I get her all logged on and then sit and do my homework while she starts furiously clicking and scrolling, pausing every now and then to read another e-mail. I know she’s got like twenty of them from me. Who knows how many she’s got in there from everyone else. At least she’ll know she’s loved.
Henny gives me a call while I’m working on my Calc homework. A phone call from Henny is actually a rarer occurrence than you’d think, mostly because I told her my “brother” has me on phone restriction because he thinks cell phones give you brain tumors. She totally bought it, I think probably because we’re from California. They think we’re all vegan hippie freaks out there, though really we’re not. That’s more Oregon.
After a couple of nonsense questions about homework (Henny is many things, but studious is not one of them), she finally gets to the point. “Mina, do you have anymore friends staying with you other than Serena?”
“No, why?”
“Just wondering. I thought I saw a new girl over in Boondale and then again here in Cartville. She looked really … interesting. But maybe I was just imagining things. Anyway, thanks for the help. I’ll see you guys tomorrow.”
Yeah, like every weirdo around here belongs to me. Did they not get anyone who wasn’t a member of the herd out here before me and Serena? “Okay. Hey, Henny—”
“Yeah?”
“Just so you know, Serena’s not a druggie. Or an alcoholic. Or pregnant. Do you think you could spread that around?”
“Oh sure,” she says, but you can tell she wishes I’d told her something juicy instead. Well, if she knew the real truth, that’d be juicy enough for her, but I’ve been in enough trouble with the various councils already. Might as well keep my nose clean for at least a couple months.
“Who was that?” asks Serena, coming up for air from the computer.
“Henny. The girl with all the questions.”
“Oh. Yeah, her. She was okay. Nosy Nellie, but okay. Is there anyone cool here other than that Cameron guy that I barely got to talk to before you ensorcelled me?”
“Eh, not so much. He’s about it.”
“Thank God for the Internet,” she says and turns back to the computer.
We have an actual sit-down dinner in honor of Serena being with us. Mom goes all out and makes Serena one of her favorite meals: spaghetti with meatballs and garlic bread. Lots of extra garlic for Dad.
“I guess that whole garlic thing is out the window, huh, Mr. Hamilton?”
“Don’t forget, it is Smith now,” he says. “But you can call me Bob anyway since I’m supposed to be Mina’s brother.”
“Oh, that’s right. Sorry. And Mari, right? It’s hard to remember!”
Tell me about it. I catch myself almost slipping up all the time.
“Not to bring up a sore subject, Serena,” Mom says, “but we really did want to talk to you again about you calling your dad. The more I think about it, the worse I feel.”
Serena’s face goes a little wonky for a minute, and then she blinks and says, “I did call him. Didn’t I, Mina?”
I swallow a big bite of meatball. “Yep. While you were at Eugenie’s, Mom.”
“Oh good,” says Mom. “I’m proud of you, Serena. I think it was the right thing to do.”
“I guess so,” Serena says. “Though won’t I have to fake my death and everything when I turn?”
Oh. Hmm. Yeah, I didn’t think of that. Would he feel better or worse to have heard that she was okay only to find out that she wasn’t?
“You won’t have to die necessarily right away,” says Dad. “The Council around here is far more lenient than the one back in California. They probably wouldn’t allow you to see him again after you turn, but you could speak to him. At some point in the future, whenever you need to relocate and go through the whole process with the VRA, they’d probably stage everything then.”
Serena nods and goes on eating. I give myself a mental “whew.” Looks like I got away with my meddling. No harm, no foul.
Which reminds me … “Hey, Dad. Bob. Whoever you are. Did you hear that John and Wayne are in town now?” Not sure if Mom gives him the Eugenie scoop or not.
“Not directly,” he says. “Though Dr. Jonas had surmised as much.” Surmised? Cheese, Dr. Musty is definitely wearing off on Dad. Who else talks like that?
“What exactly are you and Dr. Jonas trying to dig up anyway?”
