“Uhh,” he said, freeing his arms and brushing the snow from his eyes. “Hey, get off me, you girl! You’re going to make me smell like girl things!”
I let go, mesmerized. The snow was dripping off his coat, almost as if it didn’t stick to him.
“How are you doing that?” I asked, successfully concealing my absolute terror of his superhuman force.
“Edwart has a girlfriend, Edwart has a girlfriend,” someone shouted.
“I do not! She is not! I do not know her!” he yelled, protecting our blossoming mutual intrigue from petty rumors before turning back to me. “What?” he asked. “How am I doing what?”
“The snow! It’s melting off you!” I took a step closer until our faces were nearly touching. “You’re—you’re not human, are you?” I whispered intimately.
He laughed a little. Nervously.
“Is this about Biology class?” he asked. “Because I only knew all that stuff about frogs because I once had a frog. It’s not like I go on Internet sites to practice dissection or anything like that. Like nerds do. I don’t even study for class. Or get good grades. I hate school things. I mean, it’s like, why don’t we all just skip class and, like, hang. You know?”
I was suddenly blushing. His shoes, covered in dirty snow, were too beautiful to be real. I bent down to investigate, poking them with my finger. He pulled his foot away quickly and nearly fell over. Miraculously, he regained balance by simply putting his foot down.
“Hey! Stop!” he cried. “Do you … so do you like games and stuff? Like, video games … computer games … board games … potato chips …”
His attempts to evade my question only infuriated me more. I stood up. “I know what I saw—someday, you will trust me enough to tell me the truth.”
“The truth about what? I’ll tell you now—about bullfrogs?” He laughed. “That’s easy. The truth is, they absorb air through their skin.”
I looked over my shoulder to protect him from any listeners. There were definitely a few perked ears thirty feet away. “The truth about your abilities,” I said, raising my eyebrows. I meant to raise only one like they do in detective movies but as soon as I raised one the other sidled up as well. All I knew was, no average human would be able to jump from the sidewalk to the gutter as fast as he did.
“Listen,” he whispered ferociously, like a ferocious breeze or very gentle hurricane. “I am an average student, like everybody else. I do normal things on the weekend. Everyday after school, I go back to my house and chill and hang until bedtime, which is whenever I want it to be because my parents are too negligent with me to set a curfew. Understand?” He gripped my shoulders tightly. I knew if I didn’t concede, he would easily crush me.
“Yes. I understand. But this isn’t the last you’ll hear from me,” I muttered.
That seemed to appease him. He released my shoulders and ran away, flailing his limbs in that graceful way he had.
I fumed all the way to class. How did he know we were in Bio together? How did he know to walk in front of me at the exact moment a snowball was coming? Why did the snowballs melt off him as if they were made of some watery substance? Most of all, why was he lying to me about his true superhuman identity? I was so upset, I accidentally started a fire in math, sending one boy to the nurse’s office. I guess I had been rubbing the sticks I carry with me together so hard that, whoops, I started kindling a flame. Gee. Edwart was really taking over my brain. I couldn’t concentrate on anything, not even taking the Riemann sum of the approximate distances traveled in each integral of the problem I was working on. Boy, was I all out of sorts.
That night I had my first dream about Edwart Mullen. Carnival music was playing, and I was sitting in a colorful tent, surrounded by animals. We were all eating popcorn together and joking around. Suddenly, the tent went dark, and Edwart entered the stage, alone. He was wearing stilts and saying, “Whoa! Whoa!” as he walked in a wobbly way.
I woke up in a cold sweat, terrified.
3. HAND PRICK
THE MONTH FOLLOWING THE SNOWBALL ACCIDENT was tough. People kept looking at me, especially when teachers read my name on the attendance list and I said “Here.” Somehow my new nickname for Edwart, “Hero,” didn’t catch on. So, I decided to break my unwritten, unspoken, and unthought understanding with Edwart, and start telling our story.
First, I told Tom and Lucy that Edwart saved me from a snowball. They weren’t impressed. So I started saying Edwart saved me from a rock with snow around it, and, later, I started saying he saved me from an avalanche. One day, I said that Edwart ran with superhuman speed, stopping a car that was about to hit me with his superhuman strength.
