by Peter Moore
Suddenly the air is filled with an astonishingly loud, high-pitched shriek, like a cross between a scream and a fire engine siren, which is why I’m on my ass with my chair and desk knocked over, my heart going a mile a minute.
Of course, the class goes wild. Even Mr. Morrison is smiling. “And Danny Gray was kind enough to demonstrate the effect the rebel yell had on the Union soldiers.”
“Oh, happy to be of service,” I say, my ears still ringing. I get up and right my desk and chair. Looking to the side, I see that Juliet Walker is smiling.
Way to go. Could I have made a bigger fool of myself in front of her?
The period bell does its ping-ping-ping, and we all gather our books and head out.
“Hey.” A female voice.
I turn. It’s Juliet Walker. It’s her. Talking to me. Completely out of the blue. Talk, say something. “Uh…”
I’ve never been this close to her. Now I can see a spray of freckles on the bridge of her nose. No vamp kids have freckles, of course. But she does. It’s so…exotic.
“Are you okay?” she asks. And her eyes are green. I love that. “You can talk, right? Or are you still feeling the aftereffects of Mr. Morrison’s rebel yell?” she asks.
“No. I mean, yeah. Oh, man. He totally startled me. It was, like, so sudden and loud.”
“I know. I almost peed my pants,” she says.
“I almost did a lot worse.” Her locker is down at the other end of the hall, which means she came here on purpose. To talk to me.
“Oh. I thought you fell off your chair for a laugh.” She leans against the locker.
“Well, in that case,” I say, “yes. That was my plan.” Keep it cool, stay relaxed. Or at least pretend to be.
She laughs. “Nice try. We were all pretty startled, I’d say.”
“I think I’ll get revenge by giving Mr. Morrison a rebel yell when his back is turned. See how he likes it.”
“Um, he’s not exactly young. You’d probably give him a heart attack.”
“Probably.” This is a conversation. We’re having a conversation.
“What?”
Don’t let it stop. Keep going. “I guess I’ll have to pay attention in there from now on. I can’t say I was, you know, riveted by the lesson.”
“Me, neither,” she says. “I was half asleep. I do the afternoon schedule here. Then I go home, eat, and come back for Carpathia classes, eight to midnight. And after that, homework.”
“That’s brutal,” I say. “I’m impressed. I mean, seriously. Two schools, plus advanced classes here, and you still do great.”
She shakes her head and smiles shyly. “I don’t know about great.”
“You do. I mean, I notice in class, you always have the right answers. You’re smart.” Easy, boy. Don’t embarrass her. “But it must suck to have to be all about school every minute of the day and night.”
She smiles. She smiles at me. “Well, I have some free time.”
Okay, now that’s interesting. Is she trying to tell me something? “Sure. Of course,” I say.
“I mean, I need to have fun, too. Right?” she says.
Oh, man. There’s no way I’m misreading her. I’m sure. No, no. Not sure. But there may not be another chance. Just say it. “Well, maybe we can do something. Go out and do something sometime. I can’t promise it’ll be fun….” Shut up, just shut up right now. “But we can give it a good try.” Idiot!
She pulls the ends of her sweater sleeves over her hands. “Sure.”
Did she just say what I think she said? “Huh? Sure?” I repeat, like a dim-witted parrot.
“Yeah. Saturday night, I usually hang outside Bartlow’s Market, in the parking lot. You know where that is?”
“Bartlow’s? Sure. So, what, you just go and stand there in the parking lot? Just, like, stand there?”
“That’s where we hang out.”
“Great. Saturday night? Great.” Say great one more time. Impress her with that wide-ranging vocabulary.
“Okay. I have to go. My dad is probably waiting for me out front.”
“Okay. Well, see you tomorrow.”
She smiles again and I watch her leave.
“So what do you think that means?” I ask Claire.
“I told you, I don’t know. But keep asking me. Maybe after the twentieth time I’ll have an answer.”
We’re walking down the crowded hall after third period. Oliver is walking with us, twisting his gelled blond hair into spikes.
