Fantastic Schools: Volume 2

by Nuttall, Christopher G.

  “If you say so.”

  “I do say so,” she said. “I love dancing!”

  She did a little pirouette in mid step. Sean watched her and had to admit she made it look enjoyable. He liked talking with Euryda; she annoyed him, but in a way that somehow made him feel better for it.

  “So, who’re you gonna ask?” she said, as though an afterthought.

  “Ask? Ask what?”

  “Ask to the dance, lizard brain,” she said. “What’ve we been talking about?”

  “We have to ask people?” he exclaimed. “Like, on a date?”

  “And I thought Hugo was supposed to be the dummy,” she said, casting her hands up in an exasperated gesture. “Yes, genius, it’s a dance. You ask someone to go with you as your date. That’s how it works. I mean, what did you think was going to happen?”

  Sean felt his face–the only human part of him–going red.

  “Oh, come on!” he growled. “Like this wasn’t bad enough; now we’ve gotta find dates?”

  “Yeah, I can see where you might have trouble with that,” she said in a rather scathing voice. “Best of luck!”

  So saying she waved and turned down the hall leading to the girls’ dormitories. Sean watched her go, then shook his head in frustration and turned down to the boys’ dorms. He thought it would take a lot to convince him that this whole thing wasn’t more trouble than it was worth.

  “I suppose this is part of our ‘life skills training’,” Sean grumbled as he got ready for bed. “Not enough we have to keep adding to the school, now we have to go on dates with one another.”

  “I don’t know what you’re complaining about,” said Hugo, sitting atop his bed with a book on his lap. “You ain’t gonna have any trouble finding a date.”

  Sean, who had just taken off his shirt to get into bed, turned an incredulous eye on him.

  “Yeah, girls just love them their monitor lizards, don’t they?” he said, gesturing at the hard, knobby scales that covered almost his entire body. “And these claws will be just perfect for holding hands. I’m every girl’s dream come true.”

  “You really think that counts around here?” said Hugo. “At least you’ve still got a human face, and one that works, no less.”

  Sean eyed himself in the mirror. His face was indeed still his own, though it was the only part of his body that remained recognizably human. Everything else from the crown of his head to his clawed feet was reptilian: the result of a cursed amulet that he had stupidly put on and then even more stupidly tried to get off by himself. He’d been lucky to come away with as much humanity as he still had (his lizard brain was now mostly relegated to a strong taste for very rare meat). He owed Hugo and Medved for that.

  “I mean, around here, you’re practically Cary Grant,” Hugo went on. “Me, I’m Charlie McCarthy with better grades and less cash.”

  “Yah!” said Medved enthusiastically. “You will do good!”

  “Women like Charlie a lot more than they like lizards,” Sean pointed out.

  “Well, you got me there,” said the dummy, turning a page.

  Sean had to admit, Hugo had a point. Compared to some of their classmates, scales and claws weren’t much to worry about. Nicholas Mumber had a mouth on the end of his tongue that periodically shrieked obscenities in Latin.

  “While we’re on the subject, you got any idea who you’re gonna ask?”

  Sean didn’t answer right away. He hadn’t even considered the idea of dating at the Van Helsing Academy before now; with his condition, he’d figured all that was over for him. But now the idea had been forced on him, and he as thought over his female classmates, he realized that it wasn’t really a difficult choice.

  “Euryda wanted to know the same thing,” he muttered. “I suppose I might just ask her.”

  He tried to make it sound as casual as possible. Hugo, however, looked up, his head popping up a little in interest.

  “Ah, so, now that she’s asked you, you’re gonna just go ahead and ask her?”

  “What are you talking about? She didn’t ask me to take her to the dance; she just asked if I knew who I was going with.”

  “Yeah, when a girl asks you out of the blue if you know who you’re going to a dance with, that usually means she’s asking you to go with her.”

  “Since when?”

  “Not sure; how long do you reckon humanity’s existed?”

  “Very funny. What makes you such an expert on girls, Pinocchio?”

