Team Human

by Justine Larbalestier

  Anna obviously recognized the name. Her face wiped itself of expression. It was like seeing a computer crash, the screen going abruptly blank.

  “Hi, Kit,” Ty said. “I’m Ty, this is Jonathan.”

  “Just call me Jon. ’Sup?” said Jon. He was sandy blond, cute in that scruffy soccer-boy way. I wondered if Ty was trying to fix up him and Anna. Everyone was looking a bit self-conscious.

  “Kit?” asked Jon. “Weird name.”

  “Uh,” said Kit. “My mom says I was named after Christopher Marlowe.”

  “Huh,” said Jon.

  I shared a grin with him over his sneaky phrasing. Then I realized everybody was looking blank about the Christopher Marlowe thing.

  Maybe if he’d been a famous Elizabethan soccer player …

  “Old dead playwright,” I explained.

  We grabbed two hot chocolates and pulled up chairs. Ty asked Kit if he played soccer.

  “No,” said Kit. “I did play volleyball once, though. Beach volleyball.”

  “Right … ,” said Ty.

  At which point, Anna broke in: “Kit was raised by vampires.”

  She looked at him as if he’d committed a crime. I’d reached for Kit’s hand again without thinking about it. He grabbed hold, and I squeezed.

  “Whoa,” Ty said. “Seriously?”

  “Uh, yeah,” Kit said. “My mom’s a vampire.”

  Jon frowned. “So you don’t, like … take after her, or something? My mom says I’m all my dad’s side of the family.”

  “I’m adopted,” Kit told him.

  “Oh,” said Ty. “Well. Cool. We have a vampire friend, don’t we, guys? His name’s—”

  “Francis,” said Kit. “He’s part of my shade. He helped bring me up.”

  “Dude, that is weird,” Ty observed in a pained voice, and for a wild minute I thought Ty was talking about a human guy referring to “his shade.” “No offense,” Ty said hastily. “I’ve got a vampire aunt. It’s a bit strange, though, thinking of the fact that our Cathy is dating someone who used to change the diapers of someone her own age.”

  “I am certain Francis would never dream of performing such a menial task,” Kit said, tilting his chin and speaking in a beautifully modulated English accent. “There is the additional fact that it would be exceedingly aesthetically unappealing, and Francis is a great lover of beauty.”

  It was exactly like Francis. The boys burst out laughing, and Kit started and then beamed, his hand relaxing in mine. Even Anna smiled.

  “So,” Kit said. “The television is my window into all things human. There’s loads of sports on it, and I decided not to take on too many. Soccer was one of the ones I skipped. How do you play?”

  The boys plunged into action. Ty said, “Okay. Okay, so if this marshmallow is the ball, and this saltshaker is the goalkeeper, and this packet of ketchup is—”

  Normally, I would’ve been happy to join in the soccer conversation. But soccer isn’t really Anna’s thing, and I wanted to talk to her.

  I leaned back in my chair, regretfully pulling my hand from Kit’s.

  “Hey,” I said in a low voice. “I went and talked to Adam Wasserman today.”

  “My dad’s secretary?” Anna bit her lip. “Why?”

  “I wanted to follow up every lead,” I said quietly. “I didn’t want you to think I’d forgotten about you, with the whole Cathy thing.”

  Anna smiled faintly. “I knew you hadn’t.” She leaned in closer, over the yells of “Offside! That ketchup is totally offside!” and said, “I’m sorry I burst out with—that about Kit.”

  “It’s okay,” I said.

  “He seems nice,” Anna offered.

  She was looking at me, waiting for an explanation or just wanting to talk about boys, and I was trying to think of a way to ask her something awful.

  “At least he’s not a vampire,” she said.

  “Not yet,” I muttered.

  “What?” Anna asked.

  “Oh, nothing. Adam’s a really nice guy.”

  “Did he tell you anything useful?”

  “He was very surprised by the way your dad left. By how sudden it was. That he didn’t even come in to say good-bye or stay to help his patients adjust to a new doctor. Adam said everyone was surprised.”

  “Yes.” Anna’s mouth twisted. “My parents were so in love. No one could believe it.”

