by Mari Mancusi
Thank you, Heather, for being absent. Thank you, thank you, thank you. This makes every boring rehearsal, every wasted understudy hour, worth it.
And the best thing is, we have to do it all over again. Several times. Practice makes perfect, you know.
After the rehearsal is over, I climb down off the stage and head to the back, where I’ve left my book bag. My legs feel like Jell-O.
“Hey, Sunny!”
I turn around, bag in my hands at the voice. I force my mouth not to drop open in shock as I realize who’s come up behind me.
“Hey Jake,” I say shyly, dropping my gaze. Gah, he’s so cute. I can barely stand it. How can one guy be so gifted in the looks department? I mean, even Brad Pitt’s got nothing on Jake Wilder.
Jake runs a hand through his hair, for some reason appearing a little nervous. Weird. I should be the one who’s shaking like a leaf here, not him.
“You were, um, great up there,” he says, shuffling from foot to foot.
I beam at the compliment. I know it’s uncool to be so psyched about it, but I can’t help it. Jake Wilder has just said I was great. I, Sunshine McDonald, was great in the eyes of Jake Wilder.
“Thanks,” I say in my most casual of tones. “You were great, too. I can see why you always get the lead.”
He shrugs. “Yeah, I guess,” he says, clearing his throat. I look at him curiously. He’s not acting like his usual overconfident popular self at all. What’s up with that? “But you, you were a goddess.”
A goddess? What is that supposed to mean? I know I nailed the dance number, but I didn’t think I was especially goddesslike doing it. I narrow my eyes, not quite sure if he’s making fun of me. Maybe this is one of those cruel jokes that the popular kids always seem to play in the movies. Bet the football star he can’t get Loser Nerd Girl to fall in love with him. Well, I’m sooo not falling for that.
“Uh-huh. Goddess. Right.” I snort. “Yeah, I’ve always kind of thought of myself as a teenage Artemis, now that you mention it.” I grab my coat. After all that’s taken place in the last twenty-four hours, I am so not in the mood to be made fun of by the guy I’m stalking. “In fact, I’ve got some goddess-type duties to take care of now, so I’ll, um, catch you around.” I start to maneuver around him.
He steps in front of me. “Wait,” he says.
I wait. My heart is pounding in my chest now. This is too weird.
“Um, I wanted to uh, ask you if . . .” He clears his throat again. Does he have a cold or something? “If you have a date for the prom, and if you don’t do you want to go with me?” he blurts out, in one big run-on sentence.
I stare at him, doing everything in my power not to gape with an open mouth. Did he just say what I thought he said? Did he just . . . no, I must have heard wrong.
“Wh-what?” I ask, squeaky Minnie Mouse voice back with a vengeance.
He blushes a deep red. Jake Wilder. Blushing. Have we entered a parallel universe here? I remind myself this could all be some cruel prank. That I may get to the prom and the Populars will pull a Carrie and pour pig’s blood on me when I’m voted prom queen. And I won’t even have the telekinetic power to burn down the school in vengeance.
But that’s stupid. I may not be head cheerleader, but I’m certainly not Loser Nerd Girl either. I have tons of friends and play on the varsity field hockey team. So I highly doubt I’d be top of the list for the Populars to pick on.
Besides, Jake seems deadly serious.
“I just thought, if you weren’t going with anyone, that you might, uh, want to go with, um, me,” he continues, stammering. “I mean, if you wanted to. I understand if you don’t. Obviously you’ve probably got like three million guys asking you.”
I nearly fall backward into a dead faint for real this time. As it is, I’m not quite sure my heart is still beating.
Jake Wilder has just asked me to the prom. Jake Wilder!
“Uh, yeah. Sure. That’s cool,” I say with a shrug, awarding myself major brownie points for not jumping up and down and doing cartwheels down the auditorium aisle. “Why not?”
He breaks out into his amazing smile, looking oh-so-relieved. “Great,” he says. “Really great. Thank you. I’ll um, see you around then.”
“Uh, sure. Okay,” I say at a loss for more intellectual conversation. Real suave, Sunny.
He smiles at me again—that infamous brilliant flash of Jake Wilder pearly whites—then turns and bolts out of the auditorium. I stare after him, confused as anything.
