Chapter 4: Teamwork

“If you’re screaming because I’m here,” she said in the same excited tone that she’d used in my dream, “please don’t. I’m not going to hurt you. If you’re screaming for some other reason, by all means, continue.”

She backed away cautiously as I sat up. “What the hell,” I hissed, “are you doing in my room?” I glanced at the clock, and added, “at three in the morning?”

She sat on the floor, looking slightly ashamed. “I’m sorry. I needed someone to talk to.”

“And you immediately thought of me? Why aren’t you asleep. In case you missed it, it’s three in the morning. The AM. It’s dark outside. That means that you should be sleeping, like every human who doesn’t have some strange person show up in her room at this ungodly hour.” I was half-asleep and well aware that I was both talking too much and not making a lot of sense. You should be screaming, a small voice told me in the back of my mind. Not trying to reason with her.

“What was the question?” she asked. Apparently I wasn’t making a lot of sense to her either.

“Why aren’t you asleep?” I repeated, still trying to get my heart rate in the normal range. “Why did you come here? And why were you leaning over me? What are you doing?”

She stared at the floor, tracing a pattern in the carpet absentmindedly. “I’m usually awake at this hour.”

“Why’d you come here?’ I demanded.

She shrugged. “You’re the closest thing to a friend I have. “

I felt terrible for asking.

“So can I stay?” she asked, excited again.

I sighed. Her face fell, and I felt terrible again. Never mind that she was in my room, uninvited. She looked so miserable that I felt terrible. “I can go, if you want,” she said, starting for the door.

“Wait,” I said, knowing that I couldn’t go back to sleep till she had an answer. “I’m going back to sleep. You, do whatever.”

“I don’t mind!” she said happily. Before I closed my eyes, I thought that I saw her jump effortlessly from the floor to the top of my desk.

I woke again, and she was once again leaning over me.

“Stop doing that,” I said irritably, sitting up. She backed away quickly, looking horrified.

“This was a mistake,” she said, more to herself. I was surprised by the change in her voice. Earlier she’d sounded excited, thrilled even. Now she sounded grave, shocked, angry.

“What?” I didn’t understand.

“I thought that I could do this,” she said, drawing up her knees and resting her head on them. She looked sad, but there was still a tenseness in her body, like she was anticipating an attack. “I thought I could have friends here. I thought I could be normal. I was wrong. I’m just too different.”

I stared at her. “What are you talking about?”

“You wouldn’t understand, how could you?” She sounded so miserable that I wanted to hug her and tell her that everything was okay, but something in the back of my mind told me that that wasn’t a good idea. “It’s not something that anyone can understand. Even those who kind of understand it don’t understand,” she continued.

I sighed. “You’re being rather cryptic, you know?” She sniffed like she’d been crying, then her eyes widened in surprise. Suddenly, she was sitting farther away from me, on my desk, leaning against my window.

“It’s not a good idea for me to stay,” she said clearly but quietly, than began muttering under her breath, too quickly for me to understand anything but little pieces of it; I caught, “doesn’t make any sense,” “not human,” and “obvious, unless she doesn’t know.”

“What?” I asked, feeling as though I asked that far too often when I was around her.

“Shoot,” she said, sniffing again. “Was I talking out loud? I’m forever doing that, saying exactly what I think, it’s forever getting me into trouble, oh, but where are my manners, I’m sure you’ll want to go to sleep…” she trailed off, her voice sounding falsely happy, again a very different voice from the tone she’d used before. She sniffed again, then looked puzzled.

I rolled my eyes. “I don’t think I’ll be able to fall asleep any time soon,” I muttered, checking the clock. 5:30. I sighed again.

“Sorry,” she said. “I’ll just…” she trailed off again.

“No you won’t!” I said, rather irritated. “You come into my house, uninvited, and wake me up twice by leering over me. You owe me an explanation, and you’re not leaving till I’ve got one!”

Meenah laughed, but shifted farther away from me, near the very edge of the desk. “Do you have multiple personality disorder? One second you’re fine with everything, and the next you’re yelling at me.” There was the false tone of happiness again.

“I’m only bipolar when I’ve been woken up rudely, twice,” I said under my breath, but something in her face told me that she’d heard anyway.

“What time is it?” she asked casually. “Morning yet?”

“Sure.”

“Then isn’t it breakfast time?” she said hopefully, trying to distract me.

As much as I wanted to refuse to leave till she’d given me an answer, I realized that I was hungry, and reluctantly lead the way downstairs. Mom usually worked on Saturdays too, and was up at this hour, so I didn’t have to worry about waking her up.

