Sweetblood (9781439108741) (8 page)

French Cuisine

Monday, in mourning for my missing computer, I dress in black. Of course, I always dress in black, but this morning I dress even blacker than usual. I put on my black wool turtleneck and let the long sleeves hang over my hands all the way to my freshly painted all-black nails. I wear black jeans that I over-dyed to make them even blacker, and my black suede boots, and my black raincoat (even though it isn't raining) and my eyeshadow and my blackest, inkiest, foulest attitude. My goal is to get through the entire day without saying a word to anyone.

I head out the door and up Birch Street toward the high school. Leaves swirl around on the sidewalk, caught in invisible whirlpools. Wind sneaks in beneath my raincoat. The sun squints between clouds, glows weakly for a few seconds, then slips back into hiding before a single BTU of warmth can reach my bones. I am feeling very chilly and
dark when my ex-pretend-husband Mark Murphy comes jogging up, all cheerful and sunny.

“Hey, Skeeter!”

I would ignore him, but Mark and I go too far back. So much for my day of silence.

“Morning, Monkey,” I say.

“You're looking extra spooky today.”

“Thank you. I'm feeling spooky.”

“Getting ready for Halloween?”

“Not exactly.” I look at his Seward High letter jacket, orange with blue leather sleeves. “Are you?”

He laughs.

I say, “I'm in mourning. My parents took away my computer.”

“How come?”

“They think I'm getting too weird.”

Mark doesn't say anything.

“I am, you know.”

“You am what?”

“Weird.”

Mark's jacket looks huge on his lanky frame. He got his letter in track. Mark is a sprinter, and he runs hurdles. Even though I think sports are stupid, I once watched one of his track meets. Mark took second place in the 100meter event. It was strange seeing the goofy, jolly Mark Murphy being so serious and focused and
fast
. In those eleven seconds I saw something inside him. Something tough and determined and a little bit scared.

I'm that way too. Except I'm not always so tough.

“What did you do?” he asks.

“I'm flunking a couple classes.”

“You?” He stops and stares at me like I've turned inside out. I keep walking.

“They're boring.”

“Wow.” He takes three giant strides to catch up. “Why did they take your computer?”

“I wrote this paper—about vampires and stuff? And Mrs. Graham freaked, and then my dad got into my computer and checked out some of the vampire Web sites I'd been at, and they
all
freaked.”

“Vampires?”

“Yeah. You know. Bloodsucking demons?”

“I know what vampires are.”

I wonder how Mark might react if I tell him I am one. I decide not to.

Neither of us say anything for a while. We are three blocks from school when he finally opens his mouth again.

“You seem kind of unhappy lately,” he says.

Now I stop and look at him. “Why should I be happy?”

“I don't know. I just…” He is floundering. Like most boys, he has difficulty expressing himself in plain English.

“Do I have something to be happy about?” Putting the pressure on, making him squirm. He looks so uncomfortable.

“I mean… is there anything I can do?” He looks pained. “You want to borrow my class notes or anything?”

I laugh at him. It's mean, but I laugh anyway. I've seen Mark's notes. They're nothing short of a disaster. Mark is not exactly honor roll material.

“At least I'm not flunking,” he says. I can see I've stung him.

“Notes aren't my problem,” I say.

“Oh. So what are you gonna do?”

“I haven't figured that out yet,” I say. We are passing beneath a black walnut tree; the sidewalk is littered with fallen nuts in their green and black husks. They look like
organic golfballs. I kick one. As it skitters down the walk, the husk disintegrates and the walnut tumbles free, small, black, and hard as a rock. “Maybe I'm nuts,” I say.

I slog through the gray day like Godzilla through Tokyo, breathing fire at everybody. Things go from bad to awful on the way to chemistry, when I see Dylan in the hall talking to Marquissa Smith-Valasco. I stop dead. A couple of fresh-man girls crash into me from behind, spilling my books. Dylan looks up, then comes over to help me pick them up. I don't even say thank you. Marquissa watches, smirking.

In chemistry class I get hungry and eat a granola bar right there at my desk. BoreAss sees me munching and gets upset, making some sarcastic remark. I don't know if he wants me to spit it out, or what.

“I'm having a hypoglycemic episode,” I say through a mouthful of granola.

He glares at me, trying to figure out whether I'm lying, which I am.

“Maybe you should go see the nurse,” he says.

That sounds good to me. I get up—all eyes on me, waiting for me to collapse or turn to smoke or something—and I walk out. But instead of going to the nurse's office I go to the auditorium.

The school auditorium is big enough to seat every kid at Seward. That's about eleven hundred students. But right now it is empty and semidark, the only light coming from a few dimly lit wall sconces. I walk to the front and climb up onto the stage and sit at the edge and stare out over the seats. It is quiet except for the sound of air molecules on my eardrums, the roar of blood rushing through my veins, and a distant thumping sound. Is it my heart? No, the sound is too irregular. I listen carefully and finally
decide I'm hearing the sound of a basketball being dribbled. The gymnasium is right next door.

Every seat in the auditorium has held hundreds of human bodies. I wonder if anything stays. When we sit in a place for a while, does some little tiny fragment of soul remain behind? I imagine each seat filled with multiple ghosts, all of them watching me, waiting for me to do something. If I squint my eyes I can almost see them, like swirls of ice-cold smoke. A prickle runs up my spine and I turn quickly, but the creature behind me is invisible. I close my eyes and imagine Guy appearing from stage left, sitting down next to me, putting his arm around me. Warm. I feel his tattoo touching my shoulder and his breath in my hair and I hear the beating of his heart.