“A lot of things actually.” Uh-oh. I think I’ve unleashed Dad’s historical beast. I can practically feel him rubbing his mental hands together in glee that I actually asked a question about his work. “John and Wayne Carter have a very interesting history. Dr. Jonas traced a lot of their path through Europe before coming here to finish his research. Though they’ve only been in the States for a relatively short while, they’ve been around for much longer than that. They may be some of the oldest living vampires today. Dr. Jonas was able to follow them back quite a ways, back before they called themselves the Carters.”
“Cameron said they got caught once in New Orleans.”
“Yes, there was quite a to-do over that!” Again with the weird language! A “to-do”? Dad needs to get out more. “They had lured a number of people to their home, mostly young women, and trapped them there while they drained their blood slowly from their bodies through shallow cuts in their wrists.”
“Bob, that’s not exactly good dinner conversation!” Mom points her chin at Serena, like I’m not totally grossed out too.
“Oh, sorry. Anyway, they were discovered when one of their victims escaped. When the police went to their house they found a number of”—he looks at Mom—“well, let’s just say they found that the brothers weren’t good neighbors. They freed a number of people, including one crazy fellow named Felipe who had been there for quite some time. Felipe went on to become one of this county’s more prolific serial killers.”
Yikes. So I guess the brothers spread mayhem wherever they go. Nice. NOT. It’s crazy to me that Cameron is in with them. But I guess you can’t pick who turns you. Or, at least, he couldn’t.
“But what’s Dr. Jonas trying to dig up on them here?”
“Well, they made this area their headquarters in the States and settled here for quite a while. We think they have all of their Carter family recruits make a pilgrimage here after they are turned. Which, I might add, it seems they have often done surreptitiously and not with Council approval.” There he goes with the big words again. “They even still call themselves a clan, though that term is frowned upon in today’s vampire society. Clans are no longer recognized as official groups, you know. The Councils are supposed to be the only governing bodies now. Dr. Jonas thinks that they store their clan history and bloodlines here somewhere, rather than filing them officially with The High Council, which rules over all the other councils. He also thinks he might be able to tie them to some notorious vampire groups, both past and present. John and Wayne may be responsible for starting some of the more divisive factions within vampiredom both in this country and abroad.”
Vampiredom? That just sounds silly. I can tell Serena is trying not to giggle. Even Mom looks a little amused. “So why do you think John and Wayne had to come to town?”
“Well, if they are responsible for some of the groups, especially ones that are still active today, The Councils will be very, very interested. So I imagine they want to block Dr. Jonas from either finding anything incriminating or releasing it.”
“So he’s not exactly their buddy-buddy.”
“Probably not. Hey, did I tell you about how Dr. Jonas showed me the proper method for restoring old documents? We successfully restored a copy of Wayne’s Ellis Island immigration records! One of them, anyway. He’s entered the country a few different times under different names.”
That kicks off a whole conversation—okay, a whole lecture, since technically a conversation involves more than one person talking—about document retention timelines and archival methods and even something about the different types of ink used in old reco
rds. I should know better than to ask Dad about anything involving history. At least Serena’s here with me now and I don’t have to pretend to listen alone.
26
The next day at school is pretty much a repeat of Serena’s first day, except for me trying to run interference with the gossip hounds (which totally doesn’t work) and Serena making it worse by making up even more crazy stories about herself and telling them to whoever asked (like the one about how she was found as a baby by her parents in the bush while they were on African safari).
By Tuesday afternoon, I’ve completely given up. I bet Henny has a headache from trying to keep all the stories straight. I know I do.
“You ready to get vamped up?” I ask Serena when we get home from school.
“You bet,” she says, and Mom laughs as we do our happy dance.
Serena’s first vampire propaganda class (okay, sorry, her “information session”) is also at Ivetta’s, where apparently every local vampire thing is located. Mom and I drop her off on our way to do some grocery shopping.
