by Adam Selzer
“Let me think it over,” I said.
“No dice,” she said. “You could give him a warning. If you leave now, the only way we could use you is if you actually attend the diciotto yourself and tell him to convert.”
“Not going to happen,” I said.
“Jennifer, the diciotto is happening,” she said. “The council will grant permission. And it will work. His parents have some doubts, but the truth is that without you, it will only take longer and be harder for him. Think of what you’re subjecting him to. I saw how he reacted to just seeing his parents last night.”
I heard her voice in my head telling me, “Don’t do this to him.” It was an old vampire trick—if they’re nearby, they can send their voices into people’s heads, where they echo around like, well, like voices in your head. I didn’t think it had ever been done to me, but I sure didn’t like it.
“Get out of my brain,” I said.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “I can only send my thoughts in, not get yours out.”
“Well, knock it off, anyway!” I said. “That’s really rude, if you ask me. Can I go now?”
“Just think about how difficult an experience you want to subject Mr. Scrivener to,” she said. “And come see me when you change your mind.”
Mrs. Smollet’s real name wasn’t Mrs. Smollet, by the way.
It was Mrs. Fartknocker.
I walked out of the office and went into the bathroom for the rest of the period. I wasn’t going back to that auditorium for anything.
I wondered, for a minute, if Mrs. Smollet actually had a point—that the diciotto would probably convince Mutual to convert. Just seeing his parents had left him crying the night before. If he converted quickly because I told him to, that was probably better, in the long run, than if he converted because they’d made him feel like he was worthless if he didn’t.
I knew a little bit about what it was like to have someone tell you you were awful. And what Gregory Grue was doing to me was probably nothing compared to what would happen in a diciotto. Sparing Mutual that experience would be a humane thing to do.
But I could never betray him like that.
For one thing, I had entirely selfish reasons. If he was going to be my soul mate or whatever, I wanted him to grow old with me, not stay eighteen forever.
And there was hope—his parents, who knew more about diciottos than I did, weren’t sure it would be successful without me. Hopefully Fred could teach him a few more tricks that would give him an edge, and I wouldn’t need to make such an awful decision.
At the end of the school day, Jason, Amber, and I met up with Fred at his locker, and I heard Mrs. Smollet’s voice in my head saying, “Think it over.”
“Where’s the kid?” asked Fred.
“He’s not in school,” said Jason. “We have to go pick him up at my house.”
“Did you drive here?” asked Fred. “I just ran.”
“I can drive,” I said. “Let’s go.”
We walked through the parking lot up to my car and I let Fred into the front.
When he took his seat, he stared at the carved wooden dashboard.
“Oh my God,” he said. “I know this car.”
“You do?” I said.
“Where did you get it?”
“Two hundred and fifty bucks at an auction. But I lost on the deal.”
He nodded.
“Do you know whose estate it came from?” he asked.
I shook my head, and he turned to me and said, “This was Doug the Zombie’s car.”
In the glove compartment of her Prius, Jenny kept a little box containing a lock of hair from a vampire—she felt like it gave her luck. She held it to her chest, hoping it would work some magic on Fred that even her fairy godmother hadn’t been able to do.
seventeen
“You’re kidding,” I said. “This was Doug’s?”
Fred nodded sadly.
“Wow,” I said.
“It stalled the other night right outside that cemetery where he’s buried,” said Jason.
“Makes sense,” Fred said with a nod. “It knows.”
“It stalls all the time, actually,” I said.
“You were there that night, weren’t you?” asked Amber. “When he and Alley got attacked?”
“It wasn’t what people think,” he said defensively. “I wasn’t attacking them. Not really. I honestly thought we were just pulling a prank on them. I even brought Doug some brains from the Science Center to eat so he wouldn’t hurt so much while he was crumbling.”
“It was mostly Will doing the attacking, right?” I asked.
