by Tim Collins
Praise for Diary of a Wimpy Vampire: Because the Undead Have Feelings Too and Diary of a Wimpy Vampire: Prince of Dorkness
‘This series of vampire parodies is one of the funniest I’ve ever read.’
wondrousreads.com
‘Fantastically witty and hugely entertaining, this fun and accessible diary will appeal to any fan of Twilight or Adrian Mole, teenage or otherwise … ’
Goodreads.com
‘Twilight meets Diary of a Wimpy Kid in this inventive parody of both.’
guardianbookshop.co.uk
‘This hilarious book will have you laughing your head off as you learn of the misfortune of Nigel Mullet.’
Fresh Direction
‘Teens who are fans of the Twilight saga will love this laugh-out-loud parody.’
Woman’s Way
‘A funny light-hearted read which touches on first love.’
Books 4 Teens
Diary of a Wimpy Vampire is the winner of Manchester Fiction City.
Tim Collins is originally from Manchester, and now lives in London. He is the author of twelve books including Diary of a Wimpy Vampire, which won the 2011 Manchester Fiction City award, and Diary of a Wimpy Vampire: Prince of Dorkness.
Find out more about Tim at his website:
www.timcollinsbooks.com
First published in Great Britain in 2011 by
Michael O’Mara Books Limited
9 Lion Yard
Tremadoc Road
London SW4 7NQ
Copyright © Michael O’Mara Books Limited 2011
All rights reserved. You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Papers used by Michael O’Mara Books Limited are natural, recyclable products made from wood grown in sustainable forests. Th e manufacturing processes conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.
ISBN: 978–1-84317–856–9 in paperback print format
ISBN: 978–1-84317–858–3 in EPub format
ISBN: 978–1-84317–857–6 in Mobipocket format
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www.mombooks.com
Designed and typeset by Envy Design
Illustrations by Andrew Pinder
Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thanks to Collette Collins, Kate Moore, Andrew Pinder, Lindsay Davies, Louise Dixon and Ana McLaughlin
Monday 9TH April
It’s five in the morning and I’ve just woken up to find my bedroom trashed. My bookshelf is overturned, my games are scattered all over the floor, and my revision notes are in shreds.
It must have been a burglar. What if they’re still in the house?
I should go and fight them. I should dish out some vigilante justice.
On second thoughts, I think I’ll just wait here a little bit first.
This is weird. I’ve just been downstairs and found that nothing was damaged. No windows were broken, no locks were forced and nothing was missing.
I think I did the damage myself. What other explanation can there be?
I’ve worked it out now. I must be a sleepwalker. Oh God, why is this happening now, so soon before my exams? Okay, I need to calm down. I’m sure this was a one-off incident brought on by revision stress. School starts again today. I need to forget about it.
This morning I strolled into school as though nothing had happened. I’m not the sort of weirdo who trashes their room in the night, I told myself. I’m a fifteen-year-old with excellent grades predicted in my exams, who has earnt the respect of my peers.
As I walked through the school gates, Tyson from my class shouted: ‘Gingernut!’
Okay, that bit about the respect of my peers isn’t entirely true. But it should be. I’m a prefect and I’m president and founding member of both the chess club and the debating club. And yet my immature schoolmates insist on hurling abuse about the colour of my hair.
We have a tradition at our school where everyone puts their hands around their necks and shouts ‘Choke!’ if you don’t reply to an insult quickly enough. To avoid this, I’ve prepared a number of comebacks:
Them: ‘Oi! Carrot top!’
Me: ‘Actually the top of a carrot is green, not orange.’
Them: ‘You’ve been drinking too much Sunny Delight.’
Me: ‘Sugary drinks don’t affect hair colour, although they can cause acne and obesity, so perhaps you’re the one who’s been drinking them.’
Them: ‘Is Ron Weasley your mum?’
Me: ‘No. Is Hagrid yours?’
Soon none of this will matter. My ignorant schoolmates will fail their exams and head for the nearest dole office, while I’ll go on to sixth-form college, university and a glorious career in politics. And my first act will be to make teasing someone about their hair colour an official hate crime.
Tuesday 10TH April
I’ve just woken up from a really horrible nightmare. I was opening a birthday present from Auntie Susan and Uncle Derek. When I tore off the wrapping I saw it was a packet of dog biscuits. I’m usually quite good at pretending to like terrible presents. But in my dream, the gift sent me into a snarling rage and I… sort of… ate them. It was really graphic. If it had been shown on television I’d have written in to complain about the unacceptable level of violence.
Then I imagined I woke up and my body was so long that my feet went right off the end of the bed and my pyjamas were stretched to breaking point. But that must have been part of the dream, of course.
