Vampire High

by Douglas Rees

  Vampire High

  DOUGLAS REES

  STUCK IN NEW SODOM

  THIS all began on the day I came home with straight Fs. F in English, F in math, F in social studies, F in science. I'd even managed to get Fs in gym and homeroom. I was proud of that.

  My parents, however, weren't.

  "What is this?" my father raged when I showed him my grades.

  "A report card," I said. "They put these letters down on it, see, and it tells you what grade you got."

  "I see the letters," he said. "And the comments with them. 'Cody has turned in no homework at all for nine weeks.' 'Cody has been absent or tardy every day this quarter.' Oh, this one's a classic. 'Cody has spent every day in class trying to prove that Sir Isaac Newton was

  mistaken about the law of gravity. These experiments have consisted of repeatedly jumping off my desk and flapping his arms. This is distracting to the other students. He has done no other work/ And homeroom. There is no comment from your homeroom teacher, so I suppose I'll have to ask you—how on God's green earth did you manage to flunk homeroom?"

  "Easy. I never went," I said.

  "And what's this?" said Dad. "A special note from the principal? Yes. 'Your son has shown the intellectual development of an illiterate hurdy-gurdy grinder and the attention span of his monkey. It is impossible to evaluate his work as he has not done any. He is lazy, sly, and generally useless. I confidently predict he will be spending the rest of his life in ninth grade. I only hope it will be at some other school. Go back to California.'"

  That last part sounded like good advice to me. But I doubted Dad would take it.

  We glared at each other in that way we'd developed ever since he'd moved us from home to this dump of a town, New Sodom, Massachusetts. He wouldn't drop his eyes and I wouldn't drop mine.

  This was Mom's cue to stop making terrified little gasps and whimpers and start making excuses for me. I liked this part.

  "It's not his fault, Jack," she said.

  Right.

  "It's this place."

  Right again.

  "He's been miserable ever since we moved here."

  Three rights. Dad's out.

  But Dad didn't know he was out.

  "Beth, he's cutting off his nose to spite his face," he said. "I can't accept that."

  Yeah. And you can't do anything about it, either.

  Dad threw back his head like he was about to explain to a jury why only an idiot wouldn't see things his way and give his client what he wanted.

  "Now, look here, young man," he said. "This move is the best thing that's ever happened to us. I was going nowhere at Billings, Billings and Billings. Jack Elliot was good enough to handle their really tough cases, but not good enough to promote. No, my name wasn't Billings, so that was that. When this opportunity opened up at Leach, Swindol and Twist, I knew it was the best chance I'd ever get to have the career I wanted. So here we are. And here we stay. And you'd better get used to it."

  Fine. And I will go right on flunking. And you can get used to that.

  I didn't say it. I only thought it. But I meant it.

  Dad looked at my report card again.

  "Homeroom," he said softly. "My son flunked homeroom."

  Mom came over and put her arms around me.

  "It won't do any good to get mad, Jack," she said. "These grades are a cry for help. Cody needs something in his life to connect to. He needs something to love."

  Good idea, Mom. I would love to go home.

  "Extracurricular activities, perhaps," Dad said. "Working on a road gang after school. Freelance garbage collection. He needs to acquire a skill with which he can support himself, since college will obviously be out of the question."

  "That's not fair," Mom said. "You dragged us three thousand miles from home to further your career and you expect us both to accept it as though nothing has happened. Well, that's not realistic."

  Now it was "us." This was sounding pretty good. Better than usual. Maybe enough "us" would get me back to California. I thought about doing the stare again but dropped my head instead.

  "And another thing," Dad said. "That hat is an obscenity."

  He must have thought Mom had made a good point. He was changing the subject.

  "That hat goes," he said. "At least don't wear it in the house."

  This was my Black Death baseball cap, which I always wore backward because Dad hates baseball caps worn backward.

  "Don't change the subject," Mom said. "You're not in court now. Cody needs something in his life to care about."

