Still Sucks to Be Me: More All-True Confessions of Mina Hamilton, Teen Vampire

by Kimberly Pauley

  “Lowell,” says Dr. Musty sternly. “Halt.”

  Lowell growls again, deep and guttural, and grinds to a stop. But then he turns his bloodshot eyes back on Dr. Musty. “You-u-u-u—” The rest is so garbled I can’t understand it, but there’s no mistaking the downward swing of the hammer. Dr. Musty and I both jump back. I’m not sure who he was aiming for that time.

  “Why won’t he stop?” I yell.

  “I’m not sure.” Dr. Musty is panting. That’s a bad sign. How long has this battle been going on? “He’s got quite a strong mind, you know.” It doesn’t look like it right now, not with all the drool and everything. But Lowell is still going and obviously resisting. Maybe the good old doc isn’t as über as dad and George think he is. Dr. Musty stares deep into Lowell’s eyes. “Lowell, listen to me! Stop!”

  Lowell abruptly halts just inches away from me. Then he turns and lifts up the hand with the stake in it. I start backpedaling, but I’m off balance.

  “No,” I say. “No!”

  I’m still falling backward when Lowell drops the stake with a clatter and holds his index finger up to his mouth.

  “Sssshhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!” he hisses at me.

  I hit the floor.

  “Ah,” says Dr. Musty. “I think he’s trying to obey the first command I gave him and silence you.”

  I scoot backward until I’m out of the hammer’s range. “I don’t think—” I start to say but Lowell goes ballistic. His face twists in a snarl and his hands go up in the air like claws. With his scruffy beard, he looks like a bear on the loose.

  I shut up. Stupid Neanderthal vampire. Of course he only pays attention to one of Dr. Musty’s suggestions.

  “I guess I don’t have firm control of him yet,” whispers Dr. Musty.

  You think? Gah! I don’t have time for this. Who knows what Raven is doing to Serena right now!

  Dr. Musty bends down to help me up and Lowell shakes himself like a dog. Drool goes flying in all directions.

  “Look at me,” Lowell intones. His voice is scratchy, but forceful. I feel Dr. Musty go stiff behind me. He lets go of my arms and I go back down on my butt, right on top of a board. I look over my shoulder. Dr. Musty’s eyes are looking hazy. Crapola. I’ve got to do something before Lowell takes over. If he gains control of Dr. Musty, we’re both toast.

  I consider grabbing the board, but even in his current half-drooling condition I think Lowell could whip my butt in any physical fight. He’s easily three times my size. That just leaves mind control. Oh man, why haven’t I been practicing that instead of making my eyelashes longer? I am so dead. But I’ve got no choice. I have to try.

  Maybe I can distract him like Cameron said. With his attention on Dr. Musty, it just might work. I scramble to my knees and grab up a handful of assorted nuts and bolts and screws and throw them right in Lowell’s face.

  He howls and drops the sledgehammer right on his toe. He doubles over, one hand over his right eye and the other clutching his foot. Now is my chance.

  I grab his greasy head with both hands and pull him down to look him directly in the left eye. Hopefully this will work with just one of his eyes working. Hopefully it will work at all. I stare deep into his eye without breathing so I won’t be distracted by the smell of him. I don’t bother saying anything or giving him any commands, I just work on gaining control.

  I can feel Lowell resisting, but Dr. Musty snaps out of it and tries to hold him too and finally, finally, Lowell’s left eye goes completely unfocused. His whole body goes slack and I ease him down until he’s slumped on the floor.

  “How did you do that? I didn’t know you knew how to mesmerize,” says Dr. Musty. For once, the holier-than-thou tone isn’t in his voice.

  “There’s a lot you don’t know about me,” I say.

  “Ah,” he says. “Well, thank you for your help. If we can just restrain him—”

  “I can’t. I’ve got to go,” I say. “Raven—that crazy Goth girl—she’s got Serena. I’ve got to go and find her.” I start running for the door. It looks like Dr. Musty can handle the rest anyway, now that Lowell is out of commission. “Oh, but watch out. The rest of the Carters are at the homecoming game. Everyone else is at Ernie’s trying to save you.”

  “I’ll get them and come after you,” he calls after me. “As soon as I get this little matter taken care of. Be careful!”