Mom looked surprised when we came into the kitchen, but seemed to shrug it off. “Glad to see you listened to me, Liz, and invited a friend over. I was beginning to think that you had no social life.” I rolled my eyes. Meenah looked around the kitchen, seeming to be holding back a laugh.

As soon as mom’s car had pulled away, Meenah turned to me. “I’m going to leave now,” she said. Without another word, she turned and left through the front door, leaving me standing in the middle of the kitchen, confused, with far too many questions and far too few answers.

I kept turning everything over in my head. Doesn’t make any sense. True. Nothing about this was making sense. Obvious, unless she doesn’t know. Well, Meenah had made it very obvious how much I didn’t know. That one could be anything. And then there was the third one, the had nothing to do but sit here and ponder every little meaning of those phrases, the only thing that I couldn’t explain away from last night, no matter how hard I’d tried. Those phrases were the only thing that I was sure she’d said while being completely honest, completely true, because she’d been sure that I wouldn’t hear them. She’d fled before she could explain them. Not human.

I was making myself crazy. Why couldn’t I have been assigned more homework this weekend?

I paused. Homework. Not human. Brian. Another person who had called her not human.

I was desperate enough for some answer, even a crazy one, that I’d grabbed the phone book and dialed the fourth “Palmerson” entry before I’d even thought it through.

“Whassamatter?” a sleepy voice answered on the fifth ring. Too late, I realized that a lot of people would be asleep at 10:00 on a Saturday.

“Brian?” I asked.

“Yeah, who’s this?” He still sounded asleep.

“Lizzie. I have a question.”

“Ask…away,” he muttered around a large yawn.

“You said that you thought that Meenah wasn’t human, and I was wondering why you thought that.”

“Who’s Meenah?”

“The foreign student.”

“Oh,” he said, then, after a pause, “oh!” He was fully awake now. “I’ve been dying to do some research on the matter, in fact. Have been able to talk to her at all, observe her, anything?”

“Um, in a matter of speaking.” I wondered why I’d even bothered asking him. Any second now he’d make a reference to zombies or werewolves or government conspiracies. “Why don’t you think she’s human?” I asked.

“I’ll have to tell you in person, the phones aren’t safe. The Government is tapping our phones.” And there it was. Why did I even bother asking. “Do you mind if I loan you some books?” Oh, great. He thought he’d found a new nerd to hang out with. Me.

“Uh, sure,” I agreed before I’d thought it all through. I was pretty desperate for an answer, to be stooping this low.

“You live in that blue house in Old Roseland, right?” he asked. I started to give him directions, but he interrupted me. “I know the house.”

“Okay.” I hung up the phone, feeling insanely foolish.

That foolish feeling didn’t leave as I walked to the park swings, Vampires: How to Identify and Destroy clutched tightly in my hand. Once I reached the swing, which was just a simple piece of wood tied to an enormous old oak tree, all of the doubt faded away. It was much easier to accept the impossible when isolated from society and surrounded by Roseland’s attempt at a mini-forest. Since I’d moved, this place had been my haven, the place where I never had to care about what anyone thought; I was alone, just me and the other empty swing.

When I wasn’t pressured by the normal worries of the outside--the world that would consistently tell me that I was crazy for even considering this idea--everything made sense. Only a few things didn’t fit: burning red eyes, females with red hair, inability to be near humans, burned by the sun. Other than that, Meenah fit the Society for the Protection from the Supernatural’s description of a vampire down to a T. Pale skin, superhuman strength and speed, never needing to sleep, the list when on and on.

I sat out there for three hours, the amount of time that it took me to read the 180 page book, every word I read convincing me further. The majority of the book was about killing vampires--stake through the heart seemed to be their preferred method--and by the time I was done I’d decided that I needed more information before I made my decision.

My doubts and insecurities all returned when my feet hit the city sidewalk. Was I crazy? Vampires weren’t real, they were just monsters in horror movies. What was I doing? Why on earth should I believe anything that a group called “The Society for the Protection from the Supernatural” had to say? I sat at the kitchen table for a while, contemplating everything I’d read, everything that I doubted, everything that had happened. The whole idea had seemed far more likely in the park, surrounded by trees and animals, than it did in my 1950’s themed kitchen.

In the park, everything had seemed so real, like I suddenly had an answer, and I’d decided to ask Brian for more information. It seemed really rather foolish now, to think of the time I’d wasted reading that book. I’m just give it back to him and say nothing more on the subject.

The phone rang.

“Hello?”

“Lizzie?”

“Brian!” I suddenly realized how excited I was to be able to talk to him, which was stupid, because I had no real reason to be excited.

“Hey,” he said, sound rather nervous. “I wasn’t sure when to call you. Did you finish the book?”

“Yeah, it was interesting.” Interesting intriguing, fascinating, frighteningly accurate, take your pick. “I think you might be on to something.”

