Hudson raised his hand. Maddy pointed a bladed finger on him.
“The blue recycling bin?”
“Correct, young Crudson. Kids, you better make friends with the environment. Or else,” threatened Maddy, redirecting her finger to accuse the whole group.
“Or else what?” asked Duane.
“Or else! The environment will punish you! It will usher in awful weather! Like ice ages, hailstorms, and droughts. Cannonballs made out of pure stinking pollution will smash down from the sky!” Maddy’s speech was causing blue veins to stand up in her neck. “Worst of all,” she continued, “I’ll be watching you. Even when you’re asleep.” Then she threw back her head and cackled, long and low.
Hudson frowned. He thought the cannonballs and the cackling were a bit much. Also, Maddy should not have called him Crudson.
“I think you’re from my nightmares,” whimpered the freckled redhead girl. Which made Hudson feel bad. That girl, whatever her name was, the paper waster, was actually pretty sweet.
“Can we eat now?” asked a kid.
Maddy nodded. Hands slowly reached into the giant sandwich pile, reclaiming their food.
“But if I catch any of you mis-tossing your cling wrap, I will impose a small torture and a hefty fine, and I will write a letter to the Vice President of National Penalties. If you end up rotting in the clink, it’s your own wasteful fault. Later, warts.” With a parting hiss, Maddy whisked away.
For a moment, the table was spellbound.
The redhead girl broke the ice. Head held high, she walked all the way to the end of the table. As far from Hudson as she could get. A few other kids, after grabbing back their ham-and-cheeses or peanut-butter-and-jellys, did the same.
Soon Hudson and Duane sat alone.
Duane sighed as he swallowed a fish stick. “Sending in your scary sis was a bad call, Hud,” he said.
“History has taught us to rule by force, fines, and fear,” explained Hudson. “That’s how citizens are traditionally protected.”
“All I can say is I’m glad I buy hot lunch,” answered Duane. “Even when it’s rubbery old fish sticks.”
Throughout the rest of the week, Hudson the Protector was quietly comforted to see that his class took more time to separate their regular trash from recycling. While these same students weren’t very friendly to him, Hudson and Orville agreed in their late-night talks that being a Protector was not a popularity contest. The more Hudson concentrated on beautifying the New World, the more vividly he remembered the Old, when creatures understood recycling—back when there was no word for it. And the more Hudson thought about being a Protector, the stronger his bat-self became. He now could transform for over an hour per night, and as a bat he could fly higher and faster than ever before. Almost at Old World speeds. But Hudson decided to keep these developments to himself.
“Don’t know what’s gotten into these kids,” remarked Mr. Schnur as he watched a fourth-grader scoop gum he wasn’t supposed to be chewing from where he’d spit it in the recycling bin, then furtively place it in the regular trash. “I must say it’s a pleasant surprise.”
“My sister kind of jump-started them into it,” Hudson confessed, “with scare tactics.”
The janitor rasped a laugh. “Good. Whatever it takes.”
It wasn’t until later that week that Hudson fully comprehended the sacrifice of Protectorship.
Thursday was Valentine’s Day, a day of great joy for P.S. 42. The fourth grade’s bank of cubbies was stocked with cards and flowers and cellophane packets containing heart-shaped chocolates or flavored sugar candies.
Hudson prowled over to his cubby. As the handsomest boy in the class, his candy and chocolate haul was always vast and spectacular. So what if he hated candy and regifted it all to Duane? What mattered was that today was his special day, where he was singled out for being exceptionally gorgeous.
Pillowcase in hand, he peered into his cubby. Looked again. Looked harder. Surely there was some mistake. His cubby was dark and empty as a yewn. Whistling, Hudson strutted over to his desk and opened it. He blinked.
Nothing. No flowers. No candy.
Also, some of his eco-flyers had been returned to him.
Then he saw it. Taped inside the desktop, on the back of his eco-tips, a note.
Dear Hudson,
You used to be my special choice,
Now I don’t like to hear your voice.
You are my anti-valentine—
It stinks to get a litter fine.