  38

  I start piecing together my Carter girl shape-shift as I’m running. I wish I’d had a nice glass of Special K instead of that sweet tea earlier but I don’t imagine they had any of that at the concession stand. After that little escapade with Lowell, my energy is rapidly disappearing. But I manage to get it back together by the time I’ve turned the corner.

  I’m partway down the long side of the back of the building when I hear (hallelujah!) Serena’s unmistakably annoyed voice say, “Oh, don’t be so stupid.” It’s coming from the Chemistry lab. I have to stop and just breathe a minute in relief. Then I pull myself up tall again and push open the door hard enough for it to bang into the opposite wall. Hopefully Dr. Musty will hear it and figure out where we are.

  Raven jumps up and whirls around from where she was crouched down in front of Serena, who’s sitting at a desk in the front row. Actually, tied to a desk. With a bunch of rubber tubing. I guess they were doing some weird kind of experiments in class this past week. Other than being tied down and looking extremely pissed, she looks fine. And there’s no sign of Cameron. A wave of relief passes through me, but I try not to let it show on my face.

  “Who are you?” Raven demands, brandishing a broken glass tube at me. Good, I guess that means that she hasn’t met this particular Carter girl, whoever she is. So I don’t have to worry about copying her voice. I decide to just stick with a generic Southern accent.

  “Honey, I’m Eugenie Carter. And I’ve heard all about you, Raven girl. So why don’t you put down that glass and settle down a mite?” I hope that wasn’t laying it on too thick. And apologies to Eugenie, but it was the only name I could think of on short notice.

  Raven doesn’t put the tube down, but she does relax a little bit and step back slightly from Serena. “What do you want, Eugenie? I’m a little busy here.”

  “I thought Cameron had told you this particular little specimen was off-limits?” I walk forward, trying to put a Southern swish to my hips and to get close enough to step between Raven and Serena. Or, more specifically, the jagged edge of the glass and Serena’s neck.

  “Specimen?” says Serena. “Please.” So not helping the situation. I try to tell her to shut up by glaring at her, but that just makes her go more huffy. “If there’re any specimens here, it’s her.”

  “What do you care anyway?” Raven’s back to her snarling Goth girl self. “She’s just a stupid human, right?”

  I decide to go for the tough-girl act. “So are you. But maybe you don’t listen to your betters, is that it? I’m sure John and Wayne will be just thrilled to hear that.”

  Instead of getting defensive, that just seems to make Raven even madder, especially when Serena laughs. Agh! I wish she’d be quiet, just this once.

  “What’s with you people anyway?” Raven says, “I’ve done everything you’ve asked me to! I picked a target. I even followed her halfway across the freakin’ country. I got the tattoo already! What more do you want from me?” She uses her free hand to pull back her right sleeve to show me a ginormous tattoo. It looks like the foot of some kind of huge bird with blood dripping from the tips of the talons, all wrapped completely around her upper arm. Not exactly tasteful and very, very obvious.

  “A little big, don’t you think?” I can’t resist asking. You’d think even the Black Talons wouldn’t want to advertise like that. Does Raven really need to belong to something that bad? That’s just sad on so many levels.

  “That’s exactly what I’m talking about!” Raven says. “What’s wrong with all of you? Every one of you Carters I’ve met just has some tiny little tattoo, like y
ou’re ashamed of being a Talon. Except for John and Wayne, and they have to get theirs re-inked every couple of months. They’re proud of what it stands for. I am too, you hear me! I’m proud! I’m not letting you or any stupid human get in my way any longer!”

  She lunges at Serena with the glass tube and I jump at the same time, praying that for once my aim actually works. The broken end of the tube jams right into my side and I can’t help but let out a scream as it embeds itself. I catch a glimpse of Serena’s eyes getting bigger and bigger as I tumble forward and take Raven and a couple of desks down on the floor with me.

  “Serena? Where are you?” I hear Cameron yell from somewhere not too far away.

  “Chem lab,” yells Serena back. “Help! Crazy Goth girl on the loose!”

  I push myself up on my hands and knees. The glass tube is still stuck in my side. I can feel it, but I’m not quite prepared to look at it yet. I just hope it isn’t as bad as it feels because my entire side feels like it’s on fire. Raven groans and rolls over to stare at me.