Fred stared off into space for a while. “It was mostly Will, yeah,” he said. “Will was … magnetic. He drew me to him, you know? I thought we were just going to, like … scare them. Even that would have been cruel, but he could talk me into anything. You ever wonder what you’re really capable of, deep down?”
I nodded.
Sincerely.
“I never really felt like I fit in with the other vampires,” he said. “But with Wilhelm … I felt different. He was smart as hell. Dude had social graces to the nth degree.”
“You know, there were some tapes in the glove compartment when I bought the car,” I said. “I’ve never played them. They must be Doug’s, though.”
Fred opened the compartment and pulled out a cassette, which he popped into the player.
It started playing an old show tune; then that faded out and there was a song with weird lyrics sung by a guy who sounded like he had a cold. Not as gruff as Gregory Grue or anything, but deep and smoky.
“Do you know Alley?” Fred asked me.
“Not that well,” I said.
“I talked to her a lot after the whole thing at prom,” he said. “This is Leonard Cohen. They were both into him. This is probably a mix tape he made for her.”
“Weird,” Amber said. “It’s like we’re listening to someone else’s love letter.”
“You want to turn it off?” asked Fred. “I kinda think this guy sucks, personally. We could put on some metal or something.”
“Nah,” I said. “I kinda like this. And the car seems like it’s been running better since you turned it on. I’m hitting the brakes and it doesn’t feel like it’s about to stall out.”
Fred smiled a bit. “It knows.”
“Usually it stalls about once a block,” I said. “Every trip is an adventure in this machine.”
“Remember that time we broke down outside a cow pasture?” Amber said. “There were, like, fifty cows that came up to the gate and just stared at us.”
“They could’ve been a lot more helpful,” I said. “Cows don’t know anything about cars.”
Jason and Amber laughed, and Fred gave a tiny grin.
Mutual was on Jason’s porch, waiting. He still looked freaked out, and even after we introduced him to Fred and got him into the car, he kept looking over his shoulder, like he was afraid his parents might come climbing out of my trunk any second.
“So, where are we going?” I asked.
“There’s a place downtown that only post-humans know about,” Fred said. “A place where we can all be ourselves, more or less. And the cops can’t get in, so they don’t bother to card anyone. I can get you guys in.”
“Point the way,” I said.
And we rolled off toward downtown, just talking about music, school, and stuff that didn’t really have anything to do with post-humans or diciottos or anything. I guess he was building up trust.
Fred wasn’t nearly as big a jerk as I’d always thought. He still seemed mopey and unhappy, but that was understandable. I wouldn’t want to be a teenager a minute longer than I absolutely have to be. If you’ve got to live forever, you should do it in, like, your mid-twenties or whenever it is that you hit your prime.
Mutual didn’t say a word the whole trip.
Fred directed me past downtown, into the east side, and down a side street into a neighborhood so bad it looked
like a set from Drugs: The Movie.
I would have been a bit nervous, but it wasn’t like anyone was going to mug me or rape me or whatever while Fred was around. They could try, but no gang of toughs could beat a vampire in a fight.
“So, what’s this place?” I asked. “One of those new vampire bars?”
“Nah,” he said. “This one was a post-human bar even before we came out of the coffin.”
“I didn’t know there were any of those,” I said.
“Sure,” he said. “We still keep quiet about it, though, so keep your traps shut.”
I followed his directions to a place that looked like a feed store. In fact, it actually said “Feed Store” on the sign, even though I couldn’t imagine any farmers living in the neighborhood. The windows were all boarded up, and one of the boards had an Out of Business sign spray-painted on it. The paint on the sign was badly faded and chipped. Weeds sprang up through the cracks in the ground, and even out of the cracks in the paint on the walls.
“Do people from the neighborhood ever try to sneak in?” I asked. “Looks like it would be a nice place for taking drugs.”
“They probably try,” he said. “But they’d never get past the threshold.”