  “Wouldn’t you like to know? The point is, if you actually ask her, I guarantee she’s going to say yes.”

  “All right then,” said Sean, growling as he got into his bunk. “I’ll just ask her tomorrow then. It’s not like it’s a big deal or anything.”

  But Sean didn’t ask her tomorrow. Nor the day after. Nor the day after that.

  He saw her often enough. His team (him, Hugo, and Medved) sat with her team (which at present was only her and Meredith) in class and at meals as usual, and of course he saw her in the halls during break time. She generally spent these showing off her dancing skills, whether alone or with any partner she could grab, and had swapped her tight skirts for ones that flowed out when she twirled, showing off her athletic legs. These times made him all the more determined to ask her, but somehow he couldn’t make up his mind to do it.

  Meanwhile, the whole school seemed to have been transformed overnight, especially the girls. Most of them were wearing noticeably nicer clothes these days, and there was a lot more giggling and gossiping in the halls and break rooms and courtyards than Sean had ever seen before. The change even extended to the female staff members. Anna Harker had traded her usual leather work-clothes for dresses and was offering dance lessons to anyone who asked for them. Professor Thompson, their no-nonsense psychology teacher, had been seen arranging flowers along the main corridors to ‘stimulate affectionate associations,’ as she put it. Even Dr. Lyle, the school counselor (who was summoned by saying her name five times into a mirror) had let it be known that she would be available to help with both relationship advice and style tips.

  As for the male students, they were considerably more subdued than usual. Everyone seemed to be adopting a pose of not caring much about the upcoming dance, though they all seemed to be dressing with rather more care than usual and attempting to carry themselves with greater poise. There weren’t as many pranks or ribald remarks in the hallways, and as a mass the guys were going out of their way to be polite to the girls, holding doors, offering to carry books, and other little courtesies that Sean had almost forgotten existed.

  Students began pairing up all over the school. Meredith came to lunch the very next day accompanied by Spoons McGoovin, a friendly Scottish boy who had been bitten by a werewolf a few years back and whose nickname came from the fact that he was extremely protective of his collection of silver spoons, which he carried around with him everywhere in a leather case (what made them so special was the one thing he never talked about).

  Not long after, Medved was asked out by Lillibeth; a strange, quiet, and extremely good-looking girl who had wandered out of the forests of Northern Michigan one day, stark naked, knowing no English, and able to make people do almost anything she wished with just a look. Fortunately, she was a sweet, innocent hearted creature who never (intentionally) harmed a soul, and through patience and understanding the staff had brought her to the point where she now had very few accidents. Just what she saw in the hulking half-bear, Sean couldn’t imagine, but it was a little embarrassing to realize that he had been the first of the team to get a date.

  Decorations were going up in all the major rooms and corridors. Torgo the groundskeeper could be seen puttering about on his goat’s legs, trimming the trees and flowers with extra care. Work hours, which ordinarily were spent adding to the ever-growing mansion, were now mostly directed to cleaning and preparing for the party. Classes continued as usual, but in some cases the preoccupation with the dance penetrated even there. Professor Loren, th
e skeletal English teacher, set them to reading Jane Austen (whom Sean didn’t care for at all) and gave long lectures on proper etiquette, along with lamentations of how the world had declined. Professor Thompson lectured on the many psychological pitfalls that came with romantic feelings and the ways they could unbalance you, particularly how they might affect your dreams (which had made them all extremely uncomfortable). And, of course, the weekly group therapy sessions among the boys turned into discussions of all they had ever known or experienced about the fairer sex.

  And still, Sean hadn’t asked Euryda.

  “Really?” Hugo said after nearly a week had gone by. “Still nothing?”

  “I’m trying to catch her alone,” Sean said. “Don’t want to ask with everyone looking at me. But it’s like she draws a crowd after her wherever she goes.”

  “That’s ‘cause she’s what folks call ‘friendly’,” said Hugo. “You wouldn’t know about that, but basically it means people like being in her company, and vice versa. It doesn’t tend to lead to a lot of alone time.”

