Dance With a Vampire (3 page)

I ducked into the ladies’ room, washed my hands in the white porcelain sink, and reapplied bloodred eyeliner to the corners of my eyes and snow-colored powder to my nervous brow.

How would I manage to get us to the library in the middle of dinner with my parents, while the curious Mitchells sat at an adjacent table, without making a scene?

It would take a miracle—or at least a ghost white lie.

“I think Billy Boy should be with us,” I said when I returned to our table.

My parents looked at me skeptically.

“He’s at a Math Club party. I told you that,” my mom reminded me. “They’re providing dinner.”

“You know how much he loves eating here. He’s crazy about the Cricket burgers. Now I feel bad, eating at one of his favorite restaurants without him—”

“We can bring something home for him,” my dad offered. “Why the sudden interest in your brother?”

Clearly my father wasn’t making this easy.

“He loves the big-screen TVs. He whines enough as it is. I’ll have to hear about it for weeks.”

“You don’t need your little brother as a buffer, do you?” my mom asked. “Paul, I think we’re embarrassing her. We’ll stop asking so many questions.”

“No, you guys are great,” I assured my parents. “I just think he’d be upset to know we were so close and didn’t include him. How about Alexander and I just run over and pick him up?” I suggested. “It’s only a few blocks away. We’ll be back before our dinner arrives.”

“He’s having his own party,” my dad said. “Right now they are probably exchanging prime numbers.”

“Well, if that’s what you really want, Paul,” Mom said.

“All right, I’ll get him,” my dad said resignedly, putting his napkin on the table.

“No—I want to,” I said, standing up before my father could. “Alexander’s never been to the library.”

My dad looked at me suspiciously. “Are you sure you’re not sneaking off to a rave?”

“In this town? No, but if I find out about one, you’ll know where we are,” I said with a wink.

Alexander and I set off to do something I never thought I’d do: crash a Math Club party.

My vampire boyfriend held my hand as we hurried through the strip mall parking lot, across a two-lane side street, and around a gas station. We were briskly walking past the small wooded area next to the library when we heard something off in the distance. It was the sound of a dog howling.

We stopped in our tracks. Hair stood up on the back of my neck. The dog howled again.

Dead Tree Forest, as I called it, was a two-acre undeveloped property with thick brush and foliage surrounding an inner layer of decay. The trees reached out for the sun and rain in vain; all that remained were wooden skeletons. Sometimes on the weekends I’d get my research from the library and do my homework among the rotting oaks and maples. There were more dead trees than live ones, but the heavy brush made it difficult to see through to the streets once inside the woods.

In the seventies it was rumored that the woods were a haven for drunken motorcycle gangs. Others claimed no one was ever heard of coming out of the woods at nighttime alive.

Streetlights illuminated the darkened exterior, casting an eerie glow.

“Maybe Valentine is in there,” I wondered aloud. “Can you see him?”

“I can see in the dark, but I don’t have X-ray vision.”

“Valentine could be searching for more than a tree house—perhaps a meal? What if he plans to pounce on my brother the moment he walks out of the library?”

The dog howled again.

Alexander looked at me as if he, too, was uncertain about what lay in the woods—or rather who.

“All right,” he said valiantly, and proceeded toward the trees.

Now I was concerned for
us.
I clutched my boyfriend’s arm.

“Wait,” I warned. “Who knows what he’ll do. Maybe we should just head for the library.”

“You do realize he is eleven,” Alexander said to me.

“But the same blood that runs through his veins also runs through Jagger’s and Luna’s. He isn’t like any other eleven-year-old. Plus, you know better than I do what he is capable of.”

“You’re right,” he agreed, putting his hand firmly on my shoulder. “That’s why you are staying here. If I can talk to Valentine, we can put this whole thing to rest. I’ll be right back.”

Alexander pulled back a branch and disappeared into the brush.