From Your Number One Anti-valentine,
“Freckled Redhead Girl”
Jolted, Hudson crumpled the paper into a ball. He marched to the front of the room to deposit this horrible crime of a valentine into the trash. As he headed back down the aisle, he glowered at the freckled redhead girl. She was meaner than she looked, that heartless redhead girl. She wasn’t even paying attention to him. She only had eyes for…uh-oh. This was worse than the empty cubby. Worse than an anti-valentine. Hudson could hardly watch, but there was no denying who was burying his nose into the ruffled petals of a pink carnation. That should have been Hudson’s carnation.
“Bethany Finn,” said Hudson as her name burst unexpectedly through his head. “Why did you give my Valentine’s carnation to…that lunkhead?”
The lunk looked hurt. “We’ve been in school together since kindergarten, Hudson. Don’t you even know my name?”
Hudson could not answer, because he did not.
“Hudson, get a clue,” said Bethany. “Cute isn’t everything. You’re the pits.”
The pits? What did she mean? From the pits of fruits grew all new delicious fruit, but Hudson had a feeling that Bethany Finn had meant pit as in the end-thing you spit out. Because that was just exactly how he felt—spit out of Mr. Apple’s fourth grade.
Spit out and heading home at the end of the lonely day, Hudson ran into his mother’s dog pack. The half dozen small dogs (his father exercised the larger breeds) were tied to a bike stand outside a Park Avenue apartment building. Hudson whistled hello. Dogs barked greetings.
At least not everyone was shunning him.
Sherlock was an old basset hound whom Hudson’s mother had been walking for years. He was the first pure animal who had befriended Hudson in the New World. This afternoon, as always, slobber dribbled in strings from his jowls. Hudson crouched and used his shirtsleeve to wipe it up.
“How’s it going, Sherlock?”
“Looking forward to warmer months and packing away this ugly dog sweater.” Sherlock snuffled. “Give a dog a scratch between the shoulders?”
Hudson scratched. “Where’s Mom?”
“She’s dropping off Scrumptilicious,” yapped Daisy, the one-eyed pug.
“Fifty-fourth floor,” yipped Chico, a terrier mix. “They’re probably still in the elevator. Me, I don’t care for views. I’m more of a burrower.” He demonstrated, clawing into the pavement. Then he spied his tail and started chasing it.
“Who’s Scrumptilicious?” asked Hudson.
“Toy poodle.” Sherlock yawned, creating fresh chains of slobber.
“Did you check out those pink booties Scrump was wearing?” panted Chico, and then he did a flouncy impression. The dogs barked with laughter. Myrtle the corgi laughed so hard, she fell over.
“Watch it, Myrtle,” said Sherlock, nosing her back onto her feet. “You might look perky, but you’re ninety-one in dog years.”
“Eighty-four,” snapped Myrtle.
“Why the long face?” Sherlock asked Hudson.
“School,” Hudson answered. “Sometimes my differences take up more space than my sameness.”
“Yeah, we know what that’s like,” said Sherlock.
“You?” Hudson stared around the pack. “How?”
“Rrrf, think about it. It’s no picnic walking in one dog pack of seven different breeds,” explained Sherlock. “For example, Bernie’s legs are too short, which slows us all down.”
“Aw, gimme a bre
ak,” said Bernie, who was a dachshund and very self-conscious about his legs. “They get the job done.”
“And Myrtle’s getting long in the tooth, and Daisy’s missing an eye, and Chico’s a drama queen, and now we’ve got Scrumptilicious,” continued Sherlock, “with her silly name and pink booties. Scrump really lowered our coolness quota.”
“And you, Sherlock? It’s not like you’re some kinda Best in Show.” Bernie snorted. “Your saliva issues mean a rainy-day forecast every day for the rest of us.”
Sherlock shook off the insult, sending slobber everywhere. “That’s exactly my point. Admit your differences, and people forgive. A little goodwill goes a long way.”
Hudson prickled. Admitting was practically the same as apologizing, and apologies made him feel dumb, and he never liked to feel dumb. What if he admit-apologized to the class, and everyone laughed at him? What if they didn’t accept his apology? What if they didn’t give him the Protector respect he deserved? “How do you know if that’ll work?”
“Trust me,” said Sherlock. “An old hound knows these things.”