“If you ask me,” Oliver says, “it means you’re in. Definitely. It’s code.”
“That’s idiotic,” Claire says, throwing him a look. “Which is why nobody is asking you.”
“I’m almost positive she said ‘that’s where we hang out.’ We. So does she mean that’s where we—meaning her friends and she—hang out, or does she mean we like the two of us?”
“How could she mean the two of you, if you’ve never hung out with her?” Oliver asks.
“I don’t know. That’s what I’m trying to figure out.”
“You know what?” Claire says. “We’re getting sick of this conversation.”
“I’m not,” Oliver says.
Claire narrows her eyes at him. “Then I’m using the royal we.” Then, back to me. “We, that is, I, am done talking about this. You’ll find out what she means on Saturday.”
“I just want to know what to expect,” I say, more to myself than to them. “Hey, look who it is.” I raise my chin, directing their attention down the hall.
“Who?” Oliver asks. “Gunther Hoering?”
“My pal Gunther Hoering.”
Claire shakes her head. “Yeah, so you’ve been saying. For three weeks.”
“Because it’s true.”
Claire laughs. “In your dreams.”
“Seriously. Watch.” As we get close to passing, I call to him. “Hey, Gunther. How’s it going?”
I’m pretty sure he glances at me before turning back to the girl he was talking to.
“I see what you mean. That’s a really tight bond you two have,” Claire says.
“He just didn’t hear me.”
Oliver laughs. “He didn’t see you, either. Give it up, Danny. We are so under his radar, he doesn’t even know we’re alive.”
He turns and looks at Gunther. “I’d love to get my hair cut like his, though.”
I could argue with them, tell them how Gunther jokes around with me in gym, but they’re not going to believe it, so why waste my breath? Then I notice. “Pot roast for lunch.”
“You saw the menu?” Oliver is always interested in what’s for lunch.
“No, I smell it.”
Claire laughs at me. “How can you smell it? The caf is on the other end of the building.”
“How can you not smell it? The whole school stinks of it.”
She gives me a look, like, You’re a wacko, but she has to be kidding: the hallway reeks of meat. Now that I think of it, it reeks of a lot of smells. Sweat. Laundry detergent. Someone with totally rank body odor. Paint. Fertilizer someone must have walked through on the way to school. Deodorant. The urinal cakes in the boys’ room. Perfume. Cherry lip gloss. And I can pick out at least fifteen different types of shampoo.
I’ve never had an unusually good sense of smell, so this is a little weird. I don’t know what to make of it.
But what do I care? The important thing is that Juliet Walker is going to hang out with me. Or with me and her friends, but whatever. Either way, she said yes. Which makes this a very, very good night.
I’m walking home with Claire after school when headlights shine past us and a new Porsche rolls up to the curb.
Gunther’s car.
His window goes down. “Come here.”
Claire and I glance at each other. She looks confused. “See? I told you,” I say. We start toward the car.
Gunther shakes his head. “No, not you. Just him.”
We look at each other again. “Don’t worry. If he’
s giving me a ride home, I’ll make sure you can come, too.”
Claire raises her eyebrow at me, but doesn’t say anything.
I go over to Gunther’s window to see what he wants. He’s alone in the car, wearing a black cable-knit cardigan and an ivory fedora with a red band. I wish I had the confidence to dress like that. I’m always in browns and greens.
“Hey. What’s up?” I ask.
He looks ahead through the windshield. “That whole thing in Gym. With the rope. How’d you do it so fast?”
“Oh. Well. I don’t know. It’s no big deal. Really. You were fast, too.”
“I know you’re half-vamp, that’s obvious. But that only accounts for speed and coordination.” He looks at me. “You didn’t even use your legs. And strength like you had this morning? That’s not human.” His eyes narrow. “So it makes me wonder about your other half.”
I hate when this comes up. “Well, I’m half-wulf.”
Gunther’s lips tighten. “Half-wulf. Funny you never mentioned it.”
“Why would I? I mean, you can see that I’m not totally vamp, so that means either part-human or—”
“But isn’t Jessica Gray your sister?”