Maybe I’m still dreaming now. Maybe in a minute I’ll somehow find myself in my old primary school with the man from the newsagent’s and Gandalf.
I need to get a grip. I think I’ll memorize the periodic table. That will make everything better.
We had a lesson about the Treaty of Versailles in History today and I’d read ahead in my textbook so I could answer all the questions.
After a brief introduction, Mr Jordan asked if anyone knew the terms of the treaty. I knew them all, and was just about to answer when I noticed my hands were covered in thick ginger hairs.
It was so weird. The hairs hadn’t been there when I moisturized this morning. And yet now it looked like I was wearing mittens.
The worst thing is, I find really hairy people disgusting. I was once served an ice cream by a man with really hairy knuckles and I couldn’t eat the cone because he’d touched it.
I shoved my hands into my armpits and listened in frustration as my ignorant classmates attempted to guess the terms of the treaty. I wished I could put my hand up, but I knew my pride at answering the question would be cancelled out by the shame of my hairy mitts.
A few minutes later, the patches of hair had gone. How can that have happened? Did I imagine it? Is exam stress making me hallucinate now?
My friend Pete once told me that the government puts chemicals in the water supply to control our minds. Maybe that’s why I’m hallucinating. Maybe the government has found out about my political ambitions and they’re suppressing me through tap water.
No, that’s silly. I’m just getting paranoid. I think I’ll stick to bottled water for the time being, though.
Wednesday 11TH April
/> I had another really horrible dream last night. In this one I was chasing the ginger cat from number 23 through a forest at night. I was running on all fours, with my face close to the ground, and following the feline scent. I caught up with the cat, and was just about to bite its throat when my alarm woke me up.
For a moment, it felt like my whole body was shrinking. Then Mum came in to ask what was wrong. She said I’d been howling so loudly it had woken her up, which is odd because she usually sleeps through anything.
I was leaving our front gate this morning when I saw the postman approaching. I smiled and greeted him as I always do, but then I had a really strong urge to keep him out. For some reason, part of my brain told me I needed to do everything I could to keep him off our territory, whether that meant scratching him or biting his throat. I ignored this bizarre urge and carried on down the street.
Why did I want to attack him? I’m not a violent person. So far my adolescence has been relatively calm, but now it seems I’m turning into one of those difficult teens you see on BBC3.
I think I know what’s happening to me. I think I’ve been possessed by the devil. I knew I shouldn’t have downloaded all that heavy metal from iTunes. I only did it because Pete said it was cool. This is what happens when you go along with peer pressure. I’m going to delete it all right now.
Thursday 12TH April
I slept right through the night, thankfully. No nightmares, no signs of damage and no hallucinations about shrinking. It looks like deleting those Iron Maiden albums did the trick. I might even download some Cliff Richard to make sure the devil doesn’t possess me again.
It turns out my problems aren’t over at all. In fact, they’re getting worse.
I broke my blazer in Maths today. I still don’t quite know how it happened, but I think my back grew to an enormous size and then shrank again.
I was trying to get my head around a trigonometry question, but I just couldn’t do it. I started to worry about what I’d do if a question like that came up in my final exam in June.
What if I ended up getting just a plain A rather than an A star? Even worse, what if I got a B? What if I failed Maths? What if I failed all my exams and had to get a job as a cleaner? I’d have to spend the rest of my life tracing out right-angled triangles in the dirt and remembering the day it all went wrong.
For a split second, it felt as if my back was being pulled in all directions at once by some kind of torture device. I tipped out of my chair, slamming my head into the side of the desk. But then it was over, leaving me with just a torn shirt and blazer to deal with.
I crawled back into my seat as everyone in the class did the shame coughs. ‘Shame coughs’ are a tradition we have in our school where you pretend to cough but really shout the word ‘shame’. That way you can say you were just coughing if the teacher tries to give you a detention for disrupting the class.
As far as the class was concerned, I’d done nothing more than fall out of my chair in a fit of maths-related overexcitement. But I know my back almost doubled in size. I wasn’t imagining it. My ripped clothes prove it.
As I was leaving today, the headmaster, Mr Landis, stopped me and asked who ripped my blazer. I pretended I’d caught it on a peg in the corridor, but he wasn’t having it.
He demanded to know which member of Tyson’s gang had done it. When I refused to name anyone, he gave me a lecture about how it was my role as a prefect to ensure that peer pressure didn’t win out over school pride. I was one of just seven pupils who still wore the regulation school blazer, and I mustn’t let the bullies stop me. I told him I’d do my best to mend the blazer and return to full school uniform as quickly as possible.
I was going to ask Mum to mend my blazer tonight, but I didn’t want to explain what happened. I’ve only got a couple of months of school left anyway, so I think I’ll throw what’s left of it away.
