sched
ule. We wanted you to be able to stay with your friends in the same school system.”
I think about nosy Mrs. Finch, who’s always asking me how my mother is and asking things like what kind of moisturizer does she use and stuff like that. And then there’s Mr. Jackson, my Chemistry teacher, who actually asked to see her ID once when she came for a parent-teacher conference.
She gives me a big squeeze. “But you’ll always be my little girl. No matter what. I want you to know that.”
“I know,” I say.
It seems to me that there’s an awful lot they still aren’t telling me, but I don’t want to ask the obvious question. I’m not sure I want to know what happens if I decide I don’t want to be a vampire.
9
Serena calls and wakes me up at 7:30 a.m. On a Saturday. The girl is just crazy. She knows me better than that. I never get up before at least nine on the weekend. Unless Christmas falls during that time. Yes, I still wake up early for Christmas.
“Mina, can I come over? So we can get dressed and go over to Chili Pepper’s together?” I mumble something that must have sounded like an affirmative, because ten minutes later she’s shaking me awake.
Happily, there’s no trace of Goth makeup on her. But her face is almost as pale due to a case of extreme nerves. I’ve never seen her quite like this before. She dumps a bag containing what looks like every piece of clothing she owns out over the bed on top of me.
“I don’t know what to wear!” she cries and flops down onto the bed, causing an avalanche of skirts and shirts to nearly bury me completely. I fight to clear a path to air.
“Why don’t you just wear that new outfit that my mom just got you? It looks great on you.” And it really did. A little red sundress with bright yellow and white flowers, it was such a far cry from her Goth get-up that it was just astounding. It made me cheerful just to look at her in it. I bet it would make Chris Rink full of cheer too.
Serena buries her head under a pink camisole and mumbles something unintelligible.
“What?”
She comes up for air and looks everywhere but at me. “I said”—big gulp of air—“I spilled something on it.”
“How did you spill something on it? We just got it yesterday!”
She looks miserable, which is the only reason I don’t laugh when she tells me, “I was practicing. And I got some tomato sauce on it.”
“You were practicing?”
She finally looks right at me, a little defiantly. “Well, it was so much easier in the Goth stuff. As long as it was black, you were good to go. And I’m not used to being out with boys. Guys. You know.”
“So, what, you go Goth for a year or two and now you’ve forgotten how to wear clothes?” I can’t help it now. I let out a little laugh.
She looks like she’s about to cry, but she finally starts laughing a little too. “I know, it sounds stupid. But I guess I have. I was thinking about getting out of the Goth stuff last year, but … ”
“But you were too lazy to start picking out outfits again?”
She giggles a little. “Yeah, kind of.”
I wish I’d known. I totally would have shown up at her house every morning to pick out her daily outfit to get her out of that Goth stuff. I would have even gotten up early to do that.
“You,” I pronounce solemnly, “are a total goober.” We both dissolve into another bout of giggles.
“But seriously, what am I going to wear?”
“Did you bring over the dress?”
“I think so … ” She digs around in the pile for a while and finally comes up with success. The dress, as promised, has a huge tomato sauce stain right on the front.
“Geez, girl, what did you do? Bathe in spaghetti?”
“I accidentally leaned over into the serving bowl.” That explains the position of the stain. Serena’s a bit more endowed than I am.
“Ok, well, it was good you didn’t put it through the dryer. That sets the stain. We’ve got a good chance of getting it out.”
“You think?”
“Trust me.” One of my few talents is removing stains. I have no idea how I learned how to do it, but I can get almost anything out of any kind of material. My Home Economics teacher would be so proud of me. I guess it could come in handy later on for removing blood spots. Ick. I push that thought right out of my head as fast as I can.
I rinse the spot clean with cold water from the inside of the dress out until no more sauce comes off. Then I soak the whole front of it in white vinegar for a good twenty minutes, with Serena trying to peek at it every two. Then a little dishwashing soap rubbed in for good measure, and I wash it in the washing machine in cold water. Presto-chango! The dress comes out with no stain.
“Lucky you came over so early,” I say, though I really could have used that extra sleep. I was tossing and turning last night after my little heart-to-heart with Mom.
But that’s what friends are for. Serena once missed summer camp to keep me company when I had the flu. And she had a crush on one of the camp counselors at the time. That’s true friendship.