  It was also why he wanted to ask her out in the first place, he thought ruefully. She was optimistic, outgoing, and cheerful; everything he wasn’t (not to mention that, whatever her face might look like, she had a great figure). He liked her a lot. He was realizing just how much with every abortive effort to ask her. But he didn’t like admitting it. His recent one-on-one therapy sessions with Dr. Lyle had involved a lot of dodging that particular question.

  “I was gonna ask her yesterday,” he grumbled. “But something started screaming in the other room before I could get around to it.”

  “Oh, yeah: the voice in the wall,” Hugo said. “Wonder if they ever figured out what that was? Hey, did you hear about Chloe?”

  “What about her?”

  “Well, the whatever-it-was making the voice tried to pull her through a closet. Least, they think it’s the same thing.”

  “What? Is she all right?”

  “Yeah, that’s the point. Ramon happened to be about, and he pulled her free, or at least held onto her ‘til Father Gascoyne got there, and now they’re going together.”

  “They still don’t know what it was after that?”

  “What I gather, it was something they couldn’t see. But you know, maybe that’s what you need with Euryda; arrange for unspeakable evil to make a pass at her, then you might seem a good choice by comparison.”

  “I’ve still got time,” Sean growled defensively. “Halloween’s not for another week.”

  “Uh huh. You have a backup option?”

  “What?”

  “I mean, worst comes to worst, you can always ask Madam Melnitz. I’m sure she’d love to go out for a bit of fun.”

  Madam Melnitz was the ghost who haunted the school library, terrorizing anyone she suspected of mistreating her precious books.

  “What are you talking about? I thought you said she wanted me to ask her.”

  “Yeah, and you haven’t. By now she probably thinks you ain’t gonna. Anyone else asks her…”

  Sean swore.

  “Why the hell did they come up with this stupid dance anyway?” he shouted.

  “Just sayin’, either ask her soon, or come up with a backup plan. I’m sure we could find something for you in the band. You any good with a triangle?”

  “Oh, shut up!” Sean snapped, but there was no denying that Hugo had a point. Either he made his move soon, or he’d miss his chance. Maybe he already had.

  Fortunately, the next day his team and Euryda’s had work hour together. They were cleaning and decorating the northeast courtyard, just outside the ballroom where the dance would take place. With a little help from Hugo and Medved, Sean managed to get assigned to the job of hanging streamers over the trees alongside Euryda.

  Now was the tricky part: working up to it.

  “What the heck is this thing anyway?” Sean asked as they tossed orange and green streamers over a twelve-foot object that looked like a sickly purple ginger root thrusting up out of the earth. It’d been there for a few months and had a tendency to move at odd times when there wasn’t any wind. At the moment, it was faintly pulsating.

  “Who knows?” she said. “I mean, around here, it could be anything. As long as it doesn’t break out of the ground or try to eat anyone, I think they’re just going to leave it. Kind of fits the aesthetic theme, doesn’t it?”

  She nodded over at the great, twisted black-barked tree in the center of the courtyard, like an enormous skeletal hand reaching up to the sky. Around the school they called it the Black One.

  “Black One’s the whole reason we’ve got this courtyard,” Hugo called from the veranda, where he was scrubbing the tiles with soap. “They wanted to cut it down when they first built the house, then again when the Van Helsings bought it, then again when they expanded in this direction. Thing wouldn’t come down no matter what they did, so they just built around it.”

  “Stubborn wood; a close relative perhaps?” Sean called back.

  “No, but I think I saw one of yours scurrying into a crack over here,” Hugo answered.

  Sean smiled. Euryda giggled. Now was the time. It was now or never.

  “So…been meaning to ask you something,” he said as they moved from the mysterious Growth to the Black One.

  Her hand paused over the box of streamers.

  “Oh? What?”

  He opened his mouth, and the words seemed to catch in his throat.

  “…Your hair isn’t dangerous, right?”

  Her mask turned to him sharply.

  “What?”