Jake Wilder has just asked me to the prom. And I said yes. Before today I would have bet anything that he didn’t even know my name. Now I’m suddenly his prom date?
“Hey, Sunny, how you feeling?”
I turn around. Rayne’s entered the auditorium.
“Rayne!” I cry. “You’ll never guess! Jake Wilder asked me to the prom. Isn’t that so amazing? I mean, Jake Wilder! Can you believe it? I’m freaking out here!”
Rayne smiles her favorite patronizing smile. “Ah, the Vampire Scent is already kicking in, huh?”
I screw up my face. “Vampire Scent?” What the hell is she talking about? And what does that have to do with Jake asking me to the prom?
“Yeah, you know. Like pheromones. Vampires give off a scent that drives mere mortals crazy with desire. They can’t resist it. It’s actually very useful when talking your way out of speeding tickets or scoring an aisle seat on an airplane. Though the old lady the next seat over talking to you about her grandchildren the whole flight can be an unfortunate side effect.”
My heart sinks. To my toes.
So evidently Jake Wilder hasn’t lusted after me for years and only now gotten up the courage to approach me.
“Damn.” I kick the auditorium seat in frustration. “And here I thought he had some secret crush on me or something.” I sigh. I knew it was too good to be true.
“Jeez, Sunny, don’t act so disappointed. I mean, didn’t you read about all this in my blog last night?”
Uh-oh.
“I, uh, didn’t finish reading the whole thing. I mean, it was pretty long.”
Rayne stares at me. “The pheromone thing is like the third entry down.”
“Yeah, but,” I can feel my face heating up. “There were these links and . . .”
“Links?”
“Yeah, to really good stories about Spike and Angel . . .”
“So let me get this straight,” Rayne says, crossing her arms over her chest, looking very unhappy. “Instead of catching up on the vital information you need to know about your impending vampire transformation, you instead chose to read Buffy the Vampire Slayer fanfic?”
Okay, when she puts it that way, it does seem like a bad decision on my part. But some of those stories were way juicy and . . .
“You know, you shouldn’t have links on your Web site if you don’t want people to click on them,” I say in my defense.
Rayne sighs. Deeply. “You know, I really hope that Lucifent has a way to turn you back into a human. ’Cause you’re going to totally suck as a vampire.”
I start laughing. I can’t help it. I’m going to suck as a vampire? Ha!
“What?” Rayne demands. Then she realizes her unintentional pun. “Oh.” She tries to frown, but I can see the corners of her mouth turn up. “This is serious, Sunny.”
“I know!” I cry, still howling with laughter. The whole situation’s suddenly struck me as so absurd that I can’t help it. “I’m going to be a SUCKY vampire!”
Rayne bursts into laughter. “Talk about a Freudian slip! I can’t believe I said that.”
“Yeah, well being a vampire really BITES,” I add, bringing on a whole new wave of laughter. We’re practically crying and rolling in the aisle, we’re cracking up so bad.
“Who’s a vampire?”
A deep voice cuts through our laughing and sobers us up immediately. We both whirl around to see Mr. Teifert, the drama teacher, peering at us curiously behind his black-rimmed glasses. I guess we
were laughing so hard we didn’t even hear him approach.
Rayne smiles wickedly. “Sunny’s a vampire,” she says. “Well, she’s on her way to being one.” Then she starts laughing again. I kick her in the ankle to make her shut up. While I’m about one hundred percent positive Mr. Teifert will take her claim with a grain of dramatic salt, I’ve still got to work with the guy on the school play. I don’t want him to think I’m some stupid ditz. Then he’ll never give me a good part and I’ll be in understudy world forever.
Mr. Teifert raises a bushy eyebrow. “Is this true, Sunny?” he asks in a voice that seems far too serious for the discussion. What’s his deal? “Are you a vampire?”
Thank goodness I wore a turtleneck to school so he can’t see the bruised, hickeylike bite on my neck. Then he’d really be speed-dialing the guidance counselor.
“No, Mr. Teifert,” I say, forcing myself to keep a straight face. “I am not a vampire. We were just messing around.”