The rest of the morning is taken up with applying makeup and doing our hair. I finally just do Serena’s makeup myself because she keeps trying to put the blush and eye shadow on too heavy. It’s going to take a while to acclimatize her to the real world again. We make it out the door with only a few minutes to spare to get over to Chili Pepper’s Pizza Parlor.
It’s a really cool place with this nice retro feel, like an old soda counter from the 1950s. A huge counter with the round swivel stools that you can spin around and around on dominates most of the place. I really loved those stools as a kid. I haven’t been to Chili Pepper’s lately though because:
a) It’s where all the popular kids hang out and they stare at you with complete disdain when you try to eat there in all your glorious dweebosity,
b) I can’t resist their chocolate banana milkshakes and they are so-o-o-o not good for the waistline, and
c) Hmmmm, well, I don’t really have a good c. Maybe I’ve just been too chicken (see a).
All the A-list is clustered in the dead center of the long counter, with Nathan at the very epicenter. There must be at least thirty of them jostling for position. Ha! And they call vampires bloodsuckers.
I’m seriously considering backing out when Nathan sees us and waves us over.
“Hey, Mina. Serena? Wow, Serena, I like the new look! Here, I saved you some seats.” He taps two football players on either side of him and they get up without a single grumble, pushing the next person in line down with a ripple effect. Then he pats the stools for us to sit down. We’re getting the royal treatment. Serena looks at me wide-eyed from the other side of Nathan. I imagine I have a similar look on my face and try to wipe it off, probably unsuccessfully. The A-list conversations go on around us like nothing has happened, but I see a couple of people in the third row giving us dirty looks.
Nathan is chatting amiably with us about nothing in particular: how hard the last Chemistry test was (we all think we bombed it), Serena’s new get up (loves the red dress, loves the hair, loves the whole thing), our English project (he can’t wait to find a costume better than Ms. Tweeter’s and show her up), and his cool new car (bright red Mini Cooper with a white stripe down the side).
I’m starting to wonder if the A-list doesn’t actually eat after all, since no one is eating anything and we’re surrounded by the heavenly smell of pepperoni and cheese. I knew I should have had breakfast, but there just wasn’t any time in between emergency stain removal and makeup application. Chili Pepper’s has a by-the-slice counter with over fifteen different pizzas to choose from, and each and every one of them is calling my name. My stomach is going crazy. This is one time when being a vampire would be handy. I can barely concentrate on the conversation I’m so hungry.
And then my stomach goes in knots as I see Bethany break rank from the fourth row (good to know she’s not in the innermost circle) and saunter over to us.
; “When did they start letting Goth-lovers in here, anyway?” she spits out, glaring at me. Okay, now, this is absolutely and totally unacceptable because
a) Serena isn’t even dressed up in Goth stuff anymore, so obviously Bethany hasn’t even really looked at us, and
b) I have never been a Goth-lover. It’s not like I hung out with any Goth people other than Serena, and they wouldn’t even hang out with her either since she wasn’t a true blackhearted, Siouxsie and the Banshees-loving, Edgar Allan Poe-reading Goth, but even if I was, what business of hers was it anyway? And,
c) Have I mentioned how much I detest Bethany?
Before I can say anything, Nathan turns to look at Bethany with a polite but distant expression on his face. “Excuse me, Bethany? Did you say something? I thought I heard you say something. But I’m not sure, since I’m certain we weren’t talking to you.” I can hear A-listers all around us sucking in their breath in one collective who-o-o-oa.
Have I mentioned how much I love Nathan Able?
Bethany opens and closes her mouth a few times, but nothing comes out. She looks like a fish out of water. Nathan doesn’t even appear to notice, as he goes back to chatting with Serena. I can’t help a small snicker from escaping my lips. Bethany shoots me a look that could peel paint off the wall, but stands down without saying anything else and returns to her fourth-row spot, though the girl next to her backs off a little and starts talking to someone on her other side. If someone poured water on Bethany right about now (and oh, how I’d like to), it would come off as steam.
The football player who had vacated his seat for me introduces himself as Bo, short for Bobby, and goes into a highly detailed account of the pass route he executed on the single touchdown we scored in the last game of the season. I nod in what I think are all the right places, and I guess I’m doing okay since he doesn’t stop talking. I am starting to feel absolutely faint with hunger.
Finally, some kind of A-list signal occurs and people start ordering pizza left and right. Before Serena and I can order, Nathan hands us slices of pizza with pepperoni, banana peppers, and sausage.
Sucks to Be Me: The All-True Confessions of Mina Hamilton, Teen Vampire (maybe) Page 6