  "All right, all right," Dad sighed. "Tell us, Cody, can you think of anything you want that would make you happier?"

  "Tattoos."

  Dad crumpled up my report card.

  "I partially agree with you, Beth," he said. "Our son does need something new in his life. He needs a tougher school. Tomorrow I'll start making inquiries."

  The next day I was so worried that Cotton Mather High started to look almost good to me. The cracked ceilings, the wooden floors that creaked like they were in

  pain; even the boys' bathroom, which was as dark as a grave and smelled worse. The thought that I might never see them again made them seem almost friendly. No, that wasn't true. It was just fear that, bad as this was, Dad was determined to find someplace even worse.

  When he came home that night, he had a thin smile on his face and a couple of big manila envelopes in his hand.

  "Seek and ye shall find," he said. "I have learned that there are not one, but two really hard schools in this excellent town. I've got all the information right here."

  "You work fast," Mom said, crossing her arms.

  "It turns out that there are other members of my law firm who have children in each one," Dad told us. "Clancy Kincaid has a son and daughter in Our Lady of Perpetual Homework. He speaks very well of it. And there's a public school that's just as good and even harder to get into—Vlad Dracul Magnet School. Hamilton Antonescu's daughter goes there."

  Our Lady of Perpetual Homework?

  My stomach froze. I'd heard about that place. Every kid in town was afraid to be sent there.

  "But—but we're not even Catholic," I squeaked.

  "That isn't necessary," Dad said with satisfaction. "Many of their most difficult students come from other religious traditions. Sooner or later, everyone breaks. Or so Clancy Kincaid assures me."

  I believed it. I'd been by the place once, when I was cutting class. They said you could hear the screams coming through the walls. I hadn't, but I'd never forgotten the words carved in the stone over the door:

  ALL HOPE ABANDON, YE WHO ENTER HERE —DANTE

  "But—it's expensive, isn't it?" I said. "I mean, private school—"

  "Easily affordable," Dad purred. "I'm making a great deal more money than I ever did at Billings, Billings and Billings. But I gather you would rather go to Vlad Dracul, if you can qualify."

  I didn't know. I'd heard of Vlad Dracul, but only the name. The kids at Cotton Mather never said much except things like "The football team's up against Vlad this Saturday. Pray for them."

  When I'd heard that, I'd asked the kid who'd said it what the big deal was.

  "Shut up," he'd explained.

  "Come on, what is it? Is Vlad Dracul where they send the kids who flunk out of Our Lady of Perpetual Homework?" I'd asked.

  "Look, stupid," the kid had said. "Never say those words. Never say the whole name. And no, it's not where they send kids who can't cut it at OLPH. No real parent would ever send their kid to Vlad."

  And that was as much as anybody had ever told me.

  "What kind of name is Vlad Dracul for a school?" Mom said.

  "What do you mean?" Dad asked,

  "I mean/' Mom said, "that Vlad Dracu
l was a vicious, cruel fifteenth-century Romanian monarch who impaled his prisoners alive on stakes. What was the school board thinking of?"

  "There appears to be a sizable contingent of Romanian Americans in this town," Dad said. "Antonescu tells me that among the Romanians, Vlad the Impaler is quite a hero. Obviously they named a school after him as a gesture to ethnic pride."

  "Well, among the rest of us he's better known as Dracula," Mom said.

  "So what?" Dad said. "The school has the highest GPA in the state. Not only that, but the kids who graduate from it go on to top universities. Not just some of them. All of them. Every year."

  "I don't want Cody going to that school," Mom said.

  "Then it's Our Lady of Perpetual Homework," Dad said. "Either one is fine with me."

  "Do I get anything to say about this?" I asked.

  "I don't see why you should," Dad said. "Given that we're having this conversation because of your demonstrated unwillingness to meet the most minimal academic standards. But, that said, sure, go ahead. What do you want to say?"

  What do I want to say? Don't do this to me? Take me home? Yeah, but that isn't going to happen. Not tonight, anyway.

  "How about hiring a private tutor?" I said. "Maybe about twenty-five and good-looking."

