CHAPTER 30
I spent most of the weekend (well, the weekend nights) at the hospital being Super Research Girl. Since the hospital lab was officially my part-time weekend employer, there was nothing weird about my camping out there. And since my boss, Cary, thinks that I’m the most responsible teenager ever, destined to graduate at the top of my med school class (he’s been listening to my dad), he was more than willing to let me stick around after I clocked out and work on my “science project.” And since my mother was still preparing for trial, she didn’t care if I was out at all hours. Yet another benefit of being smart and well behaved: adults never assume you’ve been turned into a vampire against your will.
At any rate, on the whole, the weekend was perfect. Minimal parental contact. Minimal vampiric activity. Minimal hunger thanks to easily accessible bags of blood. (That, yes, I stole. So sue me.) The only downside? Minimal contact with Jenny and Clayton. But their families are normal and wanted to do the quality-time thing. Since arousing parental suspicions wasn’t high on our list—and since I had plenty of research to do—we decided not to push it.
All of which is why I spent the entire weekend in a state of supreme scientific activity. Which is also the reason I was in such a bad mood when Monday morning rolled around. Because I’d wasted two entire days (well, nights), and hadn’t learned a thing.
“Nothing?” Clayton asked, when I relayed all of that to him from my little perch in the chemistry lab. “If you weren’t getting anywhere, then why did you keep up the charade?”
“Because the answer’s here somewhere,” I said, waving at a slide smeared with my blood. I’d pretty much blown off my morning classes again, telling all of my teachers that I was in the middle of a potential science fair breakthrough. The ruse had worked and, although I was happy to have so much freedom, I had to wonder about the state of public education when no one much seemed to care if I bothered going to classes.
I made a mental note to write an editorial for the Liberator and kept focusing on the slide. “Something,” I said. “I’m missing something big.”
“Where?” Clayton asked. “In your blood? If it’s there, you would have found it. You’re smart, remember? That’s what you’re always telling me.”
I made a face, then moved aside so he could look through the microscope. “You’re always telling me that you’re smart. See if you can find something.”
He looked through the eyepiece, adjusted his focus, then grunted. “What am I looking for?”
“Don’t know,” I admitted. “I ran a zillion different tests at the hospital. The lab techs like me,” I explained, in response to his querying look. “But I didn’t find anything in the makeup, the chromosomes, nothing.”
“So it’s not the blood.”
“It has to be the blood,” I said, then explained about the cheerleaders’ little trick to increase their athletic prowess. “They drink the blood and suddenly they’re ubercheerleaders. So what else could it be?”
I could tell from his expression he was stumped.
“Stephen’s wrong,” I said for emphasis. “It’s in the blood. Some sort of UV-vitamin D thing. The key is right there on that slide.”
“Wow,” a voice from behind me said. “You really are as smart as Stephen said.”
I whirled around to face Chris, who was leaning against the doorway.
“Or am I interrupting?” he said, aiming a significant look toward Clayton.
“What do you want? Or is Stephen sending his little minions to check on me?” I added nastily.
“I’m not a minion,” he said. “And I came for that.” He pointed toward the microscope.
“It’s not—” Clayton began.
“I’m only giving it to Stephen,” I said, even louder as I shot Clayton a look that I hoped he would interpret as keep your mouth shut!
Since he shut his mouth and turned back to the microscope, I guess it worked.
“So you’ve really got it?” Chris asked, coming all the way into the lab and shutting the door behind him. “You figured out how we can walk outside?”
“Stephen knew I would,” I said, staring him straight in the eye and daring him to call my bluff. “That’s why he picked me, right?” I kept staring. That’s the trick about lying—always look them in the eye.
Beside me, I heard Clayton shift, and I prayed he wasn’t going to stand up straight and ask me what I was talking about.
“So fork it over.” He held out his hand.
I swallowed. “To you? No way. Send Stephen.”
“He’s busy. I’m second in command. Or hadn’t you heard?”
I hadn’t, actually, but probably best for Chris’s ego (and my overall safety) not to mention that. “He can come later,” I said. “After school. It’s not ready yet, anyway. There are still some, um, modifications.”
Can I lay it on thick, or what?
I held my breath, wondering if Chris would buy it. “What modifications?” he asked.
“Ah, well, I have to utilize the hemoglobin and platelet nuclei in order to bond with oxybenzone and other benzophenones in order to create not an SPF but an SFF that meets or exceeds one hundred percent.” Believe it or not, I made all that up on the spur of the moment. Frankly, I think I did a kick-ass job of making up a total line of crap.
From the expressions on Clayton’s and Chris’s faces, the crap sounded good, too.
Clayton stayed silent (thank goodness), but Chris nodded. “Well, okay then. So long as you’ve got it under control.”
“And if you’d leave,” I said sharply, “I can get back to work. I can’t concentrate with you hovering.”
“Yeah. Right. Sure.”
“Tell Stephen to come here at four. I should be back from the gym by then.”
He didn’t say anything, but he nodded. Then he opened the door and slipped out.
“What—”
I held a finger up to my lips before Clayton could go on, then marched across the room and pulled the door shut.
“—are you doing?” he finished. “You don’t know a thing! And what was all that garbage about oxybenzone? You’re going to give Stephen sunscreen?”