His serious expression relaxes and he smiles. “Good to know. Especially since we need you for this play. I’ve just learned Heather has come down with mono and won’t be back. So from this point on, you’ll be playing the part of Kim.”
I restrain myself from giving a loud “Woot!” right then and there and try to look like I’m concerned for poor little Heather Miller. But to hell with her! I’m now the star of the school play. How cool is that? You know, besides the whole vampire thing being a downer, the rest of my life sure seems to be turning around in a big way, go figure.
“Thanks, Mr. Teifert. I won’t let you down,” I tell him enthusiastically.
“I know you won’t,” he says with a wink. “Just promise you won’t go turning into a vampire on me. We’ve got a lot of rehearsals and most of them are during the day.”
“I, uh, won’t.” I say, laughing my nervous donkey bray. As if what he’s saying is the silliest thing in the entire universe.
He nods and smiles and waves good-bye as he exits the auditorium. Rayne and I exchange looks and then grab our book bags and hustle out.
“That was kinda weird,” I say, as we head out into the parking lot toward our car.
“That was more than weird,” Rayne agrees. She rummages around in her purse for the car keys. “You need to be careful around him.”
“Oh, I’m sure he just overheard us and thought it’d be funny to join in on the joke.”
Rayne pulls out the keys by her spider key chain. “I don’t know, Sunny. I get creepy vibes off him.” She unlocks the door and hops in the car.
I join her and take a seat in the passenger side. “What are you, a vibe reader now?” I ask skeptically. “He’s a teacher. He thought he was being funny. You’re paranoid.”
Rayne shrugs as she puts the key in the ignition. “Okay, Sun, fine. I’m only trying to look out for you. There’s a lot of vampire prejudice out there, you know.” She pauses. “Actually you don’t know,” she adds, “since you’d rather read the sexploits of Spike and Buffy than research the subject.”
“I actually preferred the stories about Angel.” I giggle.
Rayne shakes her head. “See what I mean?” she says, sounding more than a little frustrated. “You refuse to take anything I say seriously. I don’t know why I’m bothering to help you. I should just leave you to flounder and figure it all out yourself.”
She looks seriously mad, so I decide to throw her a bone. After all, I need a ride to the cemetery to meet Magnus.
“I’m sorry, Rayne. I know you’re trying to help me,” I say in the most sincere voice I can muster. “It’s just sometimes I use humor to defuse a tense, stressful situation.” Wow, I sound like I should be on Dr. Phil. “I do appreciate you helping me, though. More than you know.”
“Well, you are my little sister,” Rayne hedges.
“Yes, by seven whole minutes. Making you way more older, wiser, and worldly than I could ever hope to be.”
Rayne shoots me a look.
I laugh. “Sorry.”
“Okay, let’s get to the cemetery,” she says. “And see if we can’t get this vampire thing reversed.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
Rayne pulls out of the parking lot and takes a left. We’re silent for a moment. Then . . .
“Do you think if I change back into a human, Jake will revoke his invitation to the prom?”
“Arghh!”
“Sorry.” I fold my hands in my lap and make like a good, silent, serious vampire-chick-to-be.
I do wonder, though.
7
The Coven—a.k.a. Kick-Ass Underground Mansion
We pull into St. Patrick’s Cemetery, driving between two dead-Catholic-guy statues flanking the entryway and down a narrow road lined by gravestones.
“You know, meeting with a vampire in a cemetery seems such a cliché,” I note as I stare out the window, trying not to let the gravestones creep me out too much.
Rayne shrugs. “You’d know why if you read my blog, but hey, I’m sure that fanfic was real enthralling.”
“Will you cut the ‘if you read my blog’ crap?” I beg, rolling my eyes at her. “I mean, honestly. I will read the thing. From start to finish, I promise you. But I couldn’t exactly have read it between drama class and our trip to the cemetery, now could I?”
“Fine, fine.” Rayne turns the steering wheel so the car pulls to the side of the road. She kills the engine. “We’re here anyway.”
I look around. We’re surrounded by gravestones, far as the eye can see, which is, I might add, a tad disconcerting, given the circumstances.
“We’re here? Where’s Magnus?”
Bang! Bang!
A sudden knock on the window I’m peering out of makes me practically jump out of my skin. I see a head duck down and peek in.