We got out of the car, and Fred walked us around to the back door and knocked. A little slot in the door opened, and a pair of red eyes looked out at us for a second before letting us inside.
The place looked like any crummy bar I’d seen on TV—dimly lit, with a couple of neon signs, a jukebox, and a pool table. There was a whole lot of sawdust and scattered pieces of rubbish on the bare concrete floor. A tinny speaker overhead was playing an old song with a violin and an accordion. I couldn’t tell what song it was, because the lyrics were in German.
It looked like a group of regulars had gotten together to clean up in about 1974, and they hadn’t left—or cleaned again—since.
“This is life as a post-human,” said Fred. “Dark, dismal, and depressing.”
In front of the bar sat three guys, all hunched over. Two of them had their heads down. In the middle sat a much shorter guy. His face was shadowed under a fedora and he didn’t turn to look at us, but I assumed it was Gregory Grue. I figured it was best not to try to get his attention.
Just knowing he was there gave me chills, though.
He was not going to wreck this for me.
Fred sat down at the edge of the bar, and I sat on a stool next to him.
The bartender gave him a nod.
“What’s this, some kind of Nazi music?” Fred asked, tilting his head toward the speaker in the ceiling.
“The Nazis burned this guy’s manuscripts in the town square, you dumb punk,” said the bartender. “Got some new wannabes?”
“Just one, I think,” said Fred.
He ordered a drink, then turned back to us.
“This is the only bar I can get into without a hassle,” he said. “I’m actually old enough that most of the kids I grew up with are grandparents now, but as far as most bouncers are concerned, I’m still a teenager. They always think my ID is fake. And, technically, I am still seventeen. My brain hasn’t really matured at all since I converted—I’m just mature enough to know that I’m stuck being young, dumb, and ugly forever. Believe me, you don’t want this.”
“I know I don’t,” said Mutual.
Fred looked a bit surprised. “You don’t?”
“Yeah,” Mutual said. “I don’t want to convert. I was hoping for help with getting through a diciotto.”
Fred shook his head and swore a little bit.
“Well, this is a new one,” he said. “Most of the people I have to talk to are desperate to convert.”
“I just want help dealing with my parents,” said Mutual.
Fred took a deep breath. “I don’t know what to tell you, man,” he said. “I’ve never heard of anyone not converting after a diciotto.”
Mutual looked like he was about to cry again.
“Mutual can probably handle it,” said Jason. “He’s tough.”
“No one’s that tough,” Fred said. “I’ve even seen people pull all kinds of tricks to get out of it, like planting people who don’t really want them to convert in the diciotto party, giving them drugs to make them sleep through it, whatever. Nothing works. Nothing. Everyone converts at the end.”
I remembered Smollet’s offer. “So if I volunteered to help out at the diciotto, and warned him right now not to listen to me there, it probably wouldn’t help?”
“I guarantee you’d just make it worse,” said Fred.
“So I’m screwed?” asked Mutual.
Fred inhaled sharply and looked uncomfortable.
“Probably,” he said. “I mean, there are exercises you can do to keep them from sending thoughts into your head, which they’ll try to do, and that might help a little. You know anything about that?”
Mutual shook his head.
“Come on,” said Fred. “I can’t teach you in here with this accordion racket. Let’s go out back.”
Mutual nodded and followed Fred out behind the bar, leaving me alone with Jason and Amber—with Gregory Grue still drinking and not acknowledging that I was even there.
“I don’t like the sound of this,” I said.
“Relax,” said Jason. “Mutual can take it.”
“I don’t know if I can relax,” I said. “I’m just getting more and more scared about the diciotto, and I don’t think I’m any closer to getting Fred to kiss me at homecoming, which means I’m going to freaking die on Saturday.”
“Not necessarily!” said a growling voice from down the bar.
Gregory, of course.
He hopped down from his barstool and walked over to us.