I lifted a shoulder. “He doesn’t know it’s sunscreen. You saw Chris. I threw out a few chemical names and his eyes practically glazed over.”
“Stephen is smarter than Chris,” Clayton pointed out.
That was true. But I figured I could bullshit my way through this. Or, at least, I hoped I could.
The thing was, I really wanted to try. Because if I could convince Stephen that this stuff would let him walk in the sun . . . and if he actually did walk in the sun . . . well, then I think I would have solved my little problem of how to kill my master without actually laying a hand on him.
And wouldn’t that just make my entire semester?
At any rate, right then, I didn’t have time to worry about it. Because even though I’d snagged lab time for the whole day, at the moment, I had to go to basketball tryouts.
I think I’ve already mentioned that football is king in Texas. And that’s true. But once football season is over, the crown prince of basketball takes over, and most of the football gods put on their basketball god hats. And in that nether-period between football and basketball, the players try out for the team. Honestly, though, I’m not entirely sure why any of them have to audition. As far as I can tell, all the same guys make the team every year.
At any rate, because I was now a cheerleader (rah-rah!), I got to go to my first-ever basketball tryout. And the weird thing? This one, I wanted to go to.
Wanted to go so much, in fact, that I raced the whole way to the locker room, climbed eagerly into my little (and I do mean little!) outfit, and bounced around a bit, waiting for the other girls to show up.
Or—to be more precise—waited for Stacy to show up. Which she didn’t. Which totally made me giddy, especially when Ladybell arrived and started counting us off.
“And where are Melissa and Stacy?” She looked at all of us, but we shrugged. And when she turned her blue-shadowed eyes to Tamara, our fearless head cheerleader just about lost it.
“How am I supposed to know? Do you think I’m their freaking mother?”
Ladybell’s eyebrows rose, and I wondered if Tamara’s outburst was going to wreak havoc with her delicate sensibilities. But I’d misjudged Ladybell. She laid into Tamara hard; I swear my eyebrows were going to catch fire.
“You, missy, are the head cheerleader. Which means that you’re in charge of making sure your cheerleaders are in place and ready to go at the appropriate time. Is that clear?”
I saw Tamara’s eyes go wide, and then she swallowed. I also saw that look she gets when she’s really, really pissed. I waited for the explosion, but it didn’t come. Instead, she just nodded and said, “Yes, Ladybell.”
Wow. I guess our little Tamara’s growing up.
Anyway, once our fearless leader had been thoroughly chastised, we all got our pom-poms pomming and jogged out into the gym. I was behind Lisa, and I was cribbing from her like crazy. I mean, I’d only had one practice with them, and it wasn’t like I had a lot of experience as an audience member to draw from. I’d avoided football and basketball games like the plague. And cheerleaders even more.
As Jenny would say, my proletariat sensibilities had come back to haunt me.
Even so, I was managing to do a decent job. I didn’t mess up a routine, and I was cheering with gusto. This, I thought, was good.
Right about the time we finished our little “We’ve got spirit!” rallying cry, I saw Stacy come in from the side. My eyes went wide, and I knew that if she was looking my way, my reaction was going to look totally genuine. I mean, the girl was practically bald! Jenny had totally G.I. Jane’d her!
A whole chorus of jeers went up from the bleachers, and what made my nonpopular little heart go pitter-pat was the fact that the jeers were at least as loud as the catcalls had been earlier for Tamara when we’d bounced into the gymnasium.
Yup. I might be a vampire, but at the moment I was feeling pretty good about the way I’d brought down the popularity factor of Waterloo’s two Queen Bitches. Unless I missed my guess, they’d both be nearing rock bottom on tomorrow’s Waterloo Watch poll.
Honestly, it just goes to show you, the higher up the popularity food chain you are, the further you have to fall.
At any rate, Stacy didn’t look happy, but she did look . . . well, good. I mean, I was used to her long thick hair, but this actually looked chic.
Great. I implement a scathing plan for personalized punishment, and she comes out looking like a model for Vogue.
I was contemplating the unfairness of it all—and shaking my pom-poms at appropriate places—when America’s Next Top Model sidled up to me. “I know you did this.”
“Did what? Your hair? Are you on drugs? Is that why you’re late?”
“I’m late because I had to get a salon appointment, you freak. And don’t play all innocent on me. This is you. All of it. And somehow, I’m going to prove it.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Unlike some people, I have a life other than my hair. Other than your hair, too, for that matter. And I really wouldn’t waste my time.”
Okay, that was a major lie. But she didn’t call me on it. Instead, all she did was look me straight in the eye and say, “Life? Sweetie, I think you’re mistaken. You don’t have a life.”
Ouch. Okay, the girl had a point.
“But if I do find out that you did this to me,” she said, leaning in close, “you’re going to wish you really were dead. Because undead is going to be so not good enough to keep you safe from me.”
“Hey, dude,” I said, backing up with my hands up in surrender. “I told you, it wasn’t me.” But even as I was trying to convince her I was totally innocent, my insides were doing a victory dance. Because this was one less vampire in the halls of Waterloo.
It would be years before Stacy’s hair grew out. And if I knew anything for certain, I knew that she wouldn’t do the undead thing until she had at least eight inches, a Fekkai cut, and highlights.