The cover story this time is a painting class, so Serena went all out and wore a beret (purple, of course), a paint spattered T-shirt dress (white, with blue, pink, and green splotches … very Pollocky, Mom says), and flip-flops (with her toenails painted ten different colors). I have no idea how that ties into the eighties other than the whole Prince Raspberry Beret thing, but I’m working at not mentioning it. I mean, hey, I’m still glad she’s not wearing all black anymore. Kind of the exact opposite, I guess, but it’s still better than the same thing every day.
Mom and I pick up Serena after shopping at The Pig (i.e., the Piggly Wiggly). It’s kind of strange buying groceries regularly again. Weird how fast you get out of the habit of eating normally. Well, except for the Pop-Tarts. But that’s just me.
Serena meets us at the car and climbs in, kind of quiet. “How was it?” I ask. “History stuff, right?”
“Mostly.” She pulls out a brochure (same one I got) and waves it. “Ivetta gave us, like, the thousand foot overview and then talked about some of the more famous vampires in history. I never realized some of the stuff I’ve read in novels is actually true. Not exactly like in the books, but, you know, based on real stuff.”
“Not Dracula though. That one is totally bogus. It’s like anti-vampire propaganda.”
“I was kind of surprised at some of the famous people—I mean vampires—she was telling us about. I never would have guessed some of them.”
“Then there are the ones who you’d swear were vampires who aren’t,” Mom says. “But that’s usually a good thing.”
“Uncle Mortie says a lot of pro sports guys are,” I say. Which makes sense, though I bet they have a fun time working around all of the medical testing and whatnot. Not the steroid stuff, since they obviously wouldn’t need it, but any other kind of medical stuff. I mean, how do you explain how you never get tired or hurt? But maybe some of the team doctors are in on it too. Hard to say. The more I learn, the more I figure out that vampires today are pretty much everywhere. And organized. Or maybe the goons just step in and do a little mind control whenever something comes up. It could happen.
Good thing being organized isn’t a required skill though, ’cause I would have been rejected for sure. Serena too. “Organization” is not her middle name. More like “creative mess.” But I mean that in a good way.
“Were you guys happy when you turned?” Serena looks all serious. I bet the whole enormity of the decision must have hit her in class. And it’s not like she’s got someone forcing her to make the decision now, like I did. I would have much rather not even thought about it until I was like maybe twenty-five or so. I probably should have talked to her about that before we went all gung ho and took her to The Council, but it was kind of panic mode when she got here.
“Well,” Mom says, since I’ve been sitting there all silent and introspective. “I don’t know that I’d say that I was happy when I turned, exactly. It was a very crazy time in our lives and Mina was just a baby. The timing could have been a lot better, but I suppose that’s how everything in life is. Though it did help out with the 2:00 a.m. bottle feedings.” She reaches over and messes my hair up.
“Ditto,” I say. “I mean, not the baby thing, but the timing thing. I’d rather have waited and not have had The Council breathing down my neck.”
“But how about now? Are you happy?”
“I’m happy,” says Mom. “But I think I’d be happy if I weren’t a vampire too. It’s my family and my life with Bob and Mina that make me happy.”
Aw. I have to admit that gives me a bit of the warm fuzzies. And it’s true. I was perfectly okay before I turned. Or, as Uncle Mortie would say, as okay as any teenager ever is. Which is more okay than he is, so I don’t think he’s got a leg to stand on there.
“But didn’t it make your life better?” Serena asks.
“Some things,” I say. “Some better, some worse. But I think Mom is right. If Uncle Mortie had never been turned and hadn’t turned Dad and all that whole mess, I think we’d have pretty much been the same way we are now. Well, except for the living in the middle of nowhere part.” I point out the car window to the cow pasture we’re driving by. There’s even only one cow in it.
“Okay, okay,” Mom sighs. “I admit that Cartville is not exactly a happening kind of place.”
“And the Understatement of the Year Award goes to …” I stick my tongue out at Mom and she rolls her eyes at me.
