by Marissa Moss
I rolled my eyes. Even my sort-of friends weren’t backing me up. Where was all that human loyalty, those ties of friendship, I’d read so much about?
“I get it,” I said. “You don’t want to be seen with me anymore. Now that I’ve been cursed by Gertie, nobody will come near me.”
“Hey,” Lucas blurted out. “That’s not true! We’re not fans of Gertie, either. But vegetables ARE good for you.”
“We’re still your friends,” Howard said.
“Don’t worry about it,” Joel added. “By tomorrow the whole thing will be forgotten.”
“Really?” I asked.
“Well, maybe.” Joel sounded hopeful but not at all sure.
I wanted to be so cool, no one like Gertie could ever insult me, so cool even she would have a big crush on me, so cool everyone would want to be my friend.
There was only one way I could think of to be that cool – if kids knew I was a vampire. It made me want to climb the walls right then and there – that would show them!
But I didn’t. How could I? My parents would kill me. I don’t mean really kill me. Obviously, I’m undead so I can’t die, but you know what I mean. I’d be grounded for life and for a vampire, that’s an eternity.
January 7
The rest of the week was as bad as I’d dreaded. Clive, the football jock, tripped me accidentally-on-purpose. A girl threw spitballs at me during science. And somebody shoved garbage in my backpack.
I was the school scapegoat now. The kid everyone hated. And Gertie was the school hero, the kid everyone loved.
First a Duckling, now a Goat. What next, a werewolf?
I have to give Lucas, Howard, and Joel credit. They stuck by me like they said they would. Joel even seemed embarrassed that the whole thing hadn’t blown over.
That part was actually good. I felt like they were more than sort-of friends now. They were real friends, my first ever.
January 8
I was eager for the weekend, for all the hassles to finally stop. But I forgot that meant no more hassles AT SCHOOL. Saturday is something else entirely – it’s the day I always get treated like freeze-dried sludge. Not by other kids. By other vampires.
Some families go to church or synagogue or the mosque on the weekend. Not us. We go to the Saturday Vampire Jamboree, also known as Pick-on-Edgar Picnic.
Because if the kids at school think I’m a loser, my vampire cousins have an even lower opinion of me. To them, I’m a nerdy, dorky vampire, an insult to the entire vampire race.
I told my parents I had a headache. I told them I had so much homework, I had to stay home and do it. I told them I had a sore throat and a toothache. Maybe I tried too many excuses, because they didn’t believe any of them.
So Saturday as soon as the sun set, we drove to Grandfather and Grandmother Rakula’s house. Lots of cars were driving up at the same time and some horse-drawn carriages for the more old-fashioned vampire relatives.
Mom’s parents are classic, creepy vampires, the kind you see in old black-and-white movies.
Dad’s are a strange mix of vampire and Midwestern comfortable.
My uncles, aunts, and cousins are a big blend of styles, but they all have one thing in common – they’re cool vampires, the kind everyone admires, fears, and respects. Even regular people who don’t know they’re vampires can tell there’s something special about them. In other words, they’re the opposite of me.
You can see why I don’t fit in.
As soon as we got to the Rakula house, Mom went to the kitchen to mix up the blood cocktails. Dad went to the library to help Grandfather with his collection of incunabula. I think that’s an amazingly cool word – incunabula. Doesn’t it sound like some kind of Creature of the Night? What it really means is a book, an early printed book, like from the 15th Century. Grandfather specializes in books about vampire folklore and the 15th century was big on the subject.
I keep promising myself I’ll use that word in conversation one day, but I can never figure out quite how.
Then I could laugh and explain what incunabula really means. I wonder if I tried it on Gertie, would she’d think I was cool? Or even nerdier? Humans are so hard to figure out!
Normally at Jamborees I hang out with the little vampires because they look up to me. I’m great at organizing games of bat-tag and wall-climbing. But I’m in middle school now, I have a few human friends, and that gave me the courage to go up to a group of cool, older cousins.