“Hoo hoo!” he said. “In the dim light of the dusty bulb, purple hair looks black as ebony. You two lovebirds mind if I speak with Miss Van Den Berg alone?”
“Is this him?” asked Amber.
Gregory bowed deeply.
“Rolled into town on Halloween night,” he said, “and thought I’d give Iowa a try. I’ve been helping your friend here reach her full potential.”
“And threatening to kill her,” said Amber.
Gregory ignored her and motioned for me to follow him. I hopped down from my stool and followed him across the floor, toward the pool table. He stepped to the wall and turned the volume knob next to the light switch, and the German music got loud enough that no one back at the bar could hear us.
He held a pool cue out to me.
“You play?” he asked.
“Never tried,” I said.
“It’s easy. You hit the cue ball toward the numbered balls and try to get them into a pocket. Any boob can do it.”
He set the balls into a triangle, picked up a smaller cue of his own, and shot the white ball toward the triangle, causing the balls to break up. They rolled around all over the table, but none went into a pocket. He grabbed a knife off a table and started using it as a toothpick.
“Your shot,” he said.
I found a ball that was sitting right by a pocket, hit the cue ball toward it, and knocked it in. Nothing to it.
“Nice,” he said. “Shoot again.”
I shot at the nine ball and missed. He took his turn and started sinking ball after ball.
“Now,” he said, while he shot at his fourth ball, “why don’t you explain to me how you got Fred to take you into a place like this?”
“Because if I tell you, you’ll probably just do something to screw it up.”
“Smart,” he said as he sank another ball. “I certainly will.”
He finally missed one, so I took a shot at the four ball, which was purple. It went in, so I took a shot at a red striped ball and missed completely.
Gregory sank three in a row, then reracked the balls.
“I’m going to miss all this,” he said. “Saturday at midnight it’s back to normal for me. No more messing with humans with magic. We’ve got it rough, my people. We get one year out
of twenty to live in the world, and fifty-one weeks of that I just bum around from job to job like a regular McHobo. Then it’s back into the trees to hibernate for nineteen more years.”
“So you were never with the RSC,” I said.
“Not for three whole years,” he growled. “But I do know my Shakespeare. It’s hard to stay on top of things when you have to piece history together one year out of twenty at a time. But Shakespeare’s been popular the last several times I’ve been out and about. I saw John Wilkes Booth play Hamlet.”
“Did you really?” I asked.
He nodded. “McVicker’s Theatre, Chicago. June 28, 1862. Thought he was overrated, myself.”
He sank another ball, then paused to rub some chalk on the end of his cue.
“Now, if I overheard correctly, your little boyfriend is facing a diciotto.”
“He can take it,” I said.
Gregory finally missed a shot and went back to leaning on the cue.
“I’ve got news for you, kiddo,” he said. “No one can take a diciotto. No one. Ever. That boy is going to be a vampire by Thanksgiving—mark my words. If you want to go on being with him, I think you’d better let my vampire friend convert you while you still have a shot at doing it safely. Otherwise, he’ll be a vampire hunk and you’ll just get older and fatter till you croak.”
I sank a ball of my own and took aim at another.
“What does this guy pay you, anyway?” I asked.
“It’s more than just money,” he said. He put one end of the pool cue on the ground and put his chin on the other, leaning on it like a gnome on his cane. “Far more.”
I tilted my head toward the bums at the bar.
“Is it one of those losers?”
“No. Don’t worry. Someone more attractive. You won’t see him, but I’m sure you’d rather it be someone a little more dashing, right?”
I couldn’t help but think he might mean Wilhelm, but I knew that Wilhelm was dead, and for real. I wasn’t going to fall into the trap of believing in paranoid suburban myths.
“I’m not going to need him at all,” I said. “The two of you are out of luck.”
“You’re a failure as a human, anyway,” Gregory said. “Nothing unusual about you, other than the fact that you can buy a ten-dollar bottle of hair dye down at the drugstore.”