Serena laughs. Ha, ha. She’s been here less than an entire week. It hasn’t hit her yet. She’ll see.
I’m working on a particularly nasty Calc problem (too bad turning doesn’t improve your math skills either) when Serena picks up the conversation again.
“Turning has been good to you, right?”
“Meaning?”
“Well, you’ve got that whole perfect skin thing going. And the strength and all of that. And the eating without gaining weight …”
“Yeah, that does rock.” Now I can eat that extra cookie or three and not feel guilty about it.
“So wouldn’t you say it’s been good to you? That you made a good decision?”
“I guess. I wouldn’t take it back or anything. I’d do it again in the same circumstances. But it wasn’t like I had much of a choice. I mean, I did technically have a choice, but I think I did the only thing that made sense for me.” Well, that was about as clear as mud.
Serena just looks at me and raises one eyebrow. She must have been practicing. Last time I saw her try that, both of them went up.
To be fair, I suppose I should tell her that not everything about being a vampire is all that great. Above and beyond the propaganda they tell you in class. I get up from the desk and sit next to her on the bed. “There are bad things about it too. It’s not all sweetness and light or anything.”
“Like what?”
“The blood thing, for one.” Duh.
“Yeah …” Serena makes a face. “It does gross me out. But you like it now, right? I mean, you drink it …”
I have to laugh a little at the look on her face. “Honestly, it still creeps me out a little. But I can’t be undead without it, so, you know, down the hatch and all that.” And a little blood on a rainy afternoon does brighten the day up … as long as I don’t think about it too much.
“So, what else?”
“Okay, there’s the not sleeping thing.”
“But isn’t that a good thing? That like doubles your time!” She looks totally surprised. Heck, I would’ve been too. It sounds good in theory.
“Yeah, but it can also be really, really boring. There’s no good TV on at night and there’s only so many places you can go. Really, if it weren’t for the Internet, I think I’d be insane already.” Though I am getting kind of YouTubed out. You can only watch so many stupid videos before your brain turns to mush. “But having you around will really help! And someday I wanna live somewhere cool again where we can actually do stuff at ni
ght other than watch cows.”
“I guess I can see that. I didn’t think about it that way.”
I do want her to really consider this and make sure she makes the right choice. The right choice for her, that is. If it were just me to think about, I’d want her turned tomorrow. It’d be Serena and Mina forever. Like, literally. I take a deep breath.
“And there’s the whole relocating thing. Mom says I should think about it like an opportunity to reinvent myself, but until you came, it really just sucked. I had to leave everything behind. You know Mom even had to ditch her wedding dress? And all my baby photos?”
“Huh.” Serena turns back to her homework (she’s rocking the Calc compared to me, darn her), so I guess that means conversation over for now.
I hope I said the right thing.
27
Grady won’t stop hinting that I go to homecoming with him. It’s really coming up soon, so the pressure is on. Not just from him either. Henny and Eugenie ask me about it every time I see them, and with Henny, that means I hear it about ten times a day.
After the whole flower incident, he kicked his game up another notch and got the school’s choir to actually sing an invite to me over the PA system. I guess it helped that Eugenie’s his mom, but I bet Mr. Fleming, the principal, wasn’t too thrilled. Serena thinks it’s kind of sweet. Which I guess it is. But really, I’m just not interested. He’s cute, but he doesn’t make my heart do flip-flops or make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside like George did (before he went AWOL on me).
Even worse is that he always seems to corner me when Kacie is around. At this point, I’m not sure if he’s just totally clueless or if he’s actually trying to make her mad. Though why she gets mad at me instead of him, I don’t know. It’s not like I’m doing anything other than just existing. I’ve even tried to offer the olive branch a few times and talk her up to Grady right in front of her (which is hard since it’s almost impossible to think of something nice to say about her). But she still acts like I’m some kind of man-stealing bimbo.
Still Sucks to Be Me: More All-True Confessions of Mina Hamilton, Teen Vampire Page 15