“Wait,” said the freshman girl in the cafeteria lunch line. “Edwart Mullen? You mean the kid whose clothes are too small?”
We looked over at Edwart, who was sitting alone, doing homework due next month.
“Yes,” I said gravely, taking a large bite of my pudding to prevent me from saying anything else.
“You must be new here,” the girl said, picking up her tray.
“Mumph bleh,” I said, spitting little flecks of chocolate pudding after her. She didn’t answer. I knew no one would understand me in Switchblade.
Still, Edwart was cold towards me. I knew that he wished it had never happened—that he had never saved me—that I had never started wearing a shirt that said “Thank you, Edwart!” One afternoon in Biology, over a month after the accident, I couldn’t take it much longer. Edwart looked so cute with his red curly hair and freckles, like the “before” picture in an ad for freckle concealer for men. Yet he was so complacent, as if he didn’t need me and my alluring ear-shape to pass on to his offspring. I had to do something.
I poked the boy in front of me. He turned around, looking surprised.
“Hey, it’s Peter, right?” I asked. “Yeah,” he answered, seduced.
“Want to go to prom with me?” I asked, plenty loud so Edwart could hear.
“Um … sure,” he said. “Would it be okay if we hung out a couple of times before then? I don’t really know you.”
Did Edwart notice? Was he jealous? I slyly looked at his mood ring to find out. Still purplish-brown! Clearly, I was going to have to do more—one date to prom wasn’t enough. I turned to the boy sitting behind me, to the right.
“Zack,” I said.
“What is it?” he asked, looking up at the board to take notes.
“Will you go to prom with me?”
“But … didn’t you just ask Peter?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I want to go with you, too.”
He hesitated. “Well, I don’t have a date yet, so, okay, I guess.”
“Hey, Adam,” I called across the room.
“Belle, please. I’m trying to teach,” said Mr. Franklin. But when I called out to Adam he must have understood that this was an important interruption—an interruption for love—because he just sighed and continued diagramming the cell.
“I already have a date, Belle,” Adam whispered loudly.
“Tom!” I shouted.
“Belle!” Mr. Franklin yelled.
I settled down in my chair, satisfied. Edwart was looking now.
The rain was so bad by the time school got out I had to float my U-HAUL back home. I stood on the top of the truck and guided it with a long pole, pretending I was in New Orleans, about to save Edwart from the flood.
“So Belle …” my dad said that evening at dinner. “Any boys at school catch your eye? How about Tom Newt? He seems nice.”
“Yeah, I guess,” I said, imagining what Tom would look like as Edwart. He would look hot. “Are you going to eat your spinach?”
“Do you want it, honey?”
“No, you should eat it,” I said. “And mine, too. It’s good for your health. C’mon, dad. Open up!”
I put as much spinach as I could on my fork and moved it towards his mouth. Some spinach fell onto his placemat. Some onto his lap.
“The train’s coming!
Cug-a-cug-a-cug-a-coo! coo!” I chanted.
“Belle, that’s not the noise a train makes,” he said. “They go chug-a-chug-a—with a ‘ch.’”
“Maybe in Switchblade,” I said skeptically. This place certainly was backwards.
I wanted to look especially good in Bio the next day, because I was sure that it was the day Edwart would ask if he could be my third date to prom. That night I wrapped my hair in springs from the armchair in our living room to make it curly. I even put in false teeth. On my way to school the next morning, I felt light and bouncy, but that could be because I’d left in some springs.
I went to the Bio classroom fourth period to be sure I was on time for sixth. It was dark and Mr. Franklin was sorting beakers in the closet. He let me eat my lunch there as long as I covered my desk in aluminum foil for cleanliness.
The bell rang. I sat up super straight in my chair and smiled with my big, straight teeth. Students began to come through the door. Tom, Adam, Lucy, followed by more students. No Edwart. I stopped smiling and removed the teeth. Just when I thought Edwart was a normal, jealous boy, he does something unpredictable, like not show up to class with roses.