  “What’s wrong with your face?” she says as Cameron bursts through the door. Then she and Serena and Cameron all yell out “Mina!” at the same time, with different degrees of horror. I guess it does look as bad as it feels. I let the last of the shape-shift float away. At this point, there wasn’t much of it left anyway.

  “Oh God, oh God,” says Serena. “Are you okay? Get me out of this!”

  Raven just sits there speechless, staring at me in total horror as Cameron helps me sit up. The look on her face would actually be kind of funny if I didn’t feel like I was going to die. Like for real die. I know Grandma Wolfington said vampires don’t bleed unless they want to, but I’ve got news for her. We can bleed even if we don’t want to too. My hand slips in the pool of blood that’s gushed from my side and I almost fall back over.

  Cameron is the only one of us remotely calm. “We’ve got to get that glass out of you. It must be holding something open so you can’t heal. You shouldn’t be bleeding like this. Just—here, hold onto my hand. I’m going to pull it out. Are you ready?”

  I take his left hand and just nod. At this point, it’s trust him or faint. Or maybe worse. So much for invincibility. This definitely was NOT in the brochure. He grabs the end of the tube that’s sticking out of me and pulls. Another scream comes out of my mouth without any prompting whatsoever, but as soon as the thing is out I can feel things starting to knit back together. Slowly and painfully, but whatever the glass split open inside me starts to fix itself.

  “Better?” Cameron asks. “I’m sorry I didn’t get here sooner. I was checking the cafeteria kitchen and the storage closets. There were a lot more little rooms back there than I thought there would be.”

  I nod again and then point my chin at Serena. “Get her out of that mess, will you? Before Goth Queen over here goes postal again. I don’t think I can take another swipe like that.”

  Cameron gets up, all covered in my blood, and starts unwrapping the tubing from around Serena. “I don’t think she’s going to be a problem anymore,” he says.

  I look at Raven. She’s just staring dully at the blood on the floor. A rivulet of it starts flowing right toward her and she backs up frantically to the door like a crab. That’s when the gibbering starts.

  “I guess maybe she should rethink her career choice,” I say. “Doesn’t look like she can stomach blood after all.” I try to stand up and Cameron, who just finished untying Serena (who’s looking pretty green herself), catches me just in time.

  “You’ve lost a lot of blood,” he says. I’m very tempted to say something along the lines of “Duh,” but I hold my tongue. “You need to take some in soon.”

  “I am not taking a bite out of Raven,” I say emphatically. “I don’t have the stomach for rotten Goth girl.” She must still have a bit of a brain left, since that makes her back up even farther away from us and pull her legs up to her chest. She starts rocking back and forth and kind of moaning.

  “I can do it,” says Serena. “Take mine.”

  “No,” says Cameron. “She needs the blood of another vampire. It will fortify her faster.” He picks me up in his arms and cradles me like a baby.

  “I’ve never done this before,” I say. Does he actually want me to bite him on the neck? That’s just so personal. This close to him, the manly-man smell of him really is overwhelming. And it’s seriously not how I imagined cuddling up to his neck.

  “I’ll help you,” he says. “Serena, can you prop her up?” He sits down in the teacher’s chair and Serena stands behind my back and holds me up. He takes an X-Acto knife from the desk and makes a small slice on the side of his neck. “Hurry,” he says, “before it closes up. It will stay open while you drink.”

  I feel like arguing, but I also feel like I’m about to keel over, so I do what he says and lean forward, putting my mouth against his neck. My fangs extend automatically without me even thinking about it. Oh lordy, being this close to him is making me feel even more cloudy, but I just close my eyes and let the blood flow into my mouth and down my throat. It’s like how I imagine drinking mulled wine must be. Intoxicating. But maybe that’s just Cameron.

  And that’s our little tableau as the door flies open and George comes charging in the room.

  39

  “Mina! What’s going on? What happened?” George rushes forward, almost tripping over Raven in his haste and then skidding a bit in my blood. I must seriously look like a wreck.

  I pull back from Cameron’s neck and try to stand up to walk to George. I don’t care how shaky I still feel. There’s no way I’m sucking on some other guy’s neck with my boyfriend in the room. George gets there right as I start to crumple again and he grabs me up in his arms. Now he’s covered in my blood too. It’s starting to look like we got in some kind of twisted squirt-gun fight in here or something. And I would definitely be the loser. At least I didn’t ruin my Ella Moss dress. But some cheerleader is going to be seriously pissed at me because I don’t think there’s any way you can get this much blood out of a pair of jeans. Not to mention the big bloody, gaping hole in the T-shirt.