“Really? I have a few more you might be interested in.”

“Cool.” I tried to sound like I meant it. “I’ll stop by and pick them up. When would be a good time?”

There was a pause. “Uh, any time, I guess. Wait.” Another pause, then someone talking in the background. “My mom says that if you can wait an hour, she’ll have some peanut-butter cookies.”

“Right.” The mention of food reminded me that I’d missed lunch. “I’ll see you then.”

It was strange, I thought, that Brian seemed so nervous on the phone and that made the whole conversation seem awkward. Laughing to myself, I headed upstairs. I had an hour to kill.

An hour was plenty of time to convince myself that I was crazy, not that I didn’t already think that, so I spent the time lying on my bed, staring at my ceiling, chasing my thoughts in circles. When I looked at the click, I was shocked to realize that I had five minutes to drive the ten-minute drive to Brian’s house. I quickly grabbed my purse and left.

By running a few stop signs and only speeding a little, I managed to cut the drive down to seven minutes, which was a great accomplishment in my book. As I pulled up to the driveway, Mrs. Palmerson stepped out onto the front porch to greet me.

“Lindsey!” she said happily.

“Lizzie,” I corrected her under my breath, grabbing Brian’s book from the passenger seat.

“I’m so glad that you stopped by, I just put some fudge in the freezer but that won’t be done for a few hours, it’s got to chill, but I just pulled some spaghetti pie out of the oven, it was my mother’s recipe, and she got it from her grandma, who stole it from her mother-in-law, funny story, I should tell it to you sometime…”

I was glad, as we walked through the door, that Brian was there to save me from his mother’s endless ramblings. Wordlessly, he motioned for me to follow him upstairs.

It was immediately obvious why his mother had referred to his room as “the cave”. The whole room was dark, lit only by the blue-green glow from the computer screen, the window covered with dark curtains. The whole room had a claustrophobic, too-small feel to it. Ever wall was covered with shelves, and books loomed menacingly above, glaring down at me. I was unwelcome, the intruder in their dark world.

Brian propped the door open with his history book and crossed purposefully to one of the shelves. I lingered by the door, in the light spilling in from the hallway.

“These are all your books?” I asked casually, glancing to my left. Titles such as The Zombie Survival Guide, and Destroying the Undead: A Zombie Hunter’s Manual scowled down at me.

“Yeah,” he muttered, pulling a few books off a shelf. “They’re organized mainly by subject, with general survival guides over there by the window. Here, help me with these,” he added.

Hesitantly, I stepped into the dark, near the shelf where he stood and immediately had seven or so books shoved into my arms. Holding a pile nearly twice the size of mine, Brian cast an appraising eye over the shelves. “This’ll work for now, I guess.” He followed me downstairs to the kitchen.

With all the books spread out on the table, and Mrs. Palmerson slicing up spaghetti pie for each of us, Brian began combing through the books, cross-referencing them, writing anything that matched on a rapidly-growing list in his history notebook. I sat for a moment, just watching and eating spaghetti pie.

“This is really good,” I said casually. I’d missed lunch and was rather hungry, so anything probably would have tasted good. Brian looked up from his list.

“Oh, some help you are. Sure, just make me do all the work. Pull your weight. I’m not just going to hand your answer. You can work for it, like everyone else in this room!”

He was quoting my own words back at me, and I didn’t like that. Hesitantly, I opened one of the nearby books. “What do I do?” I asked.

“First of all, don’t get baked spaghetti on any of the pages.”

“Got it.”

“Now, you’re just looking for any physical description of vampires that you can use to compare with your experiences with out creature.”

The tone in his voice could have also been used to say, “Set the phasers on high viscosity, Scotty, we’re going into super drive,” and I was suddenly aware of what a nerd he was. Did that make me a nerd by association? He was looking at this like it was all fun, like it was a game, like a science experiment that would prove something he already knew. He didn’t have the problem that I did. My reputation was at stake.

I took another bite of spaghetti pie and decided that it didn’t really matter.

More important than my reputation, we were going to make life very difficult for this bizarre, beautiful girl who had done nothing to us. Nothing, that is, but be stronger than any other person, show up at my house at three in the morning, uninvited, and confess to being “not human,” not that I’d told Brian about her visit last night.

And, sitting in Mrs. Palmerson’s sunflower-themed kitchen, it made perfect sense to do this. I laughed to myself, opening the book I’d grabbed. I was going to regret this, I could tell, but knowing that did nothing to hinder my progress. Impending sense of doom. That was what Mrs. Edward’s claimed that she felt before we broke something. It seemed like I was feeling that.

We were running through the checklist now, cross-referencing my experiences with Brian’s description of a vampire, the ‘facts’ we’d gathered from his books.