  “I mean, why do you keep it wrapped up like that? It’s not like anyone’s gonna mind a few snakes around here.”

  She stared at him for a moment, then shook her head with evident irritation, grabbed a streamer and threw it at the Black One.

  “They’ve been known to bite,” she said shortly. “You know, when they get annoyed or something. I’d rather not have to keep an eye on them all the time, so I wrap ‘em up whenever I go out.”

  “You ever let it down?”

  “Sometimes,” she said, grabbing another streamer with rather more force than was necessary. “On special occasions.”

  “Anyone ask you to the dance yet?”

  What on earth had made him do it that way?

  She paused with her hand drawn back, ready to throw.

  “That’s an abrupt change of subject,” she said.

  “Talking of special occasions, I mean,” he muttered, somewhat belatedly.

  “A few people have,” she admitted, tossing the streamer with more grace and less force than before.

  His heart sank.

  “Yeah, that doesn’t surprise me,” he muttered. “Figured you’d be one of the first around here.”

  “Is that why you waited until now to ask me?”

  He opened his mouth, felt himself go red, and closed it again. This hadn’t gone right at all.

  Euryda laughed.

  “You’re cute when you blush,” she said. “It’s the scales; they emphasize the redness.”

  He growled a little.

  “So, who’re you going with?” he asked.

  “No one yet,” she said.

  “I thought you said…”

  “I said people asked, but I haven’t said yes to any of them. I don’t go out with someone just because they asked me, you know? It’s a girl’s prerogative to choose her own date.”

  “Oh.” Sean wasn’t sure whether that was an encouragement or a discouragement.

  “Are you asking me?” she said.

  He swallowed as he picked up a green streamer and threw it as hard as he could into the Black One’s top branches. Much too hard. He far over-shot the mark and the streamer disappeared over the roof. He was really batting a thousand today.

  “Yeah, I am,” he said. “You want to go to the dance with me?”

  She tilted her head a little, regarding him. He really wished he could see her expression.


  “Sure,” she said with a shrug. “Why not?”

  She bent over to pick up another streamer and tossed it lightly over the Black One as though they had said nothing more important or interesting than agreeing to do a homework assignment together. Behind her the Growth twitched and shuddered, but Sean ignored it, preferring to watch Euryda, her tight clothes sliding over her athletic body. He felt quietly elated.

  “Thanks,” he said. Then, somewhat to his own surprise, added, “You know, I really wish I could see your face.”

  “It is worth dying for,” she said.

  “I bet. How’d it happen, by the way?”

  He’d asked without thinking, and immediately wondered how she would take it. Personal histories were something of a sensitive topic around this school; it was best to let someone offer theirs without asking. Again, she froze for a moment but then went on with her usual light tone.

  “Oh, nothing special. This elder demon wanted me to…you know.” She made an expressive gesture. “And I was all, ‘I’m fifteen!’ and he was all ‘doesn’t matter’, and I was all ‘you’re a creep!’ and…well, this.” Her hand strayed to the faintly wriggling scarf on her head. “The worst part is that I didn’t even know what he was at the time; just thought he was an ordinary slimy jerk until the snakes started coming out.”

  “That’s rotten,” he said. It didn’t covey the vehemence of his horror, but it was all he could think to say.

  “It is rotten,” she said in a conversational tone, as though talking about the weather. “But,” she added, stretching, “I’d do it again. I’m just not that kind of girl.”

  Sean watched the way her blouse rode up her stomach and couldn’t help smiling a little.

  “What?”

  “Nothing,” he said. “Just…it’s rather funny hearing you say that when you’re dressed like this.”

  She dropped her arms, folding them across her chest. Her whole demeanor changed abruptly.

  “Just because I like looking good doesn’t mean I’m a slut.”

  “I don’t think you are,” he said, taken aback. “It was just the…” he fumbled, not sure how to put what he meant.

  “You’d dress like this too if you couldn’t show your face without killing someone,” she snapped. “You’d dress like this if people kept flinching the moment they saw you.”