  "Thank you for your suggestion," Dad said. "We're going to visit a couple of schools tomorrow."

  VLAD DRACUL MAGNET SCHOOL

  From the Outside, Vlad Dracul Magnet School looked almost normal, just nicer than most public schools. Okay, it looked nicer than any public school I'd ever seen. But remember, this was the outside I'm talking about. Only the outside.

  In the first place, the campus was huge. The buildings were just scattered around, with lots of space between them. And there were lots of trees. All the buildings were of shiny yellow brick, and a road ran all around them. There were two one-story buildings for the elementary school with a big thing that I guessed was the cafetorium between them. And there was lots of expensive-looking playground equipment covered with snow.

  A narrow road with trees on both sides separated the

  playground from the middle school, which was two two-story buildings. Then there was another road and the high school. This had five big buildings with words like classics, science, and theater carved over the doors. Then a little farther on there were three more buildings, looking like mansions, set facing each other.

  "Is this really a public school?" I asked Dad.

  "The finest in the state," Dad said. "Or so Antonescu tells me. Looking at this place, I can well believe it."

  He parked the car in the high school lot and we headed for the first building. A sign near it said the

  OFFICES MAY BE FOUND WITHIN, TO THE IMMEDIATE LEFT OF THE DOORS.

  Those doors. They glowed like gold as we went up the steps. They looked like they must weigh a ton apiece, but when we touched them, they swung open without a sound.

  And what I saw then made the outside look like a slum. There were black marble pillars and red marble pillars and white marble floors and walls. There were crystal chandeliers and big oil paintings that showed a lot of guys waving swords at each other. The classroom doors were made of some kind of expensive-looking wood that smelled good.

  We went through the first door on our left. Inside was a silver-haired woman behind a desk that looked big enough to land a plane on. The carpet had a design in it and looked like it might take off for a quick flight, and the walls were paneled in more of the expensive-smelling wood. There was even a fireplace.

  "I beg your pardon," Dad began. "My name is Jack—"

  * * *

  "Please do come in, Mr. Elliot," the secretary said. She stood up, and I thought she must be about seven feet tall. "Principal Horvath is looking forward to meeting you and your son." She had one of those real smooth New England accents. Her rs were almost hs.

  She turned to me.

  "And you would be Master Cody? Welcome. I am Ms. Prentiss, Mr. Horvath's secretary."

  She held out her hand to me and I took it. I was surprised. Her handshake was strong, real strong.

  Then she touched a button on her desk. "The Elliots are here, Mr. Horvath."

  The door behind her swung open—another door that opened without a sound—and Mr. Horvath came out.

  He was even taller than Ms. Prentiss, and he shook both our hands like we were friends he hadn't seen in years.

  "Mr. Elliot and son. Please come in. Be seated. We must talk," he said. And he put his hand on my shoulder and guided us into his office.

  There was an even huger desk, an even bigger fireplace, a sofa, a couple of easy chairs, and a window closed off by heavy drapes.

  There was also something on the floor that I guessed had to be a dog because it raised a head the size of a Volkswagen, opened a mouth full of steak knives, and made a noise that was somewhere between a chuckle and a growl.

  I jumped.

  "This is Charon," Mr. Horvath said. "He likes you. Come, Charon."

  The thing got up on its plate-sized feet and came over to me. He sniffed me all over like he was searching for drugs. Then he stared at my face with huge yellow eyes.

  "Karen?" I said. "Good dog, girl. Nice doggy."

  "No, no." Mr. Horvath smiled. "His name is Charon. The Greek deity who rows the dead across the River Styx to the underworld."

  "What—what breed is he?" I managed to whisper. "German shepherd, maybe?"

  "Timber wolf," Mr. Horvath said.

  Charon looked at Mr. Horvath, wagged his tail just once, and went back and lay down.

  "He's out of a particular Canadian strain," Mr. Horvath went on. "They tend to be larger than the average for the breed. Some place in British Columbia. What's its name? Ah, yes, Headless Valley. But enough about that."