The next day was Friday. All of Mr. Apple’s students’ memoir projects were put up around the room for display. Hudson had assembled his own project with scant enthusiasm. His was the most boring because he hadn’t been able to use his real Old World history or take any photographs. Next to his blah, phony essay, he’d brought in his completed, thawed-out Caspian Sea jigsaw puzzle. Lastly, he had painted a watercolor of his family as seen from an aerial view so they were just little specks.
Hudson didn’t expect to get a good grade on this project, but in a fruit-vampire-bat hybrid family, it was way more important not to call attention to heritage.
The girl with the white eyebrows who was from Sweden had brought in a blender and showed the class how to make lingonberry juice. Hudson drank a whole cup and repeated her name so that he was sure he remembered it before he said, “I really like your project, Vendela Sorkin.”
“Oh, um, thanks, Hudson.” Vendela Sorkin took a cautious step away from him. “And tell your sister I’m bringing my lunch in earth-friendly reusable containers now, okay?”
Hudson nodded. He didn’t even unplug Vendela’s blender to save energy, though his fingers itched to. Instead, he slowly made his way around the room, praising the projects. It was hard work, and gradually he realized that one nice word for each project was not enough to win the class’s forgiveness.
One kid, passing by Hudson’s project, whispered very loud, “I vote Hudson’s memoir most recyclable.”
“Shh,” warned the other kid, “or he’ll send his thug sister to beat you up.”
Hudson, hearing this, suddenly experienced a terrible burning in his face. He thought this must be blushing—his first blush, ever. His fingers pressed his flaming cheeks. Did this shameful feeling mean he was becoming more human?
At the end of the day, with Mr. Apple’s permission, Hudson gathered his courage and stood before his fellow students. “Class, my message to help balance our ecosystem had too much clout. While this message is still critical, I want to make a goodwill offering. Therefore, everyone is invited to a party at my home on the last day of this month. It is my parents’ anniversary and usually we just like it to be family. So consider yourselves lucky. Please bring fruit and leave by dinnertime. Thank you.” Now Hudson pulled a box of Elf Scout cookies from his knapsack. “Help yourself to these. I forgot to give gifts for Valentine’s Day. Better late than never.” He opened the box and set it on Mr. Apple’s desk.
The class didn’t speak. Hudson wondered why they all looked so frightened.
“Count me in, Hudson,” Mr. Apple said at last, breaking the silence. He clapped one hand on Hudson’s shoulder as he used the other to select a cookie. “I, for one, would like to get to know you better by visiting your home. Sometimes a family doesn’t bloom to life out of a simple class project. We can do it all as a field trip, with permission notes from parents. Right, kids?”
The class spoke not a word. Not one peep. Nobody went for a buttercrumbly, either. Mr. Apple’s extra-cheerful crunching was the loudest noise in the classroom.
Hudson slunk to his desk. Every pore of his paper-thin vampire skin felt dry and thirsty and exhausted. He had complimented and admitted and even—shudder—apologized, and he probably hadn’t solved anything at all.
In fact, he was sure of it.
Maddy
10
TEA FOR YOU
“Idiot! You blithering idiot!” Maddy flew from one end of the family room to the other. As soon as she hit the wall, she jump-kicked it, using her boot as a lever to somersault midair to land and pounce to the other end. It was making her dizzy, but had the benefit of upsetting her sister. “Why did you prepare those icky von Kriks an Old World healing brew and put in on their doorstep, Hex? After all my hard work, you wrecked everything!” Swoosh, whoosh, kick, flip, swoosh.
Hudson looked up from his latest jigsaw puzzle of Gangehi Island. “Cut it out. You’re scuffing the wall.”
Maddy was not ready to cut it out.
“How was I supposed to know you’d deliberately poisoned our neighbors?” asked her sister, looking up from her toenails, to which she was adding a second coat of rouge noir. “I didn’t realize they were your precious von Kriks. They looked like hybrids that’d gotten indigestion off some too-human food, like mayonnaise or licorice logs. So I got out the Old World Healing Balms book and made a poultice.”
“Which one?” asked Hudson.
“The same detoxifier Mom gave me when I ate those jelly beans. When you crush burnt matchsticks with five goose feathers and water from a moonlit puddle.”
Hudson nodded. “Mom made gallons of it during that last Old World War, too, when some fruits ate beef jerky that they thought was dried fig.”