Big mistake! Vampires don’t say howdy. Nobody does. I don’t know what possessed me to say such a dumb thing. A banshee or a ghoul probably. They made me say it.
The cousins ignored me, like they always do.
Elvira – She’s a junior in high school, wears tons of make up, and her main expression is of total boredom. She’s been everywhere, done everything, and says nothing new will ever happen to her again. The main reason for that is she’s been the same age for three centuries now. She’s one of those Peter Pan vampires, the kind that don’t want to grow up. I tell her that she should try aging like I do. She’ll have new experiences that way, but she says that the times (and fashions) changing is enough novelty for her. I can’t imagine an eternity of high school! That takes a strong stomach, so Elvira must be tough, even if she moans about boredom. Eventually, when she’s finally had enough, she’ll age up a year, but for now she says the only thing she has to look forward to is the senior prom, so she’s holding off as long as she possibly can.
Veronique – She’s a senior in high school and is the artiste of the family. I say artiste and not artist, because she’s got this attitude that goes beyond making art. She claims her whole life is a work of art. Her hair certainly is! I have to give her credit, though, she’s willing to age and has only been in high school for a decade or so. She keeps changing schools so nobody notices that she hasn’t graduated yet. She says she blew it by not aging into a twenty-year-old in 1930s Paris (before WWII, of course). That was the time to be an artist, and she missed it. Instead she was in elementary school in Milwaukee then – what a let-down! She swears she won’t make that mistake again and is waiting for the next brilliant art capital to emerge. Istanbul? Tokyo? Budapest?
Lucinda – She’s in 8th grade, but not at the same middle school as me. She’s smart and funny and completely sure of herself. I’ve tried to make her like me so many times and in so many ways, it’s become a family joke. For example, How many Edgars does it take to light up one Lucinda light bulb?
None! She lights up all by herself and he just makes her go dork. (Dork, dark, get it?)
I know, I know, it’s a dumb joke, not funny at all.
Zoe – She’s also in 6th grade, at Lucinda’s school. Which is fine by me because I think she’s a spoiled brat. All she cares about are the latest clothes and hot brand names. You would think after a century or two, that kind of thing would get old, but she boasts about the Dior purse she has from the 1920s. So she bought it new and not at a vintage clothes store – big whoop!
She’s the one cousin I don’t care about being friends with. She boasts that she’s one of the few vampires to live through middle school (I mean not skip over it entirely), and except for Lucinda and me, so far she’s right. Which makes me the only boy brave enough to do it. I hadn’t thought about that before.
There are only two boy cousins, both older (high school seniors) and both super-cool. Which means they barely even look at me. Every Jamboree, I study them and try to figure out what makes them so amazing and how I can be like them.
Besides growing tall, handsome, and muscular, there have got to be things I can imitate. Only so far I haven’t figured out what.
Barnaby doesn’t talk much, but he doesn’t need to. Mostly he makes quick, sharp comebacks. Sometimes I think his silence makes him seem smarter than he really is. If you want to seem profound, just nod your head and look like you have some deep understanding that’s so mysterious you can’t express it. Other times I think he’s scarily clever becau
se he’ll mention some strange fact that only somebody who’s read about a zillion books could possibly know, like how many feet above sea level Quito is or who first discovered that lemmings leap off cliffs into the ocean.
He’s super-strong and fast, the way you’d expect a vampire to be. But like me, he’s not allowed to show off at school, so no track team, no winning races. With him, that doesn’t matter, because somehow just standing still, he seems powerful, like a coiled spring, tight with energy. How can I copy that? Maybe I should just try the strong, silent treatment. Or I suppose I could start reading more books.
Then there’s Thadeus. He tells everyone he has the soul of a tortured poet. Meaning he sighs a lot. And sometimes he talks in rhyme, which sounds silly, if you ask me. Only he calls it Vampire Rap or Spoken V. Poetry. He has a lot of the same Boredom Pose that Elvira has and he’s been a teenager even longer – 557 years, if you can believe that! But he talks much more.