“Okay, guys,” Mr. Lookner began. “My nephew needs a blood transfusion, so I want to know all of your blood types.”
He sounded proud of this idea. He put on a pair of rubber gloves, which made an ominous slap as they hit his skin. I cringed. Slap. Slap. Slap.
“Okay, I’ll stop,” he said. “That’s just such a cool sound!”
Still no Edwart. Why this day to be absent from Bio? He had been in English. I knew this because I delivered a note to him from the “principal’s office” when he was in class. It said “Hey QT.” I really wished I were principal of this school. I’d give him so much detention. He deserves it, for cutting class instead of asking me out.
Mr. Franklin was detailing the procedure. “I’ll be coming around with a medical consent form, so don’t start until I get to you. Those of you who aren’t AB can sit in the back and chat.” A few kids cheered. “But!” he continued. “Not until I know everyone’s blood type. Now, I want you to carefully prick your finger with one of these knives from my kitchen…”
He grabbed Adam’s hand and cut off a bit of his pointer finger. Blood spurted out and landed on Mr. Franklin’s lab coat and the back of a nearby girl’s blouse.
As I watched the dripping arc of crimson, I suddenly felt nauseous. Where was he? Why wouldn’t he come to class on a day when we were doing such a fun lab?
Suddenly, there he was. Edwart. Edwart, standing there with his short buzz cut and masculine jaw, rough with light hair. There was something red stuck in his teeth. With a rush of nausea, I suddenly understood what he was. Dentist Patient!
I realized the whole class was silent, staring at me. I guess I must have said that out loud. Oops. Then I thought, no, that can’t be right. Edwart has naturally perfect teeth.
I got out of my seat quickly so I might lightly slap Edwart in the face with my hair. I approached the materials table, where he was standing, shoving a pack of Twizzlers into his backpack. I swung my head…
… And then the next thing I knew I was looking up at Mr. Franklin and Lucy’s faces.
“Hey guys,” I said.
“Belle, you fell!” Lucy exclaimed jealously.
“No I didn’t.”
“Yes, Belle, you tripped on the leg of your chair. I think you were unconscious for a couple of seconds,” Mr. Franklin explained.
“Nope,” I said.
Mr. Franklin stood up and rubbed both his temples like he was drawing circles there. “Dear God,” he muttered. “Why today? Edwart!” he called. “Since you’ve already done this lab with me during your free track, please take Belle to the nurse.”
“Sorry I was late, Mr. Franklin, but the Fed Challenge Team needed a replacement and—”
“Just go,” Mr. Franklin said. “And Belle, don’t mention anything about what we’re doing in class today …”
I looked right into Mr. Franklin’s eyes. He must be some kind of mad scientist! Conducting secret experiments! If things didn’t work out with Edwart, I could always be his Igor, digging up bones and teaching them English for chump change.
“Right,” I said, winking at Mr. Franklin with one eye, and then the other, to show that I really got it.
“I don’t need your help walking!” I insisted angrily as I slithered out of the classroom on my belly.
“Edwart, can you carry her?” Mr. Franklin asked.
“You heard her—she wants some bigger guy to do it,” he said, crossing his arms and hunching his back so I could climb onto it more easily. He stiffened as I took his hair into my hands like reigns and gave a gentle kick to get him going. Then he fainted.
“Edwart,” I said, poking his crumpled form beneath me. “Are you okay? I think I better carry you to the nurse’s.”
“No! I can do this!” he said, leaping to his feet. He scooped up my entire eight pounds, four ounces—to be honest, I hadn’t weighed myself in a few years—and we walked slowly out of the classroom. “Come on Edwart—a half-step at a time,” he muttered quietly, not wanting to disturb my faint slumber. “Okay. Now half step at two times.”
I rested my head on his firm, sweaty shoulder. I felt something stroking my hair. Then I felt Edwart put some of my hair up to his nose, leaving it draped above his lip. He looked good with a long, full mustache. Suddenly he released my hair. He took some Purell from his pocket and frantically rubbed it on his mouth.
“So, uh, Belle … do you have any pets?”
“No,” I said sadly, remembering Jared the Iguana. Eventually, I had to return him to where I found him: Mr. Rich’s third grade class.