I put on a face and voice like a guilty man confessing. “Okay, I’ll admit it. She is.” I cross my hands at the wrists like they’re handcuffed and hold them out to him.
He pulls back in his seat, away from my hands. He’s not smiling. “Well, she’s all-vamp, right? She looks like she is.”
Okay, if I tell the truth, Jess is going to murder me. Literally. “Um, yeah.” Not a lie, strictly speaking.
“Right. So I had no reason to think you were wulf.”
“I guess not.” This is so disappointing. Well, maybe I can fix this. Make him laugh. “I guess I should probably wear a shirt—or wait, a sandwich sign—with ‘I’m one-half wulf!’ on it.”
“Yeah, that’s funny.” He didn’t smile. “Don’t you think you should warn people? You think it’s honest to deliberately make people believe you’re human?”
“I never said I was human.”
“Yeah, well, you don’t seem like one of…them. A wulf.”
“But I’m not. I mean, I had the genetic treatments.” Which is true. I don’t have to go into the details about how I had a Recombinant DNA-mRNA Mutation reaction, the anadiploidy shock, or how that meant they couldn’t finish the series of treatments. It doesn’t matter. “It’s not like I’m a wulf-wulf. Those genes were deactivated.”
“Yeah, but you were born with wulf genes. So you’re part-wulf. Right or wrong?”
“I guess so, if you put it like that. My dad was a wulf.”
“Was?”
“I mean, my dad when I was born. He and my mom split up. I don’t see him much anymore.”
“Oh, so it’s not that he’s dead.”
“What? Oh, no. Not at all. He’s totally fine.”
“Huh. Too bad.”
Then Gunther revs the engine, throws the car into gear, and nearly runs over my toes as he roars away.
When we’re one block from where Claire goes left and I go right, Claire says, “He’s a total specist. I could have told you that.”
“So why didn’t you?”
“Because you thought he was the best guy on the planet, and you had this bizarre fantasy that he was your friend. Besides, with your little hero-worship thing going, you wouldn’t have believed me anyway.”
I don’t know if it’s her raised eyebrow or the fact that she’s right that makes me want to shake her. “Probably not.
He didn’t seem that way.”
Claire shrugs. “They never do. Look at his father.”
“His father? Come on—he’s, like, a pillar of the community. I heard he worked as an advisor to the president once.”
“He’s also in the Knights of the Brotherhood.”
“So? He is a vampyre. What’s so bad about a vamp being in a vampyre social club?”
“Oh, nothing, except the Knights of the Brotherhood is one step short of being the KKK. If it were up to them, they’d have every wulf in the country exiled or lynched.”
“I think that’s a myth.”
“Look it up. Anyway, the point is, Gunther Hoering and his family hate wulves.”
We get to her house and she checks the mailbox.
This whole thing is really depressing. “I just don’t get why Gunther feels like I tricked him. So, what? I’m supposed to say, ‘Hi, I’m Danny Gray and just so you know, I’m halfwulf,’ to everyone I meet?”
“Not everyone. But use your judgment, dummy.”
“How was I supposed to know he was a specist?”
“My approach? If in doubt, assume someone is evil.”
“What a refreshing and optimistic view of life.”
“It’s a cold, cruel world, baby. Get used to it.” She squeezes my cheek like an obnoxious relative pinching a baby. “I’m going in. You staying or going?”
“I better go home. It’s going to be light soon.”
“Okay. See you tomorrow.”
Walking home, I think about how Gunther turned out to be a specist scumbag. How I actually thought we were friends.
As far as I’m concerned, I couldn’t care less if I never talk to him again.
“What did you say to Gunther Hoering?” Jessica shouts at me the second I walk in the house.
“Can you speak up? I didn’t hear you.” I drop my book bag and shut the door. The Sol-Blok shades on the windows are already down and sealed.
“Did you tell Gunther Hoering that I’m part-wulf?” Maybe not a scream, but a bellow for sure.
“I’m sorry. I seem to have gone deaf because of a piercing shrieking sound. I don’t know sign language, so maybe I’ll understand you better if you talk softly and slowly.”