His biggest skill is making lame poetry, if you consider that a talent. Sample rhyme:
He’s been writing poetry for so long, you’d think he’d be good at it by now. He says I don’t understand Vampire Rap, and that if I did, I’d see what a genius he is. Since I don’t, he thinks I’m a jerk.
Why can’t he write like that poet who was a friend of his centuries ago, a weirdo human who was as close to a vampire as you can get? You know, the one who wrote about the raven and the creepy pit and the pendulum? Come to think of it, that guy was named Edgar, just like me, Edgar Allan Poe! Now he wrote great poetry!
With the cousins ignoring me, I ate with the little vampires. That meant wiping runny noses, telling silly knock-knock jokes, and playing with six- and seven-year-olds.
Which was fun for about three minutes.
At least at school, I have friends to sit with.
I hate Saturday Vampire Jamborees!
I felt totally sorry for myself. Mom was wrong – I’d be an Ugly Duckling forever. And I mean forever because that’s how long vampires live.
Of course, I could skip that phase and go right to Cool, Amazing Vampire Dude, so why don’t I? Why do I choose to live as a 6th grader? I’d like to think I’m being courageous, that I’m willing to face the full adventure of middle school. That I’m braver than Thadeus and Barnaby since they went right from age ten to eighteen. Being a middle-school vampire is my one way to be unique in a good way, a vampire who counts for something.
Or maybe it’s like Gramps says, we’re so used to living among humans, we want to be like them, even if that means aging the same way they do.
Anyway, back at the Jamboree, Thadeus was spouting more poetry.
“Wait! I can feel it! Inspiration is here!”
Doesn’t that sound like “One fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish” to you?
I asked Thadeus what he was afraid of, and he glared at me. So Veronique answered for him.
“How can you understand?” she snapped. “Don’t even try!”
Zoe and Lucinda fluttered their eyelashes like sick cows.
“What a genius!” they cooed.
I can’t imagine girls ever going goo-goo eyed over me. Like I said, it’s not fair.
It’s one thing to be invisible at school, it’s another to be scraping the floor of the Vampire cool scale. If I’m not careful, my cousins will start calling me a zombie. That’s the worst of the worst. Maybe you think all the Undead play well together, but that’s not true. If there’s one thing vampires despise, it’s zombies.
Here’s why: zombies WERE dead – they’re just brought back to life, usually with voodoo or some kind of nasty witchcraft. Vampires are immortal. That is unless someone stabs us with a wooden stake. Things like garlic, holy water, and crucifixes can weaken us, but not much can kill us. You can kill zombies a million different ways. There’s really nothing special about them.
And everyone knows zombies are DUMB! That’s why they’re always trying to eat your brain – because they don’t have one.
Don’t confuse zombies with mummies, another creature that was human, died, and came back to life.
In their case, it’s the mummy’s curse that gives them power. But they can be killed in the same ways zombies can. Plus they’re nowhere near as strong as us vampires. The only thing they have going for them is that they’re way smarter than zombies. And they’re known to be great dancers.
So I’d pick a mummy friend over a zombie any day.
Legend has it that 100 years or so ago, a vampire invited a zombie to the Saturday Jamboree. BIG MISTAKE!! The zombie couldn’t play any games or dance or turn into a bat. It just sat there, like the blithering idiot it was.
Then it tried to eat a vampire. Not a real threat, of course, since vampires are so strong and a zombie’s rotten teeth are nothing like a wooden stake. But still, it was a rude thing to do.
My great-grandfather whacked it with a shovel, and it’s buried behind the house here. They even put a nice marker on the grave, which was more than the stupid zombie deserved.