  “When’s the last time you heard from your dad?” I asked, wishing there was a more delicate way to phrase it.

  “When school started, he texted to wish me luck with my senior year. I was too upset to reply. I know I should have. But he hasn’t texted since. Some father, huh?”

  “Yeah,” I said. Now that I was questioning Principal Saunders’s versions of events, I was finding it very hard to imagine Anna’s dad being so neglectful and, well, cruel. “Do you think, maybe …” I trailed off. “Never mind.”

  I couldn’t help thinking about Rebecca Jones howling at Anna’s house, scratching up the door. The chill from earlier was back, even in this hot, crowded coffee shop full of yelling and laughter. I shivered, and Anna saw it.

  “What?”

  “Your dad was always so nice,” I said. “Remember when he made us the cabbage costumes?”

  Anna smiled sadly.

  When Anna and I were thirteen, we were cabbages in the school play (don’t ask), and my parents both had big cases on, so Dr. Saunders made my cabbage costume. He said it was no trouble. Made us laugh at our cabbage humiliation. It had been a lot of trouble. Those cabbage leaves had been gigantic.

  I’d always liked him.

  “I don’t get him running away like this. Being so cruel to you. It’s not like him.”

  “It’s okay, Mel,” Anna whispered. “I guess he was too much of a coward to tell me, to explain things. Some midlife crisis, huh? We all know boys, I mean men, can be selfish and awful.”

  “Is that what your mom says?”

  “No. Mom doesn’t talk about it. Not since she brought me back from camp.”

  I frowned.

  “I’ll be okay, Mel. It’s my mom I’m worried about. She loved him so much, you know? I don’t think she’ll ever get over it.”

  I wished I knew exactly what “it” was. Some of the “its” I was thinking of were so terrible, and I didn’t know how to suggest to Anna that her father might not have hurt her deliberately.

  That someone might have hurt him instead.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Jumping to Conclusions?

  I wasn’t sure Kit had heard any of what Anna and I had been talking about until we told the others good-bye and Kit insisted that he had to walk me home or Francis would make him memorize more books of etiquette.

  I might have dangled my hand sort of invitingly in the space between us, but he didn’t take it. He was staring straight ahead, as if he found the sidewalk really interesting and possibly a little bit upsetting.

  “Your friends seem cool,” he said. “Ty mentioned you guys often have a pickup soccer game in the park on Sundays.”

  “Come along,” I said, and when Kit smiled faintly, I winked. “I’ll kick your butt as well as Ty’s. Be a pleasure.”

  “It’s a date,” said Kit. I thought about objecting, but who was I kidding? It was a date. “Your friend Anna,” Kit continued after a pause. “She has it pretty rough. I didn’t know—I didn’t know your detective work was about something so serious.”

  “How do you mean?” I asked warily.

  “Well,” Kit said, “her dad’s gone, after doing something massively uncharacteristic, and he’s just been texting since he left.”

  He glanced at me, as if for confirmation. Of course he would have the same suspicions I had. It was obvious, wasn’t it?

  “What if Dr. Saunders has amnesia?” Kit asked.

  I stared at him. Okay, we didn’t have the same suspicions.

  “No, I’m serious,” he continued. “What if Dr. Saunders had head trauma and when he came to he
didn’t know who he was, but Rebecca Jones was there to tell him who he was and how he hated his family and loved her—pretty convenient, huh? And that’s why he’s abandoned his family even though it’s totally out of character. Dr. Saunders doesn’t know who he is!”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Makes sense, doesn’t it?” Kit said, waiting for me to be impressed by his crazy theory.

  “Um. Amnesia?” Not rolling my eyes took all my concentration. “What made you think of that?”

  “I saw this excellent show all about it. There was this one guy who stood up too fast in the kitchen, whacked his head into a cupboard door, and didn’t know who he was for six months! And then there was this woman who was hit by a car on the way to her own wedding, and when she got her memory back it was three years later and she was living in a hut in Alaska. Apparently it happens all the time.”