Speak of the devil.
I roll down the window. “Jeez, Magnus,” I grumble. “You practically gave me a heart attack. Sneak up much?”
He grins, not looking at all broken up about scaring me half to death. “We vampires are quite good at coming and going without being noticed.”
Okay, add super stealth to the list of vampire powers. Probably used to help them hunt humans before they got that whole donor blood bank thing worked out. You know, they should become assassins for the government or something. Sneak into Afghanistan and drain Bin Laden dry.
Hmm. Maybe they already have and that’s why no one can find the guy . . .
“Uh, are you ready to go, or would you prefer to sit in the car making mad faces a bit longer?” Magnus asks sweetly.
“Hold your fangs, will you?” I shoot him a dirty look as I push the car door open, feeling a slight rush of satisfaction when it hits him in the shin. (Even though it probably just slightly tickles, him being a vampire and all.)
I step out of the car and turn back to Rayne. “You coming?”
She frowns. “I’m not invited.”
What? She’s planning on leaving me alone with this irritating bloodsucker? Annoying twin sister or not, there’s no freaking way I’m down with that.
“Yes, you are,” I say. “You’re totally invited. I’m inviting you. I’ll have an invitation printed up, in fact, if that helps. Or how about an Evite?”
“No.” That negative coming from the irritating bloodsucker in question, not my poor uninvited twin.
“No? What do you mean, no?” I say, turning to him, hands on my hips.
“Sunny, I can’t come. Only vampires get to enter the sacred coven.”
“Can’t you make an exception? A special dispensation?” I put on my best pleading face. The one that always gets me the car on school nights when my mom thinks I should be studying. “Please? She’s my twin sister. And after all, she knows way more about being a vampire than I do. She even has a blog about the whole thing.” I turn back to Rayne, giving her a sneaky smile. “Which I totally plan on reading the second I get home.”
“No.” Magnus huffs loudly. As if I’m a pain in the neck to him and not the
other way around. “She can’t come. There are rules. Rules that have been in existence for thousands of years.”
“Rules, schmules,” I mutter halfheartedly. I know I’ve lost. I glance over to Rayne, who also looks slightly hurt and disappointed. I’m sure she was hoping to get a firsthand glimpse of this coven place. Like seeing Disney World or something to her vampire-obsessed eyes.
“Sorry, Rayne,” I say, leaning into the car. “Thanks for the ride, though.”
“Do you want me to wait for you?”
“Sur—”
“No.” From Magnus, of course. He really likes that word. I can tell. He must have been such fun as a toddler. “I do not know how long we will be. I will take Sunshine home when we are done.”
I raise an eyebrow. “Okay, fine. As long as it doesn’t involve turning into a bat and flying home or something.” Actually that might kinda rock, but I’m not admitting that to him.
“Uh, no. It’d be in a Jaguar XKR convertible if milady dost approve of that,” he corrects, in a mocking voice.
Oh. “Uh, yeah. I guess that’d be okay,” I say, though inside I’m doing the Snoopy dance. A ride in a Jaguar convertible? How cool is that? Way cooler than bat flying, IMO. And certainly better than our beat-up Volkswagen bug.
Cheered, I say good-bye to my disappointed twin and follow Magnus into the darkness. At first I’m a bit creeped out as we wander through the moonlit graveyard, but then I realize the place’s only real-life monster is already on my team, so I’m probably pretty safe.
We come to a huge, ornate tomb in the center of the cemetery. I mean, this thing is big enough to walk in and has a door and everything. It totally dwarfs the rest of the cemetery and looks really out of place looming in the center of it.
I watch as Magnus stops at the tomb and produces a golden key from around his neck. I’d been so annoyed before that I hadn’t totally checked him out. Not that I should bother, but loser or not, he is such good eye candy. Tonight he’s got this total Euro look going on; he’s wearing a leather jacket over a black Armani turtleneck that hugs his perfectly sculptured chest, and distressed, low-rise Diesel jeans that hug, well, you know, everything else. His shiny chestnut-colored, Orlando Bloom hair is pulled back with a black leather tie, definitely giving him the rebellious pirate look. In short, he looks De-lish with a capital D.