So now it’s a rule – No Zombies Allowed. Werewolves, witches, wizards, ghouls, mummies, and demons are okay in theory, but I haven’t seen any of those at a Jamboree, either. It’s just us vampires and has been for many years.
January 9
I was just waiting for it to be time to go when Grandfather struck the great gong twelve times. BONG BONG BONG BONG BONG BONG BONG BONG BONG BONG BONG BONG! (Count them if you don’t believe me – they’re all there, all 12 bongs.)
That meant all eyes on Grandfather. Every Jamboree ends the same way. Grandfather instructs us with Words of Immense and Ancient Wisdom (I told you vampires are smart), and then we all drink the Potion of Daylight.
Grandfather has a creaky voice, like the lid of a coffin squeaking open. His accent is thick and dark, kind of like snarling dogs. He’s from the Old Country and his specialty is Stories from Days Long Ago and Far Away.
When I was little, I loved to listen to him. But today, at the end of a boring Jamboree after a horrible week, I couldn’t.
Somehow tonight Grandfather sounded just like my math-science teacher, Mr. Kett. The same gravelly drone, like a motor putt-putting in the background, the kind of tuneless murmur that puts me to sleep.
Next thing I knew, someone had jabbed a sharp elbow right into my ribs. OUCH!
The elbow was connected to Zoe, the brat.
“Have some respect!” she hissed at me.
“Thanks,” I snapped. “I’d love some.”
“Idiot!” Zoe sneered and stomped off. Not very respectful, if you ask me.
“And that is why we must be ever alert to the enemy,” Grandfather was saying. “Vampires must endure. The earth depends on us – we are her beating heart!” Grandfather shook his finger, his favorite gesture. “We can’t allow these rumors to spread. Mortals can’t know that we’re more than nightmares that roil their sleep. So be aware and be more careful than ever that no one learns our true identities.”
I had NO idea what he was talking about. What rumors? Did people suspect somebody was a vampire? Had a cousin bitten a dog in public again?
I would have asked Zoe-of-the-sharp-elbow but I couldn’t see where she’d gone. And I didn’t want another jab anyway.
Instead I got in line for the Potion.
As vampires, we’ve learned to adapt to the human world. One of the most important skills we’ve developed is how to survive daylight.
One weekly dose of Sun-B-Gone, invented by my great-grandmother, Morticia LaBelle von Dead, and you can be out in the sun for seven full days with no ill effects. Before Sun-B-Gone, it was hard to have much to do with regular people unless you worked a night job, like at a 24-hour convenience store or in an emergency room.
And vampires are curious about mortals. We like them and not just because they’re tasty. Humans are interesting. Maybe because they can die, they seem much kinder than vampires generally are, more sensitive. Which doesn’t mean there aren’t mortal brats and bullies. Sure ther
e are. But there’s a sweetness to people that’s touching. It’s hard to explain. But it’s one reason I have three human friends -- they’re nicer to me than most of the vampires I know so much better.
Back to the Potion. Before Morticia figured out the secret ingredients, the only way to mix with humans was at night. But going to bars, nightclubs, hospitals, and all-night stores only allows you to meet a certain kind of person. For one thing, hardly any kids (except sick, hurt ones at the hospital). For another, the grown-ups are often drunk, sleazy, or truckers driving all night. Not the best mix of types, though at least you could go to the movies. The midnight show is still my favorite.
So Sun-B-Gone has given us a lot of freedom, a whole new way of living with people. The only thing is – and this is important – you have to drink a full dose. Everyone knows the story of Cousin Boris.
It was the end of the Jamboree, and Boris was having a great time.
“Let’s dance some more! It’s not dawn yet!”
Except he had the hiccups. Even as he drank – hic – the Potion.
Boris was annoyed by the hiccups (they are pesky, aren’t they?), but didn’t think much about them until the next day.
He strode out into the morning sun to go to his job at the Blood Bank where he was a nurse. Nobody is better at drawing blood than vampires, believe me! We always know how to find a vein.