  “I guess we can’t discount it,” I said to be kind. I wondered what show Kit had been watching. Days of Our Lives? “But, um, I don’t think he’s in a hut in Alaska. Besides,” I said quickly when Kit started to protest, “how does that explain how strangely Principal Saunders has been behaving?” I took a breath. “I think Anna’s dad may have been kidnapped—”

  “Kidnapped? By Rebecca Jones?”

  “Yes. And that’s why Anna’s mom is behaving so weirdly. She’s being threatened.”

  “By Rebecca Jones?”

  “That’s my theory, anyway. It seems more likely than amnesia.”

  “Amnesia is way more common than you’d think,” Kit said. “It happens all the time on TV shows. But either way, don’t you think we should we go to the police? I could ask my mom to look into it? She would, you know. We know she’s interested in the case.”

  “But what if it’s exactly what it looks like?” I asked, suddenly unsure. Was what I was thinking any more likely than amnesia? “Dr. Saunders had a midlife crisis and ran away with a beautiful vampire, and his wife is miserable. She really loved him. Loves him. Could be that both our theories are nuts.”

  “Beautiful crazy vampire,” Kit said. “You heard what Mr. Wasserman said.”

  “If he has amnesia, why is he texting his wife and daughter at all? If he’s been kidnapped, why hasn’t Principal Saunders gone to the police?” I asked.

  “Because she doesn’t want her husband killed?”

  “Thin. Very thin. Principal Saunders can’t believe that Rebecca would ever give him back,” I said. “The vampire is nuts. Principal Saunders would go to the police. Besides which, Rebecca Jones didn’t sound like a criminal mastermind.”

  “I guess not,” Kit said. “It’s horrible to think that a vampire would do something like that.”

  “Vampires do all sorts of horrible things,” I said.

  “As do humans,” Kit replied.

  “Right. Sorry. Dr. Saunders running away without saying good-bye, without letting his daughter know how much he loves her—texts don’t count—that’s really horrible.”

  If he’d done it.

  Someone else could have used his phone. Someone else could have sent those texts.

  But if he hadn’t, if my theory was true, then Principal Saunders was being stupid. She’d always been so sensible: She’d know the only thing to do was go to the police.

  Love made you do dumb things, though, I mused, thinking of Cathy. Maybe we were letting our imaginations run away with us. Especially Kit. Amnesia? Seriously?

  “Yeah. And depressing.”

  “It’s hard to accept it’s true. But Occam’s Razor says—” I began.

  “The simplest explanation is usually the right one,” Kit completed. “But crazy Rebecca Jones turning kidnapper is an explanation too. So is amnesia.” He saw the look on my face. “Okay, possibly not as likely. But if my mom thought there was something fishy going on …”

  “I hope I’m not right,” I said. “With or without his memory, I hate the idea of Dr. Saunders being held prisoner by a crazy vampire.”

  “Me, too,” Kit said. There was a long pause. “I hated hearing all those things Mr. Wasserman said, about vampires getting botched surgeries to let them laugh and committing suicide.”

  He shuddered and hugged himself reflexively, as if he was cold. The boy who lived in a chilly vampire house.

  It occurred to me that like Adam’s patients, Kit’s samples were skewed. Vampires who lived in the Shade tended to be older and more traditional. They were successful, established vampires who had adjusted well. Kit didn’t know any badly adjusted vampires. This must’ve been the first time he’d faced the downsides of becoming a vampire.

  I wanted to hug him.

  Kit shoved his hands in his pockets. “I should get going. But I had fun.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said, looking at his pale, strained face. “Loads of fun.”

  Kit made a crooked attempt at a smile. “Well, some of it was fun. And—I’m sure you’re going to find out what happened with Dr. Saunders. So,” he said.

  “So,” I said.

  He looked at me, and for a moment I thought he was going to kiss me.

  I suppose technically he did. He leaned forward and gave me a quick peck on the cheek.

  Yes indeed. The I-think-of-you-more-as-a-maiden-aunt kiss.

  “I’ll call you,” Kit told me. “I’ve got a lot to think about.”

  A peck on the cheek? I nodded and turned away. My throat felt tight. “I’ll call you”? I knew what it meant when a guy said that.

  Ryan had said that he needed time to think about how things were going, and that he’d call me, the day before he hit on Cathy at a party I hadn’t been invited to.