  He waved his arm at the sofa. "Sit down, please, Mr. Elliot and son. We are here to discuss educational matters, not subspecies of wolf."

  We sat. Mr. Horvath took one of the chairs and made a sort of tent with his fingers. "So. You are seeking admission to our school, Master Cody," he said.

  "Uh—yeah," I said.

  "Do you swim?" His eyebrows went up.

  "Some. I got my Red Cross beginner's card before we moved," I said.

  "Excellent. The Red Cross. We are very supportive of that organization. Blood drives," he said, like they were the best idea anybody ever had.

  "Now," he went on, "as you know, we are a school with very high standards. Extracurricular activities are

  * * *

  as important as academics. Every student must participate. Would you be interested in joining our water polo team?"

  I didn't do sports, so I didn't say anything. Water polo, for pete's sake?

  Dad spoke up.

  "Cody would certainly be willing to try out," he said.

  "I should like to hear Master Cody's views," Mr. Horvath said.

  "Well, I don't know," I said. "I'm not real into sports. I don't think I'd be very good."

  "That is of no importance," said Mr. Horvath. "Willingness is everything. Victory and defeat—what was it Whitman said? 'Battles are lost in the same spirit in which they are won.' It is the spirit that is precious to us here."

  As if. The only thing any principal ever cared about was winning. Every kid figures that out in the first ten minutes in junior high.

  "Suppose I try out and don't make it?" I asked.

  "As I said, the willingness is everything," Mr. Horvath said.

  "So if I try out, I get into the school?" I asked.

  Horvath nodded.

  Okay, I had it figured out. I try out for the team, which gets me into the school and gets Dad off my back, and saves me from Perpetual Homework. Then I flunk the water polo tryouts, which won't be hard since I don't even know how to play, and go out for something easy. Like the Game Boy team. Dad's happy, Horvath is happy, and I'm no worse off than I was.

  So I said, "Okay."

  "Excellent," Mr. Horvath purred. "I am ha
ppy to inform you that you are accepted to this school."

  Dad frowned. "Perhaps you'd like to see his grades?" He held out my last two report cards.

  "Not necessary," Mr. Horvath said.

  "I'm afraid his grades aren't very good," Dad said, sort of waving the cards at him.

  "It is not how we begin but how we end that matters," Mr. Horvath said. "Many students come to us with low grades. None leave with them."

  He reached over and shook my hand again. "Welcome to Vlad Dracul, Master Cody," he said. "Practice is at two-thirty. Report to the natatorium during free period today to receive your equipment."

  "The what?" I sort of mumbled.

  "Ah. Excuse me. The swimming pool. Calling it the natatorium is one of our traditions. We are a very traditional school in some respects, very progressive in others."

  Dad was still frowning. "Frankly, Mr. Horvath, when Hamilton Antonescu told me about this school, he gave me the impression that the admission standards were quite strict."

  "They are extremely rigid," Mr. Horvath said.

  "But you haven't even looked at my son's records."

  "I'm afraid I don't regard report cards from Cotton Mather High as an indication of a student's potential, Mr. Elliot." Mr. Horvath smiled. "Your son's record in California was quite good."

  "You have his California records?" Dad said. "How?"

  * * *

  "By requesting the transcripts," Mr. Horvath said.

  "But we only came in the door five minutes ago," Dae said. "I didn't tell anyone I was going to apply here. We only decided last night."

  "You did inquire of Mr. Antonescu about us, did you not?" Mr. Horvath said. "He informed us of your possible interest. We made the request in the hope you would apply."

  "Overnight?"

  "We live in a wonderful age, do we not, Mr. Elliot?" Mr. Horvath said.

  "But—"

  "Mr. Elliot, Mr. Antonescu recommended you to us, as a colleague of his. His own child is already here. He himself is a graduate. That recommendation, your son's record—his total record—and his willingness to participate in water polo are sufficient qualifications to enter our school. I congratulate you."