“My mom won’t let me have pets,” Edwart said. “It’s not because she thinks I’m not responsible or anything. She just thinks I’d be too nervous to care for them, and she’s probably right. But,” he continued. “I found a bat in my attic and I trapped it! Granted, it was a dead bat.”
Bats, huh? I thought, repetitively. Maybe Edwart had rabies!
We walked in to the nurse’s office. The nurse was an older woman who needed glasses but preferred to wear them around her neck with a colorful lanyard. She looked up from her novel, Full Moon. “One sec,” she said. “I’m almost done with this chapter.” Edwart and I waited.
“Okay,” she said. “Come on in here and lie down, and I’ll get you some ice for your head.”
Edwart let me down and the nurse brought me into the adjoining room with two mat-like beds. Edwart watched me leave him sadly, holding his hand out towardss me. When the nurse turned around, he cleverly disguised this gesture by doing the robot.
After the nurse lay me down, he stood there for a while, looking like the star of an infomercial explaining what happened to his little brother when he smoked weed.
“Don’t you have somewhere to be?” the nurse asked after a few minutes.
“Yes.”
“Wait,” she said suddenly. “Are you Edwart Mullen? I’ve been calling you down to the nurse’s office every day now for a week! You need to get your shots for your trip to Transylvania.”
“No! I don’t need shots! You have me confused with someone else! You must be thinking of another boy who is much bigger and braver and has a normal name!”
He turned and ran out of the nurse’s office. The nurse was about to follow him, but then she sighed and returned to reading.
I strained my neck to see Edwart go around the corner, eventually getting up from my bed to follow him all the way back to class. Transylvania, I thought as I walked past the classrooms. Why did that country sound so familiar? Then I thought, Maybe Edwart is a foreign exchange student!
I looked in through the window of our classroom door. Edwart took a seat, next to my empty seat. That’s when I realized it didn’t matter what he was—5′8″ or 6′3″ like he said on his medical forms—I loved that crazy superhuman.
Back at the nurse’s office, I ca
refully placed Edwart’s medical file back in the “Special Attention” cabinet. What was he hiding, besides multiple food allergies? What was he? It was time to do some thinking. I sat down on the floor of the nurse’s office and assumed a meditation pose, my hands poised upward on my crossed legs. I murmured, “Ommm.”
My mind was moving quickly: the red stuff in Edwart’s mouth, his being late to class during the blood lab, the bats, Transylvania … It didn’t make sense. I thought for a while longer. I took an Odwalla bar break. I thought some more.
Then, suddenly, I remembered the accident, and Edwart’s snow-proof body, and his eyes that changed from I-don’t-remember to green, and I knew. YES! VAMPIRE!
4. RESEARCHES
WHEN I GOT HOME THAT AFTERNOON, I TOLD MY DAD I had a crime to solve so he’d leave me alone. I was glad I’d set up that detective agency last summer called “Belle Goose on the Loose.” I made flyers with a drawing of me as Sherlock Holmes and put them up all around Phoenix. Too bad I only ever got one case: the caper of rampant flyer-littering. The culprit is still at large.
After slamming the door to my room to seem like I was hot on someone’s trail, I dug through my unpacked stuff until I found the CD of hyena laughter that my mom’s new husband gave me on the day I left the two of them alone in Phoenix. At the time, I couldn’t help but think he was trying too hard to get my respect. Now, I was glad to have a distraction from thoughts of Edwart. I put the CD in my CD player, put in my headphones, and lay down on my bed, covering my head with pillows. Still, I thought about the vampire I loved, so I put a couple of suitcases on my head.
Once the CD finished, I knew I couldn’t stall any longer. It was 1:00 a.m.—the time of night when I research the paranormal. My Internet works via tin-can telephones. One tin can is in the back of our computer, and the other tin can is in the back of our neighbor’s, which has Internet. It takes a while for the other computer to whisper the codes to our computer, so I ate some cereal—Count Chocula. Afterwards I still didn’t have Internet access, so I rearranged the furniture to freak out my dad. No Internet. I went to sleep.
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