I waited for a moment, my heart pounding with anxiety. I couldn’t see anything from my vantage point. I wouldn’t be hurting anyone if I poked my head in to get a better view.

I pulled a branch back and crept inside the thick brush.

The foliage blocked out much of the streetlight and I could barely see the skinny trees before me. I guided myself around them with an outstretched hand in the faint moonlight.

The wind whistled through the barren trees. I passed a creepy white broken fence with only a few pickets left, leaning like aging tombstones. I managed to carefully step over a few stumps, downed branches, and fallen trees.

I couldn’t see Alexander anywhere. I could hardly make out the woodpiles, rocks, and discarded mattresses that were before me. Just then I heard a branch snap.

I spun around.

“Alexander?”

I didn’t feel the familiar presence of my boyfriend. I turned back around and cautiously crept forward.

It was impossible to tell where I was. I studied the ground to see if I’d made tracks, but the hardened dirt and dead grass showed no signs of combat boots. I stepped once more, not knowing if I was going toward the street or farther into the woods.

The dog howled another time. Its cries seemed stronger. Was it howling at Valentine—or my own true love?

“Alexander—where are you?”

I remembered my parents were waiting for us at the Cricket Club. Alexander and I were supposed to return before the meals reached the table. We would have been back before the fish and chips arrived if I hadn’t diverted us into the woods.

“Alexander!” I called again.

Then I realized if Valentine was here, my continued shouting was calling attention to my location.

I heard a fluttering in the trees above me. I could barely see what looked like two frightened squirrels racing up a branch, running away from a winged creature. It looked like a bird, but then the moonlight illuminated its small, mouselike face. This was no bird—it was a bat. It hovered in place intently, then headed straight for me.

I raised my arm to cover my face.

“Alexander!”

Nothing happened.

I opened my eyes and saw the creature fly overhead, through a break in the trees, into the night sky. Then it disappeared.

A hand fell hard on my shoulder.

I opened my mouth to speak, but no words came out. I turned around.

“I told you to stay outside on the sidewalk,” my boyfriend scolded.

“Was that you?”

“Was what me?”

“That bat?”

“What bat?” Alexander plucked a few twigs out of my hair and shirt, which I now knew he could easily see in the dark, and grabbed my hand. “Let’s get your brother,” he instructed softly.

As Alexander led me back through the woods, I glanced up at the moon, wondering what, or maybe who, I’d just seen.

Dullsville’s library was a freestanding two-story brick building with white colonial columns, built in the late nineteenth century.

My favorite memories of visiting the library were during Halloween. The librarians did their best to make it scary and fun. They’d decorate the shelves with cobwebs, dangle plastic spiders from computers, and place “terrorific” authors like Edgar Allan Poe, Stephen King, and Mary Shelley on display. I’d be greeted at the door by a witch and later check out a book from a werewolf.

However, today wasn’t Halloween and I was going to be checking out more than literature. Alexander and I breezed through the automatic doors and past the “Used Books” drop box, the table of upcoming events, a cart of returned books, and the circular information desk.

We cased every aisle to see if Valentine might be hiding behind one. The library was empty of its regular and visiting readers, but a few Math Club family members were biding their time surfing the Internet. Alexander and I searched the fiction aisles and then wandered through the DVD and CD section. A few siblings were hanging out in the teen section. Valentine wasn’t around, and neither was Billy Boy.

A young woman with a checkered sweater and jeans was restocking books. “May I help you?” she inquired.

“Can you tell me where the Math Club is having their party?” I asked.

She pointed to the stairwell and adjacent elevator. “Lower level, behind children’s literature, in the conference room.”

As Alexander and I descended the aging staircase, I could smell the strange scent of old books combined with the intoxicating scent of cheese pizza.

When we reached the bottom, we saw a fountain with rocks running along the back wall.

It held some hefty goldfish, and gold and silver coins lay at the bottom like sunken treasures. A woman was sitting with her child as the little girl innocently tried to pet the yellow swimmers.