Jessica’s normally white face is now dark red, moving toward purple. She’s breathing loudly through her nose. She knows I’ll walk away if she keeps shouting, so she’s working hard to control herself. “What. Did. You. Say. About. Me. To. Gunther. Hoering.”
“Oh, that’s what you wanted to know? Well, it’s like this.” I walk into the kitchen. Partly because I’m hungry, partly because I’m going to make Jess pay for screaming at me. She follows me in.
“Tell me,” she demands.
“Hi, Loretta,” I say. “How’s your day been?”
“Not too bad. I got some nice Cornish game hens for your supper tonight, and I made that string-bean dish your mom likes.”
“Sounds good,” I say, picking a pear from the bowl on the granite counter. “Does that take a lot of work, cooking those hens?”
Jessica actually stamps her foot. “Dante! If you don’t just…” She stops herself and closes her eyes tightly.
Loretta looks at her. “You be careful before you burst a blood vessel or something.”
“I just want my darling brother to stop…fooling around and to answer my question before I have to open the knife drawer.”
“It’s touching when you call me darling with so much affection. Really.”
I brush past her as I leave the kitchen and go into the living room. Of course, she follows me.
“Can you please just tell me what you said to Gunther?”
I sit on the couch and bite into the pear. “Why, did he say something to you?”
“He asked me if you’re my brother. I told him: unfortunately, yes. Then he asked if I dyed my hair or used DermaWhite. When I said no, he said that that’s what he thought, and then he asked what your deal was. I asked him what he meant, but he told me to forget it.”
“Then what?”
“Then he left. I want to know why he’s asking about me and you in the same conversation.”
“Maybe because we’re related and have the same last name.”
Jess adjusts her T-shirt dress so it hangs perfectly over her black-and-gold tights. She checks the clasp on her Tiffany bracelet and rearranges the long necklaces that loop down to her waist. “How does he
know you?” she asks.
“We hang out in Gym. Joking and stuff. Or we used to.”
“Right.”
“Seriously.” I put my feet against the edge of the glass table, which Mom would kill me for doing. “Hey, I was surprised, too, believe me. Then today he asked me if I was part-wulf.”
“He what? Why?”
I shrug. “I don’t know. I climbed the rope faster than him, and he got all weird.”
“Well, what did you say?” I can see the tension in her jaw. It’s kind of funny.
“I said I was.”
“Unbelievable. Thanks a lot!” she says, starting to turn that purple color again.
“Well, sorry, but it’s the truth. I can’t help it.” I finish my pear and put the core on the table, careful to stand it up so only the dry skin on the bottom touches the glass. Mom doesn’t like smudges. I turn back to Jessica: “Why are you all psycho about it, anyway? I mean, yeah, Gunther Hoering is a big shot at school, but did you know he’s a complete specist? Like, viciously specist?”
“So?” Jessica is pacing back and forth across the living room, holding her head in both hands. She adjusts her tartan headband.
I shake my head. “He’s a jerk. What do you care what he thinks about you?”
“See, this is why I don’t want you even talking to my friends when they’re here. You’re a social moron. You don’t get it. Why do I care? Everyone cares what Gunther Hoering thinks.”
“No, I do get it. But then when I saw what he’s really like—”
Jess looks at the ceiling and actually growls, then grabs her own hair and pulls at it like she might tear it out of her head. “Why am I even talking to you?” She glares at me. “Don’t talk about me again. Ever. To anyone. We’re not related. I have nothing to do with you. Understand me?”
“Yeah. I shouldn’t talk about you to anyone. Except seniors. And really popular people. And only to let them know that you’re half-wulf. That’s what you mean, right?”
She smacks me on the back of my head as she storms off.
For some reason, my ears are ringing, even though she didn’t hit me hard. And here comes that headache again.
I reach for the pear core on the table, and…now, this is weird. My right hand won’t close. I can only bend my fingers about halfway; then they get tight. I open my hand and flex the fingers straight, but when I try to close them to make a fist I only get about halfway again. Trying to force them with my other hand only makes it hurt more.