A mosquito was poised on the wall. Midsomersault, Maddy’s cherry-red tongue shot out. She landed on both feet and crunched.
Lexie shuddered. Maddy bared her fangs. Lexie hid her eyes. “Don’t show me your teeth when they’re bloody.”
Maddy bared them some more.
“You know, Mads, you’re getting scarier.” Lexie turned to Hudson. “The other day she made her eyes go clear.”
“You shouldn’t tattle,” reprimanded Hudson. He exchanged a significant look with Maddy. Good ol’ Crud, he was smart to be on her side.
“Clear eyes means there’s too much blood in your diet.” Lexie wagged her finger. “I better report to Mom and Dad. I don’t care if it’s tattling.”
“They’d agree I need the extra protein.” Maddy spat a crunchy ball of bug wings and legs, then did another flip.
“Hey!” Now her sister peered forward. “When did you get your ears pierced!?”
“Last week. They’re silver studs. I was planning to fire them out of Hudson’s air pellet gun straight into the von Kriks—before you went and cured them.”
“Please. That’s a toy gun.” Hudson sighed. “Its pressure wouldn’t hurt a chipmunk. What do you think the undead are made of, Maddy? Cheese soufflé?”
“It would have worked if they’d stayed cookie-poisoned,” Maddy insisted.
Lexie’s expression challenged her. “Slurp down all the bugs you want, but you’re too fruit-mix, Maddy. All you’re going to do is get in more trouble than you know how to get out of. You’ve got to learn how to ignore the Kriks.”
Easy for fruity Lexie to say. Maddy clenched her fists. It was horrible to feel so vampirey without enough power to do anything about it. If she were a true pureblood, the Kriks might have befriended her. As an enemy hybrid, all she could do was pester them and hope they moved away. But ignore the Kriks? Never. Their daily presence was nothing but an agitation. She turned a final somersault, then slumped onto the window seat. She didn’t even want to spy. Spying was for fruits.
Lexie hopped off to the kitchen and soon returned with a platter of apples, strawberries, tomatoes, and carrots fanned out just the way dishes were presented
at Candlewick. “As the oldest, I demand you eat everything on this plate,” she said. “I even brought you a glass of cold water to help it go down.”
“Gross!” Maddy pushed the plate away. “No, thanks.”
“If you don’t eat this fruit, I’ll tell Mom and Dad who made those scuff marks, and who got her ears pierced without permission.”
“That’s called blackmail.”
“Actually, it’s called the truth.”
Something in her older sister’s face made Maddy take the plate. “Fine. I’ll eat it, but only because you’re so annoying.”
She’d just washed down her last slice of apple when the telephone rang. They all looked around in wonder. The phone never rang. Since everyone used cell phones, nobody even knew exactly where the telephone was located.
Brrr-rrrring! Now Livingstones went scrambling.
“It’s in the games closet!”
“It’s behind the bookshelf!”
Maddy’s ears were best. She rolled under the couch and picked up. “What?”
“Is that any way to say hello?” asked the sugary voice on the other end of the line.
“Who is this?” But Maddy knew. Her blood surged.
“We are inviting you over for tea, neighbor.”
“Really?” As excited as she was, Maddy tried to sound casual. “Why are you being so nice to me?”
“We think you’ve had a misimpression of us, Maddy.” Nicola’s voice tinkled sweetly. “We want to clear things up. Come over to the window and wave hello.”
So Maddy crawled out from under the couch and used her spyglasses to look through the window. At the pay phone across the street, Nicola von Krik, in a big floppy hat and buttoned-up trenchcoat, stood smiling and waving.
“What’s ol’ Nic von Krik up to now?” whispered Hudson.
Maddy put her hand on the receiver. “She’s inviting me over for tea.”
“You should go,” said Lexie. “That way, you can face-to-face apologize for the trouble you’ve been causing them.”
Maddy nodded. “Give me two minutes,” she said into the phone. She clicked off and smirked. “Good point, Lex. Making up with the von Kriks will win their trust. Then I’ll take them by surprise when I shine Dad’s solar-power flashlight on them. If they’re real purebloods, their skin will shrivel.”
Vampire Island Page 7