“My mom brought me here when I was little. She used to give me a penny to throw into the fountain,” I shared with Alexander as we walked past a round child-sized table riddled with picture books. “My wish was always the same. That I’d become a vampire.” I gazed into his eyes.

“Maybe that wish can finally come true.”

Instead of answering, Alexander led me toward the conference room.

We walked by shelves of picture books, tables of computers, and posters of the Cat in the Hat, Curious George, and Babar. The normally quiet library was filled with the sounds of kids talking and laughing.

We finally reached the doors of the conference room. A long rectangular table was covered with pizza, popcorn, chips, and all the soda a preteen’s bladder could hold.

A middle-aged man, who looked more like a football coach than a librarian in his sweatshirt and jeans, was at the head of the room, pulling a movie screen down over the blackboard.

About twenty kids in all were having a blast, hanging out on the weathered brown carpeting, lounging in beanbag and folding chairs, playing with MP3 players or Gameboys, and munching on snacks.

Stationed at the doorway, I quickly scanned the room, searching for any white-haired preteen. I breathed a sigh of relief when I didn’t see Valentine. But I did see something I never thought I’d witness—my pesky sibling entertaining a small group of students who had gathered on the floor around him, cracking up like he was a nerdy Chris Rock.

I was stunned. I’d always called Billy “Nerd Boy” for a reason, but now he was shining in a way I’d never seen before. I realized the scrawny little brother that I’d always picked on my whole life had something I didn’t have—a club of peers that he related to and who looked up to him as if he were a king.

I hated to admit it, but I felt a tinge of pride and a tiny bit of jealousy. My puny little brother was lucky to have a group to belong to—something I had never had. There was Chess Club, French Club, but never the Goth Club. I imagined a preteen roomful of students like Alexander and myself, eating gummy worms, reading Bram Stoker’s
Dracula,
and watching
Queen of the Damned.

Suddenly the laughter stopped, and the students glared at us, like we were the nerdy ones.

Billy Boy turned around. “What are you doing here?” he asked, joining Alexander and me by the door. “Is something wrong?”

“Have you seen that pasty kid with black fingernails that you promised to show Henry’s treehouse to?”

“No. I told him we had Math Club tonight, so we agreed to meet at Henry’s tomorrow at sunset. He eats dinner late,” Billy Boy explained. “I thought maybe he might meet us here, but I haven’t seen him. Why?”

“Never mind…Mom and Dad are waiting for us at the Cricket Club. We want you to come over.”

“The Cricket Club,” he said enthusiastically. “But I’ve already eaten.”

“It doesn’t matter; you can get dessert.”

“But
Star Wars
is about to start. And I promised I’d go home with Henry.”

Billy Boy was at the age where he preferred the company of his friends to his family. I nearly felt torn insisting my brother join us when he was having such a great time at the party, but I didn’t have a choice. Valentine might be lurking in the Dead Tree Forest—or anywhere in Dullsville, for that matter.

“We’ll bring Henry with us,” I said sternly.

The preteen techno wizard then sauntered over. “Hi, guys. Have you come to watch the movie?”

“No, we’ve come to take you and my brother to dinner. We have to hurry; Mom and Dad are waiting.”

The librarian came over. His generous smile couldn’t mask his concern that my brother was talking to a dark stranger.

“This is my sister—and her boyfriend.” Billy Boy introduced us with a hint of pride.

“We are just about to start the movie,” the book man began. “You are welcome to stay.”

“Henry and I will have to take a rain check,” Billy Boy replied. “We have a match at the Cricket Club.”

Back at the restaurant, Alexander placed his hand on my knee in between bites of his

“bloody” steak. The Mitchells continued to eyeball us as Billy Boy and Henry took over the conversation, talking about computer math and the strange boy they met a few days ago at the library.

“Maybe you shouldn’t invite a boy over you don’t know,” my mother said, sounding worried.

“That’s what I said.”