  I felt a bit disgusted with myself feeling blue about the fact that Kit wasn’t going to call, when something else Kit had said was much more important.

  His mom thought something fishy was going on. She’d interviewed Adam Wasserman too, after all.

  Francis had chosen our school, out of all the schools in New Whitby, to attend. Principal Saunders was terrified of Francis. Francis had asked me not to discuss him with Principal Saunders.

  Francis was on record as having written several volumes of his magnum opus already. Francis had a plausible cover story to be in school.

  Francis lived in a shade with a vampire cop. Was Camille secretly investigating what had happened to Dr. Saunders? Was Francis her man on the inside?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Desperately Scandalizing Francis

  At school the next day I was in the worst mood in the history of bad moods. I went to my locker, not because I needed a book but because I wanted to stand in the hall, stare into my locker, and brood.

  I’d realized that our conversation with Adam Wasserman hadn’t gotten me any closer to knowing what had happened with Dr. Saunders. Had he just left Anna and his wife? Or had Rebecca Jones kidnapped him and was she now terrifying Principal Saunders while Camille investigated the whole thing by placing Francis at Craunston High as her spy?

  Francis would be the worst spy ever.

  It was entirely possible I was crazy. Or at least the worst amateur detective ever. Was Kit’s theory really that much worse than mine? Maybe amnesiac Dr. Saunders was now living off kelp and whale meat in Alaska.

  On top of that, Kit had broken up with me. Not that we had been together or could ever have been together, what with his desperate need to become an eternal member of his shade.

  I’ll call you. Yeah, right.

  He hadn’t even said why. Was I too human for him? Too bossy? Had he lied about liking our kiss? He’d pecked my cheek last night. A mere peck!

  Ugh.

  “Are you all right, Mel?” Principal Saunders asked.

  I started. “Just lost in thought!” I said, extremely relieved she couldn’t read them.

  “And late for class, it would appear.”

  “On my way, sorry!”

  I so wished that I hadn’t told Kit my Dr.-Saunders-kidnapped theory. It had been bad enough thinking it myself. Now, thanks
to Kit, I couldn’t stop thinking it. But every time my brain went there, I started to imagine all the awful things that crazy vampire Rebecca could be doing to him, and my thoughts recoiled, going into painful spirals and heading toward a headache.

  Stop it, Mel, I told myself. There was another explanation that made perfect sense: Dr. Saunders ran off with Rebecca Jones. Love makes people crazy. Look at Cathy and Francis. She was going to change species for a guy she’d known for less than a month! Love made people deranged.

  I was so relieved I wasn’t in love with Kit. That jerk.

  I confess I did not take in much in trig or bio. Cathy was, of course, in all those classes. We always took the same classes. She wasn’t paying much attention either, which was very unusual for her. She seemed to be reading a book under the desk. I’d never seen her do that before.

  We exchanged “hi”s and “how are you”s but that was it. It felt like I was already losing her.

  At lunch instead of joining us or going off with Francis, Cathy squeezed his hand, smiled meltingly at him, and then headed for the library. Francis, shockingly, did not join us either. Anna, Ty, and I were getting used to each other’s company without Cathy. They were good friends to have, and it was especially lovely having Anna back, but I was starting to really miss Cathy. Since we were little we’d practically lived in each other’s back pockets.

  “So,” Ty said, as soon as we had all gotten our lunches and acquired a table. “This Kit guy. Kind of cool. I suppose.” He paused so I could contemplate how he, Ty, was much cooler.

  “You broke up with me, Ty,” I said.

  Ty coughed. “That’s got nothing to do with anything. I was saying I like your new boyfriend.”

  “He’s not—” I began. I wasn’t going to tell them the barely begun friendship had come to an end. “We only just met.”

  “Do you like him?” Ty asked. “Not that I care.”

  “I do,” I said, because it was true. Even though it didn’t matter anymore. “Not that I care that you don’t care. Though you clearly do care, and I don’t care about that, either.”

  “Well, I don’t care that you don’t care that I don’t care. In fact I’m glad. Because, um, if I was seeing someone that I liked, I’d want you to be happy for me.”