The bell rings, followed by the dull roar of a thousand students moving from the classrooms to the hallways. I hop off the stage and emerge from the peaceful dark and merge with the babbling stream.

Mme. D'Ormay has us break into groups. We are supposed to discuss, in French, our dinner plans. I end up in a group with Gustave, Jean-Claude, René, and Guy. We sit in a small circle, knee to knee. I look down at their motley collection of athletic shoes and my black boots and I feel Guy's blue eyes on me.

Jean-Claude starts things off by saying,
“Je voudrais homard et cravates pour dîner.”

“You're having lobster and neckties for dinner?” I ask.

He blushes. “No. I mean, what's the word for shrimp?”

“Crevettes,”
I say.

And so it goes. Gustave and René both decide to have
steak au poivre
for dinner. Guy wants
poisson et frites
—his way of saying fish and chips—and I decide to go for the
boudin noir,
or blood sausage.
Ooh-la-la!

Guy's knee keeps bumping mine. The place where they touch feels hot, like sunburn. I can see his tattoo peeking out from his shirtsleeve, the hilt of the sword and the red tip of the heart. René and Jean-Claude are discussing appetizers. They are getting goofy. René is insisting on
escargot,
while Jean-Claude wants
les oeufs du lapin étouffée
(stuffed rabbit eggs). Guy leans over and whispers to me, “You want to head over to Harker Village after school? Grab a latte and something to eat? Snails or something?”

“Can't,” I say.

We return to our weird meal plans.

After class, in the hall, Guy stops me. His blue eyes pin me to the wall. “You sure? I'll buy you a cappuccino at the Bean.”

“I told you. I can't. Why don't you ask Marquissa?”

“Marquissa?” He looks puzzled. “Why would I do that?”

I look away, embarrassed now. “Anyway, I'm grounded. My parents have got me under house arrest.”

He says, “How can they do that? You're almost an adult.”

“I'm sixteen.”

“A couple hundred years ago you'd already be married and have kids.”

“A couple hundred years ago I'd be dead.”
Sweetened to death.

“Really?”

“Yeah.”
Or maybe with a stake through my heart.

“I thought vampires lived forever.”

“I'm of the mortal variety.”

Guy laughs. The halls are emptying as kids filter into classrooms.

“I gotta go,” I say.

Poisson

Fish—Harlan Fisher, M.D.—is a very handsome man, but old. His temples are gray, and the crow's-feet at the corners of his eyes have more toes than a centipede. I'm sure he's older than my parents, and they're almost fifty. This afternoon, Fish is wearing jeans and a yellow shirt, with the sleeves rolled up to show off his hairy arms. You would never guess that he's a doctor except for the stethoscope. He grins at me as he enters the examination room.

“What's up, Lucinda Szabo?”

“That's
Ms.
Lucinda Szabo, to you.”

“Oh-ho! In a mood today, are we? How have your blood sugars been?”

I tell him, lying only a little bit, which he expects. He goes through the usual list of questions, making notes on my chart. He chides me for my last glycosylated hemoglobin—that's the test for long-term blood sugar level—and
congratulates me for having a pulse. He keeps up a steady stream of chatter as he checks my feet for signs of neuropathy and looks in my eyes for signs of retinopathy. If I didn't know better I would say he is nervous.

I'm waiting for an opportunity to say something about my problem with my parents, but it's not an easy thing to get into. Maybe I'll say nothing, then tell my parents that Fish said I don't need a shrink. Would they buy it? I don't think so.

“Hello? Earth to Ms. Szabo?” Fish is staring at me.

“What?”

“I asked you how school was going.” He backs off and sits down at his swivel chair.

“Oh. Okay, I guess.”

“I heard different. From your mother. She called this morning.”

“Oh. Well, it's not going
that
okay. Basically, I'm flunking out.”

“I thought you were Ms. ‘Straight A' Szabo.”

“An older version of me,” I say, quoting Alanis Morrisette.

“I see.” He waits.

“Actually, it was this paper I wrote that got me in trouble.”

“Oh?”

“You remember last time I was here I told you my vampire theory?”

Fish has very nice, large, even teeth, but they are kind of yellow. “You mean about vampire legends being based on untreated diabetics?”

“Yeah.”

He chuckles. “You know, I ran that theory by a few of my colleagues. They got a kick out of it.”

“That's because it's probably true.”

“It could very well be,” Fish says. “Not that anyone will ever be able to prove it.”

“I could go off my insulin and see what happens.”

“I wouldn't recommend that!”

“Just for a few weeks. You know. See if my teeth grow.”

Fish is peering at me with his eyebrows all scrunched together. He's not sure I'm kidding.

I say, “Who knows? Maybe the cure for diabetes is to drink the blood of normal people. An old Transylvanian cure?”

Fish's eyebrows do another contortion, then he forces out a laugh: HA HA HA.

“Do you want a prescription for that?” he asks, trying to join me in the joke. I can see that he is uncomfortable. That makes me mad, so I just stare back at him without smiling. He looks down at my chart for a few seconds, then changes the subject.