It’s a shame, though. I really liked that blazer. I deliberately chose one that was Teflon-coated so if anyone spat or drew a crude picture on it, I could wipe it clean and the joke would be on them.
I think I understand what’s happening to me now, although it’s very difficult to face up to.
One night last month, I popped down to the corner shop to buy some milk for Mum. On the way home, I was attacked by a large dog. I can’t remember much about it now, but at the time I felt as though I was being so savagely mauled that I was going to die. I crawled back down the street, intending to call an ambulance as soon as I got home.
I was convinced I’d been bitten by the dog, but by the time I got back there were only a few minor scratch marks on my back, and by the morning these had gone too.
I now see that I should have gone to the hospital, because I’ve contracted a very serious disease – rabies.
What else could it be? I’ve got rabies and now I’m going mad.
The earliest the doctor can see me is Tuesday. I can’t wait that long! I’ll be foaming at the mouth!
Oh God! I’ve just looked up rabies online and it says you can die within ten days of the first symptoms. That means I’ve got a week at best. I can’t die! Who’s going to lead this generation away from recklessness if I’m not around? I suppose Pete from the debating society could do it if the general public can learn to see past his uneven ears.
Friday 13TH April
I dread to imagine what bad luck this Friday the 13th will bring me. Maybe I should just stay in bed. No, I can’t risk losing an entire day of school. My exams start in just two months’ time. How did it all go so quickly?
I didn’t have to wait long for the bad luck to start. I just looked in the bathroom mirror and saw that I’d somehow managed to grow a unibrow overnight. The patch of skin between my eyebrows had sprouted thick hair, leaving me with a single gigantic brow that looked like Uncle Derek’s moustache. I shaved a gap between my eyebrows, but when I caught my reflection in the hallway mirror a few minutes later I saw that it had grown right back again.
How am I supposed to get straight A stars in my GCSEs with a unibrow? The highest grade anyone with a unibrow could realistically expect would be a D.
Mum noticed I wasn’t wearing my blazer this morning and asked if I’d be cold. It’s fine, I’m sure my body will sprout a thick coat of hair or something.
Halfway through my history lesson this morning, I realized my mouth was open and my tongue was hanging out of the side. I think it was because I was hot, but I must have looked like one of those yokels whose jaw goes slack when they concentrate. I have to make sure this never happens again. I’m a rational prefect, not a brainless mouthbreather.
We had a debating society meeting this lunchtime. The motion was ‘This house would ban zoos’, and Pete argued in favour of the motion while I argued against it. I usually look forward to debating society meetings, but I couldn’t get into it today. I’d printed out a list of ten good reasons why zoos actually help animals, but when I read them out, they didn’t seem convincing. After all, why should animals be cooped up in cages when they could be running around and chomping into prey?
Pete made a good point about how it was impossible to replicate the natural habitats of wild animals, and the three other members of the debating society applauded. He then folded his arms and smiled so smugly that all I wanted to do was slap him in the face.
I looked down at my hands and saw that my fingernails had hardened into sharp yellow claws. I shoved my hands into my pockets to hide them. Now I couldn’t even check my notes, and needed to come up with something smart off the top of my head. The best thing I could think to say was that it was only his opinion and he was wrong so he should shut up.
It was without a doubt the weakest comeback in the history of the society. The motion was carried, and I skulked away with my hands still in my pockets.
I turned up early for English this afternoon and sat at my usual desk at the front.
Then I had another funny turn. I started to worry that someone would come in and steal my desk.
I felt like I needed to do something to mark that this was my desk, and no one else was allowed near it.
In a sort of daze, I stood up and… I’m not sure I can even bring myself to write this…
Okay, then. I stood up and did a wee around the desk. I honestly have no idea why I thought this was an appropriate thing to do.
As soon as I realized what I’d done, I grabbed a handful of paper towels from the toilets and mopped it up. Then I sprayed the whole classroom with Lynx and sat down again just as Mrs Nichols arrived.
She complained about the deodorant and opened a window, but she didn’t mention anything about urine, so I think I got away with it.
All this has got to stop. People have been locked up in mental homes for less.
Saturday 14TH April
I woke up at seven this morning and made myself a cup of coffee so I’d be ready to start revision at 7.15am as planned. According to my timetable, I was in for a busy morning of maths, followed by history, followed by English, followed by science, followed by an eighteen-minute lunch break.
But as I sat down and laid out my textbook, notebook and scientific calculator, the whole thing suddenly seemed like a massive waste of time. As the clouds parted and the sun shone through my window, I wondered why I was spending such a lovely day cooped up inside my room when I could be running around outside.