  George holds me tight in his arms and kisses me on my forehead and cheeks, which are probably the only (mostly) non-bloody bits on me.

  “I’m so sorry I wasn’t here,” he says. “I should have been here.”

  “It’s okay. I’m okay. I mean, I’m okay now. Thanks to Cameron. Otherwise I’d probably be just lying in that puddle on the floor. He was giving me blood. That’s why I was, you know …”

  “Attached like a leech to his neck?”

  “I wasn’t—” I pull back to look at him and he’s smiling at me. Just a 5.8 on the George scale, but a smile all the same. It hits me then, maybe even harder than Raven did with that tube, that I’ve really missed that smile. Cameron may smell like the kind of heaven you want to wrap yourself up in, but George’s smile has the power to make everything feel right.

  “I’m just teasing you. But I am sorry.” He loses the smile to look serious. He ducks his head so our foreheads meet. “About everything.” He kisses me again. It feels like home. Blood is good, but this is even better.

  Mom and Dad come in then, talking so fast I can barely figure out what they’re saying. Mostly it sounds like a lot of oh-my-God-that’s-a-lot-of-blood-are-you-okay-what-happened! Then Dr. Musty is there, observing everything with his normal detached-historian air. Uncle Mortie jumps into the room last in a kung fu stance, like he even knows how to make chop suey. And Ivetta is here too, clucking her tongue at the mess. Who called her?

  I guess this finally puts to rest the question of whether Cameron’s on our side or not, Black Talon or no. Though he’s probably wondering what’s up with me and George. “Cameron, I—” I start to say and twist around to find him.

  “He’s gone,” says Serena, looking at me with eyes about twice their normal size. “He just went out the back door.” Did he leave because of me and George? I didn’t even get a chance to tell hi
m thank you.

  “What happened?” demands Mom. “Is all this blood yours?” She sounds like she doesn’t quite believe it. I look down at the floor. I barely believe it either. Apparently, I’m quite the gusher.

  “To make a long story short, Raven went for Serena with a broken glass tube but I got in the way. Cameron pulled it out, untied Serena, and gave me some blood to make up for what I lost. Then he disappeared, I guess.” Is that it? “Oh, yeah, and I’m the Homecoming Queen.”

  Uncle Mortie hands me a flask. “Take a drink, Homecoming Queen. You look a little pale.” Ha, ha, very funny Uncle Mortie.

  I take it and sniff it suspiciously. “What’s in it?”

  “Just some good ol’ O negative. That’s all. Always keep some around for emergencies. Or a snack.”

  I drink it and it does make me feel better. Not quite as strengthening as eau du Cameron, but definitely more fortifying than a glass of Special K. George is still cuddling me like he thinks I’ll blow away any second.

  “How did you guys get here so fast?” In some ways it feels like forever ago that I saved Dr. Musty, but I know it can’t have been that long ago. My sense of time isn’t that bad. “And what’s Ivetta doing here? No offense, Ivetta.”

  “None taken,” she says, altogether too cheerfully. I mean, come on, does nothing phase her? We’re sitting in the middle of a blood bath here. I have no idea how we’re going to explain this to Mr. Fleming.

  Mom and Dad sum it up, with frequent interruptions from Uncle Mortie:

  a) Uncle Mortie dazzled Ernie with his salesmanship demoing the BloodTender 4000, got into position, and gave the signal, then

  b) everyone else came in, overpowering a very surprised Ernie, and

  c) rushed the back room where they found absolutely nothing. Surprise.

  After that, they went back to the house and called Ivetta to see if she had any ideas. She, along with everyone else, was at the homecoming game and I hadn’t returned George’s text (he’d sent me a “hme bt no dr?” text), so they figured they’d walk over and see what was up. They were actually just outside the school looking for us when Dr. Musty ran out and told them to get their butts inside. (I seriously doubt if he actually said the word “butt,” but Uncle Mortie was telling that part of the story.) Then they heard Serena shout out we were in the Chem lab (good ears, I’m telling you, it’s why I never get away with anything). They’d have gotten here even sooner if they’d had a clue where the Chem lab was.