“Red eyes?” he asked.

“Nope, blue eyes,” I said. I felt like I was in the lighting round on a TV game show.

“Pale skin?”

“Very.” Not a game show, It was like I was being given a word association test by a psychiatrist.

“Shadows under eyes?”

“Didn’t notice.”

He hissed under his breath, the way he did whenever I’d been unable to answer a question. My lack of observation with regards to the unknown and probably nonexistent really seemed to annoy him. He continued down the list.

“Aversion to silver?”

“Don’t know.”

“Aversion to garlic?”

“Don’t know.”

“Aversion to holly?”

“The name?”

“The wood.” His tone made it clear that I was acting like an idiot.

“Oh. Don’t know.”

“Superhuman strength?”

I had to think about that one. “Somewhat.”

“Elaborate,” he told me.

Once again, he had demonstrated out differences. No one I’d talk to in normal circumstances would use the word “elaborate” in normal conversation. Then again, this conversation wasn’t exactly normal.

“Um, she threw an eggplant off the roof of the new gym and in hit the English building.”

He rolled his eyes. “Anyone could do that if they tried hard enough and trained for long enough.”

“Could you?” I challenged. “Well, it’s the best I’ve got,” I added before he could reply. “I’ve never seen her jump over a building or stop a train, sorry.”

When we’d finished the list, he tallied up the answers. “Two no’s, five yes’s, thirty six unknowns,” he said. “Any way to clarify on the unknowns?”

“Like what? Shove a silver crucifix in her face and see if she panics?”

“I don’t know. How do people usually find out?”

“How should I know. You’re the vampire expert. How do people usually find out that their neighbors are vampire?”

“They don’t,” he said matter-of-factly. “They continue their lives blissfully ignorant of the fact because they are too closed-minded to accept the glaring truth. And then their vampire neighbors kill them.”

There was a short, awkward pause.

“Well, that’s comforting!” I said. “So what do we do now?”

He shrugged. “Well, how does it usually happen in those vampire romance novels?”

I stared at him blankly. “How should I know?”

“Well, you’re a girl.”

“Oh, and, of course, because I’m a girl, I read cheap romance novels.”

“You don’t?” he asked, disbelieving.

“No.”

“Well then, how on earth are we going to find anything out?”

I gritted my teeth. “If you think that I am going to read some half-brained, poorly written book with a plot that your six-year-old sister could have just as easily come up with, you are sadly mistaken.”

“There are times when you just have to take one for the team,” he laughed.

“What team?” I asked. “You are helping me with my problem, and it’s up to me to decide if I even want to know the answer.”

“I’m helping you. Doesn’t that make up a team?”

He was right. I hated that he was right.

I felt out-of-place in Book World, the large corporate bookstore just outside of town, but I couldn’t go to the library or Emily’s used books, where I usually got my books. They knew me there, and I had a reputation to uphold.

This book store held none of the comfort that I usually felt when walking into a building filled with books. Instead, I felt the kind of stress that I usually felt when I walked into a corporate café. It was like navigating in an unfamiliar town, carefully following the street signs. “Books,” read the first one (it was next to “coffee,” which might have explained the stressful feeling), then “young adult,” then “romance,” and, as I rounded a corner at the end of the shelf, “vampire romance.” I was shocked. The entire back wall was covered with books that fit into this sub-genre.

Trying to look casual, I grabbed a paperback and looked at it. There was a photo of a blonde girl looking rather overwhelmed and a dark-haired man standing behind her on the front cover. I flipped it over and read the back.

“Mitzi’s boyfriend is a vampire. Hic he overcome his thirst for her blood and will their love survive?”

Straightforward enough. I set it down and picked up another.

“Tina is in love with a vampire. He’s almost perfect, but he wants her blood. Will their relationship survive the summer? A heart-stopping story with bite--

I stopped reading there. What was the point? They were all about the same. I shrugged and grabbed four at random and headed to the self-checkout.

“What’s the conclusion?” Brian asked as I pulled into his driveway. He had to yell over the sound of my car, which was shuddering again.

“All vampire romance novels are about the same,” I told him after I’d turned off my engine.

“What’s that mean for us?” he demanded.

“I don’t know, Brian,” I said, unfastening my seatbelt. “I haven’t read them yet.”

He sighed. “Well, when are you planning on doing that.

“We,” I said, “are going to start that right now. I don’t read while I drive.” I threw Love at First Bite at him through my window, then headed into the kitchen and settled myself at the kitchen table with Until Undeath do we Part.

Halfway through the first page, he stormed in, brandishing Love at First Bite at me. “You really expect me to read this?” he demanded.

“Take one for